finished reading in the heart of america, the collection of plays. the first and last plays were the best, but the other three were definitely interesting. currently reading borges -- knotty, but cool.

cutest nephew ever:

updates: along with reading and thoroughly enjoying artemis fowl as winnie mentioned (which incidentally i appreciated for being less cutesy than the harry potter books and for its occasional sly quips aimed at adults) i've also been reading in the heart of america, a collection of plays by naomi wallace. i first became aware of wallace when mit did one flea spare, which i was really impressed with and reviewed. since then i've found out that she's a fellow kentuckian. i've read the first 3 plays so far, and i really liked one flea spare the second time around as well, and there were parts of the other 2 plays that were really nicely done. one flea spare is set at the time of the great plague in london, while the second play concerns the gulf war and the third play concerns three men watching the mexican-american border for illegal immigrants. i'll give a fuller report when i finish the whole book. i'd forgotten how much i enjoy reading plays. on the food front, andy and i went to rouge last sunday. for me it was the last straw, b/c the "daily vegetarian offering" was even more pathetic than usual: marinated beets, succotash (i.e. steamed beans and corn), and steamed spinach. how stupid is that?! for 20 bucks i'd rather get chinese takeout for a week. i was esp. peeved b/c andy's fish came with this much more interesting creamy mushroom and greens mix. i'm f*cking sick of high end restaurants that don't offer anything good that's vegetarian. on the top of my list of higher end places where i can actually get a decent meal: hammersley's, troque, and casablanca (although i've only been to each of those places once), and sonsie. sad but true. blu, tremont 647, no. 9 park, caffe umbra, pretty much the majority of places i can think of in boston ... and the majority of places i've been to in new york, are all -pathetic- vegetarian-wise. i told andy that from now i'm not going anywhere unless i'm assured of getting something at least semi-interesting (and that more than likely means something that doesn't just throw together roasted red peppers and basil and the ubiquitous portobella mushroom although most places can't even manage something as simple as that) or unless it's asian in which case i'm sure to be able to get something decent. i'm afraid i was a bit pissy, but i'm sick and tired of eating second rate food and i'm sick and tired of having to waste time complaining about it. so that's that. so much for adventurous eating. i need to cook more anyway. anyway, in case you were wondering, winnie, rouge wasn't that great, bad vegetarian food aside. patty got a chunk of lettuce with a ranchy sauce for an appetizer while andy got the marinated beets salad (i didn't bother getting anything b/c the beets were already coming w/ my entree zzzzzzzzzzz), and patty's entree was pretty much another salad w/ little bits of trout in a sauce with some hushpuppies. andy had catfish, and he said overall the place is pricey for what it actually is. okay, enough ranting.

just to prove that i'm not completely rotting my brain on xmen, i thought i would announce that i finished reading to the lighthouse. below is the blurb i posted about it on my site.

definitely an interesting read. rather slow in general, but i liked the themes and the ideas and some of the stream of consciousness style, and how the three sections were set up and connected. allegorical but subtle and multi-dimensional.

still haven't found a really amazing book lately ... read doctor zhivago, a high wind in jamaica, and love medicine fairly recently. i'd say the count of monte cristo was the best i've read recently, and that was last summer. going to read some borges next and i plan on picking up the glenn gould reader that my sister bought for me way back when but which i haven't read yet. um, yeah ...

in contrast: my latest daily blog is polyglot: the many languages of dissent ... it's catfoo, aman, and dan chak's mostly politically-minded blog. catfoo has always been my link to what's going on "in the real world", so now i don't have to hang out w/ her to get this info, i just have to read her blog (j/k catfoo -- we should hang out soon). yah!

first off: it's been a year today since andy and i met ... !!!! happy anniversary, bootsie xx ;) latest eating adventures: on saturday andy and i and a host of andy's friends went to blu, which winnie and andy (and the people we went with) think highly of. andy was disappointed this time, though. here's the rundown on what i got: cocktail: peach, champagne, and vodka. forget what it was called. fine. appetizer: onion tatine with goat cheese on top, came with frisee and some light slices of tomato. the onion was caramelized and a little gooey, but not too mushy. pretty good, actually. entree: potato gnocchi ... light red sauce with asparagus and a sweet goat cheese in a bready half shell. ended up being rather bland and boring. dessert: apple/pistachio cake-y thing. pretty good. all in all i thought it was pretty good, but i wasn't bowled over by it, esp for the price. in comparison, i enjoyed my semi-recent trip to hammersley's more, where i got this really strong, garlicky mushroom "sandwich" (although it was super oily) and andy got this beet/goat cheese tart that was nicely done. at blu andy said that this time around his steak was "only about 55% of where it needed to be". one of the people we were with who also got the steak agreed. patty got the rainbow trout, which was the special, and which came with two sauces and which she though was quite good. one of the other people we went with got the three "fish" entree, which was calamari, a fish, and scallops in three different sauces, and she liked it. yesterday andy and i went to the jae's on columbus, me for the first time. it was about what i expected. andy got sushi, but i got the "korean" black bean sauce with buckwheat noodles. needless to say the food was about as korean (or asian for that matter) as the cheesecake factory. i think in general though i prefer cheap and greasy chinese food to any americanized asian food, although the mee krob at sonsie has been the best american asian food i've had, in recent memory anyway. the other noteworthy event at jae's: andy ordered coffee after dinner and got the cheesecake which was labelled as being pumpkin cheesecake. our server completely neglected to tell him that the cheesecake was not going to be pumpkin, it was actually coffee cheesecake. andy prob wouldn't have gotten coffee and coffee cheesecake, and our server didn't apologize for his oversight. bastard. lastly, andy and i went to rouge for brunch the weekend before last, which is a few doors down from the jae's on columbus. apparently this is owned by the same guy as tremont 647 (which is low on my list of destinations mostly b/c of outright bad service), but with a more "creole" sort of slant. anyway, we just went for brunch. andy got eggs and bacon and i got the beignets (a little doughy and thus heavy, but not bad) and we both got the sweet potato fries (3 thick wedges of sweet potato w/ a really powerful mustard). i thought it was all right, but andy was more approving, pointing out that a lot of places can't even get eggs and bacon right. we plan on going back for dinner sometime. we checked the dinner menu on our way to jae's, and apparently they have a vegetarian entree every night. hmm. more to come prob sooner than later. oh, one more thing. went to casablanca in h square, i think around brattle st, the weekend before last. pretty good, although again it didn't bowl me over. i liked it, though. our waiter was obliging, although our hostess was a bitchy snake with bad posture. geez, i hope winnie appreciates my lengthy report ;)

scanned in a cartoon from way back when (i think from a towerrecords mag) about mix tapes that i thought was funny ... includes such deep insights as "boyfriends look at piles of tapes their girlfriends are saving from ex-lovers, and wonder how they measure up." ah, mix tapes. (click image to see larger version)

also, found a great new source of time wastage in the form of gaywit.com ... there's a whole section on lesbian folk songs, with such quotes as: "The next folk song is about my food issues, so I'm going to ask that none of you eat anything while I'm singing it." and "I need your help during the next folk song. Whenever I sing 'Lesbian with a gun,' I want you all to shout 'Bang!'" ... ha ha ha ...

"I've had to get a second job in order
to live the gay lifestyle."