Egadman's Grab Bag of Amentia

2011-11-21T16:48:00.001-08:00

My mom bought me socks. These socks are ostensibly the same size, yet the sock on my left foot persistently rides higher on my ankle, by roughly an inch, than the one on my right foot . The asymmetry here is perturbing in a "my voice sounds like that!?" kind of way. It makes me wonder if it's my feet that are bizarro reflections of each other, or if maybe my ankles are constructed at different heights. I also can't rule out that I may have one leg freakishly that outsizes the other and by some trick of my brain or complete epic fail of self-awareness never noticed it.

When I look at my feet without socks there is no discernible difference in size or shape. The flaws in their mirroring only seem to appear when outside apparatus draw attention to it.

Of course, we're all asymmetrical in some manner or another. If I stare myself down real hard in the mirror I can see one ear floating above the other. It's a real jab in the mismatched eye. I think it's less about vanity (though there's definitely some of that) than it is about missing the details. If I can look at the reflection of myself for 29 years and only maybe twice a year see the halloween-ish nature of the true me (which I figure, considering how often I look in the mirror in a year and how many opportunities I have to notice these things, probably means I'm fairly symmetrical), it makes me wonder what else I'm missing.

"I hate broccoli, and yet in a sense, I am broccoli."

2011-11-05T16:30:00.001-07:00

I'm reading DFW again, which seems to correspond with a compulsion to
write. Sarah's been writing too, and maybe there's some inspiration
coming from reading her daily assignments.

It seems to happen periodically that certain aspects of our
self-identity come to a head and we have to decide whether we are the
person we think we are, or whether we are something else entirely. To
wit: I am not a coffee person. I defined myself for my entire life as
someone who does not—ever—drink coffee. No. I am a dessert person. I
like delicious sucrosey treats. Coffee is bitter. It leaves an
unpleasant aftertaste. Sure, coffee is gross, some people
respond—until you add sugar and cream. This, like a cocktail, always
seemed like a copout. If you don't like something, don't have it. It's
just cheating to cover up the flavor you don't like with other flavors
just to get the chemical upside. Don't like whiskey, there are other
alcoholic options, and the same can be said for caffeinated beverages.

Coffee is a false prophet. It's for the weak-minded—those who lack the
intrinsic motivation and focus to get shit done. They need a
performance enhancer, a minor steroid for the mind—HGH, creatine,
Bawls. Coffee makes me hyperactive, gives me chest pains, and an upset
stomach. Or maybe that was my last job.

I am not a coffee drinker. Let me rephrase that: I am a coffee
drinker. Turns out.

I blame the pizza place; and also Sarah, who introduced me to the
gateway drink, the latte, last November. Fridays and Saturdays I'm
generally up and out the door by 9:15 and pretty much immediately
working once I step outside—shopping, running errands, writing mental
prep lists—and actually at Depokos by 10. If it's a slow day I have a
couple hours in the afternoon to relax between lunch and dinner (the
gap in which I'm writing now).

If I wasn't diligent in getting to bed on time on Friday night,
Saturdays especially can be long. In order to be on the ball as best I
can—to greet customers with verve and frothy banter—sometimes a little
doping is useful. There is a café conveniently located two doors down
from the pizzeria. I have graduated from the latte to the house brew.
It's cheaper and seemingly just as potent. By keeping my coffee
consumption limited to one to two days a week, I'm able to milk that
caffeine for maximum effect.

It doesn't necessarily help the feeling at the end of a long day—it
can actually make it worse, like some kind of behemoth sugar-crash
that leaves my brain a vacuum, devoid of any chemical activity—when if
it hasn't been busy can just feel draining, with the lower half of my
body—my hips and hamstrings and knees, the balls of my feet, my
calves—worn and sore from standing for 10-to-12 hours. When it is busy
that same fatigue can be eminently satisfying, knowing that I have put
all my energy into creating something that I take pride in and that
customers have (hopefully) enjoyed.

And so I drink coffee to help me make it there. It's acrid and
astringent, but also earthy and invigorating.

Pizza

2011-07-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Everyone I Have Ever Met (more-or-less),

I've bought a pizza place.

Thank you for your time.

Regards,
Will

--
"The two strange men who just now wanted to shoot us to death were eaten by a cow and that almost makes sense to me."—the Tick

At Emiko's Wedding

2011-06-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

Today I am in the hills of Santa Barbara. Not to be confused with Hanna Barbera. The house we're staying at for Emiko's wedding is the most ridiculously large house I've ever been in. The kitchen/living room is this size of my regular residence's entire first floor. There's a second living room, a guest house, a dining room, a pool, two hot tubs (apparently, though I've yet to see either), an avocado orchard, a game room with a pool table and separate poker and black jack tables, lovely views of the surrounding Pacific coast landscape, and blah blah blah, etc. I pity the cleaning ladies.

Emiko's wedding is this evening. Then it's back to LA tomorrow where I plan to do some pizza-ing and catch up with some folks.

More changes are afoot at Portobello. I'll keep you posted.

a friendly warning

2011-06-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

If anyone's planning on going to see X-Men: First Class, I strongly encourage you to change those plans. Remember X-Men 3? It's that caliber of cringe-inducing, cheddar-covered cornball, logic-defying embarrassment of a film. They actually managed to make a less ridiculous movie out of Thor than X-Men.

If only they'd based the film solely on the content and tone of this image:

... they would've had something worth watching.

Planking

2011-05-25T01:31:00.000-07:00

Tripod Plank

Backstage Plank

Camel Hump Plank

Vagina Rock Plank

Supermarket CCTV Plank

Dinner Plank

Airplank

So maybe ya'll have heard of this and I'm just behind on my internet fads. Normally I'm not one for completely inane webby fads (and I mean truly, in every facet, stupid, e.g., the majority of LoLcats), but there's something to the deadpan delivery of planking—stone-faced people in exhibiting themselves in a ridiculous, stiff-as-a-board horizontal posture—that I can't help but enjoy.

Rules of Planking:

When performing a Plank:

You must always lay face down, ensuring your face remains expressionless for the duration of the Plank.
Your legs must remain straight, and together with toes pointed.
Your arms must be placed by your side, held straight and fingers pointed.
You must make it known that you are Planking. Saying 'I am Planking' usually get this across. Sternly announcing it will ensure a good result.
Your safety should always be considered. Properly thought through Planking procedures should always go to plan. Never put your self at undue risk.
Every Plank that is captured must be named.

Not saying I would really ever do this though...

2011-05-19T02:17:00.000-07:00

I realize probably a lot of people who used to check this thing regularly don't anymore and that's okay. It's nice to keep it around for times when I feel like rapping at the ol' qwerty. In considering the reasons this here doesn't get the regular attention it used to, I've come up with a few explanations:

1. I live a relatively drama-free life. Most of my concerns are domestic. And while I'm sure some of you are interested in how often the cat wakes me up at 8 am by batting me in the face, I'm not too interested in writing about it. And for the drama that isn't domestic—it generally isn't suitable for broadcasting over the intertubes.

2. I'm pretty stationary. I'm not traipsing about the Earth's underside or ricocheting around New York, doing all the fun and exciting things one does in New York—visits to the Met, MoMA, or dozens of other museums; seeing shows at the Lincoln Center; attending debates between the Economist and the Nation; sampling the goods of any of the dozens and dozens of quality pizzerias; even wandering around Central Park somehow seems significant. Really everything in New York seems significant while you're there... probably because it's a point of reference for everyone. There just isn't a lot of novelty to life in Portland.

3. Social networking. Need to know something? Facebook pro'ly has it covered at this point in pithier statements, or I've posted a link as my gchat away message.

So what news? Well, in the past few weeks I've started taking some hip-hop dance classes. It's a drop-in class, so I show up when I'm able and make an ass out of myself trying to learn a routine that other people seem to have pretty much already mastered.

I broke page 1000 in the Instructions. Only 100-ish pages to go and I can finally read something else (Maps & Legends by Chabon is on my list).

My dad sent me Papa Max's—my great grandfather's—fedora. It's a really nice hat. Facebookers can now see a photo of me in it. It needs a some repairs on the inner band, but otherwise, it seems to be in very good shape. It should go well with the suit I'm getting tailored from Duchess Clothier.

In addition to the hat, I also received a audio recordings of interviews he did with Papa Max and Grandma Ida in the late 70's. I'm learning some pretty interesting stuff about where at least part of my family came from. If I understand the tapes right, Papa Max came to the US from what's now Belarus via England and came through Ellis Island. It wasn't long before he owned a delicatessen and a purveyor of things like pickles, then became a farmer even though he knew nothing about farming. I haven't quite absorbed all the details, but it seems to have all the elements of a classic Jewish immigrant tale.

walk the line

2011-05-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

Here's how it works:

One of the wait-staff brings in an order written on a ticket. They stick their copy of the ticket on the back side of the hot line window. The chef sticks his copy of the ticket on our side of the line and reads off the order, e.g., "Pick up: beet tartare, crostini, an arugula salad! Order in: two ravs, a marinara and a cashew cream!" At which point I would will scramble to get my stuff together, probably shuffling in place while picking up the wrong plate for bread, looking about for the ring mold to put tartare in and then overdressing the arugula salad (think Jerry Lewis in oversized shoes).

After bungling about there for a few minutes, I'll place the appetizers up in the window (a shelf above the cold line), call out something like, "Apps in the window!" They'll then get taken out to their table by the food runner, who will cry out something like, "Table four going out!"

From there we pick up other tickets that have come in or we dally about reorganizing and cleaning our work stations, prepping food for later in the evening or the next day, or just gaze into each others eyes longingly until we're told to fire the next course on that ticket. At which point I'll busy myself with some dough stretching, distribute some toppings, and try not to burn myself while shuttling pizzas in and out of the oven.

There are some nuances to this whole process. Different dishes take different amounts of time to make. My pizzas require between three and five minutes once they're in the oven, while most of the pasta dishes probably require between two and four minutes and portobello steaks need more time. So in order to make sure all the food is ready simultaneously, pizzas get started first and then once they're about half-way finished, pastas get thrown in the boiler. At this point our timing for stuff is pretty good, so food tends to get out relatively fast and grouped together properly. Of course, if we end up with a large table ordering, it can delay the orders for everyone else in the restaurant.

Happy BSD 2011

2011-02-14T01:39:00.000-08:00

Happy Batman Sticker Day everyone! Yup. Still preachin' the gospel.

Advantage: Home.

2011-01-14T16:38:00.001-08:00

Sports Illustrated published an excerpt of Sportscasting by Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim. The article was all about the myths and realities of home-field advantage. Apparently one of the causes is bias in officiating. When they looked at statistics related to team travel, fans' support affect on players, and player comfort related to familiar environs, they found all those things to be statistically irrelevant based on in-game performance of players (they actually found visiting quarterbacks to have a slight statistical advantage over home quarterbacks). What they did find was that umpires and referees are swayed by crowd reactions. In soccer they found, for instance, that when the home team is winning at the end of the game, the amount of extra time added is less, averaging 2 minutes, while when the home team is losing the extra time averages 4 minutes. The number of penalties and fouls also favors the home team. This is also true on the gridiron. And in baseball called strikes and balls also fall in favor of the home team.

While this probably isn't the only cause for home-field advantage, it does seem like a pretty important aspect of it.

An that's the interesting thing I read recently.

* * *

In restaurant news, we're working on developing a cashew-based mozzarella substitute. We're working from a recipe by Miyoko Schinner. So far we've found the recipe works in terms of flavor, but the consistency is much too soft. Agar agar seems fairly temperamental and it seems like we're going to try and replace it with Irish moss (a seaweed). Hopefully we'll figure it out in the next couple weeks and can replace the butter-y tasting Daiya cheese with something a little more satisfying.

cooooooooooooooooookieeeeesssssssssss

2010-12-19T02:42:00.000-08:00

Rebel that I am, I'm makin' truffles for the cookie party. We've got your standard dark chocolate, cardamom–ginger, chili, and paprika–cinnamon (which is really mostly cinnamon). Well, at least I've made the ganache for the filling. I still have to coat most of them in a shell. I mean, I guess I don't have to—we could just spoon the ganache into our chompers. I imagine it'll be less satisfying that way though.

2010-12-15T16:33:00.000-08:00

Portland's on it way to becoming a pizza town:

Food lovers who know anything about Portland, Oregon, may first think of the city's renowned food-cart scene. Or its way with the microbrewed beers. Or its rising coffee-roasting culture. All thriving. Add to that a killer artisanal pizza moment.
(Serious Eats)

smarter than the average donkey?

2010-12-14T16:05:00.000-08:00

The Achenblog has a couple of interesting thoughts on the current tax bill. One of them carries the transcript of Obama's response to a reporter questioning Obama's values. A clip of this appeared on the Daily Show last week. Here's a bit that wasn't included there:

That can't be the measure of how we think about our public service. That can't be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat. This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people. The New York Times editorial page does not permeate across all of America. Neither does The Wall Street Journal editorial page. Most Americans, they're just trying to figure out how to go about their lives and how can we make sure that our elected officials are looking out for us. And that means because it's a big, diverse country and people have a lot of complicated positions, it means that in order to get stuff done, we're going to compromise. This is why FDR, when he started Social Security, it only affected widows and orphans. You did not qualify. And yet now it is something that really helps a lot of people. When Medicare was started, it was a small program. It grew.

Under the criteria that you just set out, each of those were betrayals of some abstract ideal. This country was founded on compromise. I couldn't go through the front door at this country's founding. And if we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn't have a union.

heave-ho

2010-12-13T22:17:00.000-08:00

I admit that I've neglected this thing for a while, at least with pretty much anything substantial, personal, or what the average person reading this might consider interesting. That is to say, I'm uninterested in reading a lot of the stuff here and when the author isn't even interested, that doesn't exactly indicate Andean condor-like majesty of prose or content. (Though, I suppose that's not really the point of this thing anyway.)

You might have noticed I played with bloggers template designer. We are amused. And look: color! Fun!

What most people seem to be interested in here is the restaurant. What is going on with that exactly? The stuff that seemed to me new and exciting for the first couple months are now kind of old hat and pedestrian. But it's been six months now and I definitely feel much more at ease than I did the first few months. I haven't had chest pains in a couple months for instance (something that seemed to correlate to ingesting caffeine before service—I stopped doing that).

Milestones for Portobello since my last related post (August 22nd):

listed in the Willamette Week's guide to top Portland restarants
appeared on the Cooking Channel
started serving lunch
began serving fancy prix fixe meals on weekends
had one very positive and one middling review regarding the pizzas

Our line is also all crazy. Nate (formally master of apps and desserts) is now the chef de tournant or rotating chef. He's been trained up on pretty much everything and can fill in at any station on the line. I'm now picking up appetizers, desserts and pizzas and am slowly getting lessons on the sauté line, which is to say I'm occasionally getting splattered with hot oil and narrowly avoiding melting my flesh with boiling water.

Jesse, sous-chef and living art exhibit, is now running the show most nights, as Aaron the co-owner/head chef is preoccupied working lunch, designing prix fixe menus, and encouraging everyone to do push-ups.

On the pizza front specifically, we've gone through a few menu changes, and I've made some dough adjustments after learning a little more about salt and its effects on gluten development and enzyme activity.

Since August we ran through our Autumn menu which included a pizza with butternut squash sauce, cherry peppers, brussels sprouts, garlic, and cashew cream in addition to what've been our four standard pizzas: a marinara, a daiya cheese-based margherita, a spicy field roast and cherry pepper pie, and the "piscia"—caramelized onions, olives, capers, garlic, and oregano.

The Winter menu has boasted the standards plus a sweet potato, caramelized red onion, kale, garlic, and rosemary pizza; a pie with butternut sauce, hazelnuts, chili oil, shaved apple, and sage; and last week we had one with cashew cream, chanterelle mushroom, brussels sprout, garlic, pear, and chao cheese. (Is it pizza as I imagine it? Eh. Not exactly, but they tasted good. Trust me. The hazelnut pizza, sans apple, has been my favorite thing to make for myself for a few weeks now. I made a version at home for some friends and they were all pleasantly surprised.)

Yes, I'm positive. The best of 2010.

2010-12-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

There was a lot to choose from this year. My list clocks in at an hour and forty minutes, which is a lot to sit through. I swear it's worth it though. Everything on this one was either released in 2010 or late enough in 2009 that I didn't hear it until this year.

black and white and brown all over

2010-12-03T16:37:00.001-08:00

I just started reading DFW's The Broom of the System and there's a paragraph at the beginning of chapter three that sets the scene. It's filled with seemingly trivial details about the color of paint on handrails (yellow) and the texture of the lawn grass. Embedded in there is this: "Outside the doors an old black woman stood motionless with her walker, her mouth open to the sun." Evocative, yes. But the generic "old black woman" kind of bothers me. If he was describing an old white woman he presumably would have just written, "old woman." Or at least he would have been more specific in his description of skin tone. This is presumably because of some innate bias we have when imagining fictional characters to thinking of them as similar to ourselves by default. So for DFW, who was a white male, in order to paint the picture he imagined, he had to note that this old woman was black.

What I'm getting at is that by noting specifically that the woman is black it underscores the fact that this detail is a real point of distinction and that since none of the other characters so far have been described as black, we assume that they aren't and we can probably continue to make this same assumption for the rest of the novel. It makes me wonder what a black reader might think when arriving at this line.

While I imagine that Wallace did not exactly have a black audience in mind when he wrote the book, I also can't assume that he only imagined white people reading his work.

the latest and greatest

2010-10-26T01:04:00.000-07:00

Sarah is finally here! It only took a few years, but she's now living with Amie in NE. We had dinner this evening at Blossoming Lotus, which is the other well respected all-vegan restaurant in town. Coconut sweet potato soup was consumed among other delicious plates.

I've also been reunited with another friend:

Remember her?

The Great Catsby presides over a new kingdom.

She's also better behaved. I don't have to distract her with a toy at all times.

Furthermore, as probably all the readers of this blog are aware, Portobello was listed in the Willamette Week's 2010 list of the top restaurants in Portland. Pat on the back to us. I don't have any new shiny blocks of color to share from the restaurant, but I did make some cheesy pizzas at home the other week:

...still got it.

ITEM! One Fuji bicycle, which has become my main form of transportation (with thanks to Oma for the capital, and Morgan for having a bike to sell):

Also, the other week I went on a short hike with Laurel and Jonah to Horsetail falls out in the gorge. It was lovely:

Buke and Gass

2010-09-29T01:45:00.001-07:00

It's so rare to find music that really hits that pleasure spot in my brain—the same spot that makes my eyes roll up in the back of my head when I fiercely scratch that mosquito bite that's been itching all afternoon. I mean really rare. There are songs that can get me going, hype me up, follow me around and stick in my head with T-1000-like tenacity (Hannah Georgas' Bang Bang You're Dead is the most recent example I have of that). But sometimes it's years between finding a band that just brings a smile to my face.

Buke and Gass are it right now. Their music gives me that blissed-out sensation. It's unlike anything I've ever heard before—just two people with homemade instruments, a modified bass ukulele and a hybrid guitar-bass; they also simultaneously play a kick drum and bells with their feet. While they're singular in their sound, Buke and Gass's aesthetic is right up my alley—it's melodic, cacophonous, dynamic, fiery, percussive, and cerebral yet emotive. Mostly they just rock my socks off.

Judge for yourself.

PS Thanks Radiolab.

Foxconn

2010-09-13T23:28:00.001-07:00

Mike Daisey's a monologist. Really he's a storyteller who draws on autobiographical material. I attended his performance of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, an examination of the history of Apple, the cult of Apple fandom, the "visionary-asshole" who is Steve Jobs, and most stirringly the seedy underbelly of electronics manufacturing.

Apparently half—HALF!—of all electronics in the world are produced by one company: Foxconn. Foxconn has its largest manufacturing facilities in Shenzhen, which is southern China, a town that grew from a fishing village of 500 (according to Daisey) to a city of 14 million in only the past 30 years. Their facilities employ 430,000 workers. They have 25 cafeterias that each feed 10,000 people at a time. Daisey, who went there, interviewed Foxconn factory workers about their working conditions and posed as an American businessman to get access to the insides of the factories to see what the conditions were actually like. His report, not surprisingly, is hella depressing. While he was there a worker died from exhaustion after a 32-hour shift. He met factory workers who were as young as 11 years old. He met an employee who was labeled a troublemaker and blacklisted by the labor board after asking why she was not receiving overtime pay for working 105-hour weeks. He saw the netting that was installed around the office and factory buildings at Foxconn after a series of workers committed suicide by jumping from the roofs.

Despite all this, Daisey still loves his technology. He remains optimistic that things will change because, he says, "they do change." He notes how Apple was once near the Greenpeace's dirtiest companies (due to their uses of heavy metals, packaging waste, etc.). Now Apple is atop Greenpeace's list of cleanest companies. Why is that? Primarily pressure from consumers. I plan on emailing my buddy Steve Jobs about it soon.

Sungold.

2010-08-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

Oven management is really something you don't think about too much when you're only making a three or four of pizzas in a night. It's also pretty straightforward when you can only fit one pizza in your oven. The oven at home can generally bake two or three pizzas in a row before it needs some time to reheat, which takes about 15 to 20 minutes.

The Bakers Pride at work though is a trickier beast. Because it has two decks, but only one burner, and seemingly poor thermal mass. Any time I open a deck to put a pizza in, take it out, or move it, I heat is lost. And it doesn't matter which deck I'm messing with, if I open one, I lose heat in both.

And the temperature difference between the top and bottom deck is probably roughly 50 to 100 degrees. There are up and downsides to this, which I'll get into soon. But for now I have to grab my shin guards. My legs are in demand.

LA: The Sequel

2010-07-28T02:32:00.000-07:00

I unclogged my bathroom sink today. Hooray.

In other more appetizing news:

Two LA slice joints had the dubious honor of my bum in their seats.

Tomato Pie is a kinda hole-in-the-wall greasy slice joint. It's cramped, with bar seating around the circumference, and seemingly without air conditioning. It the kind of place that could be a hive of scum and villainy (and I mean that in the best way). While it ain't gonna be the origin of a pizza revolution, they churn out some very decent slices.

The Sunny Los Angeles Exterior

On the left we have their Margherita slice. On the right we have a slice of their Tomato Pie.

I sampled their simplest offerings. The Margherita was pretty straight forward tomato cheese and basil, while the tomato pie offered a marinara with a kick, sprinkled with some parsley and romano.

While the undersides revealed themselves to be on the golden-brown side of things, they were pleasantly crisp without being crackery. The winner here is the tomato pie, which might be described as a grandma-style (or nonna-style), with an olive oil-infused, pan-baked crust, and a sauce that's tart, sweet, and spicy.

For dessert I went to Vito's and tried their margherita-esque slice featuring globs of fresh mozz and a uniformly super-thin crust:

Whoever the architect of this slice was, did not really think things all the way through. Vito's thin crust does not have the kind of structural integrity required to hold the weight of cuts of cheese that thick and and fresh tomato slice. So really, I ended up eating some cheese, then some tomato, then some crust, more cheese, and more crust. Disjointed is my best description. Also the slice was over $5.

Given that I ended up eating most of the components individually, I can say the cheese was rich and creamy—exactly what I look for in a fresh mozzarella; the tomato sauce was fine, but a little too thick and pasty; the tomato slice was your standard grocery store beefsteak slice, which isn't ever going to win me over; and the crust, while nicely charred, was dry with little-to-no rise on the edge.

Conclusions: Tomato Pie named their establishment after the right kinda pizza... though also, if they'd named it Sausage and Mushroom Pie, it maybe wouldn't have the same kinda marketing pull. I give it six and a half Mulligans. Vito's was overpriced and medicore for an upscale "sliceria." If I end up in LA again, I wouldn't go back.

Tales of LA: A Moon Landing

2010-07-22T03:11:00.000-07:00

There's a water problem in Los Angeles. It's so bad that bottles of the stuff now cost up to $9. This is true. At least the $9 part. To be fair it was the water in my parent's hotel room at the W Hollywood, which has a nightclub on the first floor and the second floor, and apparently is also stocked with naked men to appear in hallways at odd hours of the night.
From the mini-bar:

yes, 200 ml of vodka is $33

My base of operations (facing the celebrity center for the Church of Scientology... the street was guarded by security with guns... on bicycles):

Think the apartment complex in the Karate Kid, but nicer

Also street traffic is now so bad they've instituted public blimps:

At least the pizza situation is under control.

First stop: Mozza

Squash blossoms, tomato & burrata

Margherita with mozzarella, tomato & basil


Coach farm goat cheese, leeks, scallions, garlic & bacon

Abita! Root beer!

Blond, yet crisp.


Big and crunchy on the outside, soft and airy on the inside.

All in all, I was quite pleased with the pizzas Mozza's volleying out.

Highlights!:

The tomato sauce on the Margherita was rich and piquant.
An incredibly creamy burrata with a delicate flavor similar to egg whites.
The puffy edge, which maybe appeared to be little much—almost showy—but turned out to be light and flavorful. I'd be happy to finish any slice with an edge as nice.

In all, I wasn't blown away by the pizzas at Mozza. They were very good, but in some cases it seemed they were concerned with appearances over palate. The squash blossoms for instance—as far as I could tell—didn't have any flavor at all, though they looked beautiful, especially with the mounds of bright white burrata floating on top of them. Also $23 for a 12" pizza is a bit pricey. UPN could get away with it, but they were serving arguably the best pizza in the country.

This is also one of the few instances were a blond crust was actually very good. It was crisp, but not crackery. And it held it's own against the weight and wetness of those burrata mounds. They also get some bonus points for being a fancy joint that also serves root beer.

Rating: five-and-a-half mulligans out of eight.

Further pizza adventures TK.

Culinarily speaking...

2010-07-14T15:27:00.000-07:00

First point of business: Portobello now offers pizza to go (other parts of the linked report are false). So now you don't have to wait 45 minutes for table.

* * *

#2

So when I've said in the past that there are no good slices in Portland, I was wrong. Give Pizza A Chance actually does some pretty solid work. When I originally tried their wares when I first moved here, it was toward the end of the day and the slices available were limited and had likely been sitting out for quite a while. I failed to take this into account in my thinking. After dropping by there for lunch this afternoon, I can say that their slices are better than most NYC slice options. They certainly blow Escape from NY out of the water.

I tried the margherita and the sausage and mushroom. The former was crisp and pliant, with dots of char on the underside. The mozzarella and basil used were fresh along with a couple of thin wedges of roma tomatoes. A mildly seasoned tomato sauce was there too, hiding under the mozz. The crust has some whole wheat in it to add a little extra depth of flavor (it adds a little bit of weight and chew as well, but it's a minor compromise in this case).

The sausage and mushroom slice was a little more pedestrian. The crust wasn't quite as well baked and the grease from the sausage soaked through a little bit. But it was plenty satisfying with Carlton Farms pork sausage and aged mozzarella.

I followed that up with ¡¡BEIGNETS!! from The Swamp Shack.

mememememememe

2010-07-11T03:11:00.000-07:00

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

2010-07-11T02:58:00.000-07:00

Some of the things I didn't think about when considering the life of a pizzamaker:

1. that my glasses would constantly be covered in flour
2. the hour and half it would take to clean the kitchen
3. how quickly I would need to rush to fulfill orders
4. how long I would sometimes have to wait between orders
5. wearing sneakers could lead to pulling a muscle slipping on wet concrete
6. I could make more than $100 in tips in a week
7. how tired my legs would feel—especially my right leg, as I absent-mindedly put all my weight on it
8. the amount of money I'd save on dinners
9. free soda pop and alcohol at the end of the night

trouble in two parts.

2010-06-24T22:35:00.000-07:00

1. There's No Pilot?

That beautiful Baker's Pride oven, which was adjusted to burn ever more violently at temperatures that would sear the eyebrows off of distant alpacas, started to cough and sputter the other night. Apparently the thermocoupler—which sounds a like a fake piece of equipment lifted from a Star Trek script, but is actually a sensor that, when a pilot light flickers out, will cut off the gas line—went on the fritz and started indiscriminately shutting off the gas.

It started doing this about 45 minutes before we were supposed to open at the end of last week. Our head chef (we'll just call him HC), spent a good 10 minutes burning his hands trying to fix the problem. Eventually we got it running and the rest of the evening went relatively smoothly.

2. There's No Co-Pilot?

Today the sous chef (SC) walked out. HC seemed to handle it pretty well. And by handle it, I mean he hired a replacement this afternoon. So, yeah, he takes care of his shit. The amount of stress he's able to take is pretty remarkable.

There are any number of reasons why SC decided to leave and give no notice. I reckon there's something going on outside of work and this was a way of indirectly dealing with it. At least, as of last night he seemed like he was having an alright time.

* * *

Still on the work-front, it looks like we'll be getting a wood-burning oven to replace the Baker's Pride sooner rather than later. Once our plan is in place, I'll divulge some more details.

the perils. the tribulations.

2010-06-17T02:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight I ran out of dough. I went through roughly 40 dough balls. A couple of them I burned—my fault (though, in my defense, the thermostat was adjusted to bring the oven temp up to 700-ish, so the timing for cooking the pizzas changed). I'm happy people are ordering the pies though. And they seem to still enjoy them.

Yesterday, Aaron, the head chef, gave us a run-down of how he'd like the kitchen cleaned. He said it should take us 45 minutes. Tonight it took us about 2 hours, and we seemed to be working at a faster pace (thanks to that old stand-by of better communication and teamwork). While he gave us pointers on more efficient ways to accomplish tasks—cleaning from the top down and finishing up one task for the entire kitchen before starting the next one—he also added more steps to the process. And in the end, the thing that seems to suck up the most time is dishwashing. So no matter how quickly we kill the work stations and floors, there's gonna be some back-up when it comes to pots and pans.

We had a new pizza on the menu tonight: leek cream sauce, asparagus, shaved lemon and fennel, topped with basil. Other pizzas were the same as last week with a couple minor adjustments. I'll pretty much eat anything with the basil-cream sauce.

the week in review

2010-06-15T00:18:00.000-07:00

I still have gobs to learn about working in the Portobello kitchen, but after four days of service I feel much more settled than I anticipated after that first night.

We continued to be full-up through the rest of the week, however the pizza orders dropped by about a third. So instead of making 35-40 pizzas a night like I did when we opened, I've been making 20-25. We think the difference in numbers has to do with the fact that a lot of the people who sat at the opening were regulars who were possibly looking to try the new items on the menu. Whereas people later in the week were standard customers without an agenda.

My guess is that orders will pick up for pizza once we start offering a to-go menu, which I believe will be primarily pizza with a smattering of other options that are easily transportable. We're also looking to serve our to-go offerings at our neighboring bar/beer store, The Beermongers. I'm also hoping some good buzz on the pizza will help increase demand.

Apologies for not posting photos of the place in action, but I feel kind of weird bringing the camera out in the middle of service when I should probably be doing other things (often things I don't yet know how to do).

In the meantime, please see below. I took some leftover dough home and made myself a cheeseful margherita:

The dough is a mix of Caputo "00" and Blendako. It has a lower gluten content than what I'm used to working with, which means that it's harder to stretch out and more prone to tearing, but that it also has a softer crumb, airier hole structure, and is lighter and easier on the stomach in terms of digesting. It's also pretty tasty.

Tomorrow we're closed for service, but are scheduled to have a kitchen meeting at some point. We're gonna try and get more organized and efficient, I believe. It'd be nice to get out of work at 12:30 instead of 1:15.

* * *

In other news, I bought a 21 or 24 speed bike from my friend (I haven't actually counted the rear sprockets, but when you have that many, it doesn't really make much of a difference). It's a nice, steel Fuji frame. Photos are TK.

This weekend I was able to do some basic maintenance—replaced the seat; adjusted the handlebars; moved the break levers to a more comfortable position; cleaned the chain, rear derailleur, and bottom bracket. I also took my Peugeot in to get the fork replaced. (And subsequently the headset and stem too, since finding a french-sized fork the right size for my bike is virtually impossible. And if you get a fork that's English-sized, then it snowballs and all the other parts that attach to it also need to be English-sized. The different standards are annoying to deal with.) The old one was bent, which I could barely notice, but when I dropped by to get a new front brake, the mechanic barely glanced at my bike and noticed it immediately. He also told me not to buy a front brake, but to replace to fork instead. Then he told me another shop in town would probably have better fork options for me. This is all fairly insignificant information. If you're still reading this, I apologize.

the short of it.

2010-06-11T02:05:00.000-07:00

Portobello re-opened last night. Word is that the place was teeming with multi-celled organisms looking to chow down. By all accounts it was a success.

I did spend most of the first three hours of service in pretty much a complete panic, though according to the chef and sous chef, I at least appeared to be handling myself on the line pretty well considering it was my first day.

The head chef schedules the orders when they arrive. He keeps track of what table is getting their 1st, 2nd, 3rd course, etc. There are a few key cues that I had to learn. When he says, "order in" a pizza (or 3), it's to let me know to prep my station for those pizzas. "Pick up" is the go cue—cook it. If someone asks for an "all day," it means, "tell me how many orders I have in total—both order in and pick up."

In all, I made about 40 pizzas during the opening. Tonight I only made about 20 though we also had a packed house this evening—people actually waited over two hours to get a table. And the few comments that I received were very complimentary. I was told that the folks over at Food Fight may mention the pies in their blog. Isa Chandra Moskowitz dropped by the kitchen for a moment (though I didn't realize it at the time, she's the author or co-author of a number of cookbooks, including one of my favorites Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World), and had very nice things to say.

So far so good.

preview

2010-06-08T23:31:00.000-07:00

of what's in store:

this char will hopefully be making the rounds:

this pizza will not be on the menu:

char.

2010-06-06T22:21:00.000-07:00

Two of the ten pizzas I made this evening:

Mushroom, garlic, basil, olive oil, tomato:

field sausage (vegan), pine nuts, basil, fennel, olive oil

Oddly, the most positive response came from the simplest one: tomato, garlic, crushed pine nuts, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Not pictured included a lemon & fennel pie, and pies featuring shaved broccoli stem.

I'd still like to get a crisper exterior on the edge crust. That's my biggest issue right now in terms of results.

If anyone has topping recommendations, I'm open to suggestions.

BOH

2010-06-06T00:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I forgot my camera again last night. But tonight I snapped a couple shots of the kitchen-in-progress, the pizza oven, and my latest batch of dough (100% Bob's Red Mill unbleached white).

Dig the new digs.

2010-06-04T16:56:00.000-07:00

So I'm leaving my job at VTech to become the pizzamaker at Portobello. We still have a bunch of kinks to work out pizza-wise, but I promise you, we will be serving some of the best pizza in Portland in the near future.

I'll try and keep this here updated with pizza developments as they occur. Last night was the first time I used the oven—a two-deck Bakers Pride, natural gas-fired deal. The temperature hits 650 on the dial, so it's kind of a step up from my home oven.

We've got the opposite problem though. Heat is from the bottom in the Bakers Pride (as opposed to from the top element on the broil setting at home), which is good in that it's more efficient as warm air rises and all. However in the current set up, the pizzas are cooking too fast on the bottom, and are barely cooked at the top of the cornicione when the bottom is practically a block of char.

As possible solutions we're looking at shrinking the height of the decks to make the floor and ceiling temperatures more even or adding a reflective material to the top of the decks to bounce the heat back down (and keep it from escaping as quickly via heat transfer). If anyone else has any ideas, I'm all ears.

So we're experimenting with some dough mixtures. Last night was 100% white whole wheat, and a 75% unbleached white-25% white whole wheat blend. Tonight is a 50/50 whole wheat-unbleached white mix and a 100% unbleached white. All Bob's Red Mill. I forgot to drop the dough balls in the fridge this morning. Hopefully they haven't over risen.

Photos are TK. I totally spaced on bringing my camera yesterday. I'll try and make up for it this evening.

Scott. Pilgrim.

2010-06-04T10:19:00.001-07:00

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World Trailer

I am kind of giddy with excitement.

spring break 2010

2010-06-03T10:42:00.001-07:00

another sunday pizza

2010-05-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

tomato, vegan tomato-cream, pine nuts, salt, pepper, basil, olive oil

* * *

vegan tomato-cream, pine nuts, garlic, mizuna (from Sauvie Island Organics CSA), salt, pepper, olive oil

* * *

margherita #2

* * *

margherita #1

* * *

Foolish Poolish is right. The top rack is where it's at. I layered about three sheets of tin foil under my stone and placed 3 bricks around the sides (couldn't fit a 4th due to the oven light's placement). Aesthetically, these are some of the nicest looking crusts I've made. Could've used a touch more salt though.

Eat This NY

2010-05-20T12:41:00.001-07:00

Eat This NY: PIZZA DAY from Eat This NY on Vimeo.

burn it to the ground.

2010-05-18T16:49:00.001-07:00

I've started construction of my wood-burning oven. Right now I'm kind of in the test phase. I put the fire pit together (which in the instructions specifically says it's not for grilling or other cooking purposes) and attempted my first mixture of perlite and portland cement at about 3:1 perlite to cement by volume. Hopefully this will set well and make for a relatively solid block.

I really have no idea how much water to add to the mix. There doesn't seem to be a standard ratio for that. I may have made it too soupy to set properly...The good news is that the perlite makes for an ultra light mixture, so making it easy to move and store shouldn't be a problem.

If anyone reading this has any knowledge they'd like to drop regarding masonry or oven building, please speak up.

2010-05-14T12:03:00.001-07:00

Another Sunday Pizza or Four.

2010-05-09T23:24:00.000-07:00

Moriah and Ian have conquered Bridgetown and left it in magnificent ruins. It will never be the same after they depart. They have slayed our first born and swallowed whole all the kale, doughnuts, and asparagus within sight. It's been awesome so far. Yesterday morning Moriah made a brunch consisting of a roasted asparagus and fennel salad topped with a sunny-side up egg (one for each of us), with a mescaline mix riding sidecar. And then in the evening we conquered Pambiche and Staccato Gelato.

Tonight Moriah made wilted kale with some citrus zest (AWE-some) and I made the pizzas.

Tomorrow brings Pine State biscuits and St. Cupcake.

Pizza documentation (that's Ian's documenting machine and hand in the upper-right):

Adam at This Is Pizza mercifully did not post images of the bottom of my crusts when posting about the the festivities the other week. Some of that pizza was, like, beyond blond. It was practically albino. Just to prove I'm not a complete hack, here's the upskirt of the first one out of the oven (generally the best baked of the lot) this evening:

comics o' th' decade. episode: li'l pico de gallo

2010-04-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder how adolescence could have been more awkward an alienating? How about if you grew a mouth in your chest or a tail? Or what if your skin molted?

Black Hole (Charles Burns)

As unsettling as your own experience with puberty may have been, your dark teenage heart could only hope to match the blackness depicted in this series. Burns makes the worst fears of high school real, replacing acne with truly grotesque deformation, estrangement with actual banishment. Sex and the deepest anxieties about its dangers—desease, social rejection—are everywhere in this book. Yonic imagery is inescapable.

All this unease is illustrated magnificently by Burns's deep and foreboding blacks. This book is creepy for sure, but it also cuts into the innermost circle of our neuroses and shows how universal they are. And there's comfort in knowing you weren't or aren't alone.

comics of la décade: episode li'l biblioteca

2010-04-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

Kabuki (David Mack)

I bought my first issue of Kabuki (Metamorphosis #5) sometime during my senior year of high school. It was completely novel and I was enthralled even though I really had no idea what the hell was going on. I must of stared at those pages for hours trying to decipher the action. Some character named Kabuki was trying to escape from orderlies, preppy ninjas, and some kind of order of secret agents. These weren't your standard muscle-bound, spandex-wearing, Kirbyesque fisticuffs.

Kabuki wades through various genres—spy, superhero, cyberpunk, sci-fi, martial arts—using them as tools to expand on larger themes of identity and family, and the relationship between action and thought. Mack illustrates abstract ideas by placing his characters in abstract scenery—trapped in a blank limbo, floating in textures of water color and acrylic paint, running in Escher-esque algorithmic landscapes.

And just as he melds genres, Mack incorporates a wide variety of art media—pen and ink, watercolor, collage, pencil, oil, acrylic, photography, and sculpture. He uses a different medium and different styles within mediums depending on what's happening within the narrative. Action sequences may take on a more traditional comic book feel; while scenes focusing on the character's past and familial relationships might take on a looser, splotchy water color feel; and philosophical discussions between characters might take on a child-like expressive feel.

My point, really, regardless of all the highfalutin' bluster above, is that Kabuki is one of the most beautiful works of art I've ever seen. And the story is hugely ambitious, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

pixels

2010-04-11T17:36:00.001-07:00

Chinatownchicken knows the good stuff:

via tribunali

2010-04-04T23:27:00.000-07:00

this spot is one link in a seattle mini-chain. neapolitan style is their game—wood-burning oven, buffalo mozz, "pomodoro", and all.

via tribunali, a story in pictures:

readers of seattle weekly like this place (it may help that there are multiple locations, allowing for more readers to have a convenient location to sample).

there are roughly two dozen pizzas on the menu. it made for a lot of hemming and hawing. we had nearly a half-a-dozen visits from our waiter before we were able to divulge our preferences. to be fair, i copped-out and settled on the margherita (non-d.o.c. version), leaving the really hard choosing up to ian & jenn.

the results were pretty standard neapolitan. über-thin crust, a sauce made of what seemed to be naked, canned tomatoes; fior di latte; and a dabbing of basil.

the charring speaks for itself, but the edge was described by ian as spongy and i concur. pretty good flavor tough. tasted like fresh baked bread, so they were doing something right.

the highlight for me was the cherry tomato, arugula, grana, and prociutto pie. the arugula was infantile and did not have the bitterness or peppery kick sometimes associated with older leaves. the prociutto was cut remarkably thin and kid of melted in my mouth. the cherry tomatoes played the sweet card and supplemented the saltiness of the prociutto and grana nicely.

maybe the best thing about this place is the neighborhood. when we tried parking in front of someone's house we mistook an inquisitive look from the homeowner for the hairy eyeball. turns out the guy was just checking out the oregon plates on the car. he was a chatty native american fellow who'd lived in portland for a while. he knows a couple of the people who own shops in the revitalized area down the street, which is where our pizzeria of note lies.

that block of shops is like a super concentrated greenpoint, brooklyn. hipster-punk central. lots of bikes, skinny jeans, and at least one tricked out woman sporting an 18" pink mohawk with leopard spots buzzed into the sides of her head. around the corner from via tribunali is the fantagraphics bookstore, a record shop featuring soul music, a cycle shop, a couple of bars, a café, a button-maker rental shop, a letterpress office, and a mo-ped shop. this is all surrounded by a neighborhood filled with auto-repair garages, and a giant boeing complex. the falafel truck was down the block.

serious pie

2010-04-03T10:24:00.001-07:00

i forgot my camera, so this review gets an automatic fail. the pizza, thankfully, does not.

the lowdown

serious pie does wood-fired, thin crust, oval pizzas. their dinning space is compact, with communal, bar-height tables. service was efficient and friendly.

two pizzas sampled:
1—buffalo mozz & san marzano tomato (fresh basil and dried oregano, not listed on the menu did actually appear on the pie)
2—black peppercorn cheeese, pancetta, asparagus (special of the day)

both pies had nice splotches of char on their cornmeal (or semolina?) encrusted bottoms. the edge of the ovals seemed to be coated in a salty, garlicky swab of oil, which gave the crust a little extra pop and zing.

The margherita, was nicely balanced between the light spring of the tomato's sweetness and the fattiness of the cheese and coated crusted.

The special pie's asparagus was chopped into tiny rounds and really played well with the thin strips of pancetta. the black pepper cheese was, frankly, a stroke of genius, adding just a hint of bitterness and spice to keep the tastebuds on their toes. i thank my friend ian for having the gumption or order this pizza.

additionally, lord chancellor thomas kemper's root beer is available.

the upshot

not necessarily what i think of when i imagine pizza, but a delicious change of pace. i haven't met another pizza exactly like it.

comix o'the decade: Episode Li'l Noodle

2010-03-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

Promethea
Alan Moore—writer
J.H. Williams III—pencils
Mick Gray—inks
Jeromy Cox—colors
(ABC/Wildstorm/DC Comics)

Blah blah blah Alan Moore. Blah blah blah genius. Hurdy gurdy machine.

Looking for pulp fantasy action and adventure? It's here. Looking for a dissertation about the nature of reality and fiction, where they intersect with our minds, bodies, and spirits? Look no further. Moore has cleverly wrapped up a philosophical discussion of the origins of storytelling and its purpose in the guise of a sci-fi fantasy. It can be a difficult read. There are a lot of big, abstract ideas that Moore bats around. Some of the dialogue can be stilted and dry. But at the same time, the ideas it's floating are fascinating. In the world of Promethea everything has metaphorical meaning—whether literary or sexual or mythical or religious, which for all intents and purposes, in this comic, are the same. Moore has worked up a unified theory of everything that's not based on science, but on history, humanity, and mysticism.

It's one of a few comics that encourages you to really think about the world around you, your relationship to the work in your hands—it can make you think about every story ever spun in a new light.

What helps steer it clear of dreary philosophic pedagogy and make it truly palatable and amazing is the art. The team of J.H. Williams, Mick Gray, and Jeromy Cox (with appearances by Jose Villarrubia and Charles Vess among others) construct the most innovative and imaginative page layouts printed by a major comics publisher. Each page visually underscores the themes in the script, whether its using historical or cultural motifs (see above) or clever circuitous action (see infinity layout at top). Moore is notorious for writing obsessively detailed scripts with very specific page layouts, so a fair amount of credit is due to him. However, it'd be tough to find other comics artists who would be able to translate that vision to the page with as much diverse technique, daring, and verve as this team of artists. Plus it's fun to navigate and pretty to look at.

There are just a ton of moments like this one that make my mouth drop. The artwork beautiful, yes, but it's also completely insane. It kind of explodes everywhere. Speech bubbles become like little fireworks, The color palate makes it borderline illegible, but this one page is part of a larger interconnected whole.

There's more here than one would expect.

The List: Portland Pizza I've Sampled

2010-03-22T09:46:00.001-07:00

Just counting them off in no particular order:

1. Gladstone Pizza
2. Pyro Pizza
3. Wy'east Pizza
4. Ken's Artisan Pizza
5. Apizza Scholls
6. Bella Facia
7. Al Forno Ferruzza
8. Pizzicato
9. Give Pizza a Chance
10. Pizza Depokos
11. Firehouse
12. Nostrana
13. Tastebud
14. Escape From New York
15. Bella Gioia
16. Pizza Schmizza
17. Good Neighbor Pizza
18. Flying Pie Pizzeria
19. Dove Vivi
20. Bellagio's
21. Carboni's (Closed)
22. Lovely's Fifty-Fifty
23. Hammy's Pizza
24. Hotlips
25. Roma (SE Woodstock)
26. Kindle (N Mississippi)
27. Slice Brick Oven Pizza (SE Division & 32nd)
28. Pizza Contadino (St. Johns)

My current favorites (12/15/10):
1. Ken's Artisan
2. Apizza Scholls
3. Pizza Contadino
4. Pyro
5. Slice Brick Oven Pizza

Comics o'the Decade: Episode Li'l Playa

2010-03-18T16:07:00.000-07:00

Bone (Jeff Smith, Cartoon Books)

If there's one comic that's almost universally guaranteed to please, this is it. Three bone creatures (from Boneville, of course!) accidentally stumble upon a valley with talking woodland animals, cow races, and that gitchy feelin'. I don't want to give away any major plot points, so in trying to avoid that, I'll just say it's equal parts Pixar and Tolkien (or what I imagine Tolkien is like... I've never actually read the ring trilogy)—incredibly accessible, thoroughly engrossing, with a great balance of adventure, mystery, and humor.

Of course, the art is ridiculous (none of my picks of this decade's best have less than stellar art). Jeff Smith is a master of comics storytelling. He manages to pick out the right angles, expressions and poses at the right times for the maximal dramatic and comedic effect. And what's especially noticeable in the uncolored version is his beautiful brushwork and how well he spots his blacks. His ability to set the mood and give his figures weight based on how he varies his line thickness and places shadow is remarkable.

Jeff Smith kicked off Bone roughly 20 years ago. But the series was completed only in 2004. It's been collected in one massive phone-book-sized tome in its original, beautiful black and white. Scholastic has reprinted the series in smaller volumes and in tasteful color.

short rounds.

2010-03-10T21:50:00.000-08:00

so i made this machine here at Laurel's urging. it's inspired by the "italia"—one of the pizza images on the pizza mania apron that my aunt gave me. that there is a ring of spinach on the outside. it was a little heavy on the toppings and the spinach could've used a little salt and garlic, but otherwise, it was okeedokey.

i'm gonna ride on the coattails of This is Pizza again for a moment, if i may. they recently posted a review of Pizza Depokos, a new pizza cart curiosity up in NoPo.

the good:

pleasant smokiness right outta the wood burning oven
nice char and chewiness on the crust
friendly service
our pesto, olive, fresh tomato, and cheese pie had a nice balance of flavors—the salty and sweet of the olives, the nutty-savoriness of the pesto, and the creamy cheese

the bad:

the tomato sauce was both too heavily applied and too richly seasoned for my taste—it's a thick, almost pasta-y sauce; some people will likely dig this, but it threw off the balance for me

the ugly

the blurtastic upskirt shot, which is unfortunate because the char is so purty

CoD: Episode Li'l Taco

2010-03-05T16:24:00.000-08:00

Another Comic of the Decade:

Strangers in Paradise (Terry Moore, Abstract Studios)

SiP is the best melodrama comic book ever. Nothing else even comes close. It's the story of how Francine, Katchoo, and David redefine themselves after escaping separate pasts that none of them are proud of. We follow them through a tangle of romantic successes and failures, a good bit of multinational corporate conspiracy, and bit of time travel even (i.e., non-linear storytelling... not, like, an actual time machine). It's all here—love and heartbreak, fisticuffs, prostitution, gunplay, Hawai'ian beaches, laughter and tears.

Anyway, I already wrote about it. So I won't bore you with more jibberjabber. There are 6 pocketbook collections. You might even be able to find them at your local library. Go read it. You won't be disappointed.

comics of the decade, episode li'l uno

2010-03-01T14:58:00.000-08:00

Not much in the way of comics news from these parts in the last while. I still read 'em, I just don't read 'em like the coke-bottle-spectacled, cape-wearing, adolescent nerd-bot that I was in my salad days. My tastes have rolled a little to the left since my awkward years and I read fewer fist-fights-in-tights pamphlets and more long-form narratives that are less about power fantasies and more about humanity.

I'm not in the shop every Wednesday, so I imagine I'm missing out on a good bit of reading material. That said, I'm fairly confident that I read, or at least sampled, most of the of the major mainstream comics publications of the past decade; and when I say mainstream, I mean comics embraced by book stores and book reviewers at places like the New York Times, and not what the comics industry considers mainstream, which is Amazonian Princesses through General Zod, not that there's anything inherently wrong with either, I'm just noting that there's a discrepancy between mainstream's mainstream and comics' mainstream.

Also, if anyone has suggestions regarding the best comics since 2000/2001, shout 'em out. I'm curious as to what y'all have been reading comics-wise, and if you've been reading comics at all. I'm sure my list is devoid of a few titles that I either forgot I read or completely missed.

It maybe is a little late for a Comics of the Decade! post, but comics are slow to make... and so is this list.

Notes regarding my picks:

This is in no particular order of preference.
The list is completely subjective, there were no specific criteria I was looking to fill other than my personal enjoyment and fulfillment in reading the book.
Some of these comics were originally published in pamphlet form back in the nineties, but weren't collected into TPBs until the aughts and so therefore were available to people who wouldn't go into a comic shop until this past decade, hence they're eligible for consideration.

First, but not necessarily best or worse...

... well, let's get the obvious one out of the way:

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (Chris Ware; Pantheon)

OK. So here's the thing with this book: even though it can kind of drag narrative-wise, and the main character is pathetic and unappealing in every way imaginable, it is still MINDBLOWING. There's a reason Chris Ware's art has been gallivanting around the country in various exhibitions at fancy art establishments. It's a maze of delights. The line-art is sparse, obsessively clean and precise, yes, but the page layouts and panel arrangements are dense with information and require a very active reader to fill in all the action between the static images and make connections between non-linear scenes.

The storytelling is what I would call decompressed—there are a lot of small moments depicted, tiny gestures like furrowed brows and scratched noses. These are often unnecessary for the plot, but they have a huge impact on the mood of the story. The events of the page above could have been summed up in two or three panels—woman sits and daydreams; woman gets up; woman opens door—but then we would have missed out on the fidgitiness and the mundanity of the waiting room experience, not to mention the puzzle that is the interpersonal relationships of all the characters.

To cut into the somewhat serious nature of the story of this hapless loner stumbling through various disastrous and painful familial relationships is, thankfully, a great deal of humor, which while dust dry and often morbid, still helps keep the pages turning.

Obviously a lot could be written about this book, and I'm not going into a huge amount of detail (thematically there's a lot going on in this book, both story-wise and art-wise, which I'm sure some overly enthusiastic grad student has or will write their thesis on). Suffice it to say that the art is gorgeous and easy to lose yourself in. And the character of Jimmy Corrigan is hard not to stare at with some sense of awe and horror as you would an albino burn victim. Except the scarring is on the inside.

escapades

2010-02-21T19:38:00.000-08:00

Carl McFaberpantalones was in town this weekend. He and the Patterson clan had me over on Friday as a guest pizza-maker in their lovely abode.

Making pizza in an unknown oven is always a risky proposition. You never know how the heat is going to work out. Everyone seemed pretty pleased with the results. Though the bake time for the pizzas was between 10 and 15 minutes, which was waaaay too long to make me really pleased with the final product. I mean, it did taste pretty good, but the edge crust became too dry while bottom of the crust in the middle of the pies barely were blonded.

I used the last three dough balls the next day at home and was satisfied with the results:

the kit and kaboodle

the pre-cut upskirt

the post-cut upskirt

A slice voguing with its hole structure in plain site—scandalous!

The rest of the weekend update:

The weather here has been ridiculous for the middle of February. Sunny and in the 50s. The cherry blossoms are already blooming. Daffodils seem to be contagious and gardens all over are showing symptoms.

This morning I had a lovely brunch comprising Amie's blueberry ladycakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and fruit salad in the excellent company of Laurel, Tom, Amie, and her housemate Texas Pete. Post-meal we detoxed under the sun in Laurelhurst Park.

Anyone else out there addicted to the Dirty Projector's Bitte Orca? Kind of snuck up on me. At first I just found it to be an interesting, quirky bit of music. But somehow the oddball melodies have ingrained themselves in the ol' steel trap. Can't let it go.

I've also been rewatching Sports Night. Once the Natalie–Jeremy relationship gets going, that show is impossible to stop watching.

Bought a yo-yo.

Found ink refills for my Pentel brush pen.

Ate at Toro Bravo with McFaberpantalones, et al. I don't deserve to eat food that good. And! MOLTEN CHOCOLATE CAKE.

Thanks Portland!

Bat-errific!

2010-02-15T11:46:00.001-08:00

Cake #1

Laurel's masterpiece.

Sthickerths!

Yesterday's bat-festivities were boffo.

Stats:
+ 2 bat-cakes
+ 2 bat-movies
+ 5 bat-pizzas
+ 10 bat-people
+ and a few dozen bat-stickers

The movies viewed were Batman & Robin (in lieu of Batman: The Movie, starring Adam West & Burt Ward, which was unavailable at the video store... I thought it would fill the cheese quotient for the evening) and Batman Begins, which is still pretty badass. A shame about the Ra's al Ghul storyline, but it's not the worst thing to happen to a bat-film.

A special shout out to Brendan & Jess for their efforts: baked bat-brie, mint chocolate bat-sandwich cookies, bat-honey, bat muscle-rub, and bat-fabric softener (necessary to avoid the effects of bat-chaffing).

Justice was also served.

BSD...

2010-02-04T12:58:00.000-08:00

is only 10 days away, ye gimpy munter!

Lovely's Fifty-Fifty

2010-02-03T21:08:00.000-08:00

margherita

Adam over at This is Pizza covered this spot a couple of weeks ago and he appeared to be optimistic about their pizzas, even if his initial experience left him somewhat underwhelmed (my interpretation of his review, not his words). He notes that Lovely's changed their mozzarella since his visit and that it's now homemade.

That said, let's get to it:

The four cheese pizza was really top notch. The menu does not list which four cheeses are contending for spots on your tongue nor the seasoning dusting the top of the pie, but it's a well-balanced, creamy, salty, and sweet pie.

The crust, which as I've noted previously is probably the hardest thing to get right and subsequently the thing I harp on the most, has a light, airy texture and gentle flavor that includes a sweetness not commonly found in pizza crusts. I'm not sure if this is maybe due to a sourdough culture or sugar added to the dough mixture. Perhaps it's the result of the pizzaiolo giving the pie's rim a quick swabbing of oil as they come out of the oven.

Regardless, despite its apparent lightness in feel, this crust is no namby-pamby wafer when it comes to actually filling your stomach. And this may have much to do with its ample portions. If I could change one thing about Lovely's pies, it would be to reduce the amount of edge crust—stretch out the rounds closer to the circumference. At the end of the slice, the crust was just too much, and the flavor just wasn't there enough to carry it.

Another nit-picky concern: the islands of mozzarella on the margherita were a little undercooked, i.e., not quite melted through, and ended up as kind of thick blob-ular discs in some cases. The mozzarella itself had a pretty delicate flavor, creamy, and just barely salted—quite tasty on its own.

Of the three types of pizzas we sampled margherita (2 of 'em), four cheese, and the black trumpet mushrooms with fontina val d'aosta and gremolata (a garlic and parsley mix), the four cheese takes the top prize. The menu doesn't list the types of cheeses or seasoning used, but it was a very pleasant balance between creamy, brackish, and sweet. And unlike a lot of four cheese pies, it was not overwhelmingly heavy. For all the pomp of the of mushroom pie's description, the flavors that took hold were mushroom, olive oil, and garlic. No complaints there, but it left the for a somewhat dryer pizza, which meant that it was up to the crust to do more than its share of the flavor-hoisting.

Keeping that in mind, the pizza offerings at Lovely's are good and a head and shoulders above the other options in the area (I'm looking at you, Mississippi Pizza). Fresh dough, tangy tomato sauce, and top quality cheeses make for lively and lovely pies. They clearly care about the pizzas they're making. I saw the pizza chef giving a little tutorial to his kitchen assistant on their wood-fired oven (based on his hand motions it looked like he was explaining the three types of heat transfer—conduction, convection, radiation). It's not a destination spot for me yet, but if they adjust the balance between the toppings and the crust and give their mozzarella a thorough melting, they'll be headed in the right direction. As it is, I probably won't make the trip across town on a regular basis...

...Except for one thing: the ice cream is ridiculously good. It is hands-down the best ice cream I've had in Portland. The salted caramel is heavy on the caramel, light on the salt and ranks right up there with Bi-Rite's in my book (of best ice cream establishments in cities with at least two bridges, forthcoming; Macmillan). A taste of the huckleberry ice cream reveals it to be made with actual huckleberries, and not some huckleberry syrup or extract—it contains actual berries. Meanwhile the coffee ice cream, made with Stumptown beans, is like a rich affogato and not to be missed. It's the most vibrantly coffee-flavored of any coffee ice cream I can recall. And their almond praline even gives Bleecker Street's Cones' almond cream a run for its money.

black trumpet mushrooms with fontina val d'aosta and gremolata

four cheese

eight.

2010-02-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

Mélissa Laveaux—Needle in the Hay (Elliot Smith cover)
Imperial Teen—Shim Sham
The Valrus—If You See Light (Mountain Goats cover)
Rosi Golan—Follow the Arrow
Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside—Not an Animal
Winter Gloves—Factories
Wakey!Wakey!—Twenty Two
The Grates—The Biggest and Longest Adventure Ever

a new year, a new template.

2010-01-31T23:49:00.001-08:00

may your pastries be chocolate-filled and your chocolate be bacon-filled.

¬

2010-01-20T16:10:00.001-08:00

Surely, one would think, there are better things to do with one's time than sit idly in a cubical space, bound by low, beige, flimsy walls, tapping at little rectangular buttons, accompanied by a small village of other cube-bound typists. It's all orthogonal, really—square carpet-tiles, rectangular print-outs, right-angled windows. My life is largely a bunch of squares surrounded by other squares.

the range

2009-12-31T11:00:00.001-08:00

I'll be in Maryland from Jan. 1st-Jan. 9th. There may be a couple of days tripping up to NYC. My cell phone situation is still unresolved, so email is still the best way to get a hold of me for the time being.

the day is mine!

2009-12-17T16:42:00.001-08:00

the day's consumption

cupcakes: 3
cookies: 7
oranges: 2
peanut butter & jam sandwiches: 1
bananas: 1
pizzas: 1 + 2 slices
strawberry—rhubarb pie: 1 slice

things i have done in recent history

2009-12-14T18:26:00.001-08:00

1. not scored goals and been generally pissed off about my quality of play on the soccer pitch (or rink, really... as the "field" tends to be walled in with curved corners). i seem to curse at myself very loudly when i miss a chance to score. apologies to small children and their parental units.
2. thoroughly enjoyed yelling at marty while he "blows" his "horn" in public.

3. let my crush on ellen page grow and grow.

4. eaten my weight in cooooookies!

5. mentally prepared myself for a week of pizza consumption (this was not difficult). monday: homemade. wednesday: ken's. thursday: scholls...?

another 8tracks

2009-12-02T15:57:00.001-08:00

unplugged, unencumbered

2009-12-01T10:15:00.001-08:00

the cellular telephone is without a doubt one of the most useful and annoying pieces of technology ever invented. sometimes it can seem pretty much indispensable. and it saves you from the onerous task of actually planning ahead. i can't tell you how many times my high-end string-and-can dealybopper has saved dinner gatherings, movie outings, or acted as a defense against loneliness for me. take for instance this sunday: i was supposed to meet up with robyn and her crew to watch the 'skins-eagles game a claudia's. i showed up a few minutes early, waited around outside for them, and when they didn't appear by kickoff, i plunked myself down at a table and ordered up some biscuits and bacon (to console myself with for what i was sure would be a demoralizing spectacle of botched play-calling, fumbled snaps, and dropped passes). it turns out robyn's philly-oriented contingent did arrive and ended up sitting in the room adjacent. two of them even played on the poker machines right behind where i was sitting. but neither of us saw each other. i could've eaten my biscuits and bacon in good company, but instead i watched the 'skins lose, in what turned out to be a fairly enjoyable game to watch, 27-24. it's just one instance in which a cell phone would've allowed the experience to be more enjoyable.

that said, life without the cell phone, it turns out, is pretty nice. i don't have to worry about being available at every waking moment, as has become the expectation when you have a cell phone; there are no phantom ringing neuroses; i'm less concerned about giving myself brain cancer; i don't have to carry around one extra clunky thing or losing an expensive piece of electronics; i don't have awkward buzzing emanating from my pants at inopportune moments.

still, it's been a week without it. sometimes i wonder if i'm missing out on stuff because i can't check my text messages. i will try and head over to target today to purchase a replacement charger. but maybe now that i've gotten kind of used to being without it, and realized how nothing terrible has come of it, i'll have the psychological wherewithal to keep it off most of the time.

Updated: i have been to target and their universal charger for the LG phone is not compatible with my LG phone. of the three different plugs available with the charger not one of them fits the jack on my phone. it makes me wonder exactly what universe the charger is from...

Ready... FIGHT!

2009-11-17T21:38:00.000-08:00

This weekend I attacked SF pizza this weekend with the ferocity of a ferocious, wild, angry, hungry, and furry manimal. The match-up: Delfina Vs. Tony's Pizza Napoletana.

At both I tried their margherita and a house specialty.

The Delfina margherita (above; stock images from a past visit in the spring is due to poor lighting at night in their outdoor seating) easily came out on top, with a perfectly baked crust (I realize the photo shows otherwise, but the charring was fantastic this time around)—crisp, yet pliant with the crackly edge protecting soft, spongy innards—sweet and tang-tastic sauce, and a drizzle of fragrant olive oil.

Tony's margherita was good, but the sauce lacked the flavorful punch of Delfina's and the cheese was not entirely melted. It did benefit from the added smokiness added by the wood-burning oven. Extra kudos to Tony's for being open for lunch, which is a meal most of the better pizzerias in SF thumb their noses at.

I also tried the clam pie at Delfina and Tony's Cal Italia (Asiago, Mozzarella, Imported Italian Gorgonzola, Sweet Fig preserve from Croatia, Prosciutto di Parma, Parmigiano, Balsamic). Both were delicious. The Cal Italia is baked in a domed, gas oven, and uses a different flour (higher gluten content, it seemed, based on the tougher, more chewy consistency) than their margherita. It was overwhelmed by the sweet fig preserves to some degree, which was heavy-handedly dolloped into the center of each slice, with a small piece of prosciutto and a couple shavings of the parmigiano stuck on top. The gorgonzola was used sparingly and counterbalanced the sweet figs with its bitterness. It was pretty delicious, but maybe too rich and I had a hard time getting through my third slice.

Delfina's clam pie (unfortunately I have no photo documentation) was fantastic, with toothsome shelled clams scattered about on a sea of spiced tomato sauce. All underscored by a salty pecorino. Boffo.

I also tried a slice from Arnell's Pizza, which would give most NYC corner slice establishments a run for their money. A thin, crisp crust, topped with your standard greasy, cheesy fair. A good sauce-to-cheese ratio. And served up by a gentleman with a slightly toothless grin.

Please also do drop by the Bi-Rite Creamery after—or before!—hitting up Delfina. I sampled their salted caramel and malted vanilla. A+ in my book. I also had the pleasure of tasting Humphry Slocombe's off-kilter ice cream flavors: secret breakfast (bourbon and cornflakes), peanut butter curry, blue bottle coffee, and balsamic caramel.

Victory for the forces of good!

the decemberists

2009-10-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

colin meloy sounds like what i imagine ira glass would sing like if he
could or would sing.

He won't even let me play cards anymore

2009-10-23T19:55:00.001-07:00

I'm generally not one to go to movies that make you think too much anymore. I mean, I enjoy well constructed films with clever narrative structures, engaging characters, fine performances, etc. But mostly I go to films for escapism. This was not the case in later high school and college. I mean, yes, I saw plenty of stupid Hollywood shlock in that time period, but I had a strong interest in watching movies that maybe were more serious, experimental, artful, or just weird because I enjoyed figuring out the puzzles of themes and characters that they splayed before me and because they often investigate some core truth about the nature of existence, and even if that investigation is just kind of blindly stabbing and guessing, it's still often reaching for a real truth and not just what we wish were true, which is what seems to be the case regarding the messages of Hollywood blockbusters.

Last night I saw the Coen Bros. latest, A Serious Man, which is as unsettling and bleak a movie as I've ever seen. The conversation afterwards was mostly directed around that issue and how much of a bummer it was that that was the movie we ended up seeing. But I have to say, after a day of removal, that A Serious Man is a fucking fantastic bit of cinema. Oh, yes, it's stomach churning watching the main character get the shit kicked out of him by fate without putting up a fight. It makes you queasy and is inordinately frustrating. The Coen Bros. have been practicing their rug-pulling technique and the end of the film finds you flat on your back staring into a blackness of uncertainty and destruction and evil.

"When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies... "

Has anyone else seen this movie? Did it have the same affect?

to the future?

2009-10-21T10:41:00.001-07:00

agape.

2009-10-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

COMBO a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop) from blu on Vimeo.

It'll make your mouth drop.

asterios polyp

2009-10-18T20:45:00.001-07:00

it's received some pretty high praise from most critics. i recommend it. it's 100% solid comics. there are few artists working in comics who tie together the words and images together to underscore the meaning as well as david mazzuchelli does in this book. it's also pretty.

it seems likely to get enveloped into the canon of great american comic books: jimmy corrigan, blankets, black hole, asterios polyp.

in the words of batmanuel...

2009-10-07T22:37:00.001-07:00

"You are being shagged by a rare parrot."

2009-10-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

Adventures in New Zealand!

the health care blarg

2009-09-30T11:29:00.001-07:00

"Republicans charged that both plans would lead to a government 'takeover' of the health-care system and ultimately force private insurers out of business."—Washington Post

The implication that the public option is insidious and will put good and honorable privately-run health care companies out of business needs to be beaten back with a giant stick with a nail in it. Regardless of whether a public option would or wouldn't put private insurers out of business—since when have private insurers been worth saving? What has a free market brought us in terms of health-care? Run-away costs, awful service, and—yes!—rationing. The wealthy can afford it and afford more of it, those who are monetarily challenged cannot. (One could maybe argue it brought us accelerated technological advancement, but I don't know enough about that either way.)

The thing that really pisses me off is that these jackasses in Congress arguing against government-run health-care all gladly accept their gov't plan.

Does anyone feel strongly one way or the other about this stuff? Government option? National private non-profit? Regional non-profit? Leave the system as is? Choices D through Z?

radiolab artifacts

2009-09-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

parasites!:

moments!:

radiolab!

grow and change

2009-09-13T21:40:00.000-07:00

canned some tomatoes with amie yesterday. maybe there'll be some photo documentation on her site in the not too distant future (hint, hint). brunch this morning featured a fairly incredible 3-layered peach and nectarine pavlova with sour whipped cream courtesy of zoe, a friend/co-worker of laurel and amie.

also watched synecdoche, new york and cold souls this weekend. i do not generally recommend the former unless you're into semi-incoherent david-lynch-type films. it's ambitious in terms of its thematic scope, but it really lost me in the middle when it veered away from linear narrative. i'm sure there was some meaning in it, but i could not figure out what it was exactly. it re-congealed toward the end, when the main character's grandiose macarthur-genius-award-funded theatrical work takes on a life of its own. the actor he hires to play himself begins a romance with his assistant, while the main character has a run-in with the woman playing the assistant. it becomes mind-bending in the fun way that kaufman's other stuff (eternal sunshine, adaptation, being john malkovich) is. the result of the love, loss, jealousy, and existential crises is ultimately depressing, emotionally draining, and confusing.

cold souls was easier to wrap my head around. alternately darkly humorous and completely ridiculous, it's paul giamatti at his best and probably most likable role (dude plays a lotta losers and curmudgeons). there's less to it than synecdoche, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. focusing more squarely on the question of identity and existence, it still tackles love, loss, and jealousy, but by using one frame of reference it creates a more coherent story. and you get to see paul giamatti do a pretty good impression of a bad william shatner performance in a chekhov play. the ending lacks much of a resolution though, which is pretty unsatisfying.

also: glee. watched the season opener. generally enjoyable. they seem to be blowing their sexual tension load a little early regarding the football player–nerdy singer. also, the lip synching is a little over the top and distracting. i'd rather the performances feel more live, less produced. the whole kanye west interlude was, frankly, awful—too cheesy even for a show that is steeped in a variety of dairy. the extent to which all of the characters are fairly gross stereotypes is somewhat bothersome. that said, it's only the first episode (well, second, if you include the pilot), and there's plenty of room to grow and change.

fi'ty peeps, one question

2009-09-11T13:41:00.000-07:00

Fifty People, One Question: London from Fifty People, One Question on Vimeo.

the rocket summer

2009-09-08T23:26:00.001-07:00

so i was listening to this radiolab episode today, which is all about parasites, and they had an parasite expert who started talking about this parasitic wasp. the wasp uses cockroaches as a host. it stings them to stun them and then stings them in a very specific spot in their head, which basically zombifies them. they become living servants for these wasps. (please note that this summary here is probably somewhat inaccurate and for the full story you really should listen to the original discussion in what is a very entertaining episode of radiolab) the wasp then takes the cockroach and grabs onto its antennae to use as a steering mechanism (it does this with its mouth... or pincers or whatever it has in its general oral region), leads it over to a nice dirt patch lays some eggs under it and buries it alive. the eggs then hatch and burrow into the cockroach where they feast on its innards, being careful not to eat anything integral to its survival until they reach maturity at which point they burst out of the cockroach, shake off the viscera and fly away. the cockroach then dies.

now this got me thinking in my standard cynical anti-establishment mode. it seems to me that there's a parallel between these parasitic wasps—which i think, regardless of how you feel about cockroaches, may be one of the most heinous creatures on the planet—and the capitalistic/materialistic society we presently find ourselves in. granted, capitalism doesn't exactly lobotomize us, but what it does do is insidious in a way that's almost more evil than a direct stinger to the brain is. we're all trapped in this process that slowly brainwashes us. we're inundated from birth with carefully designed advertisements targeted at our exact demographic, whatever that happens to be at the time, to consume product A or use service B. we become used to consuming these products and services, cannot imagine life without them, even though in almost all cases these products and services only came to be recently—recently at least relative to the breadth of human existence. we recommend service B to friends and family—it makes life easier and it costs so little! we become fixated on these goods and services. they are a focal point in our lives. we begin to see them as not just the accoutrements that they are, but as the become increasingly important until they become our raison d'être. not only do we find ourselves buying them, but we're making them, we're selling them, advertising their existence to the newly born so that they can grow up and be enveloped by the same things.

the scary thing about consumerism is not that we consume so much, rather it's how much it consumes us.

this blog post was posted to blogger, written in gmail on a mac book pro (with intel inside!), powered by pacific power, connected to the internet via comcast, while sitting on a bed puchased via overstock.com, covered in sheets bought at fred meyer, and perched on a bedframe made from wood, screws, and nails, all summarily consumed from home depot. it will be posted on blogger in verdana, a typeface designed for microsoft. i'm sure there are dozens of other soulless, multinational corporations involved in this whole process—who made the sheets? the lightbulb lighting the room? mined the copper for the co-axial cable? we're all drowning in it.

/ / /

in other news, laurel's co-worker informed her that the space shuttle and ISS would be undocking and visible this evening. we watched for about 30 seconds, which was as long as we could see them, as the shuttle rocketed away from the space station at 18,000 mph. they were both remarkably bright objects for things that were relatively small and 220 miles away. it was cool. thanks NASA (also, thank you for my Memory foam mattress).

ad nauseum.

2009-09-02T20:44:00.001-07:00

time really flies the older you get. i what used to seem like a week is now a month. there's probably a lot to tell since the last entry, but i can't think of much. tera is outta the office on a permanent basis and is prepping for a strict regiment of higher education by enjoying the delights of le france with the martinator. with her gone, the office dynamic is very different. her replacement is high energy and has a ridiculous amount of design experience: 20 years, plus design schooling. i've also taken on some more responsibility and at least for the past week haven't really had a shortage of things to do, which is kind of nice. but i do enjoy reading the news and there's been a lot less of that.

last weekend tom and laurel led me on an expedition up South Sister, the third highest mountain in all of vasty vastness of Oregon. there's documentation of the expedition located here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/egadman/show. it was a rewarding but a difficult, steep, and slippery, slide-y climb to the summit. it's probably the highest summit i've climbed to. even starting from halfway up, it was tough. i definitely noticed the air thinning out at about 8,000 feet. the last thousand feet or so i found myself resting every 20 feet or so. it wasn't so bad though, the exhaustion just gave me a good reason to stop and enjoy the view.

where did i leave off...

2009-07-30T11:53:00.001-07:00

so i've been trying to get a little more reading done in the past fewweeks, but i can't seem to get a good rhythm going. i finally made myway back to DFW's A Supposedly Fun Thing, but i had to skip the essayon TV due to my inability to focus. the next essay, written for Harper's about the Illinois State Fair back in '92 or '93, is a vivid account of how America's three c's—capitalism, commercialism, and consumerism—really bumps and grinds against our cultural heritage or at least what we think of as our cultural heritage. possibly the most telling detail he recounts is from the first couple of pages when he notices, while bearing witness to some kind of PR event for a charity hosted in the McDonald's tent, that the grass he's standing on is fake, and when he looks under the green plastic fibers beneath him, he finds real grass. it's amusing and disturbing.

* * *
i've noticed recently that when typing in a purposely informal mostly-lowercase-with-the-exception-of-proper-nouns-and-other-things-that-feel-like-they-should-be-capitalized house-style, i find it difficult to keep consistent. it's easy to leave everything lowercase. it's fairly easy to keep things in the proper standardized form. but if i start without capitalization and then start capitalizing words (like names or book titles, for instance), i involuntarily start capitalizing sentences and first-person singular pronouns again. does anyone else have this problem? does anyone else purposefully capitalize in this (or another) bizarre manner?

hot hot heat

2009-07-29T17:25:00.001-07:00

more 8tracks

2009-07-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

more of that same macro attackro.

2009-07-12T12:10:00.001-07:00

flickr.

2009-07-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

UPDATED!

with even more photos.

new photos up on flickr. well, semi-new. some of them are from the road trip in april, some are from this past weekend, some from recent trips to SF. it's mixed bag of baggage.

i bought new bicycle wheels. i plan to install them next week.

planning a pizza and pastry evening in a couple weeks. details may or may not make it to this page.

the mostly manfattan (and man-fattening) neapolitan extravaganza

2009-06-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

1. Co.
230 Ninth Avenue & 24th St
212-243-1105

Of all the recent NYC pizzerias to have opened, Co. has received the most buzz. Jim Lahey, famous Sullivan Street baker blah blah blah—you either probably know the story already or you don't care. Regardless, these are the things you really need to know: the owner knows his dough and there's a wood-burning oven.

For a place that was hyped (resulting in stupidly long waits) and hammered by the press (one star review by Frank Bruni NYTimes) simultaneously, being both praised and reproached for its 11-inch pies, but pretty much universally beaten to a pulp for its service, the place was remarkably inconspicuous. The dining space was warm with amber-stained wood tables and floors, and with only one other group present when our small, motley crew convened, there was nary a moment of waiting in line (or on line) to be seated.

After a few rounds of negotiation, our foursome settled on splitting a Boscaiola (tomato, mushroom, buffalo mozzarella, pork sausage, onion, chiles) and a Margherita (you know). I don't think it even took five minutes after our order was in for the Margherita to arrive, piping hot, puffed, charred... and small. Really, it seemed pretty tiny, even for a neapolitan-inspired pie.

Rather than a flattened disk with a puffed edge, Co.'s crust has a steady gradient from a relatively thin center that gets increasingly bubbly and airy as it gets to the circumference. Their pizzaiolos don't waste an inch of space and cover the whole pie in toppings, disregarding the idea of a bare edge. This I think is a bit of a shame as it would allow for an opportunity to spotlight the bread. Coming from a renowned baker, it seems odd that the crust isn't given a bit of a glory moment at the end of the slice. That said it is the crust that distinguishes Co.'s pizzas from the rest. It is unique in its soft, yeasty, salty, and airy stylings.

The Margherita, in short, was very tastey, but unremarkable. The sauce was unseasoned as far as I could tell and was light with a mild sweetness. The cheese was a buffalo mozzarella, and typically extra watery with a creamier, less potent flavor than your standard fior di latte. All in all, a well balanced meal.

The Boscaiola, which may have been the wettest slice of pizza I've eat, thanks mostly to the healthy sprinkle of moist and meaty mushrooms, was driven largely by the temper of the chiles and spicy sausage. It was a punchy combination and there were moments of gustatory excitement, but it was occasionally overpowering and there were times when my tongue would have preferred to duck and cover. It's a wild one.

Conclusion: Nice for a change of pace, but not someplace I would end up as a regular.

3-1/2 John Cougar's out of 5.

2. Kesté 271 Bleecker St.
(across from John's)
212-243-1500

Sallying forth from the starting line, the four of us meandered over to Bleecker, losing Eugene to the underground on the way. Kesté lay in the bowels of a street fair. Brendan waited for us at the door. The pizza menu at Kesté is extensive and they're all cooked in a beautiful, ceramic-tiled, wood-burning oven in the back of house.

Our rounds of choice were the Margherita (duh) and the controversial Pizza del Papa (butternut squash cream, smoked mozzarella, artichoke, roasted peppers). Our server seemed somewhat non-plussed at our paltry two-pie order, but we were not deterred. We held fast in the knowledge that there was more pizza to come in the very near future. It is in this kind of race more than any other that slow and steady wins.

Kesté's pizze are beautfully blistered. The Margherita looks in many ways like the platonic ideal. Sadly though, it's a bit of a gold-plated trophy. The slice that met my mouth was over-topped, which is no small feat on a slice containing only mozzarella, tomato sauce, and basil. The paper-thin crust could not hold the weight or the wetness of a heavy-handed dose of cheese. The edge crust was a cushiony pad with a smattering of char. It had a nice mix of crunch and chewiness, but was light on flavor. The Pizza del Papa sounds like the crazy uncle of pizzas—fun to hang out with for a weekend, but not for everyday consumption. Maybe it just takes a little getting used to, but I found the combination of the puréed butternut squash and mozzarella to be much too creamy and heavy. Brendan likened it to butternut squash soup on a flatbread. This is not an inaccurate description. I also found the pieces of roasted peppers to be too large, somewhat unwieldy and overpowering. The pie would have been better served without the cheese and a sparse distribution of diced peppers. Despite the drawbacks, Kesté is rounder than your average bear and if there weren't carbon-flecked competition from Pizza Mezzaluna, John's, Joe's, or No. 28 just around the corner, I would keep a pot of honey out for it. 3-1/2 victory gardens in a world short of massive monoculture farms.

3. Pizza Mezzaluna
146 West Houston Street, New York, NY 10012 (b/n MacDougal and Sullivan; map)
212-533-1242

I don't know what I was expecting when I dropped by Pizza Mezzaluna (located next to what used to be DeMarco's, the now defunct Di Fara spin off), but it was not the marble-benched, open-awninged environs that I found. It's a small, but open and friendly space.

By the time our band arrived it was around 2pm and the joint was vacant, with a low-key atmosphere. The pizzaiolo was in no rush to get things started, but even then, with their wood-burning oven, it only took a few minutes for our order—a Bufala (a Margherita with buffalo mozz rather than the standard cow variety) and a Piccante (tomato sauce, mozzarella, spicy salami)—to make it in and out of the oven and sit steaming in front of us.

Pizza Mezzaluna produces some fine eats. The buffalo cheese was delicate and velvety and the crust was well blistered (see left). The salami on the piccante was a nice combination of smokey, salty, spicy, and sweet, and though I'm generally partial to my salami slices being smaller in diameter (truly, Di Fara's pepperoni is about as close to perfect as it comes), I would be happy to order it on a regular basis, given the opportunity.

And though these pizzas were very good, they lacked a certain character, a little eccentricity. They were too round, too regular in their distribution of toppings, the edge was too consistant in size and color. Yes, this is a nitpicky thing to complain about, but when you're in a city with as many quality pizza establishments as NYC, then you have the luxury of such opinions.

4 horse-and-buggy rides around central park out of 5 horse-and-buggy rides around central park.

4. Motorino
319 Graham ave. Williamsburg
L stop to Graham Ave. Brooklyn
718-599-8899

Why did it take so long for me to get to this one? Because writing these things is actually kind of boring. Sure there's somewhat of a personal challenge in figuring out novel ways to describe the same four components, but even that wears thin after a few go-rounds.

Let me say this, after eating our way through three distinguished NYC pizzerias, those of us left standing took a much-needed respite at a nearby record store before heading out to confront hipstervilleberg. With our appetites at risk, we judiciously skipped San Marzano Brick Oven Pizzeria and headed straight to Motorino.

Go here. With an bright and airy atmosphere and friendly waitstaff to match their friendly pizzas, if there's one new place you hit up in the next few months, this should be the one. Motorino's crust is perfectly cooked and they've got a great sauce–cheese balance. The edge is soft and bready on the inside with a crispy exterior. You won't be disappointed. Motorino was the highlight of the tour.

Una Pizza Napoletana. Di Fara. Motorino. It's been said. Can't take it back. This place is a top fiver.

And their desserts ain't half bad either.

Rating: (x—>∞)/∞

before i consecutively watched five episodes of the west wing...

2009-06-15T15:45:00.001-07:00

i survived what seemed to be a too long, but was in fact too short, east coast excursion. it seemed too long in that by about midway through i'd run out of energy. but it was, in fact, too short because if i'd been given more time to space out all the activities, i wouldn't have been so tired.

reunion was whirlwindy and now seems like much of it happened eons ago. having not slept at all on the red-eye into JFK, the weekend began with me at a disadvantage. though amie, laurel, and i still managed to make a run to di fara (as seen in the previous post) before heading up to vassar. i stole some piecemeal shut-eye while riding the Q train and on the metro-north. i further slept through the first hour of brendan's bbq extravaganza.

the reunion highlight for me was being around mr. miller, listening to him, and basking in the bittersweet glow of his retirement. look up "mensch" in the dictionary and you'll see his bespeckled owl-eyes looking right back at you.

for those of you in nyc with $5 to burn, i recommend checking out the current MoCCA exhibit featuring the work of David Mazzuchelli. The nerdy types will recall him as the penciller/inker of Batman: Year One and one of the more memorable runs on Daredevil (both with Frank Miller as writer). what a lot of people don't know is that after that he went on to do a number of more artsy and experimental comics. the man knows how to juxtapose images. (as an aside: the museum's descriptions of his work, while probably accurate, are remarkably pretentious and wanky. they're trying too hard to make comics high art. one of the great things about comics is how accessible they are, why muck that up?)

i also dropped by MoMA for their free Friday. nothing really blew me away, but i was glad to see they finally rearranged the design exhibit (which may have been done years ago at this point, and maybe it had been rearranged already last june and i just don't recall). now showcased: the aluminum soda can with the pull-tab mouth. really, it's kind of a beautiful bit of design.

furthermore: Boxed Water.

the dominator.

2009-06-05T13:20:00.001-07:00

this is what he does.
he does it well.
but, yeah, ok. here's the thing. and i know this is kind of sacrilege in the world of nyc pizza-snobs, but:

1. the crust, really, isn't that good. it's kind of bland and a bit dry.

2. dom smothers this thing in cheese. it is a cheese-heavy pie. with the pepperoni especially, you can't let this pie sit. it soaks through and becomes a delicious, but soupy mess.

it's my favorite place, but it has it's drawbacks...

negligence.

2009-06-04T11:06:00.001-07:00

i haven't avoided posting. it just hasn't been happening.

tonight i'll be emptying my water bottle, kicking off my shoes, and
gettin' the hairy eyeball from airport security. tomorrow, if all goes
according to plan, i'll chow down on a pepperoni slice from di fara,
inhale a dark chocolate and andean blackberry cone from cones, and
ride along the hudson up to poughkeepsie.

King Tom & his merry band of eaters

2009-05-26T09:49:00.001-07:00

Susanne & Anna are here! Joy. Amie and I picked them up from the airport on Sunday evening (after she fed me a delicious dinner of pasta with a morel mushroom cream sauce; cesar salad; and roasted asparagus).

Yesterday we had a Memorial Day BBQ at the SE Hipster Castle (which I feel is more of a hipster repellent than a hipster haven). Tom finally got his mesquite on. The menu was as follows:

+ bbq pork ribs
+ bbq chicken
+ bbq pineapple
+ bbq vegetable skewers
+ bbq portobello mushrooms
+ bbq jalapeño poppers (filled with cream cheese, wrapped in bacon)
+ bbq peaches (quartered, dipped in sugar)
+ bbq oranges (halved, dipped in sugar with rosemary)
+ bbq asparagus (in peach & orange juices)
+ house made bbq sauce
+ black bean, cherry tomato, and cucumber salad with cilantro and a tomato/citrus dressing
+ potato salad with asparagus
+ cucumber & onion salad (in vinegar)
+ watermelon
+ ice cream sandwhiches
+ chocolate–strawberry brownies
+ chocolate mousse
+ lemonade
+ beer
+ pepsi
+ water

I may be forgetting a couple of things. It was quite the feast though. Clearly. The champion ice cream sandwhich devourer was Zac, who ate 4.

I'm now in possession of a basil plant of the Genovese persuasion. I will cultivate it and garnish my pizzas with its leafy protrusions.

in the haze.

2009-05-18T09:27:00.001-07:00

clown-ballerina haunting long's drugs in Venice, CA

Los Angeles is a cesspool of scantly clad beautiful people drenched in
sunlight, but we didn't really find that out until the morning. The
evening was spent at Kat's brother's beach shack a couple blocks away
from Venice Beach. It reminded me a bit of living at the community
house in New Zealand, with seemingly dozens of people flowing in and
out the door over the course of the evening, except these people were
more blond and tanned and ate more dairy products.

After the desert and all the driving, it was a bit overwhelming. All I
wanted was some dinner and good sleep. These things were had, but much
later than I would have hoped and we all know what happens to people
when they are tired and hungry, they get grumpy. So I did my best to
keep to myself. Eventually the party atmosphere subsided and I was
able to crash... on a sofa that Giselle had once laid on for a
magazine shoot.

The next morning we had a nice little stroll around the beach area
before heading off to the north and meeting up with Fahad for lunch.
There was much catching up, pizza eating, reminiscing, and one case of
a mistaken identity ('cause, I mean, who can really tell the
difference between us?). My greatest regret on this trip is that I
didn't get a photo of us together. We are twins separated by genetics.

There was then much scenery and coastal driving. I believe that the
sunset image from a couple posts ago is actually from our trek out to
the Pacific Coast Highway.

2009-05-15T13:40:00.001-07:00

requisite vacation sunset image

OK. So, my attempt at recapping the whole road trip in moderately
lengthy and detailed posts has derailed. I'm okay with this. I realize
that these things are somewhat time sensitive sense (a) my memory
isn't great for such things and (b) the nature of the web blog
generally enourages quick dissemination of information that is
immediately relevant, kind of short term-y/short attention span-y.
Also, I'm not convinced that anyone actually wants to read these
posts, even me, who appreciates having them for the sake of posterity,
but since I lived the events not too long ago, am pretty okay just
sitting here thinking about them. That said, sometimes writing a
little bit can be a good workout for the brain contraption and I'll
see if I can at least pen the highlights.

Day 3: Joshua Tree redux.

We'll rewind bit, and briefly note that after Coachella Kyle and I
drove somewhat cluelessly around in the desert looking for the Palm
Springs airport, which we eventually found, and where Shanni had been
patiently waiting for us for an hour or so. We then got lost leaving
the airport ("just leave the same way you came in," one would think,
but i was a bit giddy and not really paying attention to the direction
we were pointed in). As is the wont of the Jews, there was further
wandering in the desert. What should have been an hour drive to a
Motel 6 (situated next to my mortal enemy, Pizza Hut), turned into a 3
hour battle with highway signage, countless U-turns, and everyone
losing their cool a bit, but just a bit.

Morning. The desert. We had no food. There was a diner and we were
saved by morning milkshakes. I had a Spanish omelet that was roughly
the size of Spain, and may have been populated with actual Spaniards
(I'm sorry, little Spaniards, you deserved a better death than one by
digestion). Then: into the heart of it. The morning was spent driving
through the park and the early afternoon on a two hour walk to a ridge
with magnificent views. Witnessed: Joshua trees, lizards, cacti, dirt,
more dirt, small bushes, &c. We'd just missed the bloom-y season, but
there was plenty of beauty to be seen.

Then! Away to Los Angeles!

Joshua Tree joy:

this is it.

2009-05-14T13:33:00.000-07:00

day too two.

2009-04-30T17:18:00.001-07:00

Phoenix for the most part remains a mystery. From the airplane window you could see a seemingly endless sprawl of the city's white-roofed domains. But who or what inhabited those buildings? And perhaps more mysterous: why and how is there grass here? We don't really know. Kyle and I busted outta there as soon as we finished our pies.

Driving directly at the sun for a good couple of hours, we finally arrived in the Indio/Coachella/Joshua Tree area around 10:00 pm, deciding to take our chances with a national park camp ground. The park's south entrance only led to group camp sites, in which, thanks to our national park's honor system of reservations and payment, we had no problem finding space for our two-person tent.

Kyle, having never been further west than Lexington, Kentucky woke up with the sun and frolicked in the desert while I stirred in my sleeping bag. We were on the road by 9:30, headed to conquer Coachella's Saturday lineup, killing some time before the afternoon start by scavenging a breakfast at Target (a banana, orange juice, and banana-nut muffin for me) and picking up some forgotten supplies.

Then it was off to search for parking, which despite somewhat excessive signage seemed to elude us for quite a while. There appeared to be a number of event parking lots dotting the path to festival, but none of them were populated by concert goers and most of them were mostly empty and closed off. It turns out that parking was located to the right of an intersection with an impromptu no right turn sign, which had a police officer idling next to it. This didn't seem to deter other attendees from making a right, so we followed them with crossed fingers. No trouble.

We arrived at the festival, were interviewed by a local radio station (top five favorite bands? i froze. what makes a good concert? who am i listening to right now?). Entering the grounds, security made me dump out my water bottle ("It could be Vodka for all we know!"), were accosted by a couple minors looking for beer bracelets ("I don't think drinking in this heat's a good idea. You'll end up in the medical tent dehydrated and covered in vomit." The thanks I got in reply I'm pretty sure was a mispronounced "fuck you.")

P.O.S. kicked off our Coachella experience ("It's 1:30. You're at a hip-hop show in the desert. Fuck it. Throw your hands in the air. No. Like this. Up. Like this!"). If the crowd had known what to make of it (i.e., not been full of what can only be described in this context as a bunch of honkeys), it would've been an excellent set.

P.O.S. was followed by what turned out to be hands-down the best set of the day with Ida Maria, a Scandinavian outfit with a very earnest and blond backing band that tore through straight to the core of rock's definition—dynamism, youth, sex, rebellion, and spontaneity—all made easily digestible with catchy hooks.

From there it was mostly downhill: Joss Stone played a too polished set on the main stage (that had a rigging system roughly a million stories tall and completely dwarfed every act it hosted); Henry Rollins offered a pandering rant about the evils of war, being frustrated with the Bush administration, and airport security; the tail-end of Amanda Palmer's set was a rousing ukulele cover of Radiohead's Creep, and seemed to be the only occurrence that day of an audience really singing along; Tinariwen worked the crowd with the clever use of not speaking English and looking foreign, which was completely charming and effortless on their part as they are from Mali and do not actually speak English or seem to be inclined to wear t-shirts and bermuda shorts; Fleet Foxes offered very tight harmonies in a solid set that I can only really describe as gently raucous; M.I.A.'s performance was completely seizure inducing, a clinic in pop art replete awful video collages, dancers in neon piping, and incoherent rambling ("I didn't sell out. I played the Grammy's, but I turned the Oscars down! I just had a baby.").

pop-ish rocks.

2009-04-30T16:16:00.001-07:00

not my usual stuff.

It happened already?

2009-04-28T17:17:00.001-07:00

Two days ago I was in San Fransisco. Two days ago I was a free man. Today I am parked under the fluorescent-lit drop ceiling that is the pestilence of modern living, a blight that causes the slow deaths of countless psyches across the developed world. Yup. There's nothing like a good road trip to remind you how dull and inane your daily life actually is.

Two Friday's ago I met Kyle at the Phoenix Airport Alamo Rental Car desk. After driving in circles trying to figure out how to get on I-10, we headed over to Pizzeria Bianco, a place often tagged as having the best pizza in these United States. We arrived on their sun baked front patio around 4pm, a good hour before they opened doors, and we weren't even the first in line—already there was a small collection of people hanging out under a canvass awning. Kyle and I did some catching up, interrupted periodically by a couple of very nice guys—fledgling pizza enthusiasts—asking me questions about pizzerias and pizza making. By the time Bianco's opened, the line to get in stretched maybe 60 people down the block.

How could Bianco's wood-charred pies live up to the hype surrounding them? Well, they couldn't. But I can't think of any pizza that could. We kicked off the meal with a couple of cokes and an antipasto (olives, cheese, soppressata and fire roasted asparagus, bell peppers, and onions) that turned out to be the star of the meal. A wild-haired Chris Bianco was manning the oven and stretching out paper-thin 12 inch rounds of dough. Our pizzas came out beautifully cooked, with the puffy edge having a slim crisp outter shell and soft, spongey innards. Between the two of us we split the Rosa (Red Onion, Parmigiano Reggiano, Rosemary, Arizona Pistachios), the Wiseguy (Wood Roasted Onion, House Smoked Mozzarella, Fennel Sausage), and a Margherita (Tomato Sauce, Fresh Mozzarella, Basil). The Margherita was excellent and the best of the lot, with a fresh-tasting sauce and a nice sauce and cheese balance. The Wiseguy was heavily loaded with thick strips of sausage and onion, both of which were delicious in their own right, but were detrimental to the pizza's pizza-ness. Their heft overpowered both the crust's structure and its flavor. I wondered why they bothered to put them on a pizza crust to begin with. The sausage and onions would have made a tastey meal by themselves. The Rosa is without a doubt the richest pizza I've ever had. The oils from the reggiano and pistachios mixing with the sweetness of the red onion were overwhelming and gave me that feeling of thickness at the base of the jaw where it meets the throat. I could only manage to down two of its six slices. Kyle seemed happy to play clean-up on that one.

The nail in the coffin for me though was crust, which while cooked to perfection, was simply bland. Maybe it was just this day's batch, but it lacked both the yeasty flavor and saltiness that combine for that satisfactory umami-ness one searches for in that last bite. The best pizza in America? No. But when it was all chewed and swallowed, it was still a damn fine dinner and certainly a pizza worthy of praise. Great service too.

pizza upskirt

margherita

wiseguy

rosa

the oven

songs about time

2009-04-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

the rentals' first chapter of songs about time is ear-ready:

monday morning photo play

2009-04-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

rustoleum

flora

recession

pdx loves neck beards

pdx loves bikes

pdx loves walking

pdx loves geometric shapes

pdx loves posters

more flora

more more flora

pdx loves decaying cherry blossoms

bike farm loves you.

The weather this weekend was ridiculously beautiful—sunny in the 60s on Saturday and 80 on Sunday. I managed to squeeze in a solid 5 hours of soccer.

Sunday I did some much needed maintenance on my bike at Bike Farm. Farbotron helped me overhaul my bike's bottom bracket (the section where the pedal and cranks spin around). It looks like I should purchase a new spindle and bearing cups. The trouble is that my bike frame is an 80's era Peugeot, which is French and conforms to French standardization with respect to part sizes and threading of screws and these French standards are no longer used. Fortunately Portland is a overgrown with cycle shops, so maybe it won't be so hard to track down.

And a personal PDX milestone: for the first time since moving here got invited over to hang out (read: non-party situation) with people who I did not go to school with. Low-key discussion about photography dark rooms, the correlation between astrology and Jesus, and cycling were had, followed by a viewing of choice internets entertainments.

and because it's a slow morning:

Marta is just plain better than everyone else. No one can match her quickness, speed, or creativity right now. She's arguably the best player—of any gender—in the world.

moo camera. moooooooooooooooooooooo.

2009-04-05T00:56:00.001-07:00

the return of the all-seeing eye

2009-04-03T10:31:00.001-07:00

my new, refurbished camera arrived in the mail the other day, fully formed with a working LCD display and everything. it fits snugly in my right pants pocket. i will try and use it to better document the comings-and-goings, ins-and-outs, hithers-and-thithers, repetitions-and-redundancies—the general hurly burly of everyday life in my little cloud of subjective reality. at some point this may mean additions to the long stagnant flickr page. its arrival is also just in time for my exploratory thrust into to the southern areas of the western continental united states. point being, if i can figure out how to the the photos off the goddamn thing, then there may be some photos of things besides pizza on this log of electric information.

image stabilization rulez.

meat plate

2009-04-02T14:38:00.001-07:00

went to korean bbq for lunch today. work function. ate an unhealthy
amount of meat. seriously unhealthy. feel kind of ill about it. not
food poisoning ill, more clump-of-meat-sitting-in-stomach kind of ill.
pork, chicken, beef, shrimp, and either squid or octopus were consumed
(hard to tell... it was in a seafood pancake). not sure what was in
the potstickers. luckily no one seared themselves on the hibachi.
please do not try to duplicate this experience at home.

should've eaten more kimchi, less spicy pork.

other people's words

2009-03-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

Far be it from me to want to direct people to Fox news, but one of their interns recently spent her spring break volunteering with Common Ground Relief and ended up working with (the not-so-facially-pierced) Morgan Meeting himself, aka Gorgon the Destroyer, aka Cap'n Morgan... I could go on. Point being he and CGR got a little publicity.

Morgan Elzey, a project coordinator for Common Ground Relief in New Orleans and my leader on this particularly muddy trek, specializes in working to rebuild the wetlands of the Mississippi Delta, which is disappearing by football fields everyday.

david mack is coming to town.

2009-03-24T15:33:00.001-07:00

there isn't a better comics artist alive: