Rhubarbed

Rhubarb Sophie from the Minetta Tavern

2 cucumber slices, plus 1 for garnish
2 oz 42Below vodka
1 oz agave nectar
1 oz lime juice
2 dashes rhubarb bitters (Fee Brothers is one brand)

First muddle the cucumber in a shaker glass, then add the remaining ingredients along with ice.

Shake vigorously for about 10 seconds and strain into an ice-filled glass.

Garnish with a slice of cucumber.


  On Tuesday night I met my friend Andrew Hildebrand, who was visiting from London, for dinner at the revived Minetta Tavern* on MacDougal Street in Manhattan.  Andrew, who had stopped in there for a cocktail a couple of nights earlier, recommended the Rhubarb Sophie pictured and described above.  It really was very, very good.  Apparently, many people have enjoyed the drink because it seems to be mentioned in all of the (pretty uniformly) positive notices and reviews the restaurant has received.

  It was marvelous seeing Andrew (I need to write to him today; our conversation stirred all sorts of ideas in me) and I enjoyed Minetta, although the experience was weirdly dislocating in significant ways.  Keith McNally's "updated bistro" model, which he has successfully employed many times before (e.g., Balthazar, Cafe Luxembourg, Pastis), always makes me feel as though I've stepped into Mr. Peabody's Way-Back Machine, something I don't feel the need to do because my memories of the past -- even my imagined memories which come to me in dreams -- are good enough for me.  In any event, the pied de porc pané I enjoyed at Minetta, although it was correctly prepared (with good Dijon mustard, lentils and an herb salad) and presented, couldn't hope to match the version served at the unpretentious and reasonably priced Café 58 in the happy past, and in terms of bottling and preserving fine values and present, permanent memories (if such things can be said to exist), there is still (and I hope will always be) Le Veau d'Or  on East 60th Street.

  The wine list, which we perused briefly, seemed ludicrously overpriced (no "square root of value" selections here; I ordered an interesting, but ludicrously overpriced beer and Andrew had another Rhubarb Sophie), but my main sensation of dislocation resulted from feeling I was among a riotous crowd of New Yorkers seemingly unconscious of the economic depression existing outside of their constricted, ultra-demarcated privileged view.  It's probably unfair, but from my vantage point, I felt like I was sitting on the uber-entitled, fat, happy and pig-eyed set of Morning Joe (a “rollicking” place, according to the New York Times; I guess that means “good”), or possibly at a Rachel Maddow (who seems to be the current generation's idea of Dorothy Parker -- weird!) salon imbibing Status Quo Kool-Aid.


  I suppose I shouldn't describe my dreams in public.


*  The name "Minetta," by the way, unique and esteemed in New York, is of ancient and unusual origin, deriving from the Dutch word Mintje Kill; ‘min’ means little, ‘kill’ means stream, literally translating into “Little Stream.”

Mood 2 (Feeling This Way)

  


There's not a lot to say
When you're feeling this way
And you don't listen Anyway
You've got your own problems.

Listen to me Just this time
It's something yours & It's something mine
We must be close to the end of the line:
Let's try and get there together.

She said you have to learn 
(She said, she said)
To find somewhere outside of your head
I said that would be fine (I said)
But I'd rather be with You instead.

'Cause when you're up, they'll love you to death
& when you're down, they'll steal your last breath
They say goodbye, You say hello:
Ask how you're doing
You just don't know.

There's not a lot to say
When you're feeling this way
And you don't listen Anyway
You've got your own problems.


Kevin Ayers: Feeling This Way (link)

NOTE:  Feeling This Way, the first song on Still Life With Guitar, is a little masterpiece, not a word or note out of time or place (although the song's protagonist is clearly a man excised from both dimensions). 

Mornings I torture myself watching segments of “Limousine Liberal Joe” (aka "Lord Haw-Haw's Return") featuring the most important person ever to serve in the United States Congress, his  brassy ball & chain, and their replicant/revenant brood of liars, sneaks, cheats, bores and boors.  I think I do this to remind myself that for so long as the cliché catechism repeats and recycles ad nauseum, on schedule, it proves I Still Exist.  I wonder what non-New Yorkers make of the broadcast.  I know what the broadcasters make of non-New Yorkers.

I’m about to miss the Zbigniew Brzezinski/Al Sharpton cooking segment.  I think you'll like the song. Excuse me.

Mood 1 (link)

 

Happiness Rationing

I felt like a jerk and twerp yesterday morning during mid-rant at the cable tv company.  They failed to complete a promised, somewhat involved, piece of work for us, and also to keep us apprised regarding the job’s status. The only way, it seemed, to advance the matter was to abuse successively higher levels of the organization.  But given that it was Good Friday morning, it seemed, felt and was wrong.

     Supplementing that feeling was knowing that a friend had been grievously injured two days before in a pedestrian knock-down automobile accident on the West Coast.   He’s surviving (apparently by miracle), but isn’t out of the woods yet.  The driver was per se legally and in plain fact totally at fault, but at this point that’s simply information to keep to hand until there’s time to consider secondary and subsequent actions, factors and consequences.   

Then, while still in momentarily soft-spoken, but quite mean tirade mode (you need to vary the rhythm, I’ve found), I learned that a friend’s step-father had been taken seriously ill, worsening what seems to be a fading situation for him, his wife and his children, whom I’ve known since childhood, and who are variously and complexly affected because we’re none of us children any more, except in a branch-on-the-family tree sense.


     So, I and my cable TV problems both suddenly seemed Small.  


    Earlier this morning, just after 6 am, Caroline asked me to drive out to find a patent medicine for her.  She was up all night (I sort of knew this when I reached over for her during a peculiar dream last night featuring an English cottage, a musician named Jim Rodford, and tea drinking) with food poisoning (something we both used to laugh about when others alleged its occurrence, but have now both experienced twice recently after eating at the same establishment, which recently made some kitchen staff changes), and she was desperate for a remedy.

  

Leaving our driveway, I was at first annoyed to find that Jane had changed most of my satellite radio pre-sets to her preferred stations.   However, she left the World News Radio channel alone and during the journey I listened to Radio Romania.  Two speakers, a man and a woman with light, charming accents and perfect modulation and diction, were speaking  about Romania’s Olympic 2012 activities (I had no idea Romanians  played polo; there’s a lot I don’t know about Romania) and Chevron’s plans to explore and exploit the country's natural gas reserves.   

As in the US, there are competing views concerning energy planning and strategy and the subject of hydraulic fracturing technology (aka “fracking”) came up.  I was surprised to hear the Romanian announcer state definitively and dryly, with no change at all in intonation or (what might seem appropriate) alarm, that fracking directly and conclusively leads to polluted groundwater and earthquakes.  I know this is an oft-cited fracking concern, but I’m used to hearing the charge raised conditionally and conjecturally and then hearing the counter-view stated, and I must say that I am unaware of any historical Romanian earthquake activity.  


     Fracking is, of course, discussed all the time on US tv (Canadian television too, I expect, in view of the large-scaled shale fracking activities in Alberta), and I thought either that the Romanians were very, very calm people or they were “on something,” which caused their unvarying perfectly formed speech and eerily calm tone in the face of their country’s just-announced impending poisoning and seismic doom.  Listening to the two announcers was exactly like hearing a science-fiction drama on the Radio Classics network where early 1950s somnambulist characters regularly recite nightmare scenarios, pausing occasionally to read cigarette ads and Geritol commercials.

But I really knew the wheels had come off the buses, trucks and trains, and that the various chassis were sliding toward oblivion yesterday morning when I heard a long panel discussion on the Morning Joe television show (repository of Lord Haw-Haw-ish evil and home to 1 %-er cheese-eating entitlement monkeys ) led by the fraud, huckster and obvious refugee from the remarkable, forward-looking “V” television mini-series (original version), Deepak Chopra, on the subject of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s  “tight sphincter,” a condition  Chopra (apparently a medical doctor skilled in the arts of remote patient examination and, for all I know, phrenology and palmistry) stated was the root of all Romney’s obvious personal discomfort and unforgiveable (Chopra can say this; as we all know, liberal hate speech is a protected class of discourse) nastiness.  

    The only redeeming moment of the show was that Deepak did not draw a speculative sphincter comparison/conclusion involving  our incumbent president or directly discuss his own sphincter's condition and posture.  Perhaps Deepak The Unspeakable And Illiterate  knows that comparisons are invidious.   The MJ panel – the usual gang of senior media useless idiots -- sat in rapt silence, by the way, during this unbelievable disquisition, although Donny “Sasquatch” Deutsch did engage in uncomfortable and nauseating rear-end pantomime movements.  If you missed this, thank your lucky karma.

Happiness seems to be rationed asset.  They say you can make your own happiness and I’d like to think that’s true.  It’s been a brutally challenging period involving,  among other things, what they used to refer to (it seems like a joke now) as the “job market.”   I’ve been searching everywhere for that bright line of happiness, but all I see now are white paint markings drawn all over my property  by the cable company trying to avoid other utility mains as they restore expensive service, which they never stop charging for. 


     Onward.  


  Ride Through. 


  Up Periscope.

NOTE:  I would just like to add that I am now aware of the terrible devastating earthquake that struck Vrancea, Romania in 1977 and also found this fascinating little blog detailing recent minor seismic activity in Romania (link).  Which still doesn’t explain the android-esque calm of the Romanian newsreaders, but perhaps they’re simply great professionals.  It was a terrific broadcast.