Monday, March 30, 2009

Why I’m Awesome: Double Down Monday

I AM AWESOME.  Here are two ways that this is true (No links, for reasons of personal convenience ((mine))):

Why I’m awesome, clever-dick version: When the stink went up about the AIG bonuses, lots of folk were demanding that the bonuses be rescinded or somehow recaptured.  It was an emotionally-attractive position but I sensed legal problems and even went out on a limb in the comments of a political blog, saying that I thought recapture of those bonuses was tantamount to an ex post facto law or a bill of attainder - and therefore, naturally, unconstitutional.  You can’t go passing laws to punish individuals for past behavior, neither by singling out the individuals nor their particular actions. Well, someone got a big-name law professor to opine on the question, one whose word I would personally take as dispositive on any question of constitutional law.  And Professor Tribe said it wasn’t a bill of attainder, so it wasn’t unconstitutional.  And, by extension, that I didn’t know my constitutional ass from my legislative elbow.  You can imagine how his rebuke stung, with a sting of furious stank.  Well, now Professor Tribe has taken a second look at the proposed legislation, and now he thinks it IS an unconstitutionally punitive personally-focused legislative agenda.  In other words, it IS a bill of attainder, and he’s eating his hat in public - the hat that says “DAN IS RIGHT AND TOTALLY RULES.” I can’t say how far he’ll go with this public annuciation of my brilliance, but I think a tenured chair is in my future.  That is to say, the crappy office chair I’ve been sitting on for six years is likely to be mine for another four.  What this has to do with Lawrence Tribe, I leave it to you to discern.  Constitutional genuises like me don’t have time to explain everything to regular folk like you.

Why I’m awesome, normal-person version: I’m not sure why I was looking up my high school last week, but a quick ‘net search revealed to me that there is actually an on-line repository of information about famous things, places, and uses associated with my HS.  Yes, it’s been on plenty of TV shows, and it’s adjacent to the longest mural in the US, and I know of a few mid-alphabet-level list celebs who even attended there, myself excluded.  But what I didn’t know is that Tom Selleck - yes, Tom Selleck from Magnum PI - went to my high school.  Yes, he of the manly mustache and towering hunkitude, famous for aloha shirts and driving a red Ferrari as well as various other magnumism as to which I am currently drawing a blank… yes, he went to the same HS as I did.  He probably didn’t do any acting on the stage on which I learned to do prat-faints and harmonic convergences, because apparently he didn’t do any acting till he was in college.  But I bet we used the same bathroom, a mere two decades apart.  And the star power lingered, I’m sure - I don’t think they’d been cleaned in the interim.

That reminds me of a story, but one which might tarnish my newly-established awesomeness.  So forget it.  Next up, probably something dumb about laundry or grammar.  You’ve been warned.  Awesomely. 

Friday, March 27, 2009

Recap: The Best Freaking Meal Anyone Has Ever Had Anywhere and Don’t Argue With Me

Some meals, I whip through as quick as I can, just jamming the sustenance where it fits best so that I can keep on keeping on with as little time lost as possible.

Some meals I don’t realize I’ve even eaten, since I was all wrapped up in (occasionally) conversation or (sadly, more frequently) some damn television show or other. 

Some meals I linger over because I’m not enjoying the food for some reason.  I just don’t want to keep eating, though I know I’ve got to.  It feels interminable, though I suppose it’s usually over within half an hour. 

Some meals I linger over because I spent a long time cooking them and I want to appreciate them.  But more often, I spend too long cooking and then shovel the grub with both hands till the plate is clean and it’s taken me just a few minutes to consume the labors of several hours. 

But I have never - NEVER - eaten as I did last night at Michael Mina/San Francisco.  My old friend Marc was in town for a conference and asked me to recommend an outrageously awesome restaurant.  I included MM in a short list of suggestions.  It’s in the hotel where he’s staying, so it seemed like a decent option.  And I’d heard that it was as good a restaurant as San Francisco is capable of producing, which is saying quite a bit. 

But I don’t think any of us (Dave joined us since we’d all been friends through college together) expected, nor have ever experienced, the kind of meal we wound up having in that serenely under-decorated dining chamber.  But let’s start at the beginning.

We started the evening with beers at the Tunnel Top - a Dashiel Hammet locale updated for TenderNob hipsters, adjacen to the provocative Green Door Relaxation Salon and just one staircase and four short blocks to our ultimate destination: the old St Francis on the square.  Marc checked in while I checked out the historical exhibits in the lobby, like photos from Fatty Arbuckle’s arrest for murder back in the ‘20s.  Marc wound up getting a double-upgrade on his room - a spacious suite nine stories above Union Square in the building’s original 1904 towers, right at the corner so the view stretched out 270 degrees across downtown and SoMa.  Then we rode back downstairs to the lobby and MM, where we each got the six-course meat-eater’s seasonal tasting menu, with wine pairings.  And since “it’s not a lily if it ain’t gilded,” we also ordered one six-course seasonal veggie tasting menu for the table just in case we were missing anything - a choice that seemed obvious once we’d made it, but apparently had no precedent in the restaurant’s history.  We were also also brought an extra appetizer with aperitif, and an extra dessert.  We ate for three hours.  It’s nearly a full day later and I’m still staggering under the sheer gastronomic intensity.  To wit:

Hog Island oysters with bloody mary granita; paired with Iron Horse Blanc de Blancs Sonoma sparkler.

English pea soup (black winter truffles, parmesan cheme fraiche, brioche croutons; paired with a Prager Riesling “Hollerin” Smaragd, Wachau, Austria 2001) (Dave got an amazing foie gras terrine with Medjool dates, marcona almonds and sherry gelee, served with an awesome Spanish Lustau Moscatel Las Cruces Sherry).  Veggie supplement: Winter citrus salad with shaved fennel, sylvetta, and citrus coulis.

Grilled Monterey Bay Calamari (cara cara orange, nicoise olive, fennel bulb; paired with Mount Nelson Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, NZ 2007).  Veggie supplement: really excellent seasonal squash trio of pumpkin soup, tempura squash salad, grilled “sandwich.” (We picked up a glass of the wine pairing on this one too, an exceptional dry Royal Tokaji Wine Company Furmint, Hungary 2005)

Steelhead Trout (bay leeks, morel mushrooms, lobster emulsion; paired with Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Saint-Aubin “en remily” 1er Cru (white) Burgundy, France 2007).  Veggie supplement: Roaster heirloom beets with braised endive, mache, black truffle vinaigrette.

Hobbs Shore Pork Belly (with pumpernickel panade, red wine braised cabbage, caraway jus; paired with Sainte Eugenie Corbieres la reserve, Languedoc, France 2005).  Veggie supplement: Carnaroli risotto with suncholes, castelmagno cheese, black winter truffles.  And can I tell you?  THAT PORK BELLY.  Damn.  Sure, the risotto was also fine, but I’ve never eaten anything like that pork belly.  I can’t even start to tell you what it was like; words are patently inadequate and actually make it sound kind of distasteful.  It wasn’t distasteful.  It was life-changing, is what it was.  When the server brought it, she said “all bets are off.” I only begin to understand what she meant, but I see she was on the right track.

Japanese Kobe Beef (with sacramento delta asparagus, potato fourchette, sauce bearnaise; paired with Volver (Tempranillo), La Mancha, Spain 2005).  Veggie supplement: “Scotch” hen egg with forest mushrooms and heirloom radishes in consomme.  Both majorly rocked. 

Poached Rhubarb (with tellicherry peppercorn ice cream, meyer lemon confit, and basil; paired with Kracher Cuvee BA, Illmitz, Austria 2006.  Supplemental dessert: Root beer float with root beer sorbet and sasparilla ice cream, garnished with chocolate straws.  As it turns out, these are actually two of my favorite desserts, and both were exceptional. 

Espresso smores with lychee jellies - off-menu and superb. 

After supper we rode the tower elevator up the outside of the hotel’s 1970’s addition, 32 stories up into the night sky, just for the view and the breathtaking rush when the carriage burst out over the original hotel roofline and the complimentary rush when it slammed back down into the interior again.  Then, finally, I staggered out to my bus stop - 9 stories directly beneath Marc’s room.  My ride came quickly but was crowded.  On the way home the bus stopped at Fillmore Street, where the Bob Weir show was just letting out; hordes of howling deadheads roamed the street, slapping out beats on the side of the bus and staring vacantly at their complimentary posters.  I bet they thought they’d had a nice evening.  I won’t argue with them, but I know mine was a fair piece better than “nice.” I got home at midnight and feel as if I have yet to wake up.  I don’t know if I’m ever going to taste food the same way again.  I might someday have a meal that rivals this one, but I will NEVER top it.  Hope you get to try one someday soon for yourself.  It does make a fellow look at things differently. 

This has been another presentation of “Bet You Wish You Were Me.” Have a good weekend.  IF YOU DARE.  I’ll be hosting a birthday party for 25 munchkins and their P.U.s.  Ergo, I dare not.  Enough! 

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Hardly Unwanted; plus photo update from North Beach

This one is in honor of the old crowd.  Two weekends ago Nool came to visit and nine of us - nine! - who’d gone to college together a very long time ago got together for drinks and hunan food.  I took over 70 photos but honestly they came out so badly they’re not worth sharing with anyone who isn’t in them.  Last weekend was a movie with two of that crowd, both local, both brilliant and fabulous company.  And now tomorrow night I’ll be dining somewhere outrageous with another old classmate who’s stopping by on his peripatetic path, whose company I’ve much missed.  In honor of the old college crowd, then, and of our sustenance those byegone days, I offer you thusly:

It was one of several college evenings of which my recollection is spotty - flashes of hilarity and poignancy interspersed among periods of quiet meditation and inward journeying.  I particularly recall this night, though, because I was on a field trip, far form the familiar comforts of my comprehensively-furnished bedroom.  I had left that cloister behind me to sit up all night with Nool down at the foot of Broad Street in South Philly, in the parking lot of the Spectrum. 

This was 1984 or ‘85, an era in which my computer literacy course at Big-Time University focused solely on programming in PASCAL, and even the most sophisticated home relied entirely on land-line telephones for all outside communication.  There was no internet, and no sense of deprivation without it.  What snailmail couldn’t handle, Ma Bell probably could.  When you wanted something, you went out and got it, just like frontier days.  And that’s why Nool and I were hunkered down in his mom’s Audi for an overnight stay in the parking lot of a sports complex which Nool described as the work of Frank Rizzo, our first capital’s poet laureate. 

Behind us loomed the grim bulk of JFK stadium, dark and forbidding, all poured concrete arcades and windowless walls.  Before us, the Spectrum was, by contrast, a jewel of glass and neon, set off by the infamous statue of Balboa triumphant, contrasting cheerfully to JFK as a garish paste bauble might contrast to a drawer full of rocks. 

This was the era - the mid-80s - in which the Dead began to rise again.  The Grateful Dead had already arced from obscurity to cultish popularity; then trends reversed on them and they grew more cultish and less popular for a decade or more.  But in those days of Reagan, their straightforward dancehall vibe and twisted counterculture found increasingly more receptive audiences as a new generation learned to appreciate the old favorites of their forebears.  By the time of the evening in question, the Grateful Dead had reestablished sufficient market traction to guarantee three sold-out shows at the Spectrum during their annual spring tour.  Nool and I wanted a piece of that action, so we camped out overnight to be in line when the box office opened on the first day of sales. 

Yes, childrens, that is how we used to roll in the olden days.  We’d park the car, wait all night, and then line up for tickets.  And thus it was that a bright late-winter morning found Nool and me stumbling with multiple blearinesses across a damp, manure-strewn parking lot to take our place in a surprisingly long queue with our confreres du mort. 

The world had morning breath.  There was a pointed dearth of coffee.  Everyone was out of sorts and aching for home comforts, or, at least, a hot breakfast.  And as we know, where a market arises, a marketer will emerge to exploit it.  This day, that exploiter was Mr Pretzel Dude. 

In Philly, the soft pretzel is considered tantamount to a food group of its own.  They’re big ovals of salted bread with a crossbar in the center, not the macrame knot version with which I’d grown up.  But they tasted good, warmed you up, filled bellies and provided a full RDA of crystal sodium and yellow mustard.  Along with street dogs, the soft pretzel was a ubiquitous Philly snack.  Mr PD was positively loaded with them.

He was a lean, enervated man, face drawn and spine slumped with the weight of pretzels and the strain of selling them.  He looked like he was rather resentful of us for making him get up so early.  But he was there to flog his wares, so flog them he did.  He trudged up and down the line we’d formed, a sack of snacks slung from his bony shoulder, seemingly more out of it than even we deadheads were.  His pretzel-monger’s cry fell dully from his lips: “Soft pretzels… who wants a soft one?  Soft pretzels… who wants a soft one?” He repeated it over and again, till all the meager poetry was drained from the phrase. 

“Soft pretzels… who wants a soft one?” He’d come abreast of me, a poverty-struck student with more wit than energy, and more energy than cash.  I replied to him, irony purling from my lips, “Who wants a soft one?” The ‘heads around me, starved for entertainment as much as for carbohydrates, burst into laughter.  Pretzel Dude regarded me with an injured yet callous expression, and kept walking, intoning his cry despite my jibe.  It was his living, though it was the butt of my joke.  And to this day, I don’t know how I feel about having said that to him.  Yes, I gained the approbation of a horde of unwashed strung-out strangers, but at the cost of humiliating a man who sought only to earn an honest wage.  Oh well, I’m sure I’m not the first to have said it to him.  And even now, there are still times when, in fact, a soft one is exactly what I want. 

the one photo from the Nool visit I feel okay about sharing:

this is the lamp post outside Henry’s Hunan on Sansome.  After supper, it’s apparently traditional to get a few Ande’s chocomints and to jam their green foil wrappers into the cracks in the wood of this post.  So jam and post I did, and now you can enjoy it too.  Last night’s supper was better.  I mean, crazy good.  More later.  Going now.  Bye.