Saturday Guntash and Paula organized a group of about 80 of us out to the countryside to have a light breakfast of wine and cheese, check out the ancient town of Montblanc, enjoy the Calçotada (green onion) feast and maybe have a little more rojo. From Wikipedia:
"The most traditional way of eating calçots is in a calçotada (plural: calçotades), a popular gastronomical event held between the end of winter and March or April, where calçots are consumed massively.
Calçots are then barbecued and dipped in salvitxada or romesco sauce, and accompanied by red wine or cava. Pieces of meat and bread slices are roasted in the charcoal after cooking the calçots."
The salvitxada sauce was ridiculously good, and required eating with not only Calçotadas, but also all available breads, meats, cheeses, and anything else that could be inserted in it and consumed. Will have to try to reproduct it. Too much fun with the usual clowns.
It's been almost 100 degrees out for the past week. It was manageable out on BI last weekend... breeze, beach, Battlestar Galactica.
But now back in Somerville it's a different story. It's still 100 out but there's no wind, just sun. And they're repaving the whole Schrafft's parking lot, which means everything smells like tar.
Just such a lovely spot.
Was discussing this on getting in to work today with Pauler, and we both agreed that the day would be significantly improved if replaced with vast amounts of pool volleyball. With beer in little life preservers. And cheeseburgers. Brought to us by a mermaid (Pauler's suggestion).
When questioned how the mermaid would find her way to the grill and back (being a mermaid, I was thinking "multiple leaps through hoops"), he made it clear that we're talking about a floating grill here. Which has the con of being a volleyball obstruction. But the pro of being a floating grill.
You can't not make this face around a floating grill.
Took some time off from writing the Cambridge: Judge app due tomorrow to bike down to Shaw's and buy a 5-pound chicken and a can of PBR.
I'd gotten a lovely smoker for Christmas and had been jonesing to fire it up after reading an easy recipe for Beer Can Chicken. The idea's that roasting a chicken with a mostly-full beer can in its body (A) keeps the meat moist and (B) helps the bird stand up straight, keeping the heat even.
The process was extremely simple:
Get a chimneyfull of coals going in a chimney starter
Spread the coals evenly on the bottom of a grill and cover with a cup of moistened hickory chips
Open a can of cheap beer, take a few swigs, then shove it up a whole chicken's rear
Use the protruding can to stand the chicken up in the center of the grill
Baste the chicken with olive oil, salt and pepper
Cover the grill and let smoke at 250°F for 1½-2 hours, or until the chicken's deep thigh reports 165°F
Ended up being a pretty simple process and probably much easier next time when, for example, I don't stand the chicken upright for the first time over the lit coals, allowing all of his many juices to flow downward and put out half the fire.
Ended up being some of the most tender poultry I have ever eaten.
Got up yesterday at 7am, picked up TD, Dave and Sarah and headed up to Tenney Mountain near Plymouth, New Hampshire to do some first skiing of the season. I'd lived as a kid for a few miles away and had a season pass there for three years, and was massively stoked to redo all the old trails.
But probably couldn't have picked a worse day to do it. I thought it was cold last month in Maine at 8°, but on the ride up the thermometer's showing 0°F (-20°F with wind chill) and the mountain was worse.
It was pretty much exactly like this
Anyway, we get up there and the main chairlift is closed. Only ten trails on the mountain open, all off the secondary Eclipse triple lift. Which translates to two trails open in real people speak. Whatever. The Aussies and I do up some rentals, Dan comes through with some Crown Royal, and once my nostril hairs stop shattering we make a full day of it. And it was fantastic. Few trails or no, we have the place to ourselves.
Later after the sun starts to go down we hit the lodge for some après-ski, where a pretty decent guitarist who I think might have been Penn was backing up another dude giving away a bunch of free shit, including a serious weekend getaway and a new pair of K2 skis. The most crowdpleasing hat made of tinfoil is required to win the trip. I want to make a beer helmet. Sarah and Dan pull the "let us handle this, we're artists" move but fail to nab the win with their respective creations of "flower bonnet" and "head-based camel toe".
The weekend getaway winner and his beer helmet
After some old dude who didn't need nor fit them won the skis from a terrible raffle, we head out, stopping briefly at the inn my family owned in Bridgewater from 1986 to 1988. "The Inn On Newfound Lake" as it's called now -- it was the Pasquaney Inn when we had it -- has been owned by Larry DeLangis and Phelps Boyce since 1994, and they've done an impressive job expanding the bar and fixing up the old barn out back.
I'm pretty sure my Constructicons are still buried under here
They've seriously fixed up the barn. You could now throw more than a hoedown.
Our old signs. Crazy that it's been a quarter of a century since I lived here.
I had a ladder I'd made bolted to this wall. I made one rung loose as a boobytrap. I hurt myself on that rung often.
Headed back into Somerville for the night, met up with Shana and Meg after yet again getting sick of the 90-minute wait at Red Bones (it's really starting to get old... the barbecue is not that good, folks), and hit up Out Of The Blue in Davis. Highly recommended.
The decision to head here did in fact come to us out of the blue
Heading out today to buy a watch and check out some penguins. You're a good friend, weekend.
Hit Allston last night with Tall Dan, Slama and Repucci to see three Scottish bands we know and love play at Great Scott. Met up at the Sunset Bar & Grill, place blew my mind with their beer selection. Had no idea they were fucking around that little. Pilsners, Triple Bocks, Double IPAs, you name it. Slama and I had a few there discussing our job while Pucci advised and TD was bored to tears. Heading out I threw Dan money for the tickets, which the dude then totally ignored and left for the waiter as a tip.
Great Scott turned out to be a pretty mellow little hole in the wall with a narrow back section and stage at the end. A few rounds happened, good times were had. First I've ever gotten a chance to watch three bands I like all play ten feet away while sitting on a Golden Tee drinking PBR. Not bad.
The bands themselves were BrakesBrakesBrakes, who I knew the least but seemed pretty good, We Were Promised Jetpacks, who I'd gotten into the most though only recently, and The Twilight Sad, who I'd listened to for over a year since Repucci first sent them. And who'd come to be known as the "Groundskeeper Willie Sings" band. Of these We Were Promised Jetpacks kicked the most ass with songs like "Quiet Little Voices" and "It's Thunder And It's Lightning" (below), the latter of which has been stuck in my freaking head for two weeks now ever since driving extremely hungover down to the Block Island ferry one Saturday morning a few weeks ago. It came on and not only convinced me that I wasn't going to die but that life could actually be cool. Ended up screaming along with it.
From that night. YouTube's audio quality recently starred in "Paranormal Activity" as the "thing of horror".
This song cures hangovers and makes evil hide.
Dan and I wandered back up toward the door halfway through the Twilight Sad set and realized the Jetpacks' lead singer and drummer were hanging out in front of us. The guys turned out to be extremely legit. The singer said they were off on their bus after the last set to play Montreal the next day but it'd been a great trip so far, most surprising to date was the turnout they'd gotten in Nebraska. Apparently some crazy WWPJ fans in Omaha. Like a good Scot the drummer -- who I'm pretty sure was also Topher from Dollhouse -- was trying to dominate a half-pint of whiskey the bartender had handed him. Dan and I got a photo, I bought a signed LP for the house wall (guys, you gotta get cockier with your signatures than "Thank you!"), and we were out.
Dan, Darren Lackie, Adam Thompson, Ballard
Way to make the night happen, Dan. Wouldn't mind every Wednesday going that well.
Saturday AM I manage to bang down to the 11am ferry in
record time to get out to Steve and Jennifer's wedding. I've
known Steve since god knows when – used to steal SNES games off him when I was
12 -- and had run into Jen (AKA “Larry”) occasionally out on the island in the last few years since they started dating. Just a great couple, really couldn't be more
of a fan of them -- both separately but especially together.
Still exhausted from Friday I get out to the island and borrow
the parents' Cherokee, then make my way down to the Cushman house at the end of
Minister's Lot where the wedding was set to happen on the beach. Place was a
great setup. Except for the horizontal, sheeting rain.
The crowd trundles from the house down to the dunes, rain
smattering everyone off the ocean as the waves roll in under a dark sky. The
groomsmen and one of the more stunning lineups of bridesmaids I've ever seen
come down, the girls goosebumped and shuddering uncontrollably in the wet cold.
Steve walks through the group looking pimp in an all-white suit and finally
Jen shows up looking rather amazing and not at all like any kind of Larry.
The wedding goes rather quickly. Some intense fumbling is
done untying the ring. Vows are exchanged. Two people are eternally unioned. There
might have been some making out, I don't know. And everyone heads back up the
dunes. The wedding party takes off in Vin MacAloon's van to do photos on the
bluffs, leaving the rest of us to start drinking. The wedding
party gets back twenty or thirty hours later, dinner's rolled out with some pot
roast, baked stuffed flounder, and chicken marsala, there's some speeches from
Greg and Steve McGirl and crytalking from the bridesmaids, and the night goes on.
I'm actually supposed to head home around 6:30pm to my
parents’ dinner party so I can make the 8:15am boat the next morning to be able
to get back to Boston for a Sox game with a vendor. But given how many people were there who -- like Kyle -- I loved seeing but hadn’t seen in four years or more, a 1pm boat and no game started
to sound better and better.
So there's a funny/great first dance with the Dire Straits'
Romeo & Juliet. Funny only because I remember Gasper, Zephyr, Marcus and
myself all standing around a bonfire listening to it at 3am sometime in 2000,
and Steve commenting at the time about how much he f#%&ing loved
the lyrics. Kind of cool to think back to someone standing there alone nine years ago,
listening to a song that makes him think of a woman he hasn't found yet, then come
back to the present and he's marrying her.
At one point Jen performs the bouquet toss. The second
bridesmaid knocks everyone over like an Austrian steamroller trying to
get to it and makes the catch. Steve then is on his knees and gets his wife's garter off with his
teeth, then also tosses it back. I have no idea why I'm doing it but manage to
snag the thing out of the air. Turns out I’m doing it because it means I get to put the thing
back on the bridesmaid's leg with my teeth as someone holds my arms back. Which I find
hysterical. I can barely keep the
thing in my mouth from holding back the laughing as tears roll down my face.
After awhile we move foosball and ping-pong tables upstairs, and
some pretty serious Beirut and foos action begins. Greg and I totally let the
newlyweds win. Around 8 or so I
drive my parents’ car back to their place as they’re stressing about it, have
some coffee with their friends who seem to be having about as good a time as
the wedding folks, then grab the CJ and
head back.
Back at the party some folks want to hit up the Yellow Kittens,
Steve wants to stay and enjoy what they have, I finally head into town with
some dude Ryan who was obscurely connected to the event and who'd been bitching about people wasting the beer foam earlier. Eventually most of the wedding shows up at Kittens, and after last call Ryan, I drive a few people over to Nermoe's for late night. At... some point... I
pass out.
End up getting the 3pm boat back Sunday. Amazing time everyone, and my apologies again for threatening to
murder the groom. I only meant it in the most loving way possible.
Lev Grossman: The Magicians: A Novel After buying this last summer on a friend's rec, I ended up blowing through it in two days on the most recent trip down to Barcelona. A bizarre mix of Narnia, Harry Potter, and an alcoholic Holden Caulfield, it ended up being just weird enough to be absolutely gripping. Can't wait for the sequels. (****)
George R. R. Martin: A Dance With Dragons Only finished the second chapter, but yeah, back in A Song of Ice And Fire. No idea how good this new fifth installment out of the alleged seven-book series will be, but hoping "really damn good" seeing as how the thing's 1,016 pages long and easily the largest hardcover book I've ever owned. This one may not make it back on the plane.
Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games Went with some light reading for the first few weeks of summer after ordering a dozen or so books off Amazon.co.uk. This one turned out to be great -- the story of a girl in a far-future version of the US, where the regime requires 24 contestants between the ages of 12 and 18 to battle to the death every year until there's a lone survivor. The story's told through the viewpoint of "girl on fire" heroine, Katniss Everdeen, a skilled huntress from having to hunt to feed her family, and determined to survive. Not the deepest reading but you can burn through it in a day or two. Entertaining as hell. (****)
George R. R. Martin: A Feast For Crows (A Song Of Ice And Fire, Book 4) Long and full of mud and sorrow. Still a great read full of great characters, but due to Martin's decision to split the stories of "Feast" and "Dance" into two separate books -- by character -- this one gets delegated to featuring all the less-loved folk, meaning there's no Jon, Dany, or especially Tyrion. Here's hoping the just-arrived #5 gets the momentum of the story established by #3 back on track. (***)
George R. R. Martin: A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) And on to the third one. Which despite the smaller form factor weighs in pretty hefty at almost 1,100 pages. Everything's burning, main characters are developing in new directions, the Kingslayer's on the move, the world's in turmoil, John Snow's in the thick of it, and Danny's on her way over with a few friends to wreck some shop.
So glad it's winter break and there's a fireplace handy. (*****)
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