Full Moon Blues
On my recent vacation, the foxy female friend who graciously let me crash at her place, introduced me to the wonderful world of veganism (sp). Not only is she a hardcore vegan, but she also is in posession of some rather wicked food allergies that make her dietery selections a bit limited. After watching her whip up a tasty batch of stir fry that involved little more than a chunk of tofu, some frozen broccoli, rice noodles and pad thai sauce, I vowed to learn to cook these dishes thus placing me as the front runner to be her stay at home trophy husband. Upon returning to my desert oasis, I followed up on my solemn oath to learn to wok it up and immediately ran into problems.
First off and foremost, I have been unable to locate an actual Asian grocer to procure auhtentic pad thai sauce and rice noodles from that is not located dozens of miles from my abode. Instantly I was forced to subsitute egg noodles and chinese bbq sauce. In a ongoing attempt to be a bit more frugal in my spending, I purchased generic frozen broccoli instead of name-brand or fresh versions of the same. Finally, I have never in my life attempted to use a wok to cook anything, ever. The first attempt at making stir fry was several weeks ago and I mistakenly used too much oil and set the temprature entirely too high. Once the frozen veggies hit the oil, everything exploded into a sizzling, snapping mess and in my panic, I managed to slosh oil over the side of the cooking device, onto the burner and a small fire errupted. This in turn set of the smoke alarm, which is directly linked to the security system installed in our house. Normally, a courtesy phone call is placed by the alarm service to the home to see if emergency services are necessary. The problem is the number the company has was disconnected 7 months ago and never updated by my loving sister. You can imagine my dismay, when while sitting outside smoking a cancer stick to calm my nerves, a firetruck and a police car suddenly appear. After assuring them everything was fine and being forced to let the officer take a "quick look around", I embarssingly thanked them for their quick response time (a full 25 minutes after I set the kitchen on fire) and promised to update the information on the alarm system to avoid repeat incidents.
Three weeks later, I finally changed out the severly charred burner on the stove and tried again. No explosions, no fires and I even managed to cook everything perfectly and even snapped pictures to prove I successfully cooked up my first vegan dish (which I will post at a later time)! I guess chinese bbq sauce is called such becuase they don't know squat about making bbq sauce. In addition the broccoli was all stalks and slighty frost bitten. Much to my chagrin, the egg noodles were sticky and a very poor subsitute. So the end result of my first vegan dish, was a mouth-watering to the naked eye, steaming, well prepared pile of unetable shit. Thank the gods for Marie Calenders chicken fried pork chop frozen dinners. Looks like I'll be driving dozens of miles for proper asian cuisine after all, dearest of diaries.
***
BPM (Beat, Poets & Music) was once again stellar last night. Although I was repeatedly chastised for leaving too early to make my bed time a reality and consequential "arriving to work on time" consistent, the evening ws not without it's intrigue. One of the regulars is quite the intelligent artist as well as a refined poet. His short video that was played at the local PHX film fesitval a couple of months back was a visually mind-numbing flick, with some quick-witted humor and subtle bashing on the explotation of art and the artist that create it. The poet has wrangled in a number of familiar faces to subsidize the slew of regular preformers that appear. It is nice to see old friends finally turning up to share in our mutual passion. As for me, I have finally went from seat filler and being forced into interacting with people that intimidate me with their mastery of not only writing, but turning these written works into well spoken entertainment, something that is still beyond my reach, back to the normal withdrawn stoic faced watcher that I prefer to be. When I made my retreat it was standing room only a dozen poets in attedance and almost double the amount of folks just watching, quite a manifestation for an open mic night that only a month ago had barely a dozen folks under one roof and me as the only non-reading audience member.
The final treat I witnessed of the evening (I missed my buddy free style with the DJ and he is the bomb-diggity or some other catch phrase expressing greatness and talent) was a poet who decided to try and tour the country by Greyhound bus. His idea is to hang out and be a featured poet at various establishments along his journey and sell his chap books and CD in order to finance the whole trip. And the guy (don't remember his name of course, damn those specific details) put on a helluva a performance. This monkey haiku trilogy was creative genius, his opening piece called 'asthma girl' had me splitting my sides and he closed out with a wicked poem about making fun of a dysfunctional relationship that almost everyone I know has been in. His unhealthy obsession with his old roomates lesbian cats (such an odd story he couldn't have made it up) that shit all over the house was disturbing and even though his high energy performance made a lot of his works that much better, I have never thought to bring my concert ear plugs to an open mic night. After this night and the splitting headache that came with it, I think I will.
Still have not gotten the courage, nor enough of my own writings together to make the move from watcher to speaker, but perhaps someday I will.
Maybe someday, dearest of diaries, maybe someday, I will have a monkey haiku trilogy to read all of my own.
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