Bah, Humbach

I can't believe I haven't shared this story with you yet, but there are some vague references to it in upcoming recipes, so study up!  (The unabridged version can be found in my book of essays, Driving a Rental Car in Heels ...and Other Adventures of a Traveling Musician).

Just after I graduated from college, I headed off to southern Germany for three months to participate in
an opera festival.  I never completely understood the circumstances of this festival; the singers were a
mixture of students in supporting roles and up-and-coming "stars" in the lead roles.  The orchestra, which
had been whittled down from full size to chamber, comprised students from my alma mater and a couple
others.  I auditioned on campus for some very serious German people whom I never saw again, and one
month later the letter came in the mail that I would be spending my post-graduation summer in Bavaria.  I
felt just like the ivy-leaguers of yore who did those post graduation European trips, only I'd be working it
off in my first real, paying gig!  How cool was that?  How cool, indeed...

The flight was a blur of pure agony, waiting in lines for what seemed like an eternity, a six hour
plane ride sitting next to a graduate voice student who fancied herself the supreme diva, if not in talent,
then certainly in demeanor, and a very cranky German stewardess who guarded the water and orange
juice as if it was her own personal supply for the entire of the flight.  When we arrived at the airport in
Munich, we were herded through customs in a daze, exuberantly hugged by a very tall gentleman we
would come to call our boss, and herded again into a few vans for a 90 minute drive through the Bavarian
countryside to the charming hamlet of Humbach.  I passed out soon after taking my seat between a
sweaty, morbidly obese tenor and a wiry, foul-mouthed violinist.  I came to, crammed into a kitchen with
many long, narrow tables set up picnic-style. Seriously, I don't remember how I got there.  Did someone
carry me?  I just hoped it wasn't that sweaty guy, who was already starting to give me meaningful glances
from across the room.

We were seated amidst big crusty loaves of bread, plentiful carafes of red wine, and piles of
plump gray sausages while listening to a rousing welcome from our previous airport greeter (and boss),
Marco.  I skipped the sausages and loaded up on carbs and booze (a habit I would repeat daily for the next
three months in Germany, where vegetarians are tolerated but not welcome), tried to focus my vision on a
single object (any would do) and concentrated on what sounded like directions and pertinent information.
I failed miserably at the last two tasks, but the cellist took me by the arm and filled me in while leading
me back (egad!) to the van.  And then it was on to my new summer home, a quaint little bed and breakfast
located along a picturesque pond on the edge of the Black Forrest.

We met our haus frau, whose English was horrid, but she managed to gesture toward things
enough to communicate that she would take our sheets and towels for cleaning and exchanging.  What we
didn't understand at the time was that she was telling us this would only occur once per month.  I looked
out the window to the pond.  Guests (the ones who were actually paying) lay out on the little rickety
docks with picnic baskets nearby, catching some sun in these pre-cancer paranoid days.  They all seemed
pretty old and wrinkly, and the women didn't look particularly enticing in their white two-pieces.  Come
to think of it, why were they all wearing white two-piece suits?. . .  It was their underwear.  These
grandmothers were sunbathing in their skivvies, not a care in the world.  Welcome to Germany.
At dinner we met the leading ladies and men of the two operas we would perform.  They were
definitely older and had the aura of seasoned performers, at least to my 21-year-old sensibilities.  I would
later learn that they were mostly Canadians who couldn't find work in North American companies
because the competition was too stiff, and they had singing problems or acting problems that were
hanging them up, not to mention their drinking problems.

Dinner was, of course, more grilled meats, which in Germany are rarely identifiable slabs cut
from single animals, but rather ground up bits from various animals and body parts reconstituted into
palatable shapes.  There were some mayonnaise-based salads, some over-cooked green beans, and lots of
bread and beer.  I felt like I hadn't left the Midwest, except that I couldn't understand a word anyone was
saying.  It was disconcerting when middle aged men seemed to be laughing and pointing in my general
direction, but otherwise it was really quite freeing.  I was like a child, a dazed child who relies on the
kindness of strangers and trips through the day oblivious to the complexities around her.  It was a bit
magical, especially in my jetlagged state.  The multiple steins of beer didn’t hurt the situation, either.  

Rehearsals, we learned at the end of the night, would commence in the morning (why give
directions to a bunch of drunks?  I mean, really) – so, 8am for the orchestra, 10am for the singers so as
not to strain their voices.  We would break for lunch, which we could make in the theater with the
groceries we kept there once we got to go grocery shopping, rehearse again, separately, in the afternoon,
have dinner in the theater (needed groceries again for that), and then we’d put things together at night.
We would work this way for three weeks, at which time we would then open the theater for 10
performances.  Once we began performing the show, we would have more free time; mornings off to
recover from hangovers, rehearsal in the afternoon, dinner and the show for the first week, then just
shows.  So, slave labor to start would eventually give way to some great opportunities to slip away and
enjoy the area. But first, we had to get through these three weeks.

There were drivers assigned to our various homes who would pick us up at designated times for
rehearsals, performances, and errands.  These drivers were all power-hungry idiots.  Actually, ours was
not power-hungry, just an idiot.  He was the nineteen-year-old boyfriend of my whiniest, most grating
housemate, and therefore had to obey her every whim before taking care of basic responsibilities like, oh I
don't know, taking me to rehearsal.  And because I was the only instrumentalist in my house, stranded
amongst a sea of singers, my schedule was different from everyone else in my area and often caused
much confusion.  The first morning, at 7:45am, I started to panic and began randomly calling drivers'
numbers.  I was still out here!  Was anyone coming to get me???  I shouldn't have worried.  Brett
appeared eventually--at 7:58.  Brett was not good at estimating how much time it took to get from point A
to point B, so we were, despite some very dicey moments on those narrow, winding mountain roads, five
minutes late.  When I arrived, the conductor looked at me sternly and said something severe-sounding in
German.  I had no German skills so I sheepishly apologized in English and explained that my driver was
very late picking me up.  He said, in pinched English, "Ach, don't be such a tattle-tale, vill you?  Ees OK."
Alright, then.


Rehearsal went pretty well. The problem came when we broke for lunch.  Recall that we would
be allowed to use the kitchen when we had food to prepare, but we hadn't been given the opportunity to
get groceries, the nearest full-service store being 30 minutes away.   Now we had exactly one hour before
we had to be back in our seats for the next rehearsal, and there was no food to eat.  Well, actually, the
fridge was loaded with food--some of the more enterprising singers had gone shopping before their 10am
rehearsal while we were slaving away in the pit.  But we all knew we'd be starting some kind of war if we
took their food and promised to replace it later.  So we did what any enterprising musicians would do—
we found a bottle of tequila and a bottle of red wine tucked away in the pantry and we pounded that stuff
like it was liquid gold.  Afternoon rehearsal was a bit like an out-of-body experience, but our stomachs
stopped growling.

**************
Our little adventures were really the highlight of the gig.  Once the show began, we went to Vienna,
where we spent two days locked out of our rental car before we had managed to get out of the expensive
inner ring of the city for the night.  So, two of us checked in to the swankiest hotel I have ever laid eyes
on to this day, and the other four snuck up the stairs when no one was looking, all sharing two
complimentary toothbrushes and towels.  We had the time of our lives.  We saw naked people wandering
around the city park (we found this in Munich, too--interesting that the saggy-breasted in central Europe
are so comfortable with themselves) and had some tasty coffee.  In Venice, a vendor on the piazza gave
me a pair of lovely earrings because I reminded her of her sister, and in Milan we lived the highlife in a
time when the American dollar traded very favorably against the Italian lyre.  In Salzburg we ate our
weight in beautiful, chocolaty Mozartkugel (alright, that was just me) and enjoyed amazing free concerts
at the Mozarteum.  It slowly began to dawn on me that we were living in a rather posh little vacation area
of Bavaria and that we were actually cheap labor and entertainment for rich business people and tourists.
I was foreign labor without a work permit!

The next two months were a haze of rehearsals, performances, trips, and booze, but I do recall
that our last night in Germany was rather exciting.  The local news channel had come to broadcast clips
from the show and do some interviews with the cast in a special feature about the festival.  Of course, the
old drones down in the pit weren't asked any questions--the boob-popping singers' costumes proved far
more enticing--but I'm pretty sure half of my left ear made it on screen.  After the show, there were lavish
bouquets of flowers with cards for each of us along with mini bottles of champagne, which we
unceremoniously slammed as soon as we could figure out how to open them.  We were cheap dates after
not eating for so many hours, and only after we began stumbling around did it become apparent that the
theater had been reorganized to make room for dancing on the floor, with a lot of well-dressed, middle
aged people standing around pumping our boss, Marco's, arm.  For the next several hours (who knows
how long, really?), we young gals were introduced to the wealthy-looking men while the male leads were
cloistered over near their yuppie wives, trying to remain standing upright (there was a lot more wine and
beer available after the champagne) and refusing or accepting offers to dance or sing at the piano.  I'm not
implying that Marco was trying to pimp us out, but these people's names did appear on the programs as
donors.

***************

I don't recall how I got home all that clearly.  I remember drinking a lot of tequila while crammed in to
my friend's guest room across the pond later that night, and I vaguely recall being rather crabby and
dehydrated the next day at the airport. I can say that I learned these things:  Tequila is very cheap in
Germany. . .  Those charming, authentic cuckoo clocks?—they’re not worth shipping home; they're made
in China. . . . .  And don't be such a tattle-tale, vill you?  Ees OK.

Not amused.

In praise of unhealthy food

Well, in light of my recent post siding with Anthony Bourdain, perhaps this title seems a bit hypocritical.  Perhaps it would be better to praise "eating food for food's sake" and "not freaking out every time a new item at the grocery store is labeled a super food".  My thoughts today are about whether or not we can rely on our groceries to stave off cancer, keep us looking like we are 20 forever, and make us thin.  Despite ongoing, desperate reports to the contrary, it appears that about all food can do is keep us from going hungry.

This is no longer meat.

Those antioxidants in super-expensive pomegranate juice?  Slate tells us they are probably useless.  In fact, who knows?--they might even be bad for you.  Drinking milk after workouts to get/ keep thin?  Probably a load of crap pushed through by the powerful American Dairy Association.  Remember the food pyramid?  It's gone.  Remember when eggs were bad for you?  Now they're good!  Potatoes?  Also good!  Bacon?  No longer considered a meat source!

What I am trying to illustrate is our utter and complete confusion regarding exactly what the perfect diet is for all Americans.  It's no wonder, of course--different bodies probably need slightly different foods.  But with so much idle time and our dabbling in what the media has convinced us is "science", we have spent far too much time, in my humble opinion, searching for magical ingredients to help us live forever and puzzling over why others seem healthier than we are.  The Asian diet, because some Asians live much longer than some Americans, has been touted as our new savior: very little meat, lots of vegetables, tea, and tofu.  No booze.  It sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?

But then, why do Italians have such low incidences of heart disease when they drink red wine and eat pasta every day?  It's the fish!  If you eat exactly what they eat, you, too, will have a healthy heart!  You see, it's all healthy fat.  That's the difference.  But wait--what about the French?  They don't go to the gym, they eat stinky, fatty cheese, duck liver, and tons of white bread, and they drink champagne like it's going out of style.  That does sound awesome, but is it a diet America can get behind?  Well, they live slightly longer, on average, than we do and they are noticeably thinner as a culture, so yes, yes we can do that.

The Italian diet in action.

Here's the dirty little secret that never gets mentioned in our obsessive, schizophrenic search for the perfect diet: A LOT of countries have longer life expectancies than we do.  35 countries, to be exact, including Japan, Italy, France, but also Malta, Macau, and Israel, where people are constantly killing each other.  We kind of suck at staying alive, apparently.  Same thing for staying thin, which is supposed to help with being alive.  We are fat and die earlier than others despite our constant anxiety and our constant talk about diets and health.  And we will experiment with all kinds of kooky, nonsensical fads, but we never seem to make up our minds.  So here is my inexpert, entirely non-tested advice (but I'm not overweight and I'm not dead yet, so who knows?):

Don't eat this too often.  Unless you're my grandpa.

• Stop looking for a miracle cure.  It's not pomegranate juice, nor pasta, nor red wine (sorry).  No food or beverage will guarantee that you won't contract some rare form of cancer and die at age 35.  And while many people around the world struggle just to eat enough to stay alive, isn't it a bit crass to pay $26 for an antioxidant tonic promising to be your new fountain of youth?
• Stop trying to copy others.  My grandfather lived to be 92, and he ate only tan foods whenever possible: fried chicken, potatoes and gravy, and of course Werther's carmels.  He had low blood pressure, low cholesterol, and was relatively active late in life.  I would not attempt his diet for myself (because it's disgusting), but it worked for him.  And tofu and veggies work for a lot of Japanese people, and cheese that smells like feet works in France.  Our bodies are all different, though, so that doesn't mean that any of these approaches will work for you.  
• Stop acting like a freak and use some common sense.  Three meals of Reese's peanut butter cups every day, while FABULOUS!, is probably not good for you.  Nothing but grapefruit all week, with no other nutrients to round it out, is also probably not a wise choice.  That cheesy omelet you had last week?  Meh, I don't know.  But if you're worried about it, maybe you can have some more broccoli today to even things out.  Moderation, and not constantly worrying, might be the only tricks we need.  

               

Oh yeah, and

• Move your fat butt off the couch!  French people aren't thin from loving life, they are thin because they walk everywhere.  I have perfectly mobile colleagues who will wait for an elevator for several minutes to go up one floor, so strong is their disdain for walking up a flight of stairs.  Stop it.  That's stupid.  

This is how you walk.  Try it today!

Tune in to CPR.ORG to listen to me make a fool of myself!

This is an excerpt from a full essay that will be featured on the show Telling Stories on Colorado Public Radio this weekend.  In the Denver area, tune in to 90.1FM; you can also listen ANYWHERE! at cpr.org--choose the news channel, not the classical channel.  The show airs Sunday, June 26 at 2pm and Monday, June 27 at 9pm, MDT.

Drowning on a Rooftop: My Short-lived Career in Jazz


When I was the new flutist in town, I was lucky enough to befriend a seasoned flutist in the area who had more work than she could handle, and she soon began sending people my way when she was unavailable.  She wasn’t sending me the good stuff, though-- I was fielding calls for outdoor weddings, free library concerts, and small-town museum exhibits.   In the summer, the wedding calls were particularly prolific.  I do not love outdoor weddings, but I was a hungry musician fresh out of graduate school and eager to take any job I could get, so whenever the phone rang, I said yes.

At times that was probably a mistake.  Having just completed a degree at a prestigious music school, I thought I was ready for anything that came my way; I thought I’d played it all.  I was foolishly over-confident.  I could change the tiniest detail in my orchestra solo when the conductor requested it because he was telling me EVERY DETAIL he wanted me to play.  I could change my interpretation of a concerto on a dime in lessons because I had been trained to recreate whatever sounds someone else told me to make.  [Bring in a copy of me playing Devienne w/ UW orch.] I have since learned that success as a student in a coddled environment is not exactly the same as surviving as a gigger, when one must be able to play something completely foreign without any coaching--that is not how we are trained at the university.   I learned my lesson that summer on the rooftop of the most expensive hotel in town; it was at the wedding for the daughter of a local news anchor.

I was substituting for my friend, and it was her regular trio who had been contracted to do this gig.  The pianist and cellist were old friends, and the trio had a set book of tunes they played which comprised classics from the big-band era and Frank Sinatra's songbook: “Chicago”, “De-Lovely”, that sort of thing. [Play jazz clip here--S‘Wonderful.] So, this was a jazz gig.  Let me explain. The world is divided into two kinds of flute players: those who are classically trained, and those who play jazz.  I do not know how to play jazz.  I like jazz--I like to play it on my stereo when friends come over for dinner, and I like how cool I think it makes me look when people see my CDs laying around.  I have been guilty of losing track of myself while cooking to my Totally 80s compilation, only to make a mad dash for the Chet Baker and Herbie Mann CDs at the sound of the doorbell (it also helps to have a couple others laying around casually--I like the experimental stuff that looks impressive but sounds awful--just put it on a side table underneath the stereo remote.)  So I can listen to jazz, but as a performer, I learned music strictly by reading it and following the directions on the page, not by reading a skeletal outline of the tune and filling in the rest on-the-spot.    And I had never played off of jazz charts, which are not only missing a crucial number of notes, but also tend to be scribbled in a way that makes it look like the arranger must have been writing with his toes.  I'm not making excuses--I was inexperienced.  No amount of cleanliness in those scores could have saved me.  I had no idea what I was doing.

As soon as I arrived and discovered that the music on my stand was beyond my training, I looked beseechingly around the room for my colleagues, whom I hoped would be understanding and get me through it. I‘ll be honest, I was in an absolute panic, and having just come from school, I still had fresh memories of  striving to be note-perfect and please everyone for my well-deserved pat on the head.  But when I saw jazz charts on the stand, I knew I would not be getting a gold star for this performance.  As humiliating as the thought was, I was completely prepared to relinquish any sense of shame for whatever sad, patronizing help they could throw my way.  After all, I reasoned to myself, they wouldn’t want to crash and burn in public, even if it was clearly my fault.  The audience wasn’t going to say “well, that flutist is obviously clueless, but the other two have got some jazz chops.”  Most likely, the audience would just say, “they suck.”

Well, that was my rationale, but unfortunately, the cellist and pianist were not on board with my game plan.  The cellist seemed to approach that afternoon’s musical soiree as a kind of duel, like that cheery ditty, “Dueling Banjos”, only one of the banjos (me) just falls on her face.  When I first spotted him, he was already at the bar looking grim as he ordered his first drink (vodka martini), and commenced playing the game he would maintain throughout the gig: don’t look at the flute player.  Don’t speak to the flute player.  Play as if the flute player is not there.  Playing jazz is really a combination of having the tunes memorized (I did not), having been properly trained to improvise in the style (I was not), and LOOKING AT EACH OTHER during performances to more smoothly take turns playing the solos (which I did not want, but if I had to solo, he could at least tell me when to do it).  So this “pretending I was invisible” schtick was just altogether wrong for the occasion.  It was about  like trying to run a relay race while refusing to acknowledge the next runner in line--you’re not supposed to just throw the baton on the ground and go have a Gatorade, you’re supposed to hand over the baton, then you can have your Gatorade.

And speaking of Gatorade, did I mention there was an open bar for the musicians, as well?  It was part of our pay, and initially it was also a pretty big reason why I decided to take the gig.  But here’s the problem: I hadn’t eaten much that day, and the bartender was generous with the alcohol.  My gin and tonic was gin with a splash of tonic.  Don’t ask me why I decided to cash in on that part of my pay before I even saw the music, but I assumed I could do it.  If it had been Pachelbel’s Canon, I totally could have done it.  I really shouldn’t have tried with Cole Porter.  I wasn’t exactly drunk, but the buzz I had going did not help boost the old confidence level as I tried to figure what the heck I was suppose to be doing.   As I surveyed the slightly blurry landscape of discerning audience members on that rooftop, I started to realize just how screwed I probably was.

Meanwhile, the pianist, a caricature of an aging debutante, was hugging and kissing every well-dressed couple over sixty years of age.  She seemed to be more of a small-time society lady than she was a serious musician.  But she was chatty, kind, and had pretty low standards, so that was somewhat comforting.  She was not, however, the mothering type, and she just assumed I’d pick up on things.  She also had a constant refresher going on her cosmo, so that might have been part of the reason she wasn’t always picking up on my not-so-subtle signals.

She was so wrapped up in her friends, and the cellist was so furiously sucking down his drink while diligently avoiding eye contact, that we had no opportunity to talk strategy before we had to start playing.  What tunes would we play?  What was the "high-sign" to stop?  Where was a tuning pitch?  How do you read his music?  I was the only one who didn’t know anything, and they sort of left me in the dust.   So as we began, I kept looking blankly--nay, pleadingly--at the pianist just before starting a tune so she could tell me which one it was.  I would then madly tear through the songbook until I found it, while the cellist glared and sighed at me and the pianist nervously giggled.  No one would have mistaken me for a pro.

I was generally playing the melody and should have been the one to improvise some solos over the more basic piano part, but it was such a struggle.  If it was a tune I recognized, I would just try to copy my Sarah Vaughn or Billie Holiday CDs as well as my memory would allow, and then play a couple of major scales up and down until the other two stopped.  [Insert clip of me fumbling over Theresa’s vamp on Take 5.]  Sometimes I had no clue what the song was and would just stare at the pianist to communicate that I would not be doing a solo, no thank you.  She was kind enough to jump in with her well-worn solos at those times, but only if I caught her eye.  A few times I just dropped out and stared at the music while they went on with their sparse accompaniment parts for several bars before the pianist jumped in.  A couple of years later I heard one of those tunes, I think, at a friend’s house (he was also trying to look cool while serving dinner).  Hearing the melody with the words made me realize just how badly I had butchered that song: I was stopping in all the wrong places because I was so flustered (“you make my…[stare wildly at pianist]…heart…smi-….le”.  At the time, the cellist got so frustrated that he shouted, “Ah, GOD!” during one of my blank moments between what should have been syllables of the same word.  He said it rather loudly.  During the performance...

THERE'S MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM!  Listen to Telling Stories  at cpr.org Sunday, June 26 at 2pm and Monday or June 27 at 9pm, MDT.

Me celebrity, me can cook

There is a rash of celebrity sightings in the kitchen these days: it seems that, like environmental do-goodness and politics, celebrities' tastes in food are automatically authoritative and worth sharing.  Of course, this makes sense--why wouldn't I consult a near-anorexic actress about her food choices?   It's like asking for advice on purchasing hair care products from a bald man--it just seems right.


Gwyneth Paltrow just came out with a new cookbook, launched Hollywood-style with a huge celebrity-ridden cocktail party.  It's called My Father's Daughter, and she wore a little apron with the logo on it while she cooked for Tom Hanks and some other oldish famous people.  Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria apparently likes food, so now she's a cookbook author.  Both of these A-list actresses evoke thoughts of love and family togetherness in their titles, offering down-home recipes like fried zucchini with spaghetti (Paltrow) and--I'm not joking--"Ants on  a Log"*recipe to follow from Longoria.  (Really?  I made that when I was five and my friends came over to play Barbies.)  Both books have really nice photos, some of the food, many of the actresses looking very happy to be cooking for their blurred-out friends and family.


In a playful riff on a song I always hated, Sheryl Crowe knew enough to bring in a real chef to co-author If It Makes you Healthy: More than 100 Delicious Recipes Inspired by the Seasons.  (Could we get a firm number here, Sheryl?  Have you read your own book?)    And because Alicia Silverstone is vegetarian, this also makes her qualified to counsel us on our nutritional choices in A Kind Diet, blah blah blah (the title was so preachy I got bored before I finished it).


Now, we know that classically trained chefs do not hold a monopoly on the food market: Mark Bittman is the self-taught author of the massive volumes How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, among many others; host of several PBS cooking shows (including one in which Gwyneth made a guest appearance); and long-standing regular contributor and food critic to the New York Times.  But let's face it, the guy is smart, and he's a total food nerd.  He trained as a journalist, got into food, and sought out the best chefs he could find to informally teach him how to do things.  He clearly chose to dedicate his life to studying the art of food.


I have not spent nearly the time and energy someone like Bittman has at learning the craft of cooking, and I don't claim to be an expert (this blog is for entertainment purposes only--I know where I stand in the spectrum), but I can generally keep a table of guests happy in my dining room.  I have several musician friends who can, too.  And there is a place for us to share recipes, ideas, and just talk about food--thanks to the popularity the subject now enjoys, there are more venues than ever before for laymen to geek out on cheeses and artisan oils.  I do not mean to imply that only professionals are allowed to even look at a food processor.  But, let's call a spade a spade--if Gwenyth gives you fried zucchini discs with pasta and a pile of shredded cheese on top, must we call it genius?  And Food + Wine magazine, shame on you for pretending she belongs in the same pages with Rick Bayless and Stephanie Izard. And can we please admit that Eva's Kitchen: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends will be given as gifts to people the gift-givers don't know very well and end up being donated to the nearest library six months later?  You don't have to buy a Prius just because Leonardo wants you to, you don't have to let Harrison Ford pressure you into recycling (but you should do that), and for christ sakes, don't let Alicia Silverstone counsel you on your iron intake sans meat.  She is not a doctor!  


*Ants on a Log: cut up some celery sticks, smear some peanut butter in the cavity, and sprinkle some raisins on that shit.  And here's something I learned that Eva won't tell you: don't feed this to Stacy Wojak's dog.  He is too stupid to handle the celery strings.  Now pay me $30.

The Lovely Ladies do dinner

I went out for dinner the other night, and the food was fine.  It was an Italian place near my house and I could have easily made the dish myself (as is often true with Italian restaurants), but it's still nice to not have dishes to wash now and then, right?  That's worth getting robbed for a glass of wine once in a while, I think.  But the food was not the problem.  They knew how to boil pasta and toss it with some chopped vegetables and butter just fine.  It was the service that weirded me out.

Our waiter was named Buzz.  I don't know if that was his real name--maybe he's preparing to become a very famous server and he's trying out some splashier names for the future publicity.  He looked like a Darryl or maybe a Brett to me, but what do I know?

He was painfully eager when we first sat down, but my friend and I, who made the mistake of being happy to see each other after about a year of subsisting on Facebook messages, chatted before opening our menus, so the first two times he asked to take our order (he came twice in five minutes), we were not yet ready.  It was 5pm and we were the only ones there, so I don't think they needed the table right away.

By the time we were ready to order, he had given up on us.  Or more likely, his nicotine craving had kicked in, because when we finally flagged him down to give him what he'd been waiting for (just the order, guys--come on) he reeked of cigarette smoke.  Reeked.  He had also failed to give us a drink menu, although he had certainly been eager to take our drink order earlier.  So we ordered our meals and when he said "and how about those drinks then?!", I told him that, although we did not have a wine list, I would like a glass of Pinot Grigio if they had it.  He didn't hear the last part because he scampered away to the bar to grab the drink menu.  OK.  So he gives it to me and then reads it over my shoulder with me, and he finds the Pinot Grigio before I do, because he gets all in my space and points it out, shouting "there it is!" a little too loudly in my ear, which is quite close to his ashtray-smelling mouth at this point.  So, problem solved.  Bravo, you have Pinot Grigio.

We proceed to wait for a good 30 minutes for our pasta with butter, white wine, and vegetables to arrive, though he came screaming out of the kitchen with that glass of wine, perhaps hoping I'd have time to order a second.  The food was good, though I wasn't quite ready to discuss dessert five minutes into the meal, which is when he first started asking.  Another ten minutes passed and he checked on us ("Are you Lovely Ladies saving room for some dessert?"  I won't go into the multiple problems with this query.)

Finally he went away, I feared for good.  Just as I was starting to think we could make it out of there without having to pay, he appeared and asked very specifically if we would like a piece of Tiramisu to share.  I don't know if being that very specific is taught, but  as it so happens, we both dislike Tiramisu.  And why did we need to share?  Were we looking bloated and Less Lovely?  We looked at each other, said no, thank you, and he left before we could order the coffee we had wanted.  He returned soon, looking somewhat dejected, I thought, with the bill.  We had to stop him in the middle of his "You ladies have a great night" shtick to ask for said coffee (big mistake--pretty sure it was Sanka) and make him redo the bill.  He came by later to ask how the coffee was, but he quickly answered his own question with a "pretty good, huh?" and an enthusiastic thumbs up.  I'm not kidding you.  I was so dumbfounded I just said "OK", which I realize does not quite answer the question, but he seemed happy enough.

And when he brought us the bill, he said, "You lovely ladies have a great night, whatever you're headed out to do."  Is it me, or is that just a little weird?

The People's Orchestra

Have you bought my book yet, damnit?  Well, here's another little taster, but the book is way better!

I played for a short time in a regional orchestra in my state.  We would meet once a month for four rehearsals and the concert and collect our paychecks.  Really, it was more than that; the people were extremely nice to work with, the conductor was one of the best I have ever had the pleasure of playing under, and the music he programmed was generally superb, if not always precisely played.  It fit into my schedule most of the time and satisfied my occasional desire to play some of the orchestral classics, and I did it for four years.  Since we were the only such group for at least 200 miles in any direction, and since we had the name of the state in our group’s title, we were expected to play for events all around the state.  We were the people's orchestra, in a sense; if your town had a big event happening, one that might be enhanced by orchestral music, you called us.  I liked this notion, that we served our state and that there was a need for classical music in these very modern times.  This afforded me the opportunity to get to know some beautiful places I might otherwise never have visited and also introduced me to some very sweet people...sweet people who were not accustomed to organizing large-scale events.  (You knew a punch line was coming, right?)

The last drive-out I did with the symphony was to a small town just off the interstate, about an hour's drive from our town.  They were celebrating their centennial and wanted us to give a concert in the city park as part of their weekend festivities.  Although the drive was relatively short, we all took the bus.  There was no scenery, no cute historical stop between here and there, and the symphony didn't reimburse you for mileage if you opted out of the free transportation to an event.  In fact, after the disaster with the flat tire my first year, neither Joel, Meredith, nor I ever drove ourselves again.  Plus, it was 102 degrees outside (I know it's a dry heat, but that's still a lot of heat), and my nine-year-old car wasn't too powerful in the air conditioning department anymore.  Remember that temperature, by the way, because it's a key element to this story.

We headed first to the local high school to rehearse. The building was not air conditioned, but there were a couple of doors in the back that had been propped open for some ventilation.  Considering that the air was a dry 102 degrees, it might not have been the best idea--really, it just felt like we were in a blast furnace every time a "breeze" came through.  We managed a two hour rehearsal with several breaks (much more than the one break we would normally get for this amount of work time) so people could splash water on their faces, get drinks, and generally try not to die.  I should have gotten up more often to drink--the locals in charge of the event had kindly brought flat upon flat of bottled water for us--but the heat was just making me so tired, it was all I could do to stay awake.  I would hunch down like I was melting in my seat whenever I wasn't playing, the energy it took to sit up straight was so great, and at one point I realized that the conductor had been trying to get my attention for a while in the middle of rehearsal.  Apparently I had missed an entrance while concentrating on winter scenes and trying to remember what ice felt like.  The second clarinetist kept helpfully pointing out how red my face was getting, foiling my attempt to pretend I was not hot.

Eventually the rehearsal ended and no one had passed out.  We were herded into the front lobby of the high school where the event organizers had brought many very long, party tray-style sub sandwiches cut into little pieces.  There were several different fillings to choose from, bags of salty potato chips, and more bottled water for our lunch.   As is generally my tendency when I feel overheated, I wasn't particularly hungry, but I thought the veggies in the sub might add a little moisture to my system, and the tiled floor was so very cold and inviting.  Tables and chairs had been set up, enough to accommodate our entire group, but most people had chosen to stay close to the floor where it was cooler and one would have less distance to fall if they started feeling any worse.  These organizer people sure were perky, though--they were dressed in red and white striped vests with bright blue shirts with the town's logo underneath, several of them also wearing American flag-inspired visors.  They handed out little hat pins with the centennial logo and kept pushing the ham sandwich, apparently not a big hit with my cohorts.  They were so thrilled about the centennial, and so grateful that we were there to add "a touch of class", as ham-pusher Barb put it, to the celebration.  I wanted to like these people.  It's not that I disliked them; actually, I had just lost the will to experience emotion at all, except perhaps for a slight feeling of dread every time we were herded to the next location.

Mercifully, the personnel manager left us on the cool linoleum floor of the high school until just before the show, so we didn't have to stand around very long in the heat when we weren't earning our paychecks.  We loaded up the buses and drove the four blocks to the park where we would give our concert.  It was to be an hour of patriotic music with no intermission, which I thought was absolutely brilliant.  Don't leave us out there any longer than necessary.  We had been briefed that we would be in a band shell, but because the conductor didn't know what direction it was facing, he advised us to bring our sunglasses.  He shouldn't have been as worried about that as about what the organizers called a 'band shell".  As it turns out, it is a "picnic shelter" to the rest of the world.  So, as we arrived, elderly men were hurriedly (for them) moving the metal folding chairs from the picnic shelter, where they had crammed things in around picnic tables and a grill that were cemented into place, to the only open, level plot of land large enough to hold us--in full sun.  I could see the local bank's lighted sign from where I sat, obnoxiously flashing the current temperature: still 102.  The string players were in an uproar, worried that the thin, delicate, and ancient walls of their precious (really!) instruments would be irreparably damaged.  Woodwind players alternately whimpered, sighed loudly, and mumbled about wanting a pay raise.  The brass and percussion players stared stoically ahead, arranging their music on their stands as best they could with clothespins to foil the sporadic, sudden breezes that were too few and far between.  I thought briefly about crying at the hopelessness of the situation, but I didn't have the moisture left in my body to form tears.

I don't really know how the concert went, to tell you the truth.  I wasn't concentrating on the music much at all, but rather on just sitting upright, thinking about cold things, and not playing during any silences or after pieces had ended.  The crowd seemed very happy.  I don't think anyone was younger than 50, but there were a good number of them, and they clapped and smiled heartily, whooping it up when we played the state song.  At one point I saw some movement in my peripheral vision and was curious enough to look: the second trombonist, with a poker face that would make 'em proud in Vegas, calmly got up, walked over to the nearest park garbage can, and unloaded all of the contents of his stomach.  He then composed himself, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and returned to his seat to finish the concert. I remember thinking, slowly and deliberately to myself, "I will never do an outdoor gig again".  And to this day, I haven't.

Dark Lord of Vegetables

From now on, you will please refer to me as Queen of the Socialist Tubers and Bringer of the New World Order.


Merry Christmas, Everyone!  Even you, Sarah Palin!

http://www.slate.com/id/2278621

Pass the artisan sea salt, asswipe

It may not surprise you all that much to learn that I do a fair amount of my grocery shopping at a “natural food store”.  I do, after all, live in Colorado, a state that is just littered with these places; furthermore, since I tend to eat more tahini, tempeh, and other oddities than the average Safeway shopper, it’s my only choice for said items.  I do not delude myself into thinking I’m something special for going to Sprouts instead of King Sooper’s (that’s a weird name for a store though, right?), nor do I take my shopping choices lightly.  My desire for healthy (and sometimes very fatty but exotic) food is often in direct conflict with my extreme cheapness as a human being.  

Can't you just imagine what a good
person you'd be if you shopped here?

And so it is with some trepidation that I venture out to Sprouts every week, where the floors are a blonde “beechwood” (I think they’re fake), the lighting is a mellow, earth-friendly shade of fluorescent, and all of the magazines and the skin care products have that certain smug look to them.  The sense of pride in identity when I enter these stores is palpable to me, and a fair number of the Mercedes-driving, Dansko clog-wearing, manicured and frosted clientele around me seem to be buying it along with their “free range” bacon and imported cheddar cheese. 

It would be hypocritical of me to simply mock these people, for I am, in some small way, one of them.  Yes, I’m wearing  grass-stained jeans from Goodwill and a t-shirt that says “I Love Carbs”, so I don’t think that the pretty ladies in line would like to claim me, but I am shopping there.  I just keep wondering if I have any kindred spirits—do people think critically about their journeys to the bulk section to get Muesli and bulgur wheat?   Am I the only one experiencing a mixture of satisfaction at eating tasty food and self-loathing for fueling this smug culture? 

I have been buoyed by several recent articles attempting to tackle this very issue, most of them hilariously entertaining, to boot.  A couple of years ago (but I just found it), The Independent (UK) published an article debunking popular myths about organic food.   So, did you know that organic farmers still use pesticides, just different kinds?  And organic animals certainly aren’t cleaner: “In 2006 an Austrian and Dutch study found that a quarter of organic pigs had pneumonia against 4 per cent of conventionally raised pigs; their piglets died twice as often.”  Now, I’m not saying organic piglets are weak little sissies, but it just goes to show that you have the same variety of health in every animal.  I ate casseroles based on cream of mushroom soup as a kid, and I haven’t died yet! And did you know that organically reared cows burp twice as much methane as conventionally reared cattle?  Who wants to eat stinky, hippy cows who belch all the time?

This is the weird-smelling grocery
store in my neighborhood.  

Click here to enjoy Slate’s Troy Patterson rip the Planet Green network to shreds in 2008, including the pronouncement that host Adrian Grenier and his buddies are “douches”.  (And don’t even get me started on taking dietary advice from Gwyneth Paltrow.  She doesn’t even look like she enjoys food.)   It’s not the earth movement’s fault that they keep attracting douchey actors to their cause, but it does lead me to my next musing, which is: do average people shopping at Vitamin Cottage also have to be douches?  Because it sometimes seems that way.  Honestly, the old ladies at Safeway are a lot more courteous about sharing the aisle than at Sprouts, and there’s no dress code.  

Slate comes to the rescue again in a December 2009 article entitled, “Buy Local, Act Evil”.  Their findings?  Smug shoppers can sometimes be gigantic jerks.  In a University of Toronto study, “subjects who made simulated eco-friendly purchases ended up less likely to exhibit altruism in a laboratory game and more likely to cheat and steal.”  So, no, you are not a better person because you purchased that sulfide-free, fragrance-free shampoo at $16 per 8 ounces; you’re just poorer.  (But don’t get me wrong—if you have sensitive skin or dry hair, buy the shampoo!  It’s fine if you’re not in love with yourself because of it.)

Finally, all in the name of poking a little good, sarcastic fun, I love “Shopping for the most expensive possible dinner for two at Whole Foods”.    By taking snobbery in grocery shopping to its logical limit, author Noreen Malone manages to spend $443.48 on what sounds like a pretty weird-ass meal.  But I’m sure the locally sourced frisée at $12.77/lb. is much tastier than Romaine lettuce. 

Now, there might be some value in purchasing certain produce items from the organic section. New Jersey’s Environmental Center has a helpful guide of the most pesticide-ridden fruits and vegetables out there, and it might be worth considering skipping those chemical-drenched apples if you can get some that are slightly less beautiful and a whole lot less toxic.   And in the spirit of full disclosure, I readily spend more on Greek-style yogurt because I like it so much better than Dannon.  I cringe every time I see the price, but I do it anyway, because breakfast deserves to be a happy time.   Especially on Mondays. 

But in the debate over whether to get “organic”, “free range”, “cruelty free”, or “high self-esteem” eggs, it might be good enough to stick with the cheap stuff at Safeway.  Buy what you want--just don't be a butthole, OK?

Fine Dining in the middle of nowhere

I found myself in a slightly large town in a very under-populated area and in need of a meal not too long ago.  Now, I’ve been to the steak houses that serve iceberg lettuce in galvanized steel buckets as the only vegetable option; I’ve been to the diners with homemade pie and nothing else on the menu that requires a full set of teeth to eat; I’ve even played it safe a number of times and just gone to Subway, where I know the veggie sub will be the same boring thing it is in every other part of the country.

But I was in the convention capital of…let’s call it Cheneyland.  I wanted to be adventurous.  I wanted to live the life of a busy, important oil exec who travels around the West, being pampered by chefs and masseuses between high-stakes deals.  Well, I don’t know where those people go, but I decided to try my luck at 555.

555 was located in the decaying original downtown area of the city in a crumbling old, industrial-era brick building.  It was distinguished only by its modestly-sized sign in a simple Art Noveau font.  Classy. When I stepped inside, it was clear that someone had a subscription to Interior Design magazine: the floors were a stark concrete, the lighting was dim and sexily packaged in tiny cobalt lampshades, and the furniture was all made of thin (uncomfortable) metal tubes.  It was beautiful!  This was a restaurant I couldn’t have afforded to walk into in Chicago or New York, but here I was in bumfuck listening to low, mumbling trance music, squinting to see the exotic fish in the aquarium in the floor, and pretending I was chic enough to belong in such setting.

 

The menu was filled with artful-sounding risotto cakes, exotic cuts of fish and beef with overly complicated sauces, sushi, and a martini menu.  Who needs traffic and harsh, rude people on the streets?  You can recreate the city anywhere, as this place obviously proved.

Then the waitress came.  From far away she fit perfectly with the décor; reasonably slim in lean black pants and a gray top with random hunks of fabric hanging off the front, her bright purple-streaked hair and animal-print stilettos  made sense nowhere else in this town but inside 555.  Then she got closer.  Deep crow’s feet and a couple of missing teeth towards the back of her mouth subtly hinted at the fact that I was not, after all, in New York.   She spent an inordinate amount of time telling my male companion about the martini she had just “invented” that morning and that, while it obviously hadn’t made it to the menu yet, she would make them for us (well, she said “you”, but I took that to mean “us” even though she wouldn’t look at me).   We ordered two.  We asked her what she recommended on the menu and she said everything was delicious.  That is not the sign of a discerning palate or a well-trained staff. 

The special, newly-invented martinis came and they made Kool-Aid seem a bit bland and lacking in sweetness by comparison.  Because she thought vodka (the base for every martini that is not already based on gin) was too strong, she chose to make this martini with only Triple Sec for its alcoholic component; the rest was pomegranate juice and orange juice.  So, if you’re keeping track, that’s Triple Sec, pomegranate juice, and orange juice.  That was the special martini.  If she was trying to pick up my lunch companion, she was so far failing miserably.  BUT, it looked very pretty in the glass. 

My friend ordered the sushi.  As I live in a very landlocked part of the country, I am not one to be snobbish about how far my seafood travels to get to my plate, and yet I still thought this was ill-advised.  Call it woman’s intuition.  Also, it just said “sushi” on the lunch menu, not “spicy tuna roll” or “cucumber eel roll” or even “California roll”.  When asked what kind of sushi it was they served, our waitress/ martini inventor told us it was different every day, depending on what they had in the kitchen.  And still he ordered it. 

I ordered the wild mushroom risotto cake; risotto is like the rice version of mac-n-cheese, and mushrooms are easy to find, so how could that be wrong? 

As we chugged our martinis (sipping them was only giving us more opportunities to taste them) and waited for our food, there were other little telltale signs that you cannot, despite my wish for this little bistro, pick up New York and plop it down in some other part of the country.  Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that, while you can build it, you will still have to hire locals to work in it. 

The manager was slowly working the crowd from the other end of the room.  He was dressed in black pants (they could at least get this part of the urban uniform right in 555), a black cotton turtleneck, and a bright blue blazer that perfectly matched the cobalt blue light fixtures.  Additionally, he wore white socks that peeked out from under his slightly too-short pants and black Reeboks.  When he got close enough that we could hear him talking (and he didn’t have to be too close), it was about the local high school football team that he seemed so passionate. 

Our waitress was dressed in a reasonably urbanesque way, but the other woman waiting tables looked like she had just walked out of my junior high graduation dance.  Her black pants were accompanied by a roomy sweater with a festive, Christmas-y print.  It was March.  Her hair also conformed to the requisite fluffy code of the 80s, complete with tall garden weasel bangs.  She chewed gum and looked slightly uncomfortable, like she was really trying not to screw up. 

This was the waitress who, as it turned out, had taken over our table.  For some reason the martini-maker was no longer dealing with us.  She came over to ask us if we needed anything and told us our food would be up shortly (we had only been waiting five minutes, so I kind of hoped they weren’t rushing things past the point of good taste or safety), and it was about then that the music changed from Portishead to Whitesnake.  Someone back in the kitchen hollered “yeeeeeeeeeah!”  and began to sing along to “Here I Go Again”.  It was a scene fraught with cognitive dissonance. 

The sushi, taken surreptitiously by iPhone.

Then the food came.  Rather quickly.  It matched the music, not the interior design.  My friend’s sushi, as it turns out, was a tempura roll.  It was such a large roll that it was impossible for him to fit it into his mouth whole.  However, the tempura coating on the outside was so thick and solid (really, it belonged around a piece of cod with some malt vinegar to soften it up) that biting into a piece merely created an avalanche of flaked pieces of fish, crunchy carrot, and strips of iceberg lettuce.  The fish looked to be a pink salmon broken up into pieces.  So, he did the only thing he could do: he slathered it with wasabi, took steak knife and fork to it, and dug in. 

My risotto cake did resemble risotto, though perhaps it was more like a rice pilaf piled up and stuck together, as the consistency was hardly as creamy as one would expect.  It was also made of brown rice.  There were some mushrooms in it (not of the canned variety), and except for needing salt, it was fine; there were no herbs or other seasonings that I could detect, but I am not opposed to eating rice and mushrooms.  My biggest challenge was just eating it—piled at least ¾ of an inch high, it covered the entire dinner plate.  I could have eaten off that baby for the better part of a week.

Our 80s mom waitress came back soon after we ended our giggling fit over the sushi to ask how we were.  We said we were fine because, really, what else could you say? and she hesitated slightly while staring at my friend’s McDonald’s-style sushi roll.  “So, what is that, anyway?” she asked.  He told her it was the sushi.  “Is it good?”  “Sure, it’s fine.”  “OK, maybe I’ll try it,” she said.  Maybe she would try it. 

After we ate as much as we could without feeling bilious (well, we started to), we walked across the street to the motorcycle bar and ordered two pints of the local brew to chase it down. They were pretty good, and the bikers at the other end of the bar were debating the relevance of Nietzsche in the post-modern world.  And that’s when I learned to stop searching for fine dining in the middle of nowhere.

This story didn't make it into my book, but you can read about other hair-brained visits to too-big-for-their-britches restaurants if you buy it!  Buy my book!  That's right...go buy it!

excerpt from Carpet Store Diaries

Please enjoy my humble offering, this excerpt from my new book, Driving a Rental Car in Heels. Like it?  There's more!  Order now!  

Monday, June 5, 1995

I need a job.  I am calling this “family-owned and run” carpet store because it does not involve fast food, small children, or getting dirty.  I do not really have that rigid of a list of deal-breakers, but these are all things I generally dislike, and it seems like it would be nice to avoid them.

I call the store and speak with the owner.  At first he seems a bit evasive. “Hi, is Joe there?”  “Uh, I don’t know.  Who is this?”  “My name is Nicole; I’m calling about your ad for clerical help.”  “Oh, I’m Joe, yeah.”  Uncomfortable silence.  I hear small, high-pitched clicking sounds.  Is he trimming his nails?  “Sooo, have you filled the position?” “No.  Do you want it?” “Yes, I’d be interested in coming in and meeting with you.”  “OK, can you come tomorrow morning?  We open at 9am.  Okthanksbye.”  Click.

The conversation is so abrupt that I sit for the next several minutes wondering if I have a job interview for tomorrow.  I want the job (if it pays money and not root vegetables, I will take it), so I eventually decide that I will show up and, if he didn’t mean for me to come, he might feel pressured into taking me because I am standing there in front of him.  I am not proud.  I am slightly behind on my rent. 

It also occurs to me that I do not know where this place is, because the name of the carpet store is not even listed in the ad: “Joe” and a phone number, that’s it for information.  I really don’t want to come off as a dope or one of those people who asks too many questions, though.  Hoo boy, this is awkward.  I know!  I will just call and ask for directions to the store!  I won’t identify myself–what are the odds of Joe answering again when he seemed in such a hurry?  I will pose as a potential customer.  I won’t even have to say this–it will be understood.  Add problem-solving skills to the resume.  “Hello, can you give me directions to your store?” “Yeah, is that you, Nicole?  I wondered if you knew where we were.  Take Cicero to 57^th, North on 57^th, West on Wolf.  We’re next to the 7-11 in the strip mall.”  Click.  I wonder if he will remember what an idiot I am by tomorrow.

Tuesday, June 6, 1995

I arrive five minutes before the store is supposed to open and no one is around.  The place is completely dark.  I sit in my car and start to feel like a stalker.  At 9:02 by my clock, the lights come on, but I see no movement towards the front door, where I need to be let in.

Then a woman in her 50s (60s?) approaches with a warm, generous smile to let me in.  She is very petite and seems to be wearing a lot of gold jewelry.  Also, her hair is a strange kind of hay color.  She opens the door and beams up at me (up–she might be the first adult I have met who is taller than me) and says “Are you Nikki?  Joe’s waitin’ for ya!”  I have not been “Nikki” since I was perhaps nine years old, but now is not the time for such petty concerns.  They can call me a two-bit whore (which I am not, by the way) if they want to hire me. 

This little pistol is named Carol, and she is Joe’s mother.  She is talkative and smells slightly of wine.  When she takes me back to the break area (not a room, but a section which is partitioned pretty thoroughly from the rest of the store) I see why.  Everyone is sitting around an open bottle of Riunite burgundy with Styrofoam cups in hand.  Huh.  Carol explains that they don’t usually sit around drinking, “at least not till noon!  Ha!”, but they are celebrating closing a very big deal with a housing development.  They will be installing the carpet in every new house that goes up.  That is exciting.  I am offered wine, as well.  Not unfamiliar with a morning cocktail and not wanting to look aloof, I accept. 

Joe is a small and jittery man.  He slicks back his dark, wavy hair, but it is uncooperative.  The result is a greasy mess which is mostly smoothed to his scalp, but with the occasional half-curl forming little wings that stick out from various surprising places on his head.  He has several gold rings, and each seems to be some kind of band with a large hunk of something in the front–a gold plate with an initial, a cluster of small diamonds, and in one case, a literal hunk of unformed gold.  He is also wearing two thick gold chains: one has a cross, and one has an Italian horn hanging from it.  He is probably in his early 30s, but his outfit could have come from my dad’s closet: faded jeans, not in the purposeful, cool way; button down shirt with vertical stripes; slightly worn but very clean white leather tennis shoes. 

Joe shows me to a desk and starts explaining what I will do.  Apparently there is no job interview; I have been hired.  I will not sell carpet, of course, because I know nothing, but I am encouraged to watch the others and should “speak up” if I decide I would like to go that route.  Right now Joe, his mother Carol, and his father Joe Senior (divorced from Carol) sell the carpet. 

I will sit at a desk near the back of the store, direct people to a salesperson, answer phones, and oversee the installers.  The warehouse manager should be the one to send the installers on their jobs and make sure they get their jobs done, but he is apparently inadequate in this area, as Joe informs me “He just smokes doobs all day with them”.  So, now I will have to be the bad cop and make them do their work.  I have no management experience, but I do have experience in being an unlikeable drag, so I feel qualified for this. 

I proceed to sit at my desk and laugh uncomfortably at mildly sexist jokes for the rest of the day.  I meet Joe Senior (he is the only one who calls me Nicole instead of Nikki, because he can tell I’m “classy”.  He sort of says it like, “Nee-call”.  He is from America, however.).  I also meet Al, Carol’s husband, who calls the store “a total fuckin’ clusterfuck” and wishes me luck, and Sue, Joe’s lovely bride.  She completely ignores me, but I do not take it personally.  She only seems to notice Joe, actually.  She complains about various irritants in her life and then leaves.  I think she just misses him.  She has left their 14-month-old daughter at home to stop in and “get out of that friggin’ house”.  I am unsure what to make of her.  

I Went to the O.C. and I Didn’t Even Get a Lousy T-Shirt

Nor did I get any exercise. These people really love their cars! I stayed in Costa Mesa, exactly two miles (but one town) away from my concert. The weather was nearly perfect for walking, but there generally were not sidewalks. Well, sometimes sidewalks would exist along one side of one street, but then they would dead end at a pile of dirt and broken glass. Occasionally a sidewalk would take me all the way to a busy intersection, but with no crosswalk and light to defend me, I lost the courage to attempt to cross. And often sidewalks would end in very stern-looking signs that said NO PEDESTRIANS ALLOWED. I got the feeling that pedestrians were not welcome.


All of the areas I experienced in Orange County were situated off of the busy freeway; even town streets acted and felt like an interstate road. I could drive for five minutes on I-405 and see three different town signs with no other clue that I had changed city limits except for the slightly different color scheme of the strip malls. But this highway-loving culture doesn’t love you if you don’t own a car, so there is also virtually no public transportation available. And so, to travel the two miles to my gig, I had to take a taxi. If you are from California and you are reading this, that probably seems normal and you are asking, “Why have you written two paragraphs about this very commonplace situation?” But I assure you, the majority of the country thinks you’re weird.

Oh, and you people are beautiful. Not a chubby, awkward, or overly hairy one in the bunch. I would enter a restaurant with my wild, wavy mop of mousy brown hair (and yes, those silver highlights are natural, thank you very much) and people would look around to see whose driver had arrived for them. Although you clearly must be spending thousands of dollars to look like that, since you must have a gym membership to get any exercise. And I refuse to believe that I am the only one with chin hair and eyebrow hair growing down onto my eyelids. Yes, I am sure that’s perfectly normal.

But while you may be the Mecca of cars here in Southern California, the flying thing doesn’t seem to have quite gotten figured out. With all of the fabulously rich people in this area, I expected a functional, adult-sized airport. What I got was the John Wayne Orange County Airport. Perhaps there was another one that was better, but I certainly wasn’t going to pay cab fare for the 40 mile drive from LAX.

The airport is a long hallway of sorts with a small collection of ticketing counters and a weird little space for security tacked onto the front of the building like an embarrassing sports bra-induced uniboob. I was flying a slightly smaller airline, and so when I arrived no one was working the counter. There was a sign saying that a representative would show up 90 minutes before the next flight. There was also no self check-in kiosk anywhere, but surely, I thought, there was another flight before mine going out, so I’d just check back shortly and it would be fine. (I’ll save you the shock: there was no other flight going out before mine.)

My plan, post-hotel check-out, was to get to the airport early (where else did I have to go—on a walk?), grab an overpriced lunch, and wait. Or maybe shop—isn’t it about time I started collecting cheesy souvenirs from my trips? Maybe something classy like spoons?

Sadly, all of the (four + Starbucks) eateries were on the other side of security, that magical land impossible to penetrate without a boarding pass. So I wandered along the narrow corridor that made up the non-secure side and found a few benches. Well, it’s a small airport, so I can tell you that I found exactly six benches. Not surprisingly, they were all filled, as several (all but one) airline counters were taking a noontime siesta at 10am. So, I found a cozy spot on the concrete floor and curled up with my magazine, Food + Wine. Big mistake, because I was a HUNGRY HIPPO! HUNGRY HUNGRY!!!! Even the airport food was starting to smell good to me from my sparse side of the hall.

The desk finally opened exactly 90 minutes before my flight. I obtained my ticket and stumbled the three feet to the quaint little security line. I figured this could go one of two ways: small airport filled with tourists = not so much action, ∴ laid back security. OR, rather few people to secure + lots-o-time before shift ends = overly fussy security. Guess which one it was?

I willingly admit that I invite aggravation by trying to stuff everything I need into a carry-on rather than spending $250,000 to check a bag. So, I have tweezers in my carry-on (with eyebrows like these, I’m doing SoCal a favor). I have deodorant in there. Is that legal? One never knows from one airport to the next, or from one day to the next, what is necessary to keep us safe from terrorists. But I did not expect to get stopped for a tampon—that was a first for me. Really, guys? Were you not taught to identify these in your hour of training? Have you never lived with a woman before? Actually, from the looks of these three, that was a possibility; at the very least, I will venture to guess that they hadn’t gotten laid in a very, very long time.

This would have mortified me a decade ago, but I am now 36 and I could care less if people know I am currently in the process of shedding my uterine lining. So, after explaining an abridged version of the Birds and the Bees for my middle-aged interrogator and repacking my bag because he seemed rather baffled by it (and how did all of my dirty underwear end up strewn along the table, anyway?), I struck out to the Other Side in search of FOOD.

Here are your options, should you wish to visit, when you are spending time in the John Wayne airport: McDonald’s, something called Creative Croissants (and they didn’t look too creative, folks), the “Sports Page Pub”, a Wolfgang Puck’s Express kiosk (wrapped sandwiches and boxed salads that cost more because they say Wolfgang Puck), and another something called “Oasis Bar and Grill” where there are four booths and the salads start at $14. So, I paid $9 for a little cup of salad. But it was a designer salad.

For your shopping pleasure, you may choose from a vast array of two Hudson News stands, a nameless magazine/ newspaper kiosk, and South Coast News, a Hudson News with neck pillows and slippers. So much for my new spoon collection, but I will say, these people like their reading material.