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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Wednesday, October 15, 2003

More disruptions. They are reporting power outages on Long Island. The TV is crackling and still posterizing. My Ethernet connection is still solid, but the message light on the phone is flashing. When I try to retrieve it, the recorded voice tells me it is a text message and there are no operators on hand to assist me. I found this card on the desk that says “Telephone Message Retrieval” that says, with a straight face, that “Text messages may be retrieved by selecting the menu option on your television.” I press “Menu” and get a whole lineup of value-added services – movies, video games, email, you name it – but no messages. I stayed at a Marriott in Seoul last January and remember a similar phenomenon. The bellman pushed a button somewhere and a screen popped up on the TV welcoming me BY NAME to my hotel room. That’s probably what this is too. Still, that flashing light bothers me. I got into the Mellow Yellow saffron bit too much before I realized that I hadn’t accounted for all my mussels. Some stayed in a closed shell and were discarded – at least I assumed they were still in there. Some did what they were supposed to – opened the shell gracefully to prepare themselves for human consumption. Some escaped completely, as I noted, but I didn’t check to see if the number of escaped mussels equaled the number of empty shell. It is possible some escaped the saffron sauce entirely and fled the kitchen. There are many strange things happening here… 6:17:56 AM    comment []

Damn! Nothing works here! I turn on the TV for some news and every channel is alternately posterizing and putting up a “searching for satellite signal” message. I put four cups of water in the coffee maker and only two come out – is there a coffee consumption tax? No..I take off the filter container and it’s still full of water – the auto-shutoff screwed up. Now I can’t get the damned thing back on. Maybe this area has an inversion in the electrical atmosphere and that’s why our customer’s VoIP phones lock up our laptops. Good airplane reading – I got a copy of The New Yorker (Oct 20) which is the “Making Movies” issue. Best so far, “The Screenplay Guru” by Ian Parker and about Robert McKee. My only previous knowledge of him was the satiric depiction of him in Charlie Kaufman’s brilliant “Adaptation” (directed by Spike Jonze). McKee’s legendary 3 day screenwriting seminars are now being presented to engineers, politicians, and upper level management – scary, ain ’t it, that “the story” has become critical in those professions. Also great articles about a “Best Boy,” lighting experts, and stunt coordinators. It may be the first time I’ve ever read a New Yorker cover to cover (and the back page is a Shrek cartoon by the recently departed William Steig – who, I also learned inside, spent part of each day in an Orgone box…hmmm, wonder if one of those would fix the electrical disturbance here in Brooklyn?) Aha! The coffee pot has been repaired! The filter container just slides back. I was trying to twist it on. I hate traveling and learning new things that will be useless just a day later. I wasn’t adventuresome last night, preferring to stay close to the Marriott and rest up for today. It was very windy outside and a bit chilly. I hadn’t brought my coat from the hotel room, so I just explored the area within a couple of blocks of the hotel. Didn’t find the MetroTech Center, but then I don’t have to find it until today. Our customer moved there from 1 World Trade Center. Right now, there are wind gusts up to 45 mph and I can tell when they hit the window. Last evening they weren’t so bad, just a little too chilly for my short sleeves. I went to the Archives restaurant and bar in the lobby and ordered a Brooklyn Lager after I’d had enough wind. Nice old bar and not too crowded. The Yankees/Red Sox were on the TVs and I’m used to bars where both teams are merely tolerated (one guy, a Braves fan, at the Armadillo announced that the baseball season was “over.” – I responded that it seems to end earlier every year, then bypassed the irony and said, “For me, it ended when that Pittsburgh player attacked the bratwurst in Milwaukee.”) A loud cheer and one teamouse at the bar says, “WHAT? Are there Red Sox fans here?” The bartender says no, why should he think there are? “The Yankees made an out and people cheered!” Oh yes, that was a sacrifice and the runner on third base scored. I ordered the mussels in a saffron (I’m just wild about it), garlic, and white wine sauce. They were okay. I don’t eat the mussels that haven’t opened, but wonder why they even bring them out. If they don’t have enough energy to open the shell under intense heat, I don’t want them. Some of them had enough energy to completely escape the shell so I didn’t have to scrape ‘em out. Another Brooklyn Lager. We can get that at Tyler’s in Carrboro – on draft too! – no wonder they call that place “The Paris of The Piedmont.” Maybe they should call it “The Brooklyn On The Haw.” I looked at the saffron strands and put one in my mouth by itself. I couldn’t taste anything – what is this stuff so much more expensive than annatto? Maybe those super-tasters, you know, the people whose tongues are covered with taste buds that resemble suction cups on a giant squid, maybe they can taste saffron. I’ll still buy it occasionally for the snob factor, but I don’t understand it. Who got the idea that meticulously harvesting crocus stamin was worthwhile? Maybe it was a western “innovation,” an attempt to elbow into the burgeoning spice trade from the Far East with an exotic and expensive product. Maybe someday everyone will wake up and say, “Why the fuck are we buying this stuff?’ 6:00:47 AM    comment []