Monthly Archives: May 2008

Almost Makes Me Not Hate Seafood So Much

Filed under bigtime celebrity, narcissism, restaurant ramblings
Tagged as , ,

I tasted my first bit of blogfame this week when away.com featured my Oyster Bar review in a blog post about food and history. And the best part is that the blurb is exactly what I would have written about myself had it been up to me. And probably even better.

You can–and should–read the rest of the post here.

Comment Here

Please Stand Clear of the Closing Doors

Filed under fun times on the subway, living in new york is neat, my uber-confrontational personality
Tagged as , ,

I was riding into Manhattan from my apartment in Brooklyn one Saturday night at 10 p.m. not too long ago when a little Latina lady with frizzy red hair, a tiny brown tee, and 80s jeans stepped into my car and planted herself in the doorway, one foot in the train and one foot on the platform. The doors tried to close several times, but she kept pushing them open and yelling something back to some unseen person in the station. Finally, a very tall, very well-dressed, very clean-cut young black man said in a friendly, familiar tone, “Mami, please decide if you’re in or out. I have to get to work.” Without a moment’s hesitation, the woman shouted back, “FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY?! I’M RIGHT HERE! I’M RIGHT HERE! SAY IT!”

At that moment, her son ran into the car with a scooter, which he must have had problems getting through the turnstile. The man kept his friendly tone and told her that he was just trying to keep things moving for everyone else, but the woman screamed over him, “WHAT’S YOUR POINT?! WHAT’S YOUR POINT?! I’M RIGHT HERE! IT’S A FREE COUNTRY!” The man kept on talking in a level tone, but I couldn’t hear him, because the woman kept shouting, “MY OTHER SON WILL FUCK YOU UP! MY OTHER SON WILL FUCK YOU UP! GET OFF AT 103RD STREET WITH ME! MY SON IS LOUIE, AND HE WILL TEAR YOUR ASS UP!”

The man was talking quietly, but he was evidently getting into the spirit and egging the woman on, because she got even angrier and yelled, “YOU CAN SUCK MY PUSSY!” At this point, I naturally had to uncontrollably laugh out loud and say, “Oh, my god!”, which prompted the entire train to turn and look at me. Except for the woman, of course, who screamed, “GET OFF AT 103RD STREET WITH ME, MY NIGGA! 103RD AND LEX, MY NIGGA!” Her young son finally got embarrassed by the display and patted her stomach, saying, “Mooo-ooom. Stop it.” The woman advanced on the black guy and said, “YOU EXPECT ME TO LEAVE MY 9-YEAR-OLD SON BEHIND?! MY OTHER SON LOUIE IS YOUR AGE! HE’S AS TALL AS YOU! HE WILL FUCK YOU UP!” Her son grabbed her arm to hold her back and half-smiled at how ridiculous she was acting.

A random white guy seated between the two of them suddenly clapped his hands several times very loudly and said, “You must calm down!” The woman yelled, “HE STARTED IT! I WAS JUST DEFENDING MYSELF!” The white guy said, “I know, I know,” trying to appease her, but she couldn’t seem to lower her voice. People throughout the train were laughing at her, and the black man had stopped talking back to her, but she continued shouting, repeating phrases that didn’t make sense in context. We were all looking at each other like, “This woman is insane.”

The train stopped at Grand Central, and as a bunch of us filed out of the car–the air filled with the sort of shared feeling of relief that all survivors must feel–the black man turned to us, smiled, and said, “Sorry about that, everyone.” And then he continued on his way to work.

YES!

Comment Here

Google is Keeping Tabs on My Weight

Filed under it's fun to be fat, my uber-confrontational personality
Tagged as ,

In an attempt to make millions off my website on the suggestion of my very supportive, non-blog-hatin’ friend Elise, I added a couple of Google AdSense ads tonight. I was feeling not-so-sellouty about the Japanese restaurant links that kept popping up on my sidebar, because I am, after all, trying to mold myself into the most-Asian white girl you know. But after editing an old post and reloading the page, I saw that one of the ads had become a photo of an attractive fat girl. I quickly scrolled down to my footer, and the big banner across the bottom had switched over to a spread for a BBW dating site. I’m convinced that Google saw a couple of pictures of me here and is trying to tell me something.

YOU CANNOT DISSUADE ME, GOOGLE. I WILL ONLY POST MORE PHOTOS OF MYSELF EATING TO SPITE YOU.

Comment Here

Restaurant Review: Grand Central Oyster Bar

Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat, narcissism, restaurant ramblings
Tagged as , , , ,

I don’t like seafood. I don’t like that it’s been swimming around in a cesspool of its own feces, and I don’t like that it tastes like it. But when your boyfriend wants to gulp an entire plate of raw ocean animalia, you don’t argue; you make him take you to the Grand Central Oyster Bar.

The restaurant is underground, cavernous, monstrous, with huge arced ceilings tiled and lined with lights. It feels more like you’re at an expensive wedding reception than on a private date. It’s not really dim enough to be romantic, the tablecloths are a very small-town-diner red-checker, you can hear the slurps of the couple dining right next to you, and the clatter of silverware echoes off the walls. But for some reason, you feel really great being there. Really 1920s flapper-girl-in-a-string-of-pearls. You expect fat cats in suits and top hats to walk through the door any moment. But the unpretentious, jolly kind of fat cats.

The menu is amazing. If you like seafood. In a different life, I would’ve dove right into that caviar sandwich (because what isn’t good on bread?), and a jumbo lump crabmeat cocktail sounds like an alcoholic’s delight. Kamran was intent on our trying the bloody mary oyster shooter and splitting the bivalve platter, but since I can barely stomach the word “bivalve”, we settled on some New England clam chowder. Which was totally delicious, even before I added three bags of oyster crackers to it. It wasn’t fishy at all, and the clam didn’t have the rubbery consistency I expected.

I had planned to play it legit and order the half chicken, but Kamran convinced me that if anyone was going to do fish right, it was “America’s most historic and celebrated seafood restaurant”. So I ordered one of the specials, a sturgeon splashed with rum sauce and golden raisins, hoping that the rum would get me drunk enough that I’d forget I was eating the ocean. It came with some nice buttery vegetables to help clear my palate between bites to keep me from freaking out and this REALLY AWESOME RICE. I don’t have any idea what was in it, but it was a cheesy little ball of hearty warm nothing-else-I’ve-ever-tasted. And hey, the fish wasn’t bad, either. When I asked the waiter if he thought sturgeon was okay for a seafood-hater, he told me that it’s so mild there’s a dish called sturgeon cordon bleu. And he was right for the most part; the ends of the hunk were much thinner and were a little bit browned, and they were actually what I might call “delicious”. The middle was thick and moist, and although it didn’t really taste any different from the ends, the fact that I could see all of the meaty layers freaked me out, so I had to leave a bit of it behind. Still, I was obviously proud of myself:

When I finished, Kamran said that

a) it’s good I have no idea what a sturgeon looks like, or I would’ve been too scared to eat it, and

b) he, a seafood fanatic, wasn’t sure he would’ve had the guts to try it. YES!

And speaking of guts, Kamran ordered the medley of shellfish and ended up being a little overwhelmed by the huge plate of oysters and clams arranged from smallest to largest, mussels, and giant shrimp.

He had been really excited about eating clams after having stealing a really good one from his sister’s plate the last time we were at Balthazar, but the clams on this plate weren’t cooked, and his stomach wasn’t quite prepared for that after a childhood incident involving bad clams that made him sick. The oysters were a suckin’

slurplin’

swishin’ good time, though, and he liked everything else on the plate so much that he had a hard time deciding what to save for last. Although he did spend the rest of the night feeling like slimy things were swimming around in his stomach, so I felt vindicated.

Overall, I’d say the food must be pretty great if the anti-seafood-est person alive was able to handle it with a smile, and the atmosphere was neat if not dark and romantic, and it was the sort of experience that you feel like you can only get in New York. And that’s what it’s all about.

Comment Here

There are Real People in the Big, Big Trucks

Filed under my uber-confrontational personality
Tagged as

For my best friend Tracey, the only person who will get this:

For everyone else, because you need to be reminded:

There are real people in the big, big trucks
That you flip off when they get in your way
You get so hacked that you pay no mind to the great big sign that says “oversized load”
Do you really think they can go as fast as you in your ’87 Trans Am?
They know you’re in a terrible rush but they’re going just as fast, as fast as they can

– Pedro the Lion, Big Trucks

Comment Here