Watching a David Attenborough documentary–Planet Earth–with a Sioux Indian is mildly disconcerting. Attenborough is intoning about the bison. That’s a magnificent animal I say. That’s a lot of meat, she says. We used to hunt them with arrows, she says. You could kill them with arrows? Nah, but if you could immobilize it you could hack at it. I blanch even whiter. That’s a lot of meat she says again.
Category Archives: Eats
Rich people everywhere
(2010)
Last nite we went to a show at the Bowl. Showed our press passes to the usher and went to turn right and head up the stairs as ujsual. The usher said no and pointed us down the stairs. We kept going down and down, past all the places I thought we were gonna sit, through steadily rising income levels. Then through a special gate. I was about to head to a spot tucked in the corner when the usher led us down to the very front. Then across to the very center. There we were, front row center at the Hollywood Bowl, the stage maybe four feet away. Apparently some billionaire died or something and we got his seats. Whatever, there we were with our picnic backpack full of home cooked fried chicken, some Lake-to-Lake cheese, Ritz crackers, tortillas, some fruit, whatever we found in the fridge. A ten dollar bottle of wine I got for half that. Rich people everywhere. There were menus on the table. The Beef was $41. Appetizers pushed $20, desserts a mere twelve or so. I didn’t even ask to see the wine list. I sat there kinda stunned. Fyl acted as if this were normal everyday stuff for her…she’s getting jaded. The server was oh so perky. I said we weren’t going to order off the menu and she looked a little disappointed—no big tips from table numero uno tonight. She did offer us place settings, glasses, to open your wine, anything, sir. I declined, but we did order Fyl a beer. Who knows how much that cost. Anyway, we have this really nifty picnic backpack I got once for test driving car far too small for me. I wanted that backpack. Like a sixty dollar deal, free. Really nice plates (plastic), really nifty wine glasses (plastic), stainless steel silver ware (plastic handles), a cutting board (wood) and some cute little checkered napkins (cloth). We love this thing. We pack it full of food, put a wine bottle in the wine holder, I mean it’s perfect. The envy of all picnickers. My god did it look cheap and plastic and tawdry amid that little sea of rich people. I opened the bottle and poured it into one of the little glasses. A server looked and I swear rolled her eyes. This unctuous little man, nattily dressed, went from table to table chatting with the rich people, anything I can do, etc. He studiously passed right by us, eyes averted. Suddenly the program director of KKJZ (the jazz station) pops up. His wife is holding a picnic bag. The look completely dazed that they’ve been plunked down front row center at the Bowl. They pull out their picnic dinner. Grapes, some sandwiches, a bottle of wine from Trader Joes. She was crazy about our plastic wine glasses. I had to show her the picnic pack. Tell the test-drive story. Then pops up a writer and a pal. Dazed, both. And so broke we all shared our wine and food with them. All around us tinked fancy silverware on fabulous china. Champagne bottles popped. It was surreal. The people stared at us, sitting at that table, knowing we had to be somebody, but if we were somebody how could all of us be so cheap?
A wonderful evening. Two excellent Latin jazz bands and a hackneyed Sergio Mendes set, made up for by an army of near naked Brazilian dancers who strutted all around us. They were between us and the non-rich people and we got about five solid minutes of 99% bare Brazilian tushes shaking it for the people. The night before there’d been a symphony there…. It ended and we finally got out of the parking lot and I had to get home to write my column so of course I said hey, there’s a party, let’s go, and off we were to Highland Park and caught the last dregs of an obviously uproarious party. A couple dozen boho wackos old enough to know better. Lots of slurred sentences. People with the munchies bad. We stayed till 1:30. Home by 1:45. We had left the house at 6:45…..
Btw, we never did pay for that beer.
Nachos
(2011)
I was sick all the night before…was still shaky when I got to the hotel for the protest. Dropped by Trader Vic’s in the hotel lobby for a whiskey. I felt like such a cliché….a reporter dropping by a bar on the way to an assignment and it ain’t even noon yet. Whiskey helped, though, and the second helped even more, and things settled down enough for me to interview a bunch of angry musicians. Drove to the day gig right afterward, still feeling sick as a dog, and when I walked into the elevator on the way to my office there was this overwhelming odor of cheap Mexican food…they were giving away nachos for some reason. Servers glopping them on people’s plates. People ladleing on sour cream and green salsa and red salsa and oily grated cheese. Trapped in the back of the elevator by a dozen people trying not to drop their nachos. Oh god. The twenty floors was an eternity. On every floor people on and off. I hated them. People can talk endlessly about nachos. Finally my floor. Got to my desk, opened my email and I’m getting yelled at by a couple people for not telling people how incredibly important some gigs were. Work was fucked. Got home at eight I think. Tried to eat. Tried to write. Tried to sleep. Damn. Why do I keep doing this? I hate being a jazz columnist. I was gonna quit a couple weeks ago and had guilt trips laid on me like you can’t believe. And now I still have that thing to write and my regular copy to write and I am tired of this writer crap real bad. Either that or I need a vacation. Anyway, I got the piece written. Now all I have to do is not think about nachos and I’ll be fine.
Food truck
Driving by the Satellite (ex-Spaceland for all you old timers, ex-Dreams of LA for all you even older timers) this past weekend I saw the food truck out front. Gotta have a food truck out front nowadays. It’s no burrito wagon I said out loud. Not in Silver Lake. The truck bore a digital sign. The name came across. Wait a minute, “Pinche Flavor”? Love it! I said let’s stop. My wife said why. I said I wanted to get a burrito at Pinche Flavor. She pointed out the sign said Pinch of Flavor. Oh. You should wear your glasses she said. Then I realized I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone say pinche anything in this neighborhood. We kept driving. The pinche hipsters were lining up for their Korean fusion vegan whatevers, and I hate lines anyway.
Old school
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Pig roast
Going to a pig roast.
It’s amazing how many people in L.A. you can offend by going to a pig roast. Religious reasons, PETA reasons, global warming reasons, even Green Acres reasons, everyone gets mad. It’s not even Tiki themed so all the ironic types are rolling their eyes, listening to Martin Denny.
There’s no winning. Just eating..
They don’t have goons at the Philharmonic
Was at the Hollywood Bowl yesterday for the L.A. Phil’s press party. The spread is onstage in the bandshell. Food, drink, reporters, musicians, hustlers, hangers on, sundry rich people, a lotta suits and some nice legs even. Gustavo Dudamel is really little. Maybe 5’6″. I’d seen him milling about in the mix last night, just another fast talking kid scamming on the free grub/drinks because he works in the mail room of an advertising company or something. Lucky for me I didn’t smack his hand down when he reached for the purple potato wedge things. His goons would have been on me in a second. Well, they don’t have goons at the Philharmonic. Unless those little gay kids are goons. And Dudamel isn’t gay. I was stereotyping. You can do that with that crowd. Or maybe I’ve just been around Hollywood too long.
The potatoes were purple, though. Weirdest food was the gazpacho in a spoon. Big white spoons with a big mouthful of gazpacho in each. You take a spoon off the silver tray the silent, expressionless waiter holds out for you, slurp the thing down, and then put the slurped spoon down on a tray another silent, expressionless guy holds out for you. It was one of those revoltingly decadent things, a silent servant holding a spoon for you to slurp, something out of the Last Emperor, maybe, or like the French Revolution never happened. I slurped but felt guilty about it. I mean imagine that gig—you’re the guy who holds the slobbered spoons tray. He probably was an actor. They all looked like it, the waiters/waitresses. All handsome or pretty, the girls in the same outfits as the guys—black pants and shirts and a bright pink or yellow tie. Maybe they were color coded. I didn’t notice what color tie the slobbered spoon guy had on. I doubt anyone else did either. I doubt they noticed him at all.
I wonder if a generation ago people held out spoons for people to slurp. I doubt it. I think that’s something new. And I think it says a lot.
(2010)
Italians
(email, 2009 or so)
The wine flowed, all delicious Italian varieties. I just asked for something red and then something else red and then—I had three—something red again. They were all tasty. The guy read me the name off the bottle each time but I had forgotten it by the time I nodded “oh”.
The hors d’oevres were the best I’ve ever had and the little waiter guys with the trays kept bringing them on. Got stuffed on little mouthfuls. Trout caviar is delicious. We snuck away from the schmoozing and wandered about the grounds, very nice, very unassuming. You weren’t supposed to know who was inside doing whatever things rock stars do that they don’t want known. There’s a secret entrance for the Madonnas and the like. Bars everywhere, pool side, on both sides of the lobby, everywhere you looked there were people sitting with drinks and chatting their heavy significant chats or giggling as champagne tickled their noses. There was a singer I had heard on the event’s website who really intrigued me, a soul sort of thing, and as I had mentioned it to the publicist. Suddenly she, her producer, and some unidentified others were ushered into my august presence. We had a nice chat. Turns out she was the evening’s entertainment and I was very impressed. They were thrilled and whispered about it in Italian. I was talked into attending the fancy concert at the Fonda on Saturday where she’ll be performing with half a dozen other Italian acts. Full band this time. The backstage will have gourmet Italian grub and wine, they emphasized. Bring your dear wife. I wasn’t sure if I was open that night and hemmed and hawed a bit and said yes (one always hems and haws a bit). The publicist restrained a squeal and the Italians smiled and whispered among themselves. The singer, thank god, speaks fluent English, well, is in fact an American raised in Italy so I guess she got on the bill on a technicality. Afterward the hotel manager overheard that I was from the LA Weekly and I was snatched away to join a tour of the hotel’s recording studio beneath the pool. Very nice. Madonna had just been there. Joe Perry that very day. His amp was there. We weren’t allowed to touch it. After the Italians wandered back up to the bar left we stayed a bit and talked studio business and recording techniques and music stuff. They were thrilled to have a real live LA Weekly guy in their studio. I mean, there were a couple other journalists at the party, actually, there, all from tiny little monthly rags, none of whom were on the tour. I mean puhleez……
Alas the end of the night was drawing nigh, and I had to scurry off to my beautiful Buick Lucerne before it turned into a pumpkin and me into an office worker again.
Unfabulous
Silver Lake is being straightified. It’s unfabulous. Plus you used to be able to get a great burger and get called sister at the Blue Nun.
I wanted to show you a picture of the Blue Nun but apparently it never existed. Nothing undigital ever was. Maybe’s it’s for the better. Like where that steam punk guy is hitting on that breezy little blonde. I saw something unspeakable right there. But that was in analog times, fabulous, and not online. Ain’t that right sister, the guy at the Blue Nun said. I nodded and took a bite out of my burger. The conversation was about writing and liberation. Leather and ear studs and big hairy words. Big men, big smart men. I listened. More coffee, sister? I nodded.
There. Now it’s digital. But memories are never in fabulous three dimensional full color. And all you’re getting here is my digitized memories of the Blue Nun. Pale. Wan. Distant. Unfabulous.
Rutabega
It was the Silver Lake Ralphs’ last day. I went to the produce dept. All that remained were two bags of rutabagas. I don’t remember ever seeing rutabagas at this Ralphs. Not even before Thanksgiving, when I needed them. Now this is all the produce they had, two plastic bags’ worth of rutabagas. So I bought them. I love rutabagas. Someone has too. It was the last thing I ever bought at that store, rutabagas. I’d been shopping there for thirty years, first as a Hughes, then as a Ralphs, huge carts fill of groceries, and now there I am with nothing but rutabagas. There has to be a moral in that somewhere.
I actually was looking for eggs, however. You can’t hard boil a rutabaga. Not even Whole Foods will hard boil a rutabaga. It’s going to be a weird Easter.
(3/12/15)
Thanksgiving
So last Thanksgiving I showed my wife an email from someone who is protesting the white man’s treatment of Native Americans by not cooking a turkey. It said beef, pork or lamb or chicken are alternatives to turkey. It recommended tamales too. Turkey, according to the email, is symbolic of colonial oppression. Don’t eat turkey.
My wife, a Yankton Sioux (and half Oneida) said she thought turkeys were a North American bird. I said they were. I also mentioned that Christopher Columbus had brought the first cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens to America (which he did, on the second voyage, in 1493). I’m a gold mine of historical trivia, which she tolerates. So how is it that eating something that Indians already ate is oppression, she asked, while eating something brought by Columbus is protesting oppression? I shrugged. My mother (a full blooded Oneida) cooked turkey for Thanksgiving every year, she said. We didn’t think it was oppression. Well you were Indians, I said, so it wouldn’t be. We didn’t celebrate Columbus Day, though. I said that was understandable. No white men discovered us, she said. I agreed. I think that goes along with why we’re not supposed to eat turkey for Thanksgiving. Then why not eat venison, she said. You mean shooting a deer? She said sure, why not, venison is delicious. Indians ate venison. We ate venison. Dad killed a deer or two every year and we ate lots of venison. Ducks, too. I said I doubt anyone protesting eating a turkey would suit up to go hunting. They probably don’t even have a hunting rifle, I said, or belong to the NRA. She sneered. My father went hunting every season, she said. He had several rifles, a shotgun, an NRA membership, and was a full blooded Sioux. I changed the subject. How about fish? I asked, fish is nice. She said no one eats fish for Thanksgiving. I said I think they had fish at the first Thanksgiving. And oysters. And corn. I’m not giving up corn, she said. OK, so how about a Vegan thanksgiving then? She gave me the Sioux death stare. Indians ate Vegans for breakfast, she said, cooked over a slow fire.
I’m gonna go pick up the turkey, I said.
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