A Muse with a View

Cabana Boy and I had an interesting dining experience last week, and he beat me to the punch with his blog “The $16 Scallop.” Not to be outdone, I’ve decided to write my own version!

Cabana Boy starts: “Every once in a while we are served bullshit.”

Yes that about sums up the entire experience. However, I will expand for the sake of you dear reader!

One evening last week Cabana Boy and I decided we were still quite ravenous even after polishing off a plate of potato chips and a couple of pints at the Lucky Lab, so we wandered down to Carlye for more sustenance.

Carlye is very unpretentious on the outside (located under an overpass in the Pearl District of Portland), but you soon realize when you walk through the door that you have just arrived in the land of $10 cocktails and food that’s more fancy than filling.

The waitress came over, introduced herself and rattled off the evening’s specials which included an appetizer of pan seared scallops. Cabana Boy knows I love the pan seared scallops and insisted I order that for an appetizer. As he readily points out in his blog he was paying, so order the $16 scallops I did. I also asked for an order of bread, yes an “order” of bread. Three dollars for bread and butter! Strike one.

We also ordered a salad of butter lettuce with some fancy dressing, and an entrée of roasted chicken to share. We asked for the scallops and salad to be brought out first as the appetizer, but all three dishes arrived at the same time. Strike two.

When the “scallops” arrived I thought there was a mistake. As Cabana Boy put it in his blog, “One lonely pan-seared mollusk sat in a sea of white china; a small flower by its side.” It’s true. One scallop and what looked like an edible flower, with some fancy drizzle of something occupying the rest of the real estate. I can just hear the chef giggling to himself as he instructs his assistant, “Just drizzle this brown stuff in a fancy pattern in the white space and it will look like a meal!”

Actual size of scallop:

I was waiting for a second plate to come out. Maybe they split the order. We did make it clear we were splitting everything. But no second plate appeared.

I looked at Cabana Boy and said, “Didn’t she say ’scallops’ as in more than one?”

Even if she didn’t say “scallops” we both decided that $16 was just highway robbery for one scallop, so Cabana Boy called the waitress over.

Cabana Boy describes it this way, “Cabana Boy swung into action with all the frenzy of a cocktail blender.” A cocktail blender? More like the Tasmanian Devil dear! With visible steam coming out of his ears, he asked, “Excuse me, but we ordered the pan seared scallops. That’s scallops plural, and there only seems to be one on the plate. Sixteen dollars is a little steep for a single scallop, don’t you think?”

“I only do as I’m told,” the waitress replied.

Are you kidding me? What kind of response is that? Are you a Stepford Wife or a waitress?

“I’d like to talk to the chef please,” Cabana Boy asked with all the calm he could muster. The waitress disappeared and was soon replaced with a tall thin man in a suit who was most definitely NOT the chef.

“What seems to be the problem sir?” the suit asked with all the authority of a wet blanket.

I could see the Tasmanian Devil was about to resurface in Cabana Boy, but was thankfully replaced by a slightly continental British accent only reserved for situations such as this.

“Well, the waitress described the appetizer special as pan seared scallops not pan seared scallop, so we’re a bit disappointed in tonight’s catch. Do you regularly charge $16 per scallop?” CB said, testing the waters.

“Sir, the chef sets the prices. He has been basically giving away the store lately so we have adjusted the prices,” the suit said, passing the buck. Strike three.

No one wanted to take responsibility for the fact that someone thought they could get away with charging $16 for a single scallop and a flower. The thin man in the suit did offer to take the lonely scallop off the bill, which to his credit was the best he could do at that point.

Cabana Boy ends his blog with a simple moral of the story: “Perhaps the lesson is that when it comes to bullshit be aware of its innumerable disguises and never ever be afraid to address it by its real name.”

Its real name is Carlye! The website says:

Carlyle, for many, is an oasis. Located within the ever-expanding Pearl and warehouse districts of Northwest Portland, its intimate cherry wood bar and tailored urban appointments invite an evening of quiet luxury, impeccable service, and rarefied culinary adventure

Yep. It’s a culinary adventure all right, or rather an adventure in culinary BS.

Now on a happy note, there are two restaurants I CAN recommend.

I can whole heartedly recommend the food at Paley’s Place on NW 21^st. Sit at the bar and enjoy the company of the two bartenders Chris and John, while eating the homemade spicy potato chips.

And, the Cabana Boy and I just had a fabulous meal at Paragon last night. Not only was the food wonderful, but the waitress knew her wine and brought out three wines for me to taste before I made my choice. She was attentive but unobtrusive. The perfect combination as far as I’m concerned.

Happy dining!

I drive by the big Powerball billboard on my way home from work every day, and right now it’s sitting at a cool $102 million.

So, like any normal person driving by that billboard on their way home from a long day at work I start fantasizing about what it would be like to actually win that jackpot. However, the other day my thought process didn’t quite go the way you might expect. No, it took a detour to the dark and twisted zone before it went the usual route to Fantasyland.

The first thought that popped into my head was not what would I do with all that money, but what would happen to me if I won that money.

1. Both of my ex husbands would think they had some sort of right to that money, and I’d have letters from lawyers in my mailbox within a week. Sick and twisted but probably true.

1. I’d have a bunch of marriage proposals in my Inbox, in my voicemail and on my front doorstep. Hey, could happen!

After those two thoughts occupied my head for a while I got down to the business of the real fantasy.

1. My sisters and I own a cabin in Lake Tahoe, but a cousin of ours owns a piece of it too. I’d buy her out and fix it up so my sisters, the kids and I could enjoy it, and I’d still let my cousin use it.

1. I’d buy Cabana Boy a bitchin’ sailboat, because he’s a sailor who wants to sail around the world under the power of wind and water, and everyone deserves to be granted one fantasy in life.

1. My kids would learn about world history on location around the world. Forget the history books! I’m taking them to every continent to explore!

1. Every kid deserves the chance for a good education no matter where they live, what school district they’re in, or how much money they don’t have. I’ll travel around the country like the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes prize patrol people and hand out scholarships to motivated kids who can’t afford higher education.

1. I’m building a life-size replica of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and turning it into a tourist destination. Chocolate fountains for all!

1. I’m subsidizing good daycare for single parents who have to work.

1. Spa day for all of my good girlfriends once a month.

1. Britney Spears needs some underwear. I’m sending her a 12-pack of Jockey boy shorts.

1. I’m buying myself a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes!

Would I quit my job? Hell yes! Are you kidding me?! I would write for fun instead of a paycheck.

What would you do with a windfall of $102 million? Don’t get all technical on me and tell me I have to pay taxes on that. Let’s just assume you net $102 million.

Best Buy would like you to believe that giving a Best Buy gift card is the perfect gift to give a recent high school grad who is going off to college. I actually think most people, including parents, give gift cards because they’re easy and very much appreciated by a teenager who is venturing off on their own for the first time.

I was recently (as in this week) faced with the decision of what to get my two “nannies,” who are both leaving for college this week. What to get two girls whom I have relied on for the past two years to be here with my kids when I can’t.

My ex got them a Target gift card, because he is very practical that way. I, however, wanted to be a bit more creative. A gift card just wasn’t going to do it.

I had an idea rolling around in my head. I was thinking back to my college days and thinking about the times when we would go to parties at the beach (San Diego State), drink a little too much (hypothetical situation of course),and not make it back to our apartment until the morning after. There was always that moment of realization that we weren’t going to make it home, and we were going to wake up with dinosaur breath and mascara smeared below our eyes.

So, I created the “Morning After Kit” for my two nannies. I bought each girl the following:

** A cute little purse. Two important things about the purse: 1) It has to be small enough to fit under the seat in your car, 2) It has to be able to pass as a purse for any season and any style (jeans to cocktail dress), because you don’t know when you’re going to have to use it!

Then I filled the purse with the following must-have items for any woman who finds herself in a situation where she’s not going to make it home that night. ;^)

** A beige thong. Everyone needs a pair of clean undies in the morning. Why beige? Because you may have been wearing a black dress or white pants, and beige won’t show through either.

** Two condoms. (Do I really need to explain?)

** Two tampons. Just trying to cover for Murphy’s Law.

** A travel toothbrush and toothpaste.

** Mouthwash (in case there’s no water source).

** Mint gum. Same reason as the mouthwash.

** Two individually wrapped Handi-wipes. Great for removing makeup and taking a Pommy bath in the morning.

** A fold-up hairbrush with a mirror in the handle.

** A hair tie, because you know you will have bed head in the morning.

** Mascara. (it’s the one thing that makes you look more awake in the morning even if you’ve had no sleep).

** A $10 Starbucks gift card. You know you’re going to need some caffeine!

Both girls LOVED the gift, and it didn’t cost me an arm and a leg. I put it together in less than 30-minutes from start to finish, including the trip to the store. It’s a bag every woman should have in her car!

What would you put in your emergency overnight bag? What would you put in a “Morning After Kit” for a guy?

Anthrolpologie: an over-priced women’s clothing store with really cute clothes.

My Anthropologie pajama pants are the devil. It’s true. Here’s a picture of said pants off the Anthropologie website.

Picture those in baby blue and white striped seersucker. Them’s my pajama pants.

How could such an innocent pair of pajama pants be the devil, you ask? Well, they’ve nearly killed me on more than one occasion!

The first time: I was walking across my bedroom and my big toe caught in the big bell of the leg. You know that feeling when you have that forward momentum going and then one foot gets caught in something? Yeah, that’s it. My feet stayed planted and the rest of my body continued.

My toe released from the pant leg just in time to send my calf scraping along the sharp edge of my nightstand. I had a very deep bruise about a mile long (okay, it was probably just the length of my calf) for a month, and it was sore for four months. Go rent the movie Feast of Love if you want to see it. I was wearing a dress in the garden party scene and I’m sure you can see the bruise.

The second time: I was carrying my laptop up the stairs, with mouse, cables and coffee balanced precariously on the keyboard (I know, dumb move). The familiar step, then the next step, then, oops. WTF? Laptop went flying to the ground, but I saved the coffee!

There were many other occasions where the pants played tricks on me, and in fact just yesterday I was carrying a cup of coffee up the stairs when I found myself flying forward with coffee pitching onto my lovely beige carpet.

So, I have to wonder about the cost of wearing these pants.

Fact: They cost $80 (I told you it was an overpriced store)

Fact: They were given to me by an ex boyfriend (do you think he knew they were the devil?)

Should I retire the pajama pants? What do you think?

The Cinderella Starbucks

When I go for a long run on the waterfront I start and end at Willamette Park, and hit the Macadam Starbucks before I head home. But yesterday my running buddy Debbi and I decided to hit a different Starbucks that was on the way home. We drove to a Starbucks in Mountain Park for our after-a-brutal-run latte.

I walked in the front door and made a beeline for the goodie case, because I wanted a breakfast sandwich. I didn’t see any, so I whined to the gal behind the register, “No breakfast sandwiches?” “Nope,” she said. “We’re the Cinderella Starbucks. We have no oven.”

Oh man, no breakfast sandwiches. Okay, my second choice is always a Panino Dolce. “I’ll have the Panino, heated with two butters then.”

“Sorry,” she said. “No oven. We’re still waiting for Prince Charming to bring us an oven.”

“Butter?” I asked.

“Don’t know if we have butter either. Let me ask.”

Nope, no butter either!

“Fine. I’ll have a double tall one pump vanilla latte whole milk please.” Sigh.

The Awesome Starbucks

My son Ashton was attending a 3–week intensive film school in Seattle recently, and this was his first time ever being away from home on his own for any length of time. He went to the same Starbucks every morning to get his latte and his breakfast (a highly nutritious donut of some kind I’m sure). On one of the last days of class he walked into the Starbucks, ordered his usual, and then realized he had forgotten his wallet. To his surprise all of the baristas chipped in their own money to buy him his latte and donut. Is that cool or what?!

The Pumpkin Outfit

I had the best stylist ever on the Best Buy shoot. But even the best stylist couldn’t make me look good in this outfit. I call it the Pumpkin Outfit. It was very poofy! The belt was up around my rib cage, not around my waist.

By Friday I Was so Done

Friday was Day-6 of the Best Buy shoot. We shot in two different studios that day. The morning was shots of us on a seamless, which is this big white roll of paper:

The afternoon was spent in a studio shooting video on a green screen. This is me on lunch break:

My makeup bag for the week. Brushes, mascara, etc.

The Last Shot

I mentioned in previous blogs that photographer Andy Batt was doing some staged shots all week for his portfolio. The last staged shot we did on Friday was of the “family” wearing wrestling masks. Here we are getting ready to put each other into headlocks.

Comedy Sportz World Championships

Never heard of Comedy Sportz? Heard of the show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” Comedy Sportz is a franchise of improv comedy venues around the globe. The Comedy Sportz World Championships were held in Portland this week, and I got to see some of the competition. I also got to see a lot of friends I hadn’t seen in a long time.

Funniest moments:

* Manchester doing regional American accents

* Portland doing regional British accents

* The Randy Newman game that Provo played

The lobby of the Gerding Theater:

Portland Vs. Chicago. Andrew Berkowitz (Portland) and Rance Risutto (ex Portland, now Chicago) face off as captains.

This blog is actually about two things:

1. “Initialisms” (a.k.a. Internet acronyms)
2. WTF’s

First up: Initialisms. These are the acronyms we all use on a daily basis when we text and IM and leave comments.

Example: LOL. As we all know this is an acronym for “Laugh out Loud,” as in, “Oh my God! That was so funny. LOL”

This is one initialism that I just can’t reconcile in my head. Every time I read it I hear “Laugh out Loud” in my head, which just doesn’t sound right to me, and doesn’t make me feel like laughing! However, I do like ROTFLOL (rolling on the floor laughing out loud). Go figure.

My all time favorite, however, is “WTF?” I love to swear! I know you’re shocked. I can’t bear to type the F-Bomb in blogs most of the time, but I’m thinking it I tell ya, so I use WTF. It is the perfect expression when someone just does something so inappropriate or just beyond comprehension. It is my way of cussing without cussing.

So, here’s my list of WTF’s for the week:

I have not had time to sit down and write an honest to goodness blog, but I have all of these random bits of information that have been floating around in my head, and I want to share them with you all today.

Victoria’s Secret is the one place it’s okay to yell from the dressing room, “This one is too small! I need a bigger size!” I did a little shopping there last weekend.

Why is it that when I changed my status to Single on MySpace I started getting ads like this?

WTF? Shouldn’t I be getting ads from match.com or something? Someone in Marketing needs to be fired!

The company I work for just hired a coffee service, and we now have Stumptown coffee in our kitchen! You can’t appreciate the gravity of this unless you live in Portland and/or have had the pleasure of tasting Stumptown’s Holler Mountain Blend.

I bought donuts at Albertson’s this morning, and the chatty checker said, “You know these donuts were 49 cents last summer and now they’re 79 cents. For what? It’s sugar and water and…I don’t even know if I would call that dough.” Yeah, what he said.

It cost me $74 to fill up my gas tank yesterday. Fossil fuel dependency sucks.

The new Indiana Jones movie sucked.

People who park crooked and take up more than one spot in the parking garage suck!

I recently bought my daughter a boring backpack. She asked me to decorate it. Her first request was a dragonfly. I did that with a Sharpie. Not bad!

The Rose Festival Fun Center is probably going to be the people-watching highlight of my week this week. I’m bringing a camera with me on my lunch-hour stroll next week. Carnie blog coming!

Why is it that I can find all of my ugly jeans, but my two favorite pairs are nowhere to be found?

I went wine tasting with my friend Julian last weekend. My favorite was the Macbeth’s Three Witches hard cider. Yes! We found a hard cider tasting room! The pictures are from Bethel Heights.

A man, who shall remain a mystery, brought me some beautiful flowers and took me out to a nice dinner on Tuesday night. :^)

John Breen rocks The Liberators! (an improv comedy group). They are all extremely talented.

The Janet and The Nick joined me for the show.

Random comments please. :^)

MySpace is turning into another Facebook. I hate to say it, but it’s true. The very thing that so irritated me on Facebook is now on MySpace: the stupid apps!

You think performance was bad before? Just wait. When 200 million people start playing with these apps this ship’s going to sink.

I’m going to cry now.

It’s Casual Thursday and you know what that means…uh, wait a minute, you have no idea what I’m talking about. The term “Casual Thursday” came about a few weeks back when I showed up at my friend Julian’s house at 10am to pick up two cases of wine glasses he was loaning to me for my Wine and Chocolate party.

Julian answered the door in his bathrobe, and I must have looked a bit shocked because he said, “What? Didn’t I tell you? It’s Casual Thursday.”

Julian works from home a lot, so he can go to work in his bathrobe whenever he pleases.

But that’s beside the point. The point is that today is Casual Thursday, which means a casual blog.

Today’s topic: Strange TV Shows I’ve Come Across While Channel Surfing Lately

Cash Cab
Discovery Channel
http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/cashcab/cashcab.html
Another British reality show import. Can we Americans not think of any original reality shows ourselves? Please. Okay, there is The Bachelor, produced by my good friend Sam Korkis, and I use the term friend loosely. We had lunch once and signed a business deal, but I digress. Back to Cash Cab. If you get into the Cash Cab (one of many cabs in New York City) you are bombarded with trivia questions and rewarded with money if you answer correctly. However, should you answer three questions incorrectly before you reach your destination you get kicked to the curb and you have to catch another cab. Who thinks this stuff up?

Moment of Truth
Fox (are you surprised?)
http://www.fox.com/momentoftruth/

American version of the Columbian game show “Nothing but the Truth”

Prior to the show, a contestant is hooked up to a polygraph and asked 50-70 questions, and their responses are recorded. Without knowing the results of the polygraph, the contestant is asked 21 of those same questions again on the show, each becoming progressively more personal in nature. If the contestant answers honestly as confirmed by the polygraph, he or she moves on to the next question; however, should a contestant lie in his or her answer (as determined by the polygraph) or simply refuse to answer a question after it has been asked, the game ends and the contestant loses all of the prize money accumulated. That’s not the worst of it. The most important people in the contestant’s life (usually a partner, parents, siblings, best friend) are sitting just a few feet away on a couch watching all of this.

I have seen two episodes, and witnessed a 23-year old guy admit to having sex with over 100 women, admitting to never being able to be monogamous, keeping a spreadsheet of all of the women he had had sex with, and all of this within earshot of his girlfriend of two years. I’m sure she’s his ex girlfriend now. I also saw a married man find out a lot more about his wife than he wanted to in the first 10 minutes of the show. I’m guessing they’re not married anymore either.

All of the contestants had one thing in common: over confidence and extreme arrogance. I guess they all thought they could beat the polygraph. Ha!

Tell us anything else you think we should know about you.

Wow. No thanks.

Deadliest Catch
Discovery Channel
http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/deadliestcatch/about/about.html

This show follows crab fisherman in the Bering Sea. So you think that sounds boring? My kids were riveted to the screen for the entire episode, watching the crews work five days straight (the length of the season) with almost no sleep, in a boat being tossed around the Bering Sea like a cork. Six crew members died, yes DIED, on the episode I saw. It is an incredibly rough job that pays each crew member about $25,000 for five days work if they get a good haul. I’ll keep my desk job.

Flavor of Love
VH1
http://www.flavorofloveworld.com/

This reality show stars Flavor Flav of Public Enemy. Do you remember the series Strange Love with Brigitte Nielsen and the short guy with grilles? That’s Flavor Flav, and I believe he’s done three seasons of this Flavor of Love show so far, so he’s had roughly 60 women try to win his love in the past year. The women are given nicknames like Grayvee, Hotlanta, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 (a pair of twins competing as one contestant). Instead of a rose ceremony (ala The Bachelor), there is a clock ceremony, where the contestants are given a giant clock to hang around their neck. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. I don’t see the attraction with Flavor Flav? Am I the only one?

So, there you have it. Casual Thursday. Any strange TV shows you’d like to share?

P.S. Here’s a lousy picture of Jackie Greene and I at KINK yesterday (thanks to my S.O. for inviting me, muah). Jackie played three songs off his new CD “Giving up the Ghost.” I’m a big fan, and Jackie has been in my Top Friends list since we first met two years ago (I saw him open for B.B. King). Better pictures coming from the photographer who was at KINK. Jackie is playing at the Aladdin Theater in Portland on Sunday if you can still get tickets.