2.21.2009






Well it looks like we've gotten ourselves into a little spot, here, bit of a mess.  No worries, chaps.  Buck up!  Come right in, kick up your feet, let me take your coat...  It's cold out there.

Cafés au laits all around, please, Trixie.  Thanks, dear.

I received a message via carrier pigeon the other night, from Pascual, a good friend of mine living in the hills of the Dominican Republic.  It read as follows:

My friend, why does your blog avoid the subject of the current global catastrophe?  If you want to get more hits, you must write about Obama!  May your sheep die painlessly, and may you always walk in sunlight!

Captain W____

What struck me as odd about the message was the discord between the Captain's method of delivery and his presumed internet savvy.  I scribbled my reply on a torn piece of paper, caught the bird, and tied the message to its leg with a shoelace.  After much fussing and flapping, I managed to push the animal out the window, but I think the message was not tied on properly, because I found it under my desk last night.

But the Captain does have a point.  The President is on everyone's mind nowadays... I was trying to discuss it with Silvia the other day... her English has as many holes in it as the ice caps, (the only thing worse than her English might be my Spanish)... but I did my best to explain...  'El mejor Presidente es el Presidente quien hace nada, solamente hablar, solo hablar, hablar.  La gente, Silvia!  La gente es importante!'

Silvia smiled and continued polishing the mirrors.  She couldn't put it all together, but she thought it was funny anyway.

I must confess to something here, although it's probably a good idea to go back and pull out a few bottles of wine first.  Excuse me, please...




This is the Château Latour Martillac Pessac Léognan 2000, something from the Bordeaux region, recommended by Joe.  It was difficult to get my hands on these bottles, so I hope it's good...

Ah.  I'll go ahead and confess quickly.  I listen to AM radio.  There, it's done.  I suppose I don't listen nearly as much as I did before the election.  It's losing its appeal nowadays...  it's far too easy to criticize the government, to relax back into the role of attack dog.  Anyone can criticize the government.  But what these guys, Rush, Hannity, Beck were doing during the Bush years required a certain level of artistry, a sadistic, brilliant and complete ability to twist emotion and irony into a dazzling, warped reflection of the truth as according to Exxon-Mobil.  They could sometimes make it sound like such plain sense.  It was a dance that I could appreciate, if only for the grace with which they waved the feather over the elephant man's face.

It's getting late, and I thought we could dine in the courtyard today.  Please, come this way... the tables are already set.




La Carte du jour

Une apéritif
Steak Tartare de la maison
Château Latour-Martillac Pessac-Léognan, 2000
Une assiette de fromage
Un café au lait


It's good to be home.  Last week, I took a solo jaunt to Boston (breezing through the airport) to visit my friend Scott.  It was a fine time, and traveling alone I was able to watch some TV on the flights, which is a true extravagance for me, as I don't prescribe to cable or satellite at home.  After a quick scan of the channels, I was satisfied that watching television for a minute every six months was quite sufficient to see everything I needed.  Unfortunately, two hours later (and more than twenty-four full passes over the 46 channels) I had once again become a true believer... was that really a transvestite on the Real World?  I would have to come back to see this after the commercial, but in the meantime, on Rock of Love there was a showdown between the final two girls, Jon Stewart was cracking jokes about Bush, sportscenter was showing Lakers highlights, the Discovery Channel was exploring the Sahara, here was a cooking program with a nice old queen baking chocolate truffle torts, oh, it was a wild, insane melange of 'need-to-know' programming, let me tell you!

But forget all that.  I'm home now, very sorry about the whole business, and I must say this is one the best wines I've ever tasted.

What else?  Oh yes, my friend Mike's been reading Karl Marx on his lunch breaks.  He sent me the following quote:

"Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of
expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism"

Apparently that's from Das Kapital, 1867.  Anyway, I think that's enough politics for another six months, don't you?  What I was trying to tell Silvia was only this -- that we should all go out and do our best, to do our best and try to be better than before, and that the President's job was just to encourage us to 'keep on keepin' on'... or something like that.

For dessert I've got a sweet, sweet video entitled 'Winter Wonderland'... here are some examples of the fine waves we've been getting here in Cocoa Beach over the past three months.




Ciao, bella.

7 comments:

  1. You know you're getting old when you start referring to your school years as 'the nineteen hundreds' --- Nick

    ReplyDelete
  2. Re: your comment:
    "...transvestite on the Real World"

    That was a real eye opener for me; I quite thought that you had done a Freudian misslip and, of course meant, "travesty on the Real World".

    Well, I was quite done when posing the travesty version and getting 268,000 hits, while your original transvestite returned 704,000.

    As of now, I am quite involved in this research, wondering where I went wrong, and, what has changed, and, what pieces are missing from my cultural development...

    Oh, well.
    Quite a regal Obama you posted; wherefrom did you download, cnn?
    Are you insinuating that Mike's, Karl Marx's interpretation is correct, and that the picture can be interpreted as a new greeting of,
    "Good morning Amerika"?
    Very well then;
    Back to my research.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Truth, Dr. Truth et al,

    Apparently I've been visiting the cafe regularly on the same day, January 15th, and talking to people "posting my comments" only on that day. Perhaps there was something compelling about the company au cafe on that day, or perhaps I was deeply rooted in that day, very similar to my condition in Amsterdam before the turn of the century. Anyhow, I was told to visit in the present, so here I am. I can't promise however that I won't return to January 15 though, as that was a fine day, a mighty fine day indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The portrait of Obama was done by none other than Doctor Truth himself, along with a little prodding from the cafe staff... Yes, January 15th, I remember it well, at the Chelsea Hotel...

    ReplyDelete
  5. No no, Kwazi,
    You see, she must have said travesty,
    otherwise it makes no sense, you see.
    Whreras, travesty, of course, does...
    make sense, that is..

    ReplyDelete
  6. I guess if you are speaking of the travesty of having such an obvious transvestite completely fool the complete imbeciles that compromise the rest of the Real World cast then yes, that is what she said.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Surely, the king, can do no wrong.

    ReplyDelete