I have redeemed myself. She is being less brutal this morning; we have
Automatic for the People on the ipod, and I was allowed to share some of her Bunny Grahams for breakfast . It is still, however, 07.23am. The day ahead is meticulously portioned - at 9am ring the parental unit on Skype, at 10.30am go to Commons for a social breakfast (Chris has a friend visiting from Florida), 12pm is for gymming with Nancy Grace or Jon Stewart and claiming the cross trainer before the lady with the pink umbrella takes it, from 12 till 6 she must research and/or begin that Modernism paper and read Book 10 of
The Ambassadors, and finally from 6pm we can go to Thai Peacock for dinner. If it wasn't for this last fixture, I think I might be less compliant with the whole parade. The parade that is her life. Yes, if it wasn't for thai installments (or, equally, sushi), Consette would be quite the problem child.
Yesterday's post was a hotchpotch mess, and the idiot has insisted that this one reinstates some semblance of chronological order. As it turns out, all the significant events of the last three weeks can, however tenuously, be connected back to food or drink. This does not surprise me: love handles are emerging. Arrangement of the blog shall be chaptered accordingly.
(according to food, not love handles)
VODKA SCOTCH TRIPLE SEC AT MATTHEW'S 23RD BIRTHDAY, FEBRUARY 12TH: Someone - thankfully not the idiot - uses triple sec as a mixer. Up to an hour in weaving home. A great party, though, with a memorable rendition of Happy Birthday and the ceremonial burning of a christmas tree in the yard. Like a thousand sparklers all at once, leaving the smell of pinewood on my jumper.
FIRST 'FRO YO' EXPERIENCE, FEBRUARY 13TH: Vanilla frozen yoghurt, granola, gummy sweets and blueberries from the shop on Pioneer Square, followed by an International Film Festival screening at the NW Film Center - an Irish documentary called
His and Hers, which I guess was kind of touching. But there was a huffy lady to the idiot's left who wasn't so persuaded. She sighed and grizzled at her poor husband for the full 90 minutes, at one point hissing, '
I'm never going anywhere with you again.'
SABURO'S ON BYBEE BLVD, FEBRUARY 13TH: An aforementioned sushi installment on a Sunday night. Fat roll for only $6.
VALENTINE'S DAY CHOCOLATE DODGE, FEBRUARY 14TH: Fred Meyer's Valentine aisle might be a glut of pink and chocolate, but the actual day of Valentine was fairly inconspicuous. No one invited me to dinner, no one gave me a box of candy, no one bought me a drink. I can assure you, I am relieved. Definitely relieved.
ETHIOPIAN INJERA, FEBRUARY 18TH: We won a spot on Gray Fund's African Film Festival trip, preceded by a meal at one of Portland's Ethiopian restaurants. We go 'family style', which, on reflection, was not such a great idea. There is certainly a workable method for eating injera and tibs, but our end of the table failed on every level, lacking in both hygeine and decorum. The idiot got stuck in, but I joined Aurore and Michael at the other end for a more slow-paced, less saliva-flecked, approach to consuming food. Afterwards we went to the antique Hollywood Theater in NorthEast for a screening of
The Athlete, and return only 2 hours later with Justine at 11pm for
Rubber (about a homicidal car tire).
She is going to go easy on the movie screenings for a while. As much as she loves the cinema, I advised her that she can watch movies back in England, and she only has 4 months left in America to do
American things. You don't get a Hollywood Theater in England, though, and I appreciate that half of the appeal for her is in the neon vertical signs and the old-fashioned billboards. On February 25th we went to a screening of the Portland-based
Cold Weather, which achieves this city's Oregon grey with pristine accuracy. We had to queue up outside Cinema 21 for at least half an hour for tickets, and everyone was taking pictures of themselves beneath the billboard, it being, of course, the coldest day of the year so far.
MONTAGE, FEBRUARY 20TH: Portland had a jazz festival. Gianmarco, the idiot, and I went to a wonderful show at The Blue Monk on Belmont. They play a jazz cover of Paranoid Android within 10 minutes of our arrival, and we get an insight into GM's fantasy life soundtrack. Justine kindly lent us her car for the night, so afterwards we (ie. GM) drove to Montage on Morrison and ate gumbo, catfish jambalaya, and oyster shooters for a latenight dinner. Montage is an incredibly cool southern restaurant, poking out from underneath Morrison bridge just before it hits the river. It has big, high ceilings, and tables about thirty settings long, and when you order an oyster, the rock and roll waiter with a bandana throws back his head and shouts 'oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyssssteeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' at the open kitchen.
On the way home, Justine's car began to smoke from the bonnet, smelling distinctly of hot rubber. For once, the idiot and I were united in our protestations, and demanded that Gianmarco pull into the Trader Joe's parking lot to take a look. Nothing could be surmised, so we drove back to Reed with the warning lights on, at 10 miles an hour, with the idiot blubbering about exploding all over 39th Avenue.
Justine was very understanding - apparently it wasn't our fault, thank goodness - but the car is still (2 weeks later) at the garage.
PULLED PORK, FEBRUARY 25TH: She has decided to do her dissertation next semester on Gerald Vizenor's trickster. Vizenor is a Native Theorist, poet and fiction writer who lectures at Berkeley. The other day she was waiting for the restroom, just before a great performance of
The Ghosts of Celilo at the Newmarket Theater, and got chatting to a lady in the queue, who ended up inviting her to the annual Delta Park Pow Wow in June. It's happening less than a week before her flight leaves Portland, but I think she's pretty keen on going, for more than 'dissertation research'. Anyway, the proposal deadline for UEA was on Friday 25th Feb, but she actually blagged something fairly okay and handed it in early. Still, though, the deadline date warranted celebration in its own right. She also required comforting from a minor migraine, which later launched into a major migraine and a mid-class collapse, not aided by the brightness of some February snow days. So on Friday afternoon we ate freeze-dried blueberries from Fred Meyer and meandered down Hawthorne for a wax at the Aveda salon, announcing our arrival with a purply, black-toot
hed grin. The nice, pretty, expertly-arranged ladies looked a little alarmed. Then we walked to Belmont for a foodcart lunch: pulled pork from Namu's Killer Korean BBQ, with sides of sesame spinach, sticky rice, peanut sauce, kimchi, chinese cabbage, and cucumber salad. This was as beautiful as it sounds - something that cannot be said for the 'snack stick' she purchased from the 7 Eleven later in the day, just 'to see'. It contained, amongst other things, 'mechanically separated chicken'.
WAFFLE W
INDOW, FEBRUARY 26TH: One of the 7 Eleven men, upon hearing her accent, told the idiot that she looked like a 'small princess Kate'. I choked on my twinkie, and someone at the coffee bar had to perform the heimlich maneuver on me. My god it was funny. From there we went to the House of Vintage Sale on Hawthorne, where we found Aurore all dazed and flushed underneath a pile of clothes, having been there for over 2 hours already. Despite claiming to hate shopping, the idiot ended up buying 5 tops for less than $40, one of which was a ghastly USSR shellsuit with a map of the world on it. Lunch was a leisurely affair at the
Waffle Window. Three Bs for the idiot (Bacon, Brie and Basil), Hot Apple Pie for Aurore, and the Granola and Fruit one for me. I didn't really want to leave Hawthorne, but the idiot had to go back for work - the whole road has this excellent smell, one long road of British festival SMELL, which makes both of us nostalgic. A mixture of patchouli and fried food and doughnuts and smoke.
That night we attended the Renn Fayre theme unveiling at the S.U.
GOLD RUSH, mofos. GOLD RUSH.
BLACKBERRY GIN RICKY, MARCH 1ST: For $4 at Holocene. Some bands played or something, but I stayed at the bar.
GAIL GIVES US COOKIES, MARCH 2ND: The professor who teaches 'James and Ozick, Faulkner and Morrison' is called Gail. She is amazing. She sent the idiot an email about migraine specialists in Portland when the idiot had that migraine. She brought in cookies to apologise for being tardy every day. Some of those cookies were snickerdoodles. She has promised to bake everyone their own personalised cake if she is late in returning paper comments.
UNCOMMONS AT RAW, MARCH 2ND: Reed Arts Week is going on at the moment.
Uncommons, Reed's gourmet collective, did the catering for the opening party in Winch, but we didn't stay for the whole thing - just the chips/fries and ketchup, pâté on toast, and beer, but apparently there were seven courses. More than anything, I am putting this in the blog to remind myself to remind the idiot to sign up for one of their dinner events.
FISHY CHIPS,
MARCH 5TH: Yesterday we had fishy chips for lunch from the Eurotrash foodcart on Belmont. Breaded fried Spanish anchovies with sea salt and lemon and signature 'trashy sauce'. The sun came out. She turned to me and said that fishy chips are the best thing she has eaten in PDX to date, and I find it hard to disagree. Although I did enjoy that Twinkie, before the Kate Middleton choking incident.
Belmont is probably my favourite area at the moment. Movie Madness is just nextdoor to the foodcart camp, and it has Drew Barrymore's first day back at high school costume from
Never Been Kissed in its collection. This alone makes Belmont cool. I also like the view down the Morrison St hill, where all the cranes from downtown remind the idiot of her posh South-of-England fetish for the Northern-industrial-city. We caught the bus to the Saturday Market and people-watched for over an hour - supping thai ice tea, grinning along to the idiot grinning along to Portland's Zimbabwean Marimba Dance Band (
Boka Marimba), who have over seven marimbas coordinating on stage at any given time. It drizzled a bit, but really we can't complain. Four umbrellas have fallen by the wayside since arriving in Portland, and I think we're finally going to give up. Does that make us proper Portlanders? It is said, by someone, that a proper Portlander does not own an umbrella, because to do so would be to admit that it is raining.
HOW TO CHILL BEER IN YOUR DORM WINDOW, MARCH 5TH:
AN EMAIL FROM THE GRANDMOTHER WHO IS ALMOST 89: Yeah not connected to food, but possibly the best thing ever. She got an iPad over Christmas:
Darllng whizbizz. I am amusing myself and getting a bit better on the magic box,! It is such moody little thing with a mind of its own.Sometimes it decides to cancel everything I have laboriously typed ,or writes everything in red which is quite jolly but uncalled for! I do hope you are happy and not working too hard ,All my love. Xxxxxxxx GrannyYes? Yes.
Consette x
ut the idiot (I apologise - this really does warrant 'idiot') insists that this horror is a thing of beauty, an expression of self at a particular moment in time, a consolidation of all she has been since the age of 15, a blah de blah de blah. Something about a New World, a Divorrrrjack, the cello she has not played properly now for at least a year ...I'm sorry, my writing collapses in anger. She is certain that you will be more forgiving. It is, at least, a line of music, and you are are the person who introduced her to music at 6 years old, and the father has already relented and judged it 'not so bad, as tattoos go'. She says I am jealous: the only tattoos I can ever get are of course imaginary. Hrmph.
