2004-06-14 - 12:52 a.m.
Drink, eat, drink, drink, eat, drink, drink, drink, and be merry.
I have just had a completely lazy, relaxing, unproductive, self-indulgent weekend and I would be the first to say without fear of contradiction that I deserved it!
Also, I am now pretty sure that I have become a margarita-aholic. Frozen margaritas. Kind of green-looking. With or without salt on the rim, I don�t care.
Of course, I have always liked them, but so far, until recently, they hadn�t rooted themselves into my blood stream or wrapped tendrils around my nerve fibers where now all it seems I want to have is another one.
This past week, despite the busy-ness I have been reporting on, was also a serious party week at school. First we had a retirement party for a beloved teacher who had taught only two years short of half a century. It was a pretty spectacular retirement party that fittingly concluded a pretty spectacular teaching career. Filled with lots of heart-felt and tearful testimonials. She seemed to endure it all really well, considering�it is very hard to take all that praise and outpouring of love, despite how much we all crave it and never get nearly the amount that we deserve.
However, that party didn�t have much of anything good to drink. There was a round of sangria, which is pretty good, but that ran out pretty quickly and all we were left with was wine. I�m really not a big wine drinker at all. To me, wine really deserves just a �feh�. I definitely don�t think much of it as a libation for the cocktail hour�for that, one has to have some kind of hard liquor or forget about it. Wine, if it is to be drunk at all, needs to be with food and then, only the wine that goes well with the foods that are to be eaten. I think it is too hard for people to figure out which wine to have with which food, yet they think wine has some kind of snob value, so they simply drink it straight without concern for food, in which case, they have violated the very reason it had snob value in the first place.
Where wine has a place in my life is if I am having a dinner party, I will enjoy providing some kind of exotic or obscure wine from an unusual foreign country with a fascinating label and which I believe has some likelihood of being good with whatever food I am serving. In other words, it is more or less part of the decorative atmosphere, to me. My favorite place to buy wine, then, is Cost Plus Imports, because they have cases and cases of beautifully-labelled wines that nobody has ever heard of from places like Chile or Bulgaria, which makes it a lot more fun and takes us right out of that whole Napa/Sonoma tyranny that I detest.
When people give me gifts when they haven�t the slightest idea what to give me and know absolutely nothing about me, they will give me wine. I have bottles of those gifts rotting away on some lower shelf in the kitchen. They all are from very unexciting, typical-California-Napa-or-Sonoma labels, and there on that bottom shelf they are likely to stay unless somebody happens to see a bottle lying there and asks to open one of them up, which they certainly may with my blessing.
Then there was another retirement party, this time for the Headmaster�s executive assistant, one of my favorite people at the school and somebody who will be sorely missed. The Headmaster asked me if I would like to say some words at the party, which I did, and I am proud to say that my speech was very well received by all, including the one for whom it was meant to honor, and I got a little bit embarrassed at all the positive attention, but I was truly pleased, too. �You are such a good writer, you are so funny, those stories were perfect, I could have listened to you all night, I had no idea you were so talented.� Now that's a phrase that I have been hearing quite a lot of, lately, �I had no idea you were so talented.� It makes me wonder how I have been so hidden all these years. Maybe I ought to do something about that. Frankly, I�m surprised that it has been �hidden�, but it does completely back up what a close friend of mine, a very successful sales person (who easily earns double my income each year), told me about marketing: �People have to hear it at least seven times before they understand that they have heard it at all.� I guess I have finally been at this school long enough now that I have crossed over the �seven times� threshold.
Beyond all the fun and the outpouring of love at that second party, it turns out that the best feature of it was the frozen margaritas that they served. Everybody liked them and kept raving about them, it wasn�t only me! They were so good that I actually broke my normal one-drink-only rule and had two of them, which wasn�t nearly enough to satisfy me. But I wasn�t driving, so it was okay. I have no idea how many the woman who was driving had, but she has a Volvo, so maybe it doesn�t matter as much. [Joke.]
The third party was a western barbecue outside on the lawn on Friday provided by the parents (our version of the PTA) in honor of all the employees. It�s the teachers� last day of the school year before their summer off, and for us, it is our last day of the school year schedule (starting Monday, we are able to leave work at 2:30 and have Fridays off, and can wear whatever we want to work, which for me means shorts and t-shirts or polo shirts�hooray hooray hooray!).
Unfortunately, even though I really look forward to that party every year, I had to arrive late because of some issues I had to take care of before all the teachers left (always the responsibilities!). And it made me mad, because the food was out of this world AND they had frozen margaritas! But by the time I was able to sit down with a plate of food and a glass filled to the brim with a margarita, everybody else had finished eating. A few kind souls hung around with me as I bolted my food down, but even they gave up once the clean-up crew started folding up chairs and tables around us. I took the hint and took my unfinished plate and glass upstairs to my office. At least I found out from one of the servers where the restaurant was that catered the food�Wood Ranch Barbecue�and he told me which of their several locations was the most convenient. Well, I have written before how much I love barbecue, and this one was amazingly good. The ribs were almost as tender as butter, and the char-grilled corn on the cob was actually juicy and delicious, not dried to a crisp like it usually is when barbecued. But still, having to race through the meal left me with a pent-up desire to have that food again and actually enjoy it like it deserved.
I left work about an hour early and realized it was a perfect time to catch the new Harry Potter movie. The timing was perfect. I drove to the theater, bought my ticket, sat down in the seat with a Coke and the coming attractions began.
I loved the movie. I loved the first two, but this one was different. For one thing, the kids are noticeably older and bigger. They seem to be twice the height that they were in the previous film, and Daniel Radcliff has a perfect lean, muscular body. They�re actually quite sexy, although I guess I�m not allowed to say that, because they�re still below the age of consent�at least in the U.S. I think they�re okay in England, where they are citizens, so I�ll say it with an English accent.
The director was different; this time around, it was Alfonso Cuaron, perhaps best known for the Mexican erotic adventure Y tu mana tambien (which I did not see), and I thought he was wonderful at the helm of this. This movie had so many elements in it that I like, particularly the intricate design of the film in which there seemed to be so many more intriguing set details than even the previous films. It�s a movie I would have loved to have been in even as an extra, just to enjoy all the sets and locations, of which there was far too much to enjoy with only one viewing of the film (and maybe more). I particularly loved the map that Harry had that showed the footsteps of people as they moved about the hallways of Hogwarts, and the concept of the map was used to clever effect during the final credits of the film. I love the way all the rooms of the buildings on the map were made out of Leonardo-daVinci-like writing, and the final credits, instead of moving in a crawling scroll, were written in calligraphy along the halls of the map and the camera merely panned along them, into rooms, around corners, up and down stairs. I want to copy that concept for something that I make.
The �measuring time� motif was wonderfully executed in the castle with such elements as the gigantic pendulum that moved back and forth across the main entrance, the complicated mechanical device that showed the movement of the planets in the nearby solar systems that decorated Professor Lupin�s study, and the time-controlling device that Hermione wore on a chain around her neck, all of that entranced me.
I had thought I wouldn�t like Richard Harris�s replacement for the part of Aldus Dumbledore, but while Harris�s Dumbledore was kind, sweet, magical, and all-knowing, Michael Gambon added a measure of humor and mischievousness to the mix that made him my favorite character this time around. Of course he�s an incredible actor with decades of professional experience. The last time I saw him was in Gosford Park. Fortunately, he will be in the next Harry Potter movie, too.
The only character who didn�t seem to translate well this time was Hagrid (he just seemed huge, ugly, and kind of stupid this time around), which is too bad, because previously that had been the character that was me in the films. Now I�m embarrassed at saying that. This time around, I felt more relative to Professor Lupin (I loved the way he was so kind and helpful to Harry), although he reflected only a piece of me, and I think Dumbledore reflected another piece.
I love the way Rupert Grint has perfected that pained, put-upon, foil-of-misery persona that he had been working on in the previous films. I swear, he and Dumbledore could have their own spin-off, a kind of wizardly Laurel and Hardy series!
Saturday I took my car to my mechanic for a routine oil change, etc., which meant that I had no car at my disposal until 2:30 P.M. After getting the car serviced, I took it to the car wash and got it beautifully cleaned (their quality of service is just one level below actual detailing). Then I decided to go the Patio Caf� at the Sportsman�s Lodge for an indulgent lunch of a mushroom burger and fries outside near the pool. The Patio Caf� isn�t exactly poolside, but it is close enough, so it feels like I am on vacation. I ordered a, guess what, frozen margarita from the cool tiki bar they have there by the pool. See, it really felt like a vacation, then, like maybe I was in Miami!
The waitress really approved of the fact that I was ordering a margarita and she said, �Did you order two of them? I think I could use one right about now!� I said, �Sure, I�ll buy you one,� just playing along. Afterwards, after I had left, I wished I had left her as an extra tip the price of a margarita, �one margarita on me,� but I hadn�t thought of it, so I hadn�t done it. But she seemed to get enjoyment enough over the fact that I was having one! As I drank it, she seemed to be drinking it right along with me. (Maybe she and I could be charter members in our local chapter of Margarita-aholics Anonymous.)
The other diners outside near me were quite an interesting bunch. To the left of me was a black couple. The man had ordered a hamburger and he kept remarking on how delicious it was. He�d say, �this is such delicious beef�; �I am sure enjoying this burger�; �this is really good quality meat�, and so on. I loved that. How often do you actually hear people praising their food? Usually it�s just complain complain complain, �I don�t like this, it isn�t cooked right, it�s too fattening, it�s got too many carbs, I think I will send it back,� yadda yadda yadda, gee whiz, for heaven�s sake settle down and enjoy life for a change! Actually, I am surprised that something like is so rare that it stands out in my mind.
That brings to mind one of my favorite movies, 84 Charing Cross Road, starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. It is just a precious movie, full of love and appreciation, it never fails to bring tears to my eyes and almost rips my heart open with the low-key but deeply poignant ending.
There are several scenes of the Anthony Hopkins character sitting down to have a dinner that his wife has cooked. Now you know that man has been sitting down and having dinners that his wife has cooked almost every single night for the past fifty years or more, and yet at every meal he very carefully cuts into his food, gently puts it into his mouth, chews it thoughtfully, and carefully tastes it with every swirl of his tongue, and then nods his head appreciatively and says, �Very tasty�this is very, very nice.� His wife then nods, smiles, and then starts her meal. What grace could be better than that? I could imagine God saying, �You really don�t have to thank me, but if you want to express your appreciation for this meal, I would like it if you thanked the person who prepared it for you.� There was something holy about how the Anthony Hopkins character would appreciate that food every night. It�s a demonstration of one of my favorite words: reverence.
So that�s what that black man reminded me of.
As long as we are talking holy, over to the right of me was another couple, this time a grandfather-like man and a frail woman sitting in a power wheelchair. The woman�s hunched-over back was to me, but it was obvious that she was very, very sick�the only thing I could think was that she looked like she had been sucked dry by the Dementors that I had seen in the Harry Potter movie just the night before. Like there was hardly anything left of her. Honestly, I couldn�t tell if she were the man�s wife, or his mother, she was so severely aged. I never heard her speak a word to the man or even acknowledge his presence, although she did eat (barely) the food that he put in front of her. I did notice her hands, though, grasping her fork, which, while wizened to the point of looking like turkey claws, hardly any width to her hand at all and mostly all bone and a tangle of blue blood vessels, there was an amazing soft glow to her pure white skin that made me want to jump and grab her hand and look into her eyes and sincerely say, �Do you realize what beautiful hands you have?� I don�t know, there was just something amazing about those hands that belied their actual physical condition.
The man was the soul of patience and love in dealing with this woman who had had a stroke or Alzheimers or was severely retarded or I just don�t know what. While she was practically in a coma, he gamely kept up a running dialogue with her: �Are you enjoying that cole slaw? I thought you might like that, they have good cole slaw here. Doesn�t that remind you of that picnic we had in Golden Gate Park that time? Remember how much you enjoyed sitting on that grassy hill overlooking the pond? That was a good day, wasn�t it? Here, let me help you, I want you to have another bite of the cole slaw, see if it makes you think of San Francisco.� Then he�d sit quietly for a while, eat a french fry or something, and then he�d continue: �I�m glad you like that stuffed bunny I gave you. It�s a pretty pink, isn�t it, I know how much you like pink. Pink always was your color, you are so pretty with it next to your skin. Do you think you would like to give the bunny a name? I can think of one if you don�t want to. How about �Pinky�? Wouldn�t that be a good name for a pink stuffed bunny?�
There was nothing about this man of a sense of frustration or anger, or a hint that any minute he might get up and run screaming from the restaurant. There was no sign at all of him as thinking of himself as a responsible gentleman remarkably doing his duty for better or for worse, no, it was simply that he loved her, had always loved her, and he always would love her, and no matter what happened for good or ill, he was going to be there for her doing whatever it took. He was, in short, eternally devoted to her.
I was filled with admiration for him and for who he was and, again, thought of how very rare that seemed to be. So many men leave their wives simply because they obtain a few wrinkles. I wanted so badly to get up and tell him what a marvelous human being I thought he was. I could have done it, but I didn�t know how to praise him with the woman sitting there, for any praise of him would have been an insult to her, which, in turn, would have negated any praise to him. He did not seem like a man who would appreciate or even accept other people�s impression that something was wrong with his wife.
While I was sitting there thinking of how I could possibly speak to that man, a third man came out and sat down at a table by the door. Now, a little relevant background is in order. There is a gay newspaper in Los Angeles called �Fab� and it has a columnist named Paulo Murillo. I can�t say that I like Murillo all that much, in fact, it might be accurate to say that I detest him, except that I have concluded that he is beneath the energy it would take for me to detest him. But he does very much disturb other people, many of whom write angry letters to the editor about what a negative force to the gay community this writer is, and yet you know that every bit of buzz, positive or negative, does nothing but further entrench Murillo�s position on that paper.
Murillo is the kind of writer who knows how to cleverly use his command of words to hurt as many people as he possibly can and just about the only saving grace that he has is that he hates everybody, that is, everybody but himself. To Murillo, everybody else is too fat or too old or too bald or has a dick that is too small or a body that is too flabby or muscles that are too undeveloped or hair that is cut in too ugly of a style or clothes that went out five years ago or they smoke too much or are on too many drugs or have the HIV virus and it is all their fault and LOOK what it does to their sunken-cheeked faces as they�re slowly dying the death that they brought onto themselves, how dare all these toads and freaks pursue him and talk to him in a bar and want to have sex with him oh my God he just freaks out at the total thought of it�.that kind of a guy.
In his most recent column, he was bemoaning the fact of the �metrosexual,� the straight man who is fashionably done up like a homosexual is supposed to be (and yet few really are) and poor Paulo Murillo sometimes gets confused and pursues the faggy straight man instead of the straighty gay man that he really wants. Here�s his description of somebody who recently got his goat:
��Fag,� I muttered under my breath with a pinch of contempt when I beheld the flaming disco inferno clutching a �man purse� while he window-shopped at The Beverly Center. This guy was queendom incarnate with frosted blonde icicles peering out of a black Patty Hearst beret; a rhinestone-encrusted Chrome Hearts tank top encased his slender body, and a pair of offensively low-rise jeans hugged his hips, and then flared around his pointy-toed designer boots. The guy even had a sparkly, bling-blinging pinky ring for fuck�s sake!
��They don�t make them any more gay,� I remember thinking to myself. Imagine how hard my bottom lip hit the ground with surprise when I noticed a blonde female bombshell in a cute hoochie Gucci number step out of the D&G store, and then walk up to this big queena to smack him an affectionate kiss on the cheek. She then tapped the guy on the ass to claim ownership and wrapped her arm around his waist.�
Reading that, I thought to myself how can anybody think that that guy was gay? To me, he came across more like a rock star. I mean, really, there hasn�t been any gay guys like that around for the past twenty or thirty years, if there ever really were except in cartoon-like caracatures. Am I wrong here? That is a stereotype that simply is wrong.
However, ha ha to me, the third guy at the Patio Caf�. Okay, he was not dressed the way Paulo Murillo was describing the �Tommy Lee� guy he saw at The Beverly Center. In fact, this man was in a business suit. And he was definitely middle-aged, which means Murillo wouldn�t have even seen him, as anybody past the age of 29 goes off the radar of people like Paulo Murillo.
But this man definitely fit the description of �Now that one is definitely gay.� His hair was coifed to its last inch, the skin of his face was as smooth and clear as if he had been wearing foundation; he moved and talked and fluttered around like Liberace. I wondered what kind of a man would be joining him. But it was a woman who sat down next to him!
Okay, so they�re friends or working partners or he�s in some kind of an advisory position to her. He�s the Queer Eye for this Straight Woman. But no, not based on their conversations, and definitely not based on their actions!
They were trying to figure out what to order, and every time she would suggest something, he would have an answer for it. �No, you sweet precious thing, you know how much you hate lasagna.� When she tried to protest, like maybe the lasagna here would be okay, he would prove to her why she shouldn�t have the lasagna. So she suggested something else, and he said, �But darling, your sweet little tummy will just go rumble rumble rumble all night long!� It seemed that no matter what this woman suggested that she order, he had some rejoinder for it�it was something she didn�t like, or it was something that wouldn�t like her. I thought such a conversation would never be held when the other party was a liberated female, which I assumed she had to be in order to be with him.
As for the man, he kept thinking that the woman�s inappropriate suggestions were cuter and cuter, like he was getting off on her petulant struggle to think of something she could eat and he liked being the big strong knight in shining armor who could rescue her from her potential gastronomic disasters. Her cuteness in these attempts at first made him hug and squeeze her with great joy and affection, but as the conversation progressed, he got more and more intimate with her until he was finally deeply French-kissing her, and actually bending her bosom-thrustingly backward in his arms, like Rhett Butler carrying a swooning Scarlett O�Hara upstairs at Tara.
I looked at the woman more closely and was shocked to see how �Republican� she looked. She had pure white hair all done up big in a �Texas� hairdo, and wore a blue skirt and a red lady�s suit coat with a crisp white blouse, and to top the whole ensemble off, she had a red purse decorated with blue stars. With all this red, white and blue and stars, it was as if she were wearing the American flag (or a delegate at the party�s convention), and the expression on her face added to the picture of a person with a very narrow, tightly-filtered acceptance orifice through which you could not possibly pass unless you fit a very extreme band of qualifications of which about 99% of Californians would not fit, but among born again southerners, maybe 20% would.
And yet obviously she and this very �fruity� man were lovers and practically had a �Promise Keepers� sort of relationship in which he was the ruler of the household and she, sweet and helpless little thing that she was, was an inferior child who couldn�t even order her own meal in a restaurant.
The grandfatherly man with the woman in the power wheelchair got up and went off in the direction of the bathroom. I finished the last of my frozen margarita and went into the restaurant to pay. The grandfatherly man was there at the cash register; he had gotten there before me and had paid already. Apparently he knew the cashier, as they were having an animated conversation about retirement. �Now I would just go crazy sitting at home with nothing to do,� the cashier said. I chimed in with, �I�m with you on that one, which is a good thing, because I don�t think I could afford to retire anyway.� Then the grandfatherly man said, �Retirement drove me crazy at first, but now I am writing my memoirs for my grandchildren�so far, I�ve got six chapters done.�
�Oh, wow, what a special treasure,� I said, �that is completely wonderful, those kids will love having that!� I realized that while I was being completely sincere, I was, though, pouring all the praise that I wanted to give this man for how kindly he was treating the woman he was with into my comments about the memoirs he was taking the time to write for his grandchildren. In other words, the hidden theme beneath my words was �what a wonderful human being you are,� regardless of where and how that wonderfulness was expressed. And I could tell by the glow on his face and the extremely happy smile that he had received the intention of my words, as did the cashier, for when he left and I stood there to pay, she said, �That�s his wife, you know, and she wasn�t like that before, this only recently happened. She was such a lovely woman, and he takes such good care of her.�
�And I can see that to him she still is lovely,� I answered.
�Yes, it�s true, but he is such a saint. He�s a regular here, and he always makes my day whenever they come.� I stood there and had a nice conversation with her and didn�t think of my idea of leaving money for a margarita as a fun additional tip for the waitress. I was filled with too many other thoughts.
I stayed up late that night, which then meant that I got up late today. By the time I was showered and dressed, it was deep into lunchtime. I suddenly had the idea to go to the Wood Ranch Barbecue and have everything that I had had at the school�s party that I had had to rush through.
I ordered everything the same�the ribs, the mashed potatoes, the corn�and the frozen margarita. Everything was DELICIOUS! They advertise that they slow cook their meat for twelve hours over night, and then sear them to their finish just before they serve it to you. Well, I can tell you that that isn�t just mere hype, it really makes a difference. Their ribs are absolutely the best and I lost myself in a greasy barbecue-sauced orgy of devouring them like a dog. I told the manager I would have eaten the bones if I could have! The corn on the cob was so good I could have eaten five of them (but stuck with the one that came with the meal). And, to their great credit, the frozen margarita came in a pretty hefty glass, no chintzy little drink for this place. Well, doesn�t a ranch-sort of meat-eating place have to cater to man-sized desires? This place did so admirably, and I felt well-satisfied.
But then driving home, I ended up going down Sunset Boulevard and passed the Cabo Cantina. That�s a place were I have never eaten, but their sign is a big painting of a delicious-looking margarita�that�s when I fully realized what a margarita-aholic I am, because the Cabo Cantina�s sign made me crave to have yet another one. But I held off (the �only one� rule, and this time I was driving), so instead I went to Starbucks and got myself a venti mocha frappachino instead, as a moist, icy, frozen dessert. While I was there, the security guard (a cute young guy) said, �Cool Cadillac, man,� which endeared him to me no end. After I got my frappachino, I went over to him to talk about the car for a moment. I told him I was lucky with this one, it really had been owned by �the little old lady from Pasadena,� except in my case it was an elderly couple in La Quinta (wealthy town near Palm Springs) who used the car only to carry their golf clubs to the country club on Sundays. �The car was practically mint when I got it.�
He said, �It still looks mint, now.� Then he told me about his uncle�s �59 cherry red Cadillac DeVille, lovingly restored.
I said, �Some people lust after SUVs, not me, they�re all just trucks to me, I lust after cars like this.� [Nothing wrong with trucks�I just find it hard to distinguish among them. Besides, the parking lots are now too full of people driving things that are like mobile storage units, or boxcars.]
He nodded in agreement. �Me, too�I don�t care for SUVs, but a car like yours, now that�s something really worth having.�
Happy weekend all around, the city filled with fascinating, loving people, good taste and good tastes. Looks like the perfect summer has now begun.
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