Health Care....

So.....I missed the clinic closing today.

Damn.

I have health insurance.....Anthem has doubled the costs in the last three months, but I have coverage. For now.

$1000 deductible, no dental, no meds, I pay 20% over and above the first $1000....and it caps out after a car crash, but way before cancer or anything really bad.

And it is now more expensive than my rent.

For that shit.

Meanwhile, two weeks ago I broke a tooth.

The nightmare people who now run the Library insisted that I come to town to have a meeting about a party we have done for free for 30 years....to critique my performance and menu selection. Only in Carmel would you have to drive to an hour to town to be bitched at for giving away food....not just for giving away food, but for not giving away the right kind of food.....Too many carbs...not enough sensitivity to wheat alllergies.

Fuck me silly.

I took the dogs along as wingmen....The same way that if you hire a stripper on-line to jump from your cake, she comes with a giant Samoan wingman with no sense of humor. To protect her "honor".

By some miracle we arrived early on the day. No lunch, because believe it or not my day is usually too busy to actually eat. Energy flagging, depression mounting, blood sugar plunging. I stopped at Nielsen's for Diet Coke (caffeine) and Swedish Fish (sugar). Green food coloring (anti-depressant). The dogs howled in the car during my transaction, causing all the LOL's (which used to mean Little Old Ladies) at the Carmel Seniors....... to glare at me as if I were a child molester.

Note the use of subjunctive case....

Anyway....back at the car with the howling Pointers.....I gobbled some Fish, and washed them down with Diet Coke. It was cold day. The fish were stiff.....I broke a tooth.

Fuck.

I drove to the Library, found a parking place, left the howling hounds, ignored the broken tooth....on time for the meeting.

Wrong locale. Wrong Library.

Move the car. By now the dogs are going bug-fucky and clawing the walls, windows, ceilings....and me. I no longer hear the howling. I used to slaughter hogs....and I raised three screaming boys.

I re-park.

I run into the other Library, five minutes late. Wrong place, you have to go around back.

Fuck.

I run around back.....

The Library: "Oh....I am sorry. I forgot to call you. A board member was a little under the weather, so we cancelled the meeting. I hope this didn't inconvenience you......."

Fuck me silly. I am used to it. The Irish were niggers before they even invented the word to describe black people.

Meanwhile the dogs did not give a rat's ass about my broken tooth or my wasted afternoon. They can smell the beach. So, we drive there.....

And...there is no beach.

Proof that there is a God.....and She hates me. And German Wirehaired Pointers are her choice of weaponry.

Meanwhile, as a guy who spent 10 years in Europe in countries where there is no dental care....a busted tooth doesn't worry me.

I call my dentist.

Appointment in March.

Fine. No worries.

Until....

I start losing feeling in the right side of my face. And, I can't smile very well, because the muscles over there don't move. And my sinuses start tanking.

Now....I am scared. But, no room at the Inn. March is a ways off.

Luckily, my mad dogs are so nutty that they charge into inanimate objects for fun.... at speed ....on a daily basis. They have better health insurance and health care than I do, and we all spend lots of time at the vet's. I have bottles of antibiotics and painkillers around for the hounds...pills and injectables.

Can't get in till March? No worries. Got Doggie Downers.....Puppy Uppers.....Puppy anti-Buggers......We can hang in.

Cephelaxin.

Penicillin.

Boxes of Vicodin.....which actually don't matter, because the infection is destroying the nerves.

There is no pain....just a sense of loss.

Awesome.

And...we are oddly busy: in January, in a Depression.

So....no time to argue or seek alternatives. Shoulder to the wheel.

Meanwhile.....in an Alternate Universe....

That is: the Entire Rest of the World Who Don't Know Water Buffalo Personally......

This would not be an issue.

In Spain....where we go for culinary and cultural inspiration....and which country was run by an outfit crazier and more vicious than Hitler or Mussolini and which insane outfit survived 40 years after the war....has universal, single-payer health care.

Hitler thought he had an infinite supply of Jews, homosexuals and Slavs to grind down and burn up to run his industrial empire. Francisco Franco.....the twisted fuck who invited the Guernica massacre as practice genocide and inspiration for Art....realized that he needed functioning, healthy working class slaves to feed his industrial machine.

It is not a little thing.

If you are a Spanish 20 something.....if you have ever been hurt or sick, you go to the doctor and get fixed. Maybe you wait in a line for a few minutes or an hour....people tend to get hurt all at once.....but you are taken care of. Health care is not an issue in your life....more than the supply of oxygen or sunlight.

Meanwhile......

My 20-somethings know how to stitch up wounds with dental floss, and how to make butterfly bandages out of duct tape. There are even funny stories about my guys stitching themselves up with floss....and not noticing that is was green mint floss until too late.

Really.

And they all know where Hacienda Hay and Feed is.

Choice: you have an eye infection. Call Doctor Tocchet and ask for an appointment. Wait three days. Mom takes a day off from work to bring you. You get a script.....which you drive to Safeway to cash in. $80 for Doc, $80 for meds....Mom loses a day of work....you miss three days school. Or you go anyway, and give everyone else pinkeye.....which causes all of them to seek their private doctors and miss work and study.

Or.....you use the Otic salve from Hacienda.....$17 a tube....and you don't miss a minute.

The loss of efficiency, the loss of good labor, the loss of educational potential cannot be measured. Actually...it can be measured, but you don't want to know....any more than you want to know what is in that envelope the IRS just sent you.

Beyond that......is the concept that in Spain a child lives in an environment where she grows up with no question that the society and government are there to take care of her basic needs. No one is Spain has ever had to worry about missing work, or about how to pay for basic health care. It is part of the air they breathe. It is the wind beneath her wings. They think that the world around them values them....and their health and well being.

And, believe me....their kids fly on wings who take them to places of which our kids know not....

And this is a country run in recent memory by one of the top three most murderous motherfuckers ever to walk the planet.....and who cynically wanted health care for his people....

Walk the La Concha beach in San Sebastian today and be stunned by the beauty....and try to deal with the echoes of the daily executions that took place on that beautiful beach for twenty years. Franco was a cocksucker, but he was a realist. He wanted a functioning, efficient working class....so he could exploit them.

In our health care debate....which is really a health insurance debate....the main idea that Republicans have lost sight of is that everyone else in the world takes care of their workers as a given. Even insane fascists like Francisco Franco. The fact that America dumps health care off into ridiculously corrupt private cum buckets means that all of us business owners start off 20% or more short while trying to compete on world markets. Our national health policy has turned us into a third world country.

I own a shitty country store in Cachagua....a different sort of cum bucket. I have skills and visions of foods and service on a world wide scale.....and to implement them I have to count on only hiring kids who feel bullet proof, and who don't mind me stitching them up with dental floss if they fuck up....and don't mind cephelaxin from the vets if the infection gets out of hand.

You can get a way better deal in Kenya.....Don't talk about Spain.

Meanwhile....speaking of cum buckets....our national legislators have sold themselves against popular interests in a way that is unprecedented since Caligula stopped sending Legions to fight the tides.

More than 60% of Americans support single payer, and/or a public option for health insurance. Single payer works great in Canada, Mexico, England, France, Italy, Spain....fucking Costa Rica!!! and all our young people go to these places and understand that.

The medical insurance industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to pervert the popular will....and have succeeded. Did they think no one noticed? The guy getting the blowjob outside the bar thinks he is hiding in a bush?

I think that this epoch of supposed "democracy" and "will of the People" will go down as one of the most corrupt in two thousand years of studied, rampant corruption. People have been working at corruption, just like they work at internal combustion engines.

We now have Ferraris.

Republicans are obviously at fault....but worse are the Democrats who talk the talk.....and fail to walk the walk.

"Money talks....and bullshit walks. So...stop talking and start walking....."

It is inconceivable to me that our society could value the health of children less than the profits of oligarchs. Health insurance execs walk with BILLION dollar packages, while I shop at Hacienda Hay and Feed for antibiotics and eye medicine for six-year old soccer kids?

I think that our present legislators are the most venal and corrupt in the history of the world...

History will judge them....and us, for having allowed them power over us.

Murder in the Kitchen.....

My Uncle Bob from Portland sent me a big package full of family histories that I found on my desk this morning when I came in to do Sunday Brunch.

Uncle Bob is a retired Oregon Supreme Court judge and a 9th Circuit federal judge. Bob and I have had a cautious relationship for some time....as you can imagine a federal judge would have with a nephew who is clearly missing some important neurotransmitters..... and whose impulse control somehow gets lost in the wash.

Uncle Bob is six months younger than my Mom....and both of them are supposedly retired, but it is very difficult to tell how. Mom still teaches ESL three days a week, is a California Senior Senator, drives for Meals on Wheels three days a week, and runs the senior lunches at the Community Center in the Valley. Also she drives "old people' to their doctors appointments, and takes them to lunch. Uncle Bob still tried more than 60 cases last year....and is the kind of Oregon Republican who wrote the opinion that upheld the Oregon "Right to Die" law.....in the face of a conservative shit storm. I won't say how old they are....but it is very probable that the first movies they saw as kids were in black and white.....and silent.

Still, beyond the politics.....and being my Granpa's son (Gramps had an apron that said: "When It's Smokin' It's Cookin'.....When It's Black, It's Done.....) Uncle Bob has been a major culinary force in my life. At his house I saw my first Weber cooker when he took me in back in 1974. He grilled a filet of salmon over charcoal on the Weber for me one day....a fish dropped off by a local lawyer, fresh from the Willamette River that morning. It changed my life.....and is still one of my archetypal flavor memories.

Uncle Bob and I share one bigotry....we both hate cigarettes. His crazy, gifted writer sister smoked herself to death......Her last words to her mom: "Sorry, Mom.....I couldn't quit." My brother, another crazy gifted writer and editor...... also died of lung cancer. All his authors and editors smoked like chimneys at his wake

In Bob's package were some stuff about his career, some pages about my Grandpa's championship target shooting as a Customs agent (Bob and I are also both 2nd Amendment folk....in a civilized Oregon Republican kind of way.....), and an oral history of my grandmother's that was written by my dead aunt.

When I opened the package and picked up the hand-typed manuscript......the scent of nicotine and old ashtrays wafted up all through the kitchen around me. Aunt Bess. Long gone.....but here I am still breathing her air thirty-five years later. As I read her words.

It was an "Open Sesame" moment. Poof! "Sherman....set the wayback machine for 1921!"

My granny grew up on farms in Oregon.....first out by Ashland, then later in Beaverton near Portland. She lived almost to 100, so I knew her well enough to pick her brains forty years ago for recipes and techniques they used on the farm. Our confit of duck, the pork belly, the brined pork chops we serve every Monday....all Ashland recipes that turned out to be identical to country recipes I learned in France.

Even in Portland in 1921, my newly married Granny and Gramps lived in a house with no inside plumbing. When her Civil War cavalryman dad died, they used the settlement money to put in a septic tank, and there is a great passage about the joy with which they finally busted up the outhouse (and used the boards to pave the driveway). Gramps was unemployed except for gigs as a musician, so they raised chickens and sold eggs. The chicken house was only slightly better than the outhouse in terms of quality of life for newlyweds, and the money was crap.....so they came to the executive decision to fade from the egg business by having a roast chicken every Sunday.

Gramps was, relatively speaking, a city boy. By the time he managed to capture the chicken of the day, the shit was in the fan. Then holding it down and chopping off its head, while not chopping off his own hand....fully sucked. He was a dead shot, so finally he said "Screw it" and just shot the damn bird off its perch....then chopped off its head.

Does this sound like a book review so far? No?

Turns out that my friend Brian from Seattle was one of two people who actually sent me Christmas presents......books! A first "A Moveable Feast". A Toulouse Lautrec food poster book. Some nicely obscure fiction. And.....the "Alice B. Toklas Cookbook".

Brian is an artist....a jazz piano guy, as well as a subtly wonderful color photographer...so I appreciated the artistry of his gift....everything matched: culturally, historically, personally. This is one reason why I hate Christmas: it is really fucking hard to do it right!

It is possible that at one time or another Brian and I could have been called stoners....so I assumed that was the Toklas connection, plus the Hemingway/Gertrude Stein/1920's thing. Alice was "married" to Gertrude Stein, and they all lived in Paris in the 20's with Hemingway and Picasso, etc. And....everyone has heard of the "Alice B. Toklas Brownies".

Then I actually picked up the book and started reading. I started with Chapter 4: "Murder in the Kitchen". The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook is not exactly a cookbook. It is the wonderful, witty rambling rap about life and food that accidentally has some recipes. Murder in the Kitchen immediately starts with Alice, like Gramps, trying to murder a beast for dinner.

(And, of course....Alice, like Brian....is from Seattle. Well, by way of Oakland and SF).

Alice's narration had me on the ground, giggling. She writes recipes like I do.....recipes need context: cooking is way more than grams, liters and degrees. "I plunged the knife into the base of the carp's vertebral column. Horror of horrors! The carp was dead, killed, assassinated, murdered in the first, second and third degree. Limp, I fell into a chair and with bloody hands reached for a cigarette, lighted it and waited for the police. After a second cigarette my courage returned and I went to prepare poor Mr. Carp for the table......" The recipe for Carp Stuffed with Chestnuts follows.

Later she speaks of the smothering of squab (Braised Pigeon on Croutons), the murder of Babette, the duck, by the neighbor's sheepdog (Duck a l'Orange), etc. She discusses the crime novels of her friend Dashiel Hammet and his plot organization (the murders always take place before the novel opens) and weaves into the story the whole hypocrisy of diners being isolated from the bloody work of the chefs who serve them.

Then, for perspective: "Many times I held the thought to kill a stupid or obstinate cook.....but as long as the thought was held.....murder was not committed." She meets a genius Austrian chef whom she hires, and whose cooking she falls in love with. "He told us that he and Hitler had been born in the same village and that anyone in the village was like all the others and that they were all a little strange. This was 1936 and we already knew that Hitler was very strange indeed. Friedrich was not so much strange as weak: loving wine, women and song. But he continued to be a perfect cook...." Alice finishes the story of Friedrich's disastrous love life that took him away with a sweet elegaic recipe in his honor.

Alice does, of course, have the one controversial recipe: "Haschich Fudge (which anyone could whip up on a rainy day).

"This is the food of Paradise....of Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chaper meeting of the DAR. In Morocco it is thought to be good for warding off the common cold in damp weather and is, indeed, more effective if taken with large quantitities of hot mint tea. Euphoria and brilleiant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extentions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Sa. Theresa did....you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by "un evenouissement reveille."

The recipe follows. No chocolate involved. Think Stony Fruitcake. We are serving it tomorrow.

"Obtaining canibus may present certain difficulties, but the variety known as canibus sativa grows as a common weed, often unrecognized, everywhere in Europe, Asia and Africa. In the Americas, while often discouraged, its cousin, called canibus indica, has been observed even in city window boxes......."

My kind of recipe....and I don't even smoke pot......

A side effect of the nutty Nazi race doctrine was that pedigreed dogs got meat rations in Occupied France.....more meat than humans. Alice and Gertrude still gave all their meat rations (4 oz per week!) to their standard poodle. Alice learned to love crayfish and cultivated glorious gardens that she would dream about all winter.

Alice and Gertrude work as nurses in France in WWI, entertain Picasso, despise Hemingway, survive the Germans, welcome Patton, and recreate a lost world that it turns out is not so very lost after all. The book was strange for its time, because France was technically backward compared to Alice's America: no refrigeration or freezers...all the food was fresh and local. All of the interaction in obtaining ingredients involved dealing with crazy locals and crazy local culture...all of which was food for Alice's pen.This is the first cookbook....and the first book of any kind....that I have actually run to my desk for a highlighter while reading:

"The French, like their Bourbon kings, learn nothing and they forget nothing."

"If it seems to soon for another glorious lunch, remember what the young man said: "If perfection is good, more perfection is better...."

"Like many first-rate women-cooks she had tired eyes and a wan smile......"

"To cook as the French do once must respect the quality and the flavour of the ingredients. Exaggeration is not admissable. Flavours are not all amalgamative. These qualities are not purchasable but may be cultivated....."

"What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander....but is not necessarily the sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the guinea hen."

"The first gathering of the garden in May of salads, radishes and herbs made me feel like the mother about her baby.....how could anything so beautiful be mine?"

So.....what a great Sunday! Breathing the smoky aura from my Aunt Bess' story of my grandmother on one side of the desk, and Alice B. Toklas' wonderful book on the other side: two great ladies born more than 100 years ago and both of them still current, reachable, touchable......their ideals and values still vibrant and alive out here in Cachagua.

MFK Fisher.....another great California food writer of a certain age.....wrote about Alice in the intro to the uncensored Cookbook (the one with the has recipe) in 1984:

"I know now that the Alice B. Toklas' Cook Book would feed my sould abundantly if I could find no other nourishment, just as it would make me smile in the midst of sadness, and feel braver if I risked faltering."

It is a good book, as Alice said of something else: "abundantly satisfying....imagination being as lively as it is....."

Say it isn't so.....

Before you say something like: "Oh, those Brits....always bitching....."

Realize that General Metz has been in charge of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization since November of 2007.....so he should know.

The Brits have lost 246 troops in Afghanistan....more than a quarter of the 882 US losses. This is disproportionate to the size of the relative populations of the two countries, of course.

From the Daily Mail....

US 'won't share secret of beating roadside bombs'

By Christopher Leake, Mail On Sunday Defence Editor
Last updated at 11:09 PM on 09th January 2010

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The United States was accused last night of refusing to share with Britain the latest technology it uses against roadside bombs which have killed scores of Allied troops in Afghanistan.

US Army Lieutenant-General Thomas Metz, who retired last week as the chief officer specialising in counter-measures against the attacks, claims the UK and other coalition forces have been denied information which could save lives.

Lieut-Gen Metz has urged the Pentagon to share top-secret methods used by US forces to detect the so-called Improvised Explosive Devices and the terror networks which build them.

Deadly: Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) kill more coalition forces than any other weapon used in Afghanistan

But Pentagon chiefs have refused, arguing that if the information falls into the hands of the Taliban, new ways will be found to beat the technology.

IEDs kill more coalition forces than any other weapon used in Afghanistan.

Lieut-Gen Metz – a 61-year-old holder of two Distinguished Service Medals – described the US as ‘very timid’ in sharing intelligence.

He said: ‘If you’ve got information about the network, you don’t have to share how you got that information.

‘But it would surely be nice if your allies and your coalition partners got that part of the information that they needed to be successful.’

The officer said IEDs were often located using unmanned drone aircraft equipped with sensors to detect where ground has been disturbed to bury explosives. It is understood Britain does not possess this technology.

The Americans also use robotic helicopters to track the vehicles of insurgents planting bombs.

Military sources say there is no question of the US refusing to use its superior technology to help save the lives of British combat troops.

Last night, Shadow Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox said: ‘Information is key to operational success, and in any coalition operation if we expect better burden-sharing, we must have information-sharing.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242008/US-wont-share-secret-beating-roadside-bombs.html#ixzz0cBHaYWHg

My Friend Marcel....

Last month we were super busy.....no way to even much answer emails, much less write.

Normally, Christmas is slow for us....we hate fucking Christmas as the ultimate hypocrisy (great idea....bad execution, and the whole thing is supposed to be in March!), and strongly resist working on the cheap for doctors and lawyers for their one token party per year to pay back all the expensive dinner parties folks have treated them to all year.

Our hatred of Christmas is deep, wide and multi-faceted.

Personally, the boys and I recoil from the concept after our experience in 1993. The wife took off four days before Christmas with no notice while we were at a soccer match. We came home to an empty house, empty bank accounts, and no dogs. Still wrapped presents under the tree, though. I got to deal with heartbroken, weeping children for months.....but I still have the presents. Still wrapped.

Strike 2 for Christmas was the infamous Starlite International employee Christmas party.

Starlite was a network marketing outfit that rose from the ashes of Cambridge. Get your friends to buy this shit and you can retire to the Kona Coast. Nutritional supplements, I think. Because Starlite wouldn't pause production for a morning, we had to feed the workers in shifts starting at 10:45 am.....and lasting all the way to 2:45 pm. We set up a buffet in the lobby on Garden Road, blessed with Christmas music from a DJ with giant speakers.

And apparently only one CD.....Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole Christmas songs.

I have heard recently that the CIA uses Black Sabbath, Kiss and Metallica to get Al Qaeda to confess stuff at Guantamo. Fuckers blew it....the needed Nat and Natalie. They should call me....I have the DJ's number....after two hours of this stuff we were ready to confess to the Black Dahlia murder. After four hours we were all ready to volunteer for suicide missions anywhere.

I went up to the DJ at one point and asked if he didn't have the Eminem Christmas album. Joke. Irony.

"Eminem......He is disgusting!"

The corker was when the CEO came through dressed in a Santa suit with his trusty companion, Kurt the beautiful, large and malevolent Alsatian. Santa handed out candy canes to his African and Latino workers (Oh, goody! The Boss smiled at me!) and admonished them not to disturb Kurt unduly.

Strike 2.5 might have been this year when we did another employee Christmas party for a giant golf/real estate/fake environmental thing on an historical ranch in Carmel Valley. The AA's who booked the party insisted on a 100% American menu....with a veggie option. We suggested beef, a stuffed portabella, and maybe some tamales dulces or pavo mole also. Their was plenty of money in the budget.

"No.....Nothing Mexican! We want a real American Christmas."

Of the resulting 175 workers for the meal......160 were Latino. Maybe 60 were comfortable enough to speak English to us on the line.....

"Lo siento...no hay salsa. Este cosa se llama "horseradish con crema". Pica. Es como salsa para gabachos."

"Merry Christmas, you fucking wetbacks! You'll eat American food....and be grateful!"

Normally we serve about 10 people per quart of any given dish. 175 people.....18 quarts of gorgeous wild rice salad with cranberries, pumpkin seeds, currants, etc. 18 quarts of organic French green beans with mint. 30 quarts of mashed potatoes, and gallons of really nice mushroom gravy.

The workers ate TWO quarts of wild rice....about a grain per person. Maybe six quarts of green beans.

Merry Christmas.....the chickens in Cachagua were really festive.

Strike 3 for Christmas was one Christmas Eve at Macy's fifteen years ago. Something technical of ours had broken, and I had to run into the housewares department for a knife or a pan or a blender or some such. In and out, and on to Maggi Weston's....where he have spent the last 30 Xmas eves.

While paying for my blender/knife/pan I ran into Milton Bonilla....one of my star soccer players from Seaside. Milton's family is from El Salvador, and his older brother Walter was the best player ever to play in Seaside or Monterey. Despite my hurry to get out and get to Maggi's, the look of despair and desperation on Milton's face stopped me in my tracks.

"Milton, what's wrong?"

"Oh, Coach.....I have to get a present for my mother. I don't know what to do. I only have eighteen dollars....."

Milton and his family live in a converted motel room off Canyon Del Rey across from what is now Chile's. Eight to ten folks, Dad works as a cook at the yacht club on Wharf 2. Milton was 11 at the time. When not in school or on the soccer pitch, Milton sits in the little apartment and watches TV. For six weeks the kid had been bombarded with Xmas ads......what you give is how much you love. A Lexus with a big bow for the black family.....A diamond of a carat or more.

The message had sunk in with Milton. Message delivered. His eighteen dollars....in the face of the gale force of modern corporate advertising had let him know exactly what is love for his mother was worth....and what he was worth by extension. The expression on his face was the reflection of the seismic shift taking place in the boy.

Love mom with my whole heart and soul. Eighteen bucks don't mean shit.

Of course.....I downed tools. Blew off Maggi because I knew she would cry at the story after she stopped screaming at me for being late......Milton and I went up to the third floor and bought Mom a cashmere sweater. It wasn't the money.....it was soft as her kisses, and her favorite color.....rich and vibrant, just like the space her hard work and love created in their little apartment. Bob Cratchett....stand back!

Bitch.....

Anyway....despite our antipathy, we were super-busy this year. The recession must have dropped whatever businesses used to do down to our price-point. I am thinking that lots of these folks used to go to restaurants....bad news for my restaurant buddies.

So, back to the point.........Last night, our Jenny was telling a story about working at From Scratch and some disappearing eggs. Jenny is in the Hall of Fame of local bartenders, having survived 14 years at the Running Iron. She now works three jobs...two for us....and is going to school full-time to become a nurse.

Her story about the disappearing eggs at From Scratch immediately made me think of Marcel.....

And.....I just now see that I started a post on Dec 13th....also about my friend Marcel, the waiter.

Marcel and I worked together at the Colony in New York City back in the day.....1971.

The Colony was an old school place....Truman Capote, Jacque Kennedy kind of place. Salvador Dali, Tricia Nixon Cox, Andy Warhol.............Cordelia Biddle Duke Robertson even.

Here is the kind of old school The Colony represents: my son gave me a Christmas present of a book about the history of New York restaurants. The Colony and I are about two thirds of the way through the 300 year history of NYC restaurants. OLD school.

Billy Joel was our piano guy. Really. He wrote the song at the Colony with us on long, despairing broke summer nights in 1971.

Anyway.

Marcel was a French guy....very slim and very short....maybe 5'7" and 110 pounds. He favored the big lapelled tuxedos he found in the basement locker room of the 70 year old restaurant.....and Marcel always went to work armed. He had a little .22 automatic with six rounds in the magazine that snuggled right up next to his corkscrew. Those big lapelled tuxes had an inside pocket virtually designed for a piece.....but that is another story.

I was befuddled why I started writing about Marcel in December in the middle of the rush. Something about disappearing eggs at a cocktail party.....

Marcel was the consummate professional. He could deal with all, every and any situation that could arise in a dining room filled with celebrities.

Marcel was from Marseille and started working in restaurants when he was twelve. He got his first big break when he landed a job at sixteen at a cafe on the Champs Elysee in Paris as a commis de suite.

In French dining rooms the waiters work in teams: a commis de suite and a commis de rang. A waiter and a runner. The waiter...the commis de rang....never leaves the station. The rang, pronounced "wrong". He takes the orders, fusses and does all the sidewalk monkey work. The commis de suite....the runner.....delivers the orders to the kitchen, deals with the chefs, and brings the food back to the station. Typically, the commis de rang has a guerridon (a war wagon) which is a rolling cart he uses to serve all the meals. Dishes are delivered on silver platters to the guerridon. The commis de rang moves the dishes from the platters to individual plates with flair and little touches, and the two partners serve the meal.

The commis de rang is the senior partner. He makes probably four or five times the money of the runner. There is a captain above both commis, and a maitre d'hotel above the captains, so the flow of tips is a trickle when it gets to the commis de suites. Truth be told, there are awesome commis de suites who earn as much as the waiters or even captains...but it is only age, experience, politics and flat out speed that allow this to happen. And the ability to produce the only thing that matters to waiters......major tips.

So....back to Marcel on the Champs Elysee.

As a new guy, albeit with a connection that got him the job to begin with....Marcel got the worst station with the worst tip situation. His station was all the way out by the sidewalk. The cafe had an inside area, an upper level deck, an intemediate deck.....and the sidewalk deck. This meant that Marcel had to run up two flights of steps and all the way through the restaurant to the kitchen....four or five times for each table, two meals a day, a hundred covers per meal. He made.... for a full day's work....the price of two beers in the cafe, although he had a room in the dorm and three crappy meals per day.

I was Marcel once....only in Austria. I have lived this life.

Anyway.....

Even though it was a shitty station....Marcel and his waiter still had their regulars. Business guys would pop in daily for coffee, an omelette, a light lunch, a couple of pops....and some time to read the papers and correspondence from the office. Steady, predictable, kind...good tippers. Plus all the tourist douche bags. Heaven and Hell.

One day, the ultimate thing happened for a commis de suite: the waiter called in sick at the last minute. No way to get a replacement....Marcel stepped up and told the captain and the maitre d' that he could cover the station.

This was a huge chance to show off his skills and make some serious dough. Like the rookie pitcher being called in to pitch in Yankee Stadium in relief in the 15th inning.

Marcel rose to the occasion. He polished his shoes, brushed down his jacket, slicked back his hair and got pumped. He took the orders, delivered the drinks, ran the food...sprinting like a maniac up the two sets of steps, through the other stations, through the indoor restaurant....and navigated the craziness of the kitchen to protect his folks.

Marcel ran like a nut....but when he got to his station, he shifted gears......slowed down, and transformed from commis de suite into commis de rang. He was calm, smooth, contained.....attentive. And he had flair.

And he was making major dough.

As always each day....M. Blanc arrived for his table just in the nook of the last set of steps down to the sidewalk. M. Blanc owned this table...the way he owned a major seat on the Bourse. He arrived every day at precisely 11:45 and had precisely the same order: Vichy water, Ricard, omelette aux fines herbes, cafe. M. Blanc always left by 1pm.....and was ritually generous with his gratuity.

Day of.....Marcel was ready for M'sieur. Had the Vichy and Ricard all ready on his side station.

Marcel reassured M. Blanc that all was cool without the waiter, and brought him his water, drink and paper. Marcel had already set up the order, so when he raced back to the kitchen it was already fired and he jumped to the head of the line to pick up.

Nailing it!

Marcel held the silver tray with the omelette over his shoulder as the dodged the kitchen melee, through the doors and through the chaos of the inside dining room.....down the steps to the first terrace, held held high....perfect posture.

Down the steps to the sidewalk...guerridon waiting next to M. Blanc's table.... anticipating the turn at full speed with the platter ever so.....

And the omelette aux fines herbes slid off the silver platter on the turn.....

And dropped directly into the side pocket of M. Blanc's suit jacket.......

M. Blanc was engrossed in his Paris Match....

Marcel had a decision:

Grovel as the incompetent, over-reaching commis de suite failing..... his big chance to cover the spot of the missing commis de rang....what could one expect?

Or.....

Turn.

Race back to the kitchen.

Elbow aside all the other "suites".....

And get a new omelette.

Through the restaurant, head held high.....

Down the steps to the first terrace.....

Down the steps to the sidewalk with the silver platter held ear-high ever so.....

To the waiting guerridon....

Where he moved the gorgeous omelette aux fines herbes from the sliver to the plate and laid it before M. Blanc with as much elan as any waiter ever in the history of France.

"M'sieur....May I get you anything else?"

"Perhaps a coffee in a few minutes. Merci bien......"

Back to work. All good. Check paid, generous routine tip.....

Strikeout on a 3-2 count with the bases loaded in the 16th inning.

One only wonders what M. Blanc thought when he got back to the office and reached for his keys......

So....now I remember what brought Marcel to mind last month.....

I served an hors d'oeuvre to an old guy at a nice party.....bone marrow with some local chanterelles. The guy grabbed the bite, and as he guided it to his mouth everything dropped off the crouton directly into his pocket....marrow, chanterelles, butter...the works.

The guy mowed the crouton.

"Delicious. You are the best, as always....."

And our Jenny....working her third job at From Scratch at breakfast on Sunday. Plate of eggs, slammed, not enough time or help......she is both the commis de suite and commis de rang every day of her life in all three jobs....

Jenny turns quickly....busts through the door and out to the regular customer in his place by the stairs.

When she arrives......no eggs on the plate.

Jenny goes back to the kitchen....

And laughs hysterically with the Mexican chef about the missing eggs....

Restaurant People live in a different Universe than Normal White People.

We have a different God.....

And I love Her....... Sense of Humor.

Props to Marcel.....Wherever you are.

Joyeux Noel......













I was reminded of Marcel tonight while serving a clueless older guy at a cocktail party. Chanterelles with bone marrow.....the guy took the canape, tried to study it, and dropped both the chanterelles and the bone marrow into the pocket of his blazer as he struggled with the appetizer.

What to do? Tell him about it.....or get over it and move on?


Omelette in the pocket. Cab to the elevator.

Waste not, want not......

Back in the day my first job in the restaurant biz was at L'Auberge du Cochon Rouge.....the Inn of the Red Pig....in Ithaca, New York.

My mentor chef there was Etienne Merle.....who himself was mentored by his father, Pierre. These guys were hard-core, old-school French pricks.

Nothing was ever wasted in our kitchen....nothing. Etienne would even monitor my tying of the ducks for roasting to make sure that I was only using so much string. Then, when the ducks were roasted, he would monitor my cutting through the knots in just the right way......so I could re-use the string for the next load of ducks.

String.

Inches of string.

It mattered.

I am always amused by people who make jokes about the Scots and the Jews being culturally cheap. These folks have never worked in a French kitchen. Don't even talk to me about cooking in the vineyards in Burgundy and slaughtering pigs for the grape-pickers. (Hint: "andouille" only means "sausage" in Corralitos and New Orleans....in France it means "small pig intestine as pasta).

The French kitchen dynamic has been rolling for 700 years. Right now, we follow the Northern Spanish model.....creative, market-driven, etc, etc. Andoni Aduriz taught Brendan to make a killer dish using apple cores......His chefs comb the hills in the mornings for wild saffron, mushrooms, tender herbs......

Unknown to almost everyone is the fact that Northern Spain, a "neutral" country in WWII, underwent a viscious famine after the war. Juan Mari Arzak, Pedro Subijana, and Sr. Elizondo in San Sebastian grew up with no food....and close relatives who died from hunger. It is no wonder that modern Spanish cuisine uses gleaners....and turns the kind of fungus, produce, fish and shellfish Carmel rich folk never notice or are repelled by into high art.

Kitchen work and profitability go back to the struggle between the two age-old dynamics: 1) "It is better to throw out than throw up....."; 2) "It is better to throw up than throw out......"

America is obsessed with weird OCD visions of its food. Americans cut the rind off Brie as something dangerous and disgusting.....and guzzle gallons of poorly filtered, acrylomide-laden fry fats....and don't even mention the GMO corn, sugar, cotton....and the RoundUp Ready rapeseed oil that went into the crappy fry fat to begin with.

In America, image is everything.....and proof positive of our place as Greatest Nation in the Universe (?) is our ability to have Lots of Food All the Time... or the image of an abundance food.....but food that meets our narrowly defined concept of wholesome, healthy and fun.....

Which definition has been defined by a diabolic conversion of marketing, agribusiness and political corruption on a grand scale....

Oh.....and:

There is no hunger in America!

We'll just ignore the whole NY Times article about food stamps. The whole thing about the fact that there are 239 counties in the US where more than 25% of the population is on food stamps......36 million people in all. Such a buzz-kill.

OK.....fold that nugget into this one: Americans now waste 40% of the food we produce and prepare. Check it.

And it is not just the food that is wasted.....the water (25% of our fresh water consumption goes to food production), the energy (production, preparation, transportation).....300,000,000 barrels of oil yearly. I have not heard anyone talk about the labor......I have had gifted engineers carefully slicing green onions ever so.......

And.....we are in the middle of an obesity and diabetes epidemic.

Is this Through-the-Looking-Glass stuff, or what? Water and energy shortages, 36 million on food stamps, 35% obesity rates, increasing diabetes, 40% food waste......

I have been busting my ass in the restaurant business for 40 years. I have still.....touch wood....not lost a nickel doing it, for me or any of my foolish investors. Restaurants, like grocery stores....run on an expectation of a 1-3% profit.

And we are pissing away 40% upfront?

And.....this is a great country?

How stupid are we?

Really fucking stupid....or amazingly lazy and passive, as it turns out.

Six or eight square-state senators control our farm and food policy....and create all this mess, with a huge assist from agribusiness, mass food outlets, etc.

The scientists who calculated that each American tosses 1400 calories a day (which is ironically the Oprah Weight Loss Calorie Goal) trace the loss to marketing and policy.

More is better. Push it, mow it, and toss it.

Anyway...back to waste, local version.

Even as a French-trained, waste-nothing kitchen prick....we still compost at The Store 9-10 five gallon buckets of trimmings and food waste every week....minimum. 400 pounds a week for a little caterer with a one-day-a-week restaurant. This does not include meat scraps, which go in the dumpster.....or the dogs.

Part of this waste is just normal: no one eats the core of the fennel bulb or the carrot peels....even after we make veggie stock from the skins, stalks and cores.

The lion's share of this is just pure waste....we grow too much and we buy too much, trying to anticipate our clients demands. We work our butts off trying to anticipate your needs and demands.....but we work an 18 hour day every Monday....and most weekends prepping food that no one will ever eat.

God forbid we should ever run out of anything. It would be Un-American. We are a good caterer....we never run out of anything.

For example.....today we have a half organic chicken, half a duck, 20# of organic tomatoes, a shit load of chard, kale, eggplant and sorrell...... 10# of organic purple potatoes that went to seed.....15# of tri tip, a whole wild salmon....5# of wild harvested wild rice, 5# of natural pork loin, three racks of organic, smoked baby back ribs, 3 # of wild halibut, 4# of wild scallops, three sheet pans of hand made pasta, six servings of handmade lasagnette, one awesome serving of rabbit, three natural filet steaks, two natural double pork chops......plus the peels, trims and cores. And this is winter, when we are slow. Oh, and two sides of wild smoked salmon nobody bought.

We eat as much as we can....and give away as much as we can...but my dogs are really happy dogs.

And.....we are often on the receiving end of unwanted food. In October we were trying to deal with a half ton of organic heirloom tomatoes a week, plus the plums, peppers, squashes, lettuces of a system geared to only consuming the best of the best when in the mood....and tossing everything else.

Part of the whole abused child/PTSD syndrome that French-trained chefs deal with after our training is Stockholm Syndrome.....a misplaced love for the captor/abuser, and a tendency to propagate the abuse into further generations.

We should be so lucky.

Based on my training.....I still scrape my bowls and blenders with the best quality silicone spatualas because the French taught me to be cheap....but also because they taught me to respect the food, the people who grew it, and the folks put love and intensity into bringing it to me.....and to get the maximum value out of all that time, attention and work.

Tonight my dinner was some leftover pasta I made three weeks ago.....green from the basil pulp that derives from making our basil oil that I blended into the mix for the linguine. It was brittle, and you have to be careful standing it up on end over the small pot of water so it all gets cooked in one piece (all our big pots are at The Store).

I had the basil linguine with some sauteed fresh local boletes.....I bought six pounds from a local gleaner yesterday.....and sold two pounds last night. Actually I sold one pound.....I gave away two orders as a mitzvah, another story. The other four pounds will go to waste, since it is almost impossible to store, freeze or dry king boletes.

I sauteed the boletes in good European-style Wisconsin butter from Wuthrich .....that I have tons of because I have to make a certain weight in my orders to be able to buy my panko and my Valrhona chocolate from my supplier. (Amuricans buy by weight, dammit!). The butter costs dramatically less than Costco butter, and insanely less than Safeway butter....but no one buys it in Cachagua, or elsewhere for that matter. I give it away as party favors with the unserved bread Micah bakes on Monday's, and people often back away from me, politely as I rant...We sell Wuthrich for $2.50 a pound, and make a profit. It is so good that I am torn between considering it an anti-depressive....or a depression enabler. In our household, butter is a beverage, and the fact that I pay less than $1.80 per pound for a wonderful, hand-made product makes me weep....both for joy at my access to inexpensive abundance, and in sadness for Mr. Wuthrich.....family owned since 1904.

Finally, I grate over my pasta the heel ends of my Beecher's cheddar that I bought on my tour with my friend Charyn in Seattle on October 7. It is a cow/sheep blend made in a shop across from Pikes Place Market. In Monterey this would be like buying a bread bowl of shitty clam chowder from a Shake descendant, saving it for two months, and dying of salmonella and botulism for nostalgia's sake....In Seattle the rules are different. In Seattle the tourists are a side effect, not the raison d'etre. Beecher's makes the cheese on the spot....you can watch them. You can also buy the world's best Grilled Cheese Sandwich, and arguably the world's best Mac and Cheese for four or five bucks.....and you can take home chunks of the cheese being made behind you. I bought sixty bucks worth.....Charyn bought the mac n cheese.

As the insanely kind, friendly and helpful clerk was wrapping up my chunks of cheddar......

(Seattle also is the center of American kindness and politesse. People stand easily in lines, and take the opportunity of line-standing to converse. No worries. The day I returned from Seattle I was in the am at the Carmel Valley Chevron trying to buy coffee, gas and Red's donuts.....the fuel of the local construction industry this side of heroin and methamphetamines.....and noticed a builder-type guy standing politely and waiting while uptight yuppies and whacked out sheet-rockers charged the register, banging elbows and throwing money at the poor checker. As we waited, I asked him: "So......How long have you been away from Seattle?"

"Six months.....how did you know?"

Never mind.......)

Back to Beecher's on 7 Oct......

I heard the clerk at the next register respond to a question:

"How long will the cheese be good for?"

"About a week...if you wrap it ever so, and pray to the cheddar gods, and abstain from oral sex....and if the refrigeration and humidity is right......"

WTF?

My chunk has been loosely wrapped in the original paper since 8 October. I consider it an anti-depressant. It helped my parvo puppy over the hump of being scared of food (he was a from Wisconsin in a previous life and is crazy for milk products)......It served us a dozen impromptu meals in October and November....

And tonight I grated the crusts and rinds over my leftover pasta ......with the unwanted butter that sauteed the unsellable mushrooms.

Heaven.

I admit that I did add salt....Murray River Pink.

Apparently.....I was dumpster-diving, according to the American Ideal.

And....

I am still just now getting over being pissed off about the couple last night at The Store who sent back two plates of oak roasted local natural lamb.....without even TASTING it!

It didn't LOOK right.....They refused it on sight.

It wound up as my dinner, as it turns out....and snacks for Zim, the Criminal Border Collie, who was really happy....as was Haji, Zim's puppy, another Canine Criminal-in-training.

It was delicious....and technically perfectly medium rare, as ordered......142 degrees F....digitally monitored.

It was a rich red in color because it was a natural product, raised on a fifth-generation ranch up by Lake Almanor somewhere by folks genetically imprinted to care about their work.....not some shite from Outback.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

You have to really be something to be 86'd from the Cachagua Store. I served wild diver scallops last night to a guy who sleeps in the creek behind The Store in dry weather......

These people are beyond 86'd.

I don't just want to 86 them....I want to hit them with something sharp, shiny and heavy.

Actually.....something dull, filthy and blunt......

Like their world view......

Secret Service.....

If anyone was wondering seriously about the relative importance of two social climbers making into the State Dinner at the White House.....wonder no more.

I have passed Secret Service scrutiny three times....minimum. Any outfit that would allow me within wine-pouring distance of a sitting President, former President, or Presidential candidate.....has a deep and abiding trust in the goodness of mankind.

Plus....it turns out the dumbass Obama's fired the woman in charge of vetting all the social guests to the White House in advance, and who was always present at the door of all social functions to double check the lists and find problems. Well, they didn't fire her....they just demoted her to the point of absurdity. She was a hold-over from the Bushes, you see. Been on the job since 2001. Knew every idiot in Washington.....

Let's see: Obama kept the Secretary of Defense from Bush....and every one of the politically appointed US Attorneys from the Bushes....and fired the chick who can tell chicken from chicken shit on the red carpet?

Oy.

They probably also fired all the little old lady volunteers who hand-wrote thank-you letters to all the visitors and for all the gifts sent to the White House. They probably have a high-tech firm send out printed letters. So much more sustainable and efficient.

Believe me.....don't let Republicans run your war, but don't let Democrats anywhere near your State Dinner. They don't know fish fork from oyster fork....and they are prone to fake Rolex's and Thom McCann's. When it comes to parties, Democrats could fuck up a wet dream. Plus, they don't know when to leave.

I think Obama missed a key appointment when he failed to hire Ray Krenske (aka "The Radiator" as the door guy at the White House.

Ray worked for us for 20 years....and has since retired to Denver. Ray was fired from virtually every service establishment (Mediterranean Market, Nielsen's, DoReMi, Thunderbird, Bird of Paradise, Grapes of Wrath, etc )on the Peninsula for being rude to the public. Actually, Ray was never rude.....Ray just did not suffer fools.....or rudeness....gladly. He would have spotted the Salahi's at fifty paces.....

Ray was a discalced monk....and a theatre buff and professor. Ray was straight out of Gosford Park. Some would say,not so straight..... but not me.

Classic Ray: Pebble Beach fancy dinner party with Peter Ueberoth, Arnold Palmer and various CEO's in attendance. A scattering of locals and press were invited for cocktails before dinner, but dinner was for 12.....period. Place settings, china, flowers, menu to match all of the above decided months before.

The writer from Forbes Magazine failed to leave on cue at 7:45, and seemed very comfortable sitting on the couch in front of the fire overlooking Cypress Point with a Waterford crystal tumbler of Glenmorangie in his hand.

The hostess was stressing: Cypress Point rules decree that dinner must be served by 8:04. Forbes boy was still there, and immune from all her subtleties. We turned Ray loose.

Ray came into the family room, and in his most imperious voice announced: "Dinner is served.....for all the invited guests."

Forbesy actually got up and made a move for the dining room. Ray gripped him firmly by the arm and steered him to the coat closet and the front door.

"Sir, I am sure you have somewhere wonderful to go to just now......"

"Well, actually......I don't."

Ray...handing him his coat and shoving him firmly through the front door......into the pouring rain.

"Pity......."

Con te partiro.....

This is a post from last month....I thought it was long and boring. Sorry.

So….a couple of times in my life I have been awestruck by music.

Awe struck….as in gap-mouthed, dumb and drooling…..“struck by lightning”…..full on, melt down….Like the apes in “2001”. Uhhh….that was a movie back in the day, before the whole plane-crashing thing.

I was an electrical engineer once… The last class I failed at Cornell in the EE school was taught by Robert Moog….he of the synthesizer, and brake/alignment fame. I learned that Middle E is 400 cycles per second. A square wave sounds like a clarinet. Turn it up loud enough and it will move you……even if you are a rock.

Hence my early music movements: the Allman Brothers live at the Fillmore East… the Airplane, same venue. Jeff Beck. Drugs may have been involved. Crazy decibels certainly were.

I grew up as the son of a crazy, violent, abusive, schizophrenic, drunken banker who loved classical music. Pops would come home from the train….grab a bottle of Boodles, retire to the den and blast Mozart and opera until he passed out under his New Yorker magazine.

Classical music, banking……and gin…. have never been my favorites……..

After my various and many failures in engineering…..I found myself adrift in the kitchens and cellars of Europe after graduation. Burgundy. Switzerland. Greece. Turkey. Croatia. Kosovo, even. And….Austria. Separated from my childhood sweetheart, Jane….recovering from a broken heart or a broken head. Hard to tell the difference.

I used to work in Vienna at Demel’s….the place that claims to have the real Sacher Torte recipe. (Ggg-grandpa Demel worked at the Hotel Sacher, created the cake….. and they didn’t pay him or whatever. He bailed with the recipe 150 years ago, and the battle over Sacher authenticity continues to this day.

This is how crazy I was/am: I was working in Kitzbuhel in a fancy restaurant from 4pm till 4am....then skiing all day on the mountain. I had no money so I could only afford about eight bucks a day. Eight bucks on the mountain got you a slice of Sacher Torte and a viertel of gluwein……a quarter liter of hot, spiced wine with a good shot of Inlander rum in it. Nutrition according to a 23 year old.

I fell into Sachertorte and gluhwein when I was accidentally in a bar on the mountain when Princess Caroline of Monaco swept in with her entourage. Caroline was the most beautiful, radiant human I had ever beheld….plus, she was a dead ringer for Jane. Princess ordered Sachertorte and a viertel gluhwein…….I was hooked.

I was also crazy. I worked all night, skied all day….and in the wee hours of the night conducted a contest in my mind for “Greatest Novel of the 20^th Century” between “Sometimes A Great Notion” and “Gravity’s Rainbow”. I read them both cover to cover twice in a row in my spare time that winter. And played on a local hockey team.

No wonder I was single and depressed.

I was so hooked by the Caroline/Jane/Sachertorte/gluhwein thing that I finally quit my job in Kitzbuhel and moved to Vienna to work at Demel’s. Did I think Caroline or Jane would show up? Did I think I would master Sachertorte’s and win the love of Caroline/Jane? Who knows.

Anyway, Vienna was brutal in the winter, especially after a 16 hour shift that netted eight bucks……I hauled bags of flour in from the street, up and down stairs…and did all manner of menial jobs just short of the vile Jugoslavian dish dogs.

After work I would always go two blocks to the Augustiner Keller….. if they were still open. (6.5 days a week, two shifts we worked)….a 500 year old bar next to the palace in Old Vienna. I would hang with old ladies like we have in Cachagua….hardworking, classy, bitter, vicious….only these old ladies had worked for the Kaiser….before WWI.

Next to the Augustiner Keller was the Augstiner Kirche…..an old church, part of the Hofberg (Palace) complex of the old Kaisers.

I grew up a hard-core Catholic…the bishop’s altar boy…..so I have had all of Roman Catholic orthodoxy beaten into me. I can still run the entire Latin Mass out loud, or in my sleep….both the priest’s part and the altar boy’s part: “Introibo ad altare Dei.” “ Ad deum qui laetificat, juventutem meum.”

I will go to the altar of God…..to God, the joy of my youth.

Right.

I still have all the hymns in Latin: “Tantum ergo, sacramentum……”, etc. running through my head....

Which is only coincidentally the tune to the Nazi Germans’ national anthem.

So.....on a given night in 1972 in Vienna on my half day off on Sunday…..with no money in my pocket and snow pouring down and my crappy room a two mile hike away.........I turned into the Augustiner Kirche after a visit to the Keller.

“The preacher likes the cold…..he knows I’m goin’ to stay....”

Introibo ad altare dei.......Indeed.

They were doing a Mozart Mass. The place was packed and I was late and a little drunk….so I sneaked up onto the altar and sat out of the way in a spot where I knew no one would notice me. I grabbed a program......which turned out to be the entire score of the Mass.

Mozart wrote the Mass in the Augustiner Kirche….using the Augustiner Kirche’s organ to diddle about and create the piece.

There was a big choir, an orchaestra......and the same damn organ Mozart had originally used to write the Mass.

I had the score….so I could watch everything unfold as it was written out centuries past:: each voice, each instrument......everything.

Sitting on the altar I watched the notes crawl across the printed page as the choir and the band set up a sonic and emotional resonance in the old church that gave me glimpses of things I had never before imagined or felt.

The engineer in me responded to the organization…..the incredibly detailed aspect of one man writing things down on paper that could transmit crazy emotion and knowledge across centuries….instructions for fifty people to follow 200 years after his death to essentially bring him back to life.

It brought everything together for me……the music, the math, the architecture, my dad, the insane work level, the crushing weather…..the refuge of the church. The little frozen, desiccated nugget that was my soul warmed, expanded…..and flew.

I wept quietly and secretly there in my shadow on the altar.....

I got it.

I remember walking home that night and laughing to myself about how cold it must have been to have tears actually freeze on my face.....

So….on to tonight.

We are at the bitter end of a long season. By Friday, we will have done 20 parties in a week. This week alone we have had 15 in four days. We are staggering, fucked and done…..We maintain our sense of professionalism at the expense of our bodies and our souls. Everyone tells us that we are lucky to be busy….and we are too tired to realize that they are dummies and this is all random chance and we will be fucked and broke next month.

Tonight….on our fourth party of the day... we did a fundraiser for Big Sur Land Trust in a house in Carmel. It was sketchy even to have power in Carmel today….and even sketchier to have a Cachagua caterer come 25 miles to town over a winding mountain pass to work after the biggest storm in 40 years.

Big Sur Land Trust event: some piano guy with a concert and board members and major donors. 30pp for apps for an hour, followed by the music. 5:30pm start....with luck we can be gone by 7pm. Please, Jesus….

Upon arrival there is some turmoil in the house. The hot water heater is out. A nice older man is trying to light it and failing. Lee tries to help him.....and fails. The guy just wants a shower, but we come from Cachagua where the storm has taken all of our plumbing out….no water, hot or cold….and no drainage, no sewage, no toilets…..and 36 consecutive 16 hour days without a break. We maintain a barely professional recognition of the gentleman’s lack of hot shower.....We call a plumber.

The household starts to arrive…..BSLT people, the host…who is not the shower guy it turns out....and a beautiful woman who comes in to check out the food. She is from Seattle and loves oysters and champagne. She is a Virgo....August 24….and each year she and her brother buy a bushel of oysters and drink themselves silly and cut their hands up celebrating. She is the cello accompanist for the piano guy….who is the shower guy, it turns out.

I am smitten: Virgo....hot....cellist who is from Seattle, loves champagne, loves oysters and can and does shuck her own in the hundreds range.

Her name is Wendy. Instantly trying to forget the Seattle band, The Odds, song about a Wendy...

So.....”Who is the piano guy with the shower problem?” I ask….

“Phillip Glass.”

Should I know him?

Wendy laughs hysterically and goes off to her room……

Well.....Wendy is Wendy Sutter, and Phillip is Phillip Glass. Wendy started with the Seattle Philharmonic at 16 and now teaches at Columbia after studying at Julliard, etc, etc, etc.

Philip Glass is Phillip Glass.

Wendy is packing a 450 year old cello built by the guy who taught Stradivarius how to build cellos and violins. The cello has the bed in the guest room. The cello is worth 10 million dollars.

Trying to rally…..I ask Wendy about her bows for the cello. Old Jack from Pine Valley builds bows for Yo Yo Ma, and I wonder if she has heard of Jack.

“Well….there are a lot of bow-makers. Sorry. Bows are kind of dime a dozen compared to the instruments. I don’t mean to be disrespectful of your friend….”

Duh.

“So….where did your bow come from, and……what do bows cost?”

“Italy. This one I use for traveling and I got a great deal on it. It was only 17,000 euros. I think I can resell it for 25k eu.”

No wonder a couple of cello bows can keep Pine Valley Jack in beans and rice for a decade or two….

Sufficiently humiliated…we wait for the show to start. Guests arrive and are fed. We manage to get some crab and oysters into Wendy despite her normal pre-concert fasting routine. Phil is a vegetarian….but indulges as well.

Then they play……

A tape of the concert exists….we sat behind the camera. Phillip played an Etude #2, and something else #2. He ran circles and poems around our heads….toyed with us and dazzled us.

Then, Wendy played a solo something that reminded me of Greg Brown…. Or Tom Waits. Growly, grumpy, bassy…..and ultimately deeply moving…..like hearing your granpa talk about courting your granma on the race train to the Derby.

Anyone who thinks that modern technology has all the answers has not met Wendy and her 450 year old cello. Willow wood sides. I forget the wood in front. There is a stainless steel brace where the foot is installed….but everything else is 16^th century. The sound that she brings from that old willow is beyond 16^th century….it is preternatural.

I learned about resonance as an engineer…..and the music and the sound resonated in that room on levels unimaginable. I don’t have the words…..but once again I was reminded that I have a soul….and once again that dessicated little fucker flew……

Con te partirò.
Paesi che non ho mai
veduto e vissuto con te,
adesso si li vivrò,
Con te partirò
su navi per mari
che, io lo so,
no, no, non esistono più,
con te io li vivrò.

No shit….Paesi che non ho mai…..indeed. Su navi per mari che io lo so non esistono piu…..

Yup. Countries I never saw…..and seas which I know exist no more.

Thanks, Wendy…..

The best part?

When the recital was done, Wendy bee-lined it to the kitchen for some bubbly and some shellfish. I stuttered and babbled…..but she was just another pro, back in the kitchen with the other worker bees.

“God…..that was awful.”

WTF? It was supernatural......

“No….the music was OK….It is just having all those people so close to me. Normally there is a big stage, and I can work with my instrument by myself in my own bubble. But all these people were right on TOP of me…..It was weird.”

As the guy who inaugurated his 60^th year on the planet by screaming at nice old lady to “get the fuck out of my kitchen”……

I could relate.

Princess Caroline and Mozart….move over.

I wonder what Wendy thinks about Sachertorte?