Rumors have been greatly exaggerated.......

OK.....

I grovel and apologize for drifting back into the task-oriented world and not posting for three entire weeks.

There has been an intervention: not the "we-will-never-talk-to-you-again-if-you-don't-stop drinking-Gruet-Rosé" style intervention.....but the "if you do not keep us posted you are a lame ass" type intervention.

Hey....my Mom always told me: If you don't have something nice to say......shut the fuck up.

We were stunned by loss last month. Loss, not floss. Face it, doc. No one flosses....we are all going out with periodontal related heart disease.

Our Number One Lady, Mrs. Hatfield, got diagnosed with lymphoma. This is probably the only billionaire that can actually be trusted with her tax cut.....and is the walking personification of all that is technically right about The Heartland and the Ayn Rand vision of America. And her beloved Kitty died. A woman who won't take aspirin, and who eats fat-free ricotta sweetened with stevia root while her guests dine on single source organic African chocolate......to keep off the couple of pounds she feels she owes it to her husband to keep off.........Winds up getting chemo from a guy in a space suit (to avoid the possibility of the chemicals touching his skin that he is injecting in her veins) with the ashes of her Kitty in a box by her side.

The Perfect Housewife Lauren (beautiful, sweet, kind, blonde with perfect body, perfect tattoo, perfect husband, perfect kids, perfect house) called in tears to tell us her dad has vicious, fucked cancer. Dad and Lauren are close enough that they do yoga together in the mornings....and Dad runs their business.

Kate Rosenthal...the Godmother of every twenty-something athlete in Monterey County with a brain and a heart.....has a little thing on her Irish neck metastisize and blow through her throat and reduce her to ruin.....

Paula from New Jersey's Dad died of cancer. Paula and her husband Trevor are Our People.....Kind, considerate, hard-working, Cachagua folks....

Then, my kind, smart, non-smoking creative-writing teacher sister-in-law got diagnosed with lung cancer......The Philly school board sprayed her room for bugs in 1990 and gassed her and her kids into asthma land.......

And a bride cancelled her wedding on June 9 because of something I wrote about people over-feeding ducks, or people having sex with geese, or George Bush not being George Washington or some goddamm thing.......

Sweet Sleeping Jesus on His Holy Mountain......

The name of the Store two Monday's ago was:

"Mike to God: Stop Fucking with My People!!"

The humility lesson came personally and quickly.

I tried to reassure Lauren that it was OK.....Sure, her Dad is done, but in my case......Brendan is so much better at what I do, that I get in his way in business, and it is time for the young people to take over. Her response: "My Dad is a nuclear physicist from Stanford...it is all about the patents. I have two kids and can't take off the time to get that Phd right now......"

I made a lobster bisque, thickened with quinoa, for Kate Rosenthal to help with her chemo. It was so rich it gagged her, and my soccer guys that hang at her house ate it. Chemo is the ultimate tequila hangover.

I went over to Mrs. Hatfield's to bring her some chicken broth and some organic strawberries. I found her in the garage, dragging her old BBQ out the door to the deck. Someone (the president of Viacom, as it turns out......) had given her a new BBQ and she wanted to give me her old one and was trying to drag it outside so we could get it while she was in the hospital doing the chemo thing.

Another old school client called in tears....cancelling parties....because her husband of twenty years had just dumped her. Another actual billionaire......his aunt wrote the check to Frank Lloyd Wright for the Marin Civic Center.

I was the first phone call.....or one of the very first. The caterer? What does this mean about her life? I mean, I love and revere the woman, and I have her back.....but it is seriously odd to be explaining to a 60 something year old woman that it is a bad thing if her husband "wants space."

If you remember my story about the chloral hydrate and tossing the asswipe in the dumpster in NY.......I did the same at my old restaurant Secrets when this lady and her man showed up for their first date in 1986 (a Gilroy Italian refused to put out his cigar and I knew they both hated smoke)....so I dosed him and tossed him to clear the space so these two could get together.

True Love! Well......except for that Space thing.....

So....other than the menu name....we had to fight back against this karmic load.

We drew a line in the sand and tried to stem the flow of shite. I called up the SPCA...who hate us, don't ask.....and told them to put us down for all the food and booze for an owl-release, or a muppet release, or whatever.....karmically dedicated to Mrs. Hatfield and her Kitty. Put a finger in the dike.......

Saturday, Brendan and I are doing an event at the Monterey Museum of Art: "How Chefs Use Color, Texture, Shapes, etc in designing dishes.....everyday artistic choices we all make in our lives......" I have been working all week on umami, our crazy Spanish mentors like Xaby Guitierrez and Andoni Aduriz......... Aryuvedic food philosophy, etc......Psychotic wine idiots like my friend Mark Jensen at Bernardus.......to try to bring some concept of how we make our choices in FoodWorld. I have a seven dimensional model: texture, taste, aroma, mouth-feel, vision, movement, temperature. Fifty bucks for Museum members, seventy-five for outsiders.

First person to sign up for the seminar?

Mrs. Hatfield.

I would appreciate some input here. What the fuck is going on?