This Food Is Haunted

I have just come this evening from the Twilight Zone, from the Land That Time Forgot.  There is a time capsule of a restaurant – a shrine to the color mauve – within a mile of our house that remained, until tonight, undiscovered.

We dined this evening in a place beyond description – a chapel bathed in silk damask, with a thirty-foot ceiling and a four-piece band.  This is the dining room scene they edited out of “The Shining.”  This is the last vestige of the mediocre country club meals of which I never had the mostly qualified privilege to partake and never had the stomach to imagine.  This is where the 1960s Milwaukee mob goes to celebrate after a big heist.

I am at once horrified and delighted to report that such a place exists.  That it exists within a mile of my house prompts similar ambivalence.  This place sets out real silver and gilded plates for two seatings a night in a dining room of delectable irony of which the management is stubbornly unaware.

They stop short of doilies, but only just.

If you ever wondered what happened to Sole Meunière and Steak Diane, wonder no more, for these throw-backs survive in geriatric splendor at a restaurant called “Chantilly.”  If you’re willing to bump elbows with patrons 50 years your senior eating cuisine of a similar era, you too can stare agape at the six-foot flower arrangement – bristling with gladiolas – that dominates the room.  I didn’t fully grasp the meaning of the word “milquetoast” until tonight.  It is a triumphant and unsettling spectacle of mediocrity.

The entire experience is devoid of imagination – everything about it had been done, and done better.  The food is as musty as the 70-year-old four-tops around you, and, but for a three-generation-family celebrating the birthday of a 13-year-old the spitting image of the Beave, we would have been the youngest people in there by leagues.

The food is, frankly, abysmal, but if you, like I, celebrate the strange and unusual – relics that defy the odds – you will make it a point to see it for yourself.

Go there (but do not eat anything).  They have a full bar, which is the strategy I would recommend.  I am sure – with a certainty approaching fact – that the kitchen is whittling down overstock from the 80s, but these past few hours spent in a freakish David Lynch snow globe has inspired in me a gratitude and appreciation for our current reality that I would not have imagined possible.

You’ll NeverWalk Alone

It turns out that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, I was unable to orchestrate a holiday-themed photo op for James Brown this year.  Having scoured the local pet store and drug store offerings, the best I could find was a striped elf hat (replete with ears!) which, sadly, involved a complicated and unsubtle seating apparatus VERY unpopular with the canine participant.  After several failed attempts and much whining, cajoling and petulance (by all involved), the enterprise was abandoned in its entirety.  We will clearly need a better plan for next year.

I offer instead photo-documentation of an important New Year’s revelation in the Reynolds-Knighten household.

Traitors Among Us

It seems that all occupants have now declared their 2009 EPL allegiances.  The final tally is Liverpool -2, Tottenham – 1.  To which my response is 1) it’s (cheap and) easy to root for the league front runners, and 2) I’m not naming names, but somebody’s a bad dog.

Happy New Year and go the Spur!

Go the Spur!

Supermarket Trolley Dash

I promise to get something holiday-appropriate up soon.  We are canvassing local pet stores.  James Brown will not make it through the Christmas season without being festooned with something jolly for your viewing pleasure.  Stay tuned.

The unsung art of understatement

 

 Until then, chew on this next post – another issue in a series I like to call “Why It’s Hard Being Me.”

 

 I concede from the get-go that I have more than my fair share of idiosyncrasies and a (hopefully endearing) brand of quirky “charm.”  In general, I like to think I keep most of the crazy under wraps from day-to-day.  I do acknowledge there are flare-ups that, while few and far between, are always entertaining.  I live to serve, so here you go.

 

I’ve noticed of late that my usual compulsions and preoccupations have become exaggerated as I age.  More frightening still is the revelation that I seem to have overcome my long-standing aversion to talking to strangers.  It has turned out to be an unfortunate confluence of events.

 

I was at the grocery store a couple weeks back stocking up on those boring but essential household items that seem to demand an ever-increasing supply of my attention.  Piling boxes of Kleenex into my cart, I encountered a bit of a hiccup.  My local Safeway-turned-Lucky “super”market had only seen fit to provide three suitably non-descript grey boxes of Kleenex.  I mined the depths of the options on offer but to no avail.  There were green boxes, blue boxes, boxes with kittens, boxes with dolphins, boxes intended to suggest you were walking through a forest at dawn and, finally, a hideous mauve misfire encased in a bizarre ivy overlay that I will have nightmares about forever.  Aside from the three acceptable instances already in my cart, there was not a single alternative sitting on the shelf that I would consider bringing into my home for reasons that I maintain are obvious.

 

And before you bother suggesting that I buy some other color (or heaven forfend another brand), allow me to explain how buying Kleenex works in my world.  It is a complex and many-tiered decision tree that I’ve developed over years of dedicated tissue consumption – really another post for another time – the quintessence of which is 1) I only buy boxes of Kleenex with acceptably subtle décor (usually grey), 2) I only buy boxes of Kleenex in even numbers, and 3) I always buy boxes of Kleenex myself because, well, if you want something done right…

 

So I’m standing in the household aisle looking from my three boxes of “good” Kleenex back to the 3’x5’x3’ shelf of nothing but “bad” Kleenex and wondering what my next play will be, when I notice a gentleman idly pushing his cart past the paper towels and BAM! Orange-off spray as he steadily approaches my location.  More importantly, I notice the grey box of Kleenex nestled in the bottom of his cart.  I wonder whether this man might be willing to entertain the notion of a Kleenex exchange and I select a relatively non-objectionable (but decidedly unacceptable) box from the shelf in front of me.  I want to say it had stripes and mini Christmas lights on it, but I can’t be sure since things started happening pretty fast after that.

 

By this point the man with the cart sees me watching him and gives me the kind of acknowledgement that leads me to conclude that this may become a more lengthy exchange than I’m willing to endure, but I’m stymied by the prospect of having to return one perfectly reasonable box of Kleenex to the shelf so that I can leave the store with an even number of boxes and my sanity (irony intentional).  As I’m running the cost-benefit analysis of engaging this man in conversation in the hopes of commandeering his Kleenex, he reaches speaking range and gives me a barely imperceptible nod, as if to say “You’ve been staring at me for a while now.”  At this juncture I still have it in my power to redeem myself and get out of there with Kleenex in hand by responding with any of the following:

 

“How do you feel about blue boxes of Kleenex?”

“You look like a sailboat kind of guy.”

(A nautical-themed box being crucial for this purpose)

“I’m hoping for a Christmas miracle and you can be the architect.”

 

What I actually said was:

 

“This is not weird for the reason you think it is.”

 

To his credit, the guy did not even slow down.  He looked at me appraisingly as he passed, but by now just to satisfy himself that I was unarmed.

 

I went home that day chuckling to myself with two grey boxes of Kleenex and a fresh reminder of why it can sometimes be so hard to be me.

Have You Seen This Duck?

Your Coffee Is Mocking Me

I recognize that it’s been a while since my last post.  I’m slowly coming to grips with the realization that not everything I do is blogworthy.  Shocking, I know.

Now that Michael and I are back in Sydney, and I no longer have a move to execute or a wedding to plan, it’s time to find a job.  I met with a legal recruiter on Monday who assures me that I’ll be able to find a position without much trouble, so that is encouraging; of course, I don’t have a job yet, so we’ll see how much trouble it actually is.

The real newsworthy gem of the day was the flat white I ordered in a cafe before the meeting. 

I don’t know how you do that with coffee and milk, but color me impressed.

Neighborhood Watch

It’s been several weeks since we moved into our little house-top apartment in Bronte and I am slowly familiarizing myself with our immediate surroundings.  Today was a gloriously sunny day and, having spent many a rainy, blustery day indoors, I decided to capitalize on this reverse of fortune.  I took James on a lovely, long, lingering walk along the seaside cliffs between Clovelly and Bronte beches, sat outside on our patio and read my book (Independence Day by Richard Ford – I’m enjoying it very much), all the while doing my best to soak up as much sunshine as possible (having dutifully applied the prescribed 50+ SPF).  Toward the middle of the day, I walked up to our local strip of shops on McPherson Street to see what I could find for dinner.  Unfortunately, our local organic pasta shop had sold out of the fresh pesto I had hoped to purchase, and, as I walked back to the apartment, I weighed the odds of convincing Michael to pick some up on his way home from work.  Then I weighed the odds of his knowing what pesto is and being able to locate it at the grocery store.  Ultimately,I  figured it was worth a shot anyway.

This is what I was thinking as I pushed open the wooden gate at the base of the steps leading up to our apartment.  I took a sidelong glance at the patio downstairs as I headed on up, and that’s when I saw what looked like the naked form of one of our downstairs neighbors, let’s call her “Suzy” (not her real name), laying on the patio table.  I thought that was a little strange.  Then I noticed that she wasn’t actually nude, but wrapped in layers of skin tight cling film.  Stranger still.  But before I could even begin to hypothesize that I might have stumbled upon some new age de-tox ritual, I witnessed another woman (fully dressed) bustle up to the patio table and place a silver candlabra and a big bowl of lemons near the head of my neighbor’s bare but trussed-up form.  And at the point I decided that whatever was going on down there was none of my business and I beat feet up the remaining steps and sequestered myself up here for the rest of the afternoon.  I’m frankly a little afraid to leave lest I stumble upon the denouement of some bizarre Wiccan rite I very nearly interupted.  I’m sure there is some “rational” explanation why a person might be swaddled in saran wrap and laid out on their patio table in the middle of the day, but, I confess, nothing jumps immediately to mind.

And here I was worried that I would be the weird one in the neighborhood.  Honestly, I don’t think I’m up to the challenge.

James Brown Is the Boss of Me

For those of you not keeping score at home, James Brown is our dog.  He is a chocolate Labrador.  We brought him with us from California to Sydney, which involved a long flight in a kennel and 45 days in quarantine – an unfortunate episode for all of us and one which we’d all just sooner forget.

Anyhoo, now that he has been sprung from quarantine and has returned to his regular self (after a regretable bout of kennel cough), he thinks he’s the boss of me.  Maybe it’s his way of ensuring there is retribution for the whole quarantine thing, but – as I keep telling him – that was not my idea.  I would have been more than happy to let him sleep in the aisle on the flight over and bring in whatever strain of hoof-and-mouth disease he might be harboring, but, for some inexplicable reason, the Australian Quarantine Service elected not to leave that decision in my hands.

Since I don’t currently have a job (another post for another time), James and I spend much of our days together, by which I mean that he has ample opportunity to mount his ever increasing campaign of bullying against me and my weak defenses.  I’ve started taking him on morning walks down to the dog park by our house where he gets to smell a bunch of other dogs’ crotches and we have a nice game of fetch with a tennis ball before returning home where he spends the next two hours panting and slobbering on himself.  It’s got to be like Christmas for him. 

So it’s been a couple of weeks since we started with the morning walk ritual and now James clearly thinks that he is entitled to a morning walk and he’s not taking “no” for an answer.  A couple mornings ago it was rainy and windy and more awful than usual outside, so I had another cup of coffee and wrote some emails and waited for the weather to clear up so we could go outside.  Well, someone wasn’t satisfied to wait for the weather to subside.  Someone wanted to go for his morning walk immediately – weather be damned – and he communicated this by picking up his tennis ball and dropping it at my feet…repeatedly, which precipitated the following “conversation.”

[Drops tennis ball]

“Yes, I know you want to go outside.  I would like to go outside too, but have you looked out there?  It is not a fit day out for man nor beast, so just take it easy and we’ll go out in a bit.”

[Picks up tennis ball.  Drops tennis ball.  Hops around. Picks up tennis ball.]

“Yeah, I get it.  It’s time for a walk and some fetch.  I understand what you’re saying, but it is raining unusually hard outside, so I’d prefer to wait and since I’m the one with the opposable thumbs and a mastery of opening and closing doors, I’m making the rules.”

[Drops tennis ball.]

“Now you’re just being bossy…and mean.  You’re just being mean.  It’s not my fault it’s raining outside.  Do you think I’m happy it’s raining outside?!?!  You think I wouldn’t enjoy some sunshine?!?!  Is that what you think?!?!  Because you don’t know what you’re talking about mister!

[Picks up tennis ball.  Leaves the room.]

“Well, that’s nice!  THAT’S JUST GREAT!  Go ahead ignore me!  See if I care!  I’ll tell you who’s not using her thumbs to open the door and take you to the park later!“

And by then it had stopped raining, so we went to the park and played a little fetch, but that talk with James really got me thinking.  I need to get a hobby or some friends or something.  It’s just that he’s so bossy sometimes!  Sheesh!

Beer at the Movies!

As mentioned elsewhere, I recently moved from Palo Alto, California to Sydney, Australia.  This blog will be primarily dedicated to a chronicle of the ups and downs of my move abroad.  There have been plenty impediments and disappointments, but I thought I’d lead off with a highlight.

Just last night I discovered the “Gold Class” theater at my local cinema at Bondi Junction.  Hands down the best movie-viewing experience of my life!  The move itself (“Knocked Up”) was not so hot, but the theater itself was fantastic!  The movie seating is comprised of pairs of full-on living room recliners anchored around a dining console table that includes its own bottle chiller.  The chairs recline all the way and have foot rests!  That alone would have been enough to sell me, but it gets better.  When you arrive, you check in at the dedicated bar and order whatever food and beverages (read “beer and wine”) you might like to enjoy during the show and instruct the barkeep when you’d like the various items delivered to your seat during the show.  For example, you can have fish and chips and a beer delivered to you at the start of the show, another beer an hour into the movie and dessert and coffee a half hour before the end.  Amazing!  Also, given the availability of alcohol, all patrons must be 18 or older.

This is now officially my happy place.