fuzzy and blue's New Writeups

February 23, 2004 (idea)

2005-08-18T22:27:03Z

The following text appeared on my homenode from 23 February 2004 until 18 August 2005. Daylogs still seem like the best place to remember this kind of stuff.

So. It's been 6 months since I wrote anything autobiographical-like on my homenode, mostly because whatever instinct I had for daylogging or otherwise journalling online got buried under a rich pile of LiveJournal compost and took root and blossomed like I would not have believed except for it happened. Good thing, too, what with E2 being all down with its bad self in October and November and whatnot. Problem is I can't seem to do both E2 and LiveJournal effectively, and I definitely can't do E2, LiveJournal, and try to write other stuff. And if I try to have a life on top of all those things, well sheesh.

All this is to say that grundoon is a wonderfulbad lady for challenging me to her nodeshell collection this past weekend. The first thing I copied down was…

The End of the Century (thing)

2005-02-08T23:06:56Z

The End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones is a 2003 documentary film by Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields about the seminal punk band The Ramones. It's named after the song "End of the Century" on the 1980 Ramones album of the same title, but this writeup is not about either of those, which I'll leave for some other, more dedicated noder to write up (hint, hint!)

The movie begins and ends with the group's 2002 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In between it tells their story in more or less chronological order, starting with their teenage years in Forest Hills, Queens, New York. To paraphrase the late Douglas Colvin and John Cumming, better known as Dee Dee Ramone and Johnny Ramone, when you're the only guys in Forest Hills who like The Stooges, you sort of have to be friends. (Other early influences on the Ramones included the New York Dolls, MC5, and the fact that most mainstream rock at the time was both boring and pretentious; as …

November 15, 2004 (thing)

2004-11-16T08:03:43Z

Well, shit. It feels petty and small to add the following little lamentation to the logs of a day full of more serious losses, but... The LocoMotive Restaurant is closing its doors at the end of this year! I know it doesn't compare to the loss of a father or a sister or a cat, but The LocoMotive is my favorite restaurant in the world, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I had to blink back tears when I first saw the news on their website, www.thelocomotive.com, an hour ago (I check it almost every Monday or Tuesday, to keep up with their weekly menu changes).

It's hard to express what I'm losing here, but I think what I'll miss most of all about the LocoMotive is the inspiration. Their food is truly great, their staff friendly and knowledgeable, the ambience classy without being stuffy, but best of all is the palpable sense that the restaurant is a labor of love. After my first dinner there, I wrote a short review of the LocoMotive for a local restaurant listings website and a…

Asparagus Hollandaise (thing)

2004-05-01T04:02:09Z

Did you read sneff's Asparagus with poached eggs and Parmesan and come away thinking, "That's great, but it needs more cholesterol?" Never fear, tonight I cooked a decadent dinner that will serve your gluttonous needs. It went a little like this:

Ingredients

one bundle of asparagus
three egg yolks, (in my case separated by the tried-and-true "pass the yolk between the two halves of the shell over a bowl" method)
one stick (1/2 cup, 8 tablespoons) butter
lemon juice
hot sauce (Tabasco, Tapatio, pick your favorite)
two to four more eggs for frying (optional, I suppose, but since you're already bathing everything in Hollandaise sauce, why hold back?)
maybe some good bread for sopping up extra sauce

Equipment

a knife for cutting off the ends of the asparagus
a pot big enough to boil or steam the asparagus in
double boiler or the ever-popul

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March 19, 2004 (thing)

2004-03-19T09:23:26Z

Shhhh! Don't tell, but... I just submitted my first query letter for the first time in over a year. It's for a not-quite-written-yet piece based on my adventures in Tunisia (check out the pipelinks for related material on E2), and I offered it to a little online travel zine that only barely pays its contributors, so it almost doesn't count, but.... baby steps. Soon, I tell you, soon I will be rocking all over the dead tree quest brought to us by the stupendously awesome Lucy-S. And maybe, just maybe, I will someday regale (i.e. completely bore) all y'all with the terrible true story of how the first magazine to accept one of my articles went out of business before they could publish me. I'm still traumatized, I tell you!

Ok, done bragging about my more or less completely petty personal victory now, really.

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What's Bred in the Bone (thing)

2004-02-26T22:05:36Z

"What's bred in the bone will not out of the flesh."

---English proverb quoted repeatedly in the novel that is the topic of this writeup.

What's Bred in the Bone is the second part of the Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies. Like its predecessor, The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone stands on its own as a novel, but is best enjoyed as part of the trilogy, each of the other books in the series (the third is The Lyre of Orpheus) enhancing the others with added plot details, context, background and character development.

Although What's Bred in the Bone begins shortly after the action of The Rebel Angels, it quickly changes gears and takes the readers back in time to tell the life story of the late Francis Cornish, the Canadian art dealer and collector for whom The Cornish Trilogy is named. To put it…