Friday, June 17, 2005
Ssssssss-CRACK-K-k!
When I moved uptown from the dirty East Village I brought my bad habits with me along with my records and tapes. I’m an old fashioned girl without a cell phone and while I salute my clean and sober friends, I do so via landline, often with a drink in hand, or a cigarette, or both. I’m cherrybomb and SITC’s the firecracker who set me off. These are the pieces of my exploding head.
I was going to go to Motor City last night to check out a party for the cute boys from nycpinup.com but decided that it was too far to go to get wasted, which is what happens at Motor City. (My buddy Dorth called it “Home” for that reason.) Instead I met Starman for beers at The Ding-Dong Lounge. We played a few games of pool with a couple of cockney guys who were into perfume and muscles – mine. I know because they told me so. I enjoyed their attention but found neither attractive and did nothing to dispel the appearance that Starman was my date. Beyond being a good guy, he’s also an effective beard, enabling me to cruise without being cruised, and I return the favor.
Starman’s an enabler in other ways too. He’s putting together a trip to Egypt to see a solar eclipse and invited me to join him, which I may do. I’m tired of traveling alone, and I understand Egypt’s a good place to buy sheets.
I mentioned that to Theda a couple of weeks ago over a rather lame dinner at Nooch, a Chelsea noodle bar with utensils that look like surgical instruments. A sheet queen who won’t sleep on anything but 1000-thread-count cotton, she said it was ridiculous to go all the way to Egypt for something you can get at Bed, Bath and Beyond. She wasn’t however, averse to going way the hell out to IKEA in Elizabeth to buy a set of glow-in-the-dark sheets that are unavailable on-line.
A remarkable thing happened when I tried to fix Starman up with Theda. Picture an Irish birder from New Jersey and a German/Irani fire-spinner from Dusseldorf trying to make it through a poorly-lit (we were on the roof of my building) dinner (a wonderful chicken recipe sent to me by my buddy Thos in L.A. that is included at the end of this blog) without knives (I forgot to bring them). It was also drizzling. Starman was getting about as far with Theda -- who was mourning the recent death of Shatzi, her beloved cat of 17 years, repeatedly calling up images of the dead animal on her cell phone in the course of the night -- as he was with the chicken, which he later told me he could neither see, nor cut. After repeated stabs at sustained conversation during which he valiantly produced topic after topic (Cambodia; Saturn; the ivory-billed woodpecker) we stacked our plates and headed down to my apartment. I got the feeling Theda was getting ready to make her exit when Starman, what did he have to lose, put a Pink Floyd album on the turntable. I cringed. Theda rose from the dead. It turns out they’re both into astronauts.
He asked her out for coffee a week later. This is part of Starman’s dating protocol: coffee then maybe dinner, no screwing until at least the fourth date. He though it went well. I have my doubts. Theda tends to date older, crazier men but touched by the believing lights in his birder eyes, I’m hoping for the best.
AMAZING CHICKEN THIGHS WITH ANISE
6 chicken thighs
1 head of lettuce
6-8 new potatoes
2 cups baby carrots
3-4 tablespoons of anise seed
3-5 cloves of garlic
½ cup white wine
1 bullion cube
salt/pepper
Preheat oven to 350.
Lightly brown the chicken thighs in olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Scatter the coarsely chopped garlic over a medium-sized baking pan lightly coated with olive oil.
Chop the lettuce and spread over the garlic.
Lay the chicken on the bed of lettuce.
Score the potatoes with a paring knife, drizzle with oil or turn in the oiled pan that the chicken was browned in, and place between the chicken thighs on the pan. Do the same with the carrots.
Crush the bullion cube over the chicken and vegetables then sprinkle with anise seeds.
Pour wine over everything.
Lightly salt and pepper before placing in oven for about 30 minutes.
When chicken is tender remove and serve.
(Cheers to Thos, and thanks to Pat Loud, America's First Real Mom)
Labels: cherrybomb
