I like Catholics. They seem a serious bunch    I like Christians more often than not.  That some aspects of Catholicism are un-appealing to other Christians concerns me only a little, as I have seen all manner of in-fighting between more similar denominations. The fact the Catholism seems to be held in low regard amongst the anti-religious folks, tethers me to it even more.  But these aren’t really spiritual answers to Ms. Anonymous poster’s question.

I could say that I feel the most complete, spiritually, when I am behaving in a manner consistent with my understanding of Grace.  And to be clear, I think this behavior overlaps, but is yet completely different than simply behaving in a ‘moral manner’.  I will concede that person can live a good life by just trying to live a good life, but I don’t believe that to be the best strategy.    This is a good example of the philosophical principle that I always come back to:  The best way to achieve a goal is to put something more important, ahead of it.      Most major decisions in my life are made after I consider what to place first, and what to place second. While I am not certain, I suspect that if ‘trying to live a good life’  is your guiding light, you are only going to be marginally effective.

 This whole line of thought I stole from this C.S. Lewis essay that I first read about 13 years ago.

One more thing about the Catholics, and why I like them.  They are stubborn.  This is a characteristic of the church itself, and of the culture of the peoples who make it up (Italians).   What is a church if not resistant to change?    I like stubborn. I even like it when you stick to your guns even though you strongly-suspect you are wrong.  There is some good to be wrung out of that situation I think, and besides, once you change, there is no going back.  I think this attitude is best summed up by this defense of the new Pope, “Sometimes we need a few rocks in the river”.

Amen to that.

Stick it up your ass John McCain.    Whenever Bush disappoints me to the point that I am willing to consider a McCain presidency, McCain reminds everybody that he is the most self-serving politician around.   Even if you believe ‘self-serving politician’ to be the height of redundancy, this guy sticks out.

A small part of me says ‘so what’: If he cuts spending and secures the borders, what difference does it make if his primary concern is staying in office.  Clinton’s had a similar outlook, and things turned out ok. Every public second of Clinton’s presidency, and ex-presidency, was spent trying to get people to like him.

But put Clinton’s personality in a room with a powerful republican congress and two things will come out: A vilified republican congress, and a conservative agenda. Maybe we won’t be so lucky with McCain, whose continuous pandering to the media seems less of a personal deficiency and more of a cold calculation.     He does whatever it takes keep everyone’s eyes on him so that some day he can implement his master plan.  He’s been this way for the seven years I have watched him.   Bush needs to put McCain headlock and yell “What’s your angle boy, don’t you know I could snap your neck in 30 different ways”.

 On a lighter note. 

This weekend I saw the very fun Asylum Street Spankers at 12 Galaxies.  Imagine an improvisational troop performing ragtime.  They play a mean saw, but their wash boarding had me craving the sweaty swamp blues bands of New Orleans. 8 barefoot musicians in damp linens under a dripping wet tin roof, Blood and guts and spit and ass everywhere.   This was more effortless muscicianship and harmless tomfoolery.  Which is good too.

At the break I walked across the street to Foreign Cinema to say hi to Colleen.   She's the best.   I couldn't stay but promissed a swift return.  I'd have gone back Sunday morning for brunch if I didn't already have plans to go to Memphis Minnie’s for Kim's birthday party.

Minnie’s has some darn good brisket.  It wern't crispy at all, but plenty tasty.   We walked over to Toronado for a Racer5, and then over to the Met for some asteroids and a movie.  Though it wasn't mine, that’s about as good a birthday as I could ask for: BBQ, Good Beer, Joust and Asteroids, and then Bruce Willis getting shot to pieces but ultimately triumphing.  Then then Soprano's afterwards!

Junior, Junior, Junior......

Truth be told, Deadwood has surplanted Sopranos for 'best thing on T.V. ever' bragging rights.   I hope I am only saying that because I havn't seen the Sopranos in 2 years.   I hope that in two week I am eating my words, kissing Tony's pinky finger. We will see.

After I wrote about Bix, I was in a good mood.  I like writing Hard-Boiled stuff.   My mood improved even more when I realized that my guy is a bit dumber than the only other hard-boiled characters I have read: Dennis Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie, who I wrote about a few days ago, and Nelson Demille’s John Corey, who I’ll get to in a minute.

I have never claimed to be all that original a writer, and Whiskey Sean Food Detective isn’t breaking any literary ground, but the style seemed to be my own.  But then I remembered Calvin, of Calvin & Hobbes fame, who would occasionally assume the identity of Tracer Bullet, ace private investigator.

Nearest I can tell, Whiskey Sean is one half John Corey, and one half Tracer Bullet.

So who is John Corey?   Pretty much the coolest cat in fiction. 

Yesterday I picked up Nelson Demille’s NightFall, to wash away the aftertaste of the first chapter of another book I had just started.  Here is a perfect little scene, where John, an Ex-New York Copy, is being confronted by a territorial FBI agent.

             We both remained silent for a while and stared at each other. I love these macho-eyeballing contests, and I’m good at them.

            Finally, he said, “Your wife, as she may have told you has never been fully satisfied with the final determination of this case.”

            I didn’t reply.

            He continued, “The Government is satisfied. She---and you--- work for the government.”

            “Thanks for the hot tip.”

            He looked at me and said, “Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.”

            “Is English you second language?”

…..

…..

            He added,  “If you retired—or got fired---tomorrow, you could spend all the happy hours you want looking into this case. That would be your right as a private citizen, and if you found new evidence to reopen the government’s case, then God bless you. But as long as you work for the government, you will not, even in your off-duty hours, make and inquiries, conduct any interviews, look at any files, or even think about this case. Now, do you understand?”

            I keep forgetting that nearly all special agents are lawyers. But when they speak, I remember. I said, “You’re making me curious. I hope that wasn’t your intent.”

March 10^th  Asylum Street Spankers

March 11^th Sailing, weather permitting

March12th Sopranos Season Premier

March 17-19th Skiing At Squaw

March 24^th  Lauren Rose’s Birthday! Anyone have any ideas on what I should Get Lauren? 

March 30^th  OPEN DATE, who wants to go skiing?!

April 7^th  Back in Atlanta, Busting the Camero out.

April 8^th  Mayweather Vs. Judah at Lauzon’s house In Atlanta. Who’s coming?

I am going to miss Clap Your Hands in S.F. the weekend of the 24th.

Per my recently married hair stylist's request (Congratulations!), I am going to provide audio links to bands I speak of. If you follow this link you can get to Clap Your Hand's best song.    While your hanging out in NPRland, here is one of my favorite Hold Steady songs. Eventually I hope to have a WhiskeyTown Jukebox section, that contains links to the 100 greatest songs,  the 100 ultimate bar songs,  and the 2 songs from the 100 greatest Jukebox Albums.    

Now here’s the thing: If you all don't think I am obsessed right now, you're about to.  And here’s the other thing:  if I get this list done correctly, It will be exactly fourteen hundered and forty minutes long.   See,  I’m pretty sure “the day” was designed so that you could listen to that playlist straight through. Somewhere, this playlist is playing, and the sun and moon are using it as cues.  

Crazy, maybe, but I'm not the only one.  Just ask Chroma the Great.

As the conductor waved his arms, he molded the air like handfuls of soft clay, and the musicians carefully followed his every direction.

"What are they playing?" asked Tock, looking up inquisitively at Alec.

"The sunset, of course. They play it every evening, about this time."

"They do?" said Milo quizzically.

"Natually," answered Alec; "and they also play morning, noon, and night, when, of course, it's morning, noon, or night. Why, there wouldn't be any color in the world unless they played it. Each instrument plays a different one," he explained, "and depending, of course, on what season it is and how the weather's to be, the conductor chooses his score and directs the day. But watch: the sun has almost set, and in a moment you can ask Chroma himself."

The last colors slowly faded from the western sky, and, as they did, one by one the instruments stopped, until only the bass fiddles, in their somber slow movement, were left to play the night and a single set of silver bells, brightened the constellations. The conductor let his arms fall limply at his sides and stood quite still as darkness claimed the forest.

"That was a very beautiful sunset," said Milo, walking to the podium.

"It should be," was the reply; "we've been practicing since the world began." And, reaching down, the speaker picked Milo off the ground and set him on the music stand. "I am Chroma the Great, he continued, gesturing broadly with his hands, "conductor of color, maestro of pigment, and director of the entire spectrum."

I was cold, hungry and a little bit wet, walking around lower north beach on a Monday night looking for Myth.  I must have walked right by it, and it must have been lights-out closed, because I got to the end of the block and was a little bit colder and a little bit hungrier.

I took a right, thinking to make the trek down to Frisson, when the flicker of a neon light turned my attention down a narrow alley.   I’m not going to say I heard that little buzzing sound that movies always play when they show a neon sign in the rain -you know the on- it sounds like a little fly-execution and smells like ozone. If you could smell a sound.

I’m not going to say I heard any of that, but its tempting, cause it was real good to see that sign again, it meant I had stumbled upon Bix, everyone’s favorite North-Beach speakeasy. 

I took the bar stool closest to the well and asked for a bitters and soda, stalling while I figured out my drink.   I was quickly reminded that this is one of the best bars in the city. It’s a bit self-consciously square, in its white-coated prohibition vibe, and while that is part of its charm, it comes off a bit like a gimmick.   Great bars need gimmicks like Martinis need Vodka.       Heck, let me spell that out more plainly, gimmicks and bars don’t go together, period.   The guys at Brazenhead will give you the exact same service without the costume, and it works a little better, but you won’t get a better drink anywhere in this city except Absinthe.

Biz is a place that knows without instruction how to make a Martini on the Rocks.   Pour at least a quarter ounce of Vermouth over some ice in an old fashioned glass, and a fill up the rest of the glass with Gin. And for the love of all things clear, dry, and holy, don’t shake a thing.  By the way, someone needs to pass this recipe to the lad on U-Street who squealed “on the rocks?!” ten seconds after he took my order.   (If you do bring him the recipe, might as well tell them to get some good gin too. While your there)

Well, Bix does everything well. Their house Gin in Plymouth, for instance.   The keep their martini glasses face down in a pile of crushed ice, and their house specialities include  a Sazerac and a Vesper Martini.  The bartender saw me looking at a description of their Vesper and when I looked up to say somethign about it we both spoke in unison: “the lillet makes it a drink”.  Which is true, but don’t tell that to Misters Fly and Guarnera, who have been pouring Gin and Vodka together for years and calling it perfect.

Well this meal was going to be a little bit of perfect but I couldn’t bring myself to order the Tar-Tar.   Coming to Bix and not ordering the Tar-Tar is like going to a rock concert and not throwing a beer can at the lead singer.  That was a joke.  You’re supposed to order the tar-tar-- Its real good. But I wanted to save it for a rainy day. Which is to say, a    rainy day other than this one.

So I ordered the Cod ceviche and a slate of Lamb sliders. The bartender did a small double taken cause though he didn’t know me, he knew me well enough know that I was going to order the tar-tar.  I gave him as subtle a ‘mixing it up a bit’ expression as I could, and he put in the order.

Those little Lamb burgers were damned incredible.  I’d call them gourmet White Castle except that’s been said before.  Take an Absinth burger, this city’s best, shrink it down to the size of an Italian wedding cookie, replace the beef with a spicy lamb sausage patty, and put it on a plate with three of its delicious clones, and you would have a better picture. But you really just have to try it.

I polished up the fourth and realized that I had made a grave error:  I was still hungry, and not much follows Lamb-sliders on the pallet progression chart. I could make a Chuck-Berry-Jerry Lewis- unicycling-beatles-monkey reference, but you get the picture.  Last time I was at Bix I ordered the Tar-Tar and followed it up with their Hamburger, but that was in the mad-cow days and I was just trying to prove a point.  No, this time around the only thing that was going to follow those four burgers was four more burgers, but I didn’t want to burn myself out, so I paid my bill and let the crew know I would see them again soon.

I was going to save those for burgers for a rainy day.

A rainy day other than this one.

So I may have accidentally given the impression that I was going to try to date 52 women this year.   This couldn’t be farther from the truth.   That is the stated goal of a guy I know, who is blogging at 52dates.blogspot.com.   

I am pretty much sticking to the same goal I have had for the last 6 years: Find one good girl, and then date her for as long as possible.     Of course, things don’t often work out as planned. 

But sometimes a bunch of plans fall apart in a fortuitous way that looks like one good plan. That is how I got on a reality show.

It all starts at a Sushi Restaurant.   There was this girl who seemed just my type. She was exotic looking, clever, and only just a wee bit crazy. Lets call her Ms. Jones.  She worked at the Sushi Restaurant, and liked to order me around, mainly insisting that I come visit her, even though we had never been on a date or even seen each other outside of the restaurant.  But I took it as a given that those things would happen.

Yet when it came time to actually ask her out on a date, she stopped returning my calls.    Many months went by and she eventually sent me a text message asking me to come see her at another restaurant, but by then the spell was broken and I had started thinking that maybe I shouldn’t be dating girls who work as bartenders or hostesses.    There is nothing wrong with bartenders and hostesses mind you, it just that they are who I have most often dated, and it has never worked out.   I mean Ms. Jones stood me up the only time she ever agreed to meet me out.

But I couldn’t hold it against her. It’s hard to hold a grudge against a girl who orders you around like you’re married but blows you off when you actually try to take her on a date. So when my friend David mentioned that he ran into her at a party a few weeks ago, we figured it was time to stop by the restaurant and say hello. 

So I meet David at the Sushi Restaurant and he had brought his ex-girlfriend,  Ms. Bond.  I exchange pleasantries with Ms. Jones who had given them a nice table in the back on account of me texting her in advance.  We are all having Sake and Sushi when out of nowhere David pulls me aside and asks me what I think of Ms. Bond.   Apparently when she surreptitiously used the phrase “CEO of a Major corporation” she was using code to indicate to David that she thought I was attractive. (I found out about the code later)

Suprised by the inquiry, I dodged the question.  Conversation soon shifted to Michelle, a friend of theirs that they think I should date. Ms. Bond was emphatic that I should date this girl, but for some reason David’s endorsement seemed tepid. Things were moving pretty fast and Ms. Jones kept bringing us Sake.

Well, I don’t have much experience in set-up dates, but my instincts told me that if the female setter-upper is more enthusiastic than the male setter-upper, the girl they are representing probably has a “great personality”.   Plus, this girl was Plan B to being with, ten minutes prior they were trying to set me up with the female setter-upper! For all I know Ms. Bond got the “He’s not interested” code from David and decided to set me up with someone hideous as recompense.

Well, I couldn’t figure out what it was about David’s pitch that wasn’t resonating with me, but I didn’t want to dismiss the set-up outright since the girl they were trying to set me up with, Michelle, is reportedly very successful lawyer and I had been thinking to myself that I need to date a professional woman.  Seriously, I actually had said that to myself.

And there was one last thing, Michelle is the subject of a MAJOR  NEWTORK documentary.  

Apparently MAJOR NETWORK is following her and three other single women around San Francisco. The show is going to be called “SOMETHING SOMETHING ”  (I JUST GOT CENSORED BY THE MAN), and is not, I was assured, a cheesy game-style ‘reality show’.

As dinner ended I gave Ms. Bond my email address and told her I would think about it. David leans over and whispers something in Ms. Jones’s ear and then leaves with Ms. Bond.

[TO BE CONINTUED]

UPDATE!

Ms. Bond has emailed me explaining that she was in no way interested in me, and that I incorrectly translated their secret code.  She also thinks my ego has blinded my memory, and is a threat to public safety.     She makes some other good points that I can't get into without spoiling the story.

So I met this guy last night.     He pretty much shamed me into blogging again.  I am hesitant to link to him because whenever I show the least amount of interest in something a bit misogynist*, I get private emails saying that I am ‘better than that’.   Like yesterday, my Brother-in-law said “Walk away from that reality show Sean, you’re better than that”.

Yeah, that’s right, I am on a reality show, though its considerably less demeaning that my brother's response might imply.   I've been on it for the last couple of weeks.  You haven’t heard about it for two reasons, the second one is that I havn’t really figured out how to tell the story.   Everything so far has been fun and memorable, but not zany.   Not that ‘zany’ is the bar that all posts must meet, but its help me find my voice.  Mirth—That’s the word that best describes the emotion with which I try to write.   That, by the way, is why I never understand when people think I am insulting them. If they could see my face when I write, they would never make that mistake.

Like that poor girl who offered me a ride to Tahoe in January. She made a light jab at my Alma Mater, and I did the classic disproportionate response.  I told her I couldn’t bear the thought of spending four hours listening to Jack Johnson, while she attempted to simultaneously drive, talk on her cell phone, and put makeup on.   (She's a Florida Gator). 

But I am not going to write about it just yet, since I still haven’t figured out how to tell the story.  Rest assured that I am not making a complete jackass out of myself and now that I have mentioned it will explain myself soon, since your imaginations will probably run rampant.

5 episodes, shirt still on

              -Text message from me To Rich

 

Perhaps  next week something Zany will happen and I will recover my voice.   

In the mean time (and before you send me chastising emails) lets recall that before there was  The Slowdown, there were The Reports from the Pitch, And before that there was CoatCheck Girl  (Before that there was reams of bad poety).  That’s right, the first thing I ever blogged, were my attempts to take a Girl out on a date.  Here  was my first ever blog entry:

Monday: We had tentative plans to get drinks when she got off work. We had the same plans the previous week but they fell through, so I was bit anxious. In a change of tactics I sat at the bar with my back to her station. No reason really, but now instead of looking at her I got to watch everyone else look at her. The bartendress (Jennifer) and I exchanged men-are-Pigs glances at all the shameless ogling going on. Jennifer knew I was putting a move on CCG for weeks because I told her one time that I wanted to sit near the Hostess Booth if a spot opened up because “are you kidding me, there are tons of beautiful women working over there”. I overheard no less then 10 guys talking about CCG in hushed, reverential tones. I think I saw a guy instructing his son on how to approach her, but the son chickened out mid-approach and just asked when their table would be ready: Everyone kept going to CCG to check on their reservations, even though there was a perfectly good hostess standing right next to her. A pack of Cisco sales guys finished their dinner and descended on the Piano bar to sing Elton John songs. These guys could sing, but they soon started changing all the words to be about CCG. You haven’t lived until you have heard the Cicso Boy’s Choir sing “The Coat Check Girl from IwoJima”.
The Cisco Guys Stayed late, but Jimmy V told CCG she could leave if she could guarantee that all the guys wouldn’t immediately leave afterwards. Jimmy is up front with her as to her role at the restaurant. She couldn’t make such a guarantee, so it was going to be a long night for her and in the end I took a rain check.

*I am not sure that  Misogynistic is  word. If it is, I'm not sure a word that ugly looking should exist.  And I am not sure what Misogyny really means, its probably like 'Narcisist'--old and misunderstood.  And I am also not saying that attempting to date 52 women in a year is a priori evidence of it.  It is evidence of a preponderance of energy, I would think.  I don’t know, I haven’t followed that link yet.