Zombies make great YouTube videos

Saw this today on BoingBoing:



YouTube link
Zombie Haiku home page
Zombie Haiku @ Amazon.com

Have you seen this bowl?

I've been meaning to write this up since Memorial Day weekend, when I first went to Mac's Shack in Wellfleet for this season, ordered the tuna poke, and met the perfect rice bowl. Unfortunately, I was sans camera that trip, and I wasn't sure if I could adequately describe the perfect rice bowl in all of its perfection, so I decided to wait until I went back and remembered to bring a camera. Well ... that was ... oh ... three weeks ago ... and I did get some pics ... I was just too dang lazy to do anything about writing this up ... until tonight, anyway.

So ... here's the deal ... they have these great bowls at Mac's Shack this year ... they're flat on the bottom, so they sit just fine on the table, but they're also just a little off-center so that they rest comfortably in your palm, your fingers cupping the straighter edge of the bowl, and have an indentation for your thumb ... in short ... perfect.

[what looks like milk in those wine glasses is unfiltered sake - really!]

Well ... almost perfect ... the problem with them being ... I CAN'T FIND THEM FOR SALE ONLINE!!! I even got the name of the vendor where the restaurant bought them, but it's definitely a wholesale vendor in New Jersey without any online ordering capabilities (and almost certainly not in the lot of 4 or 6 that I want).

If any of you faithful readers have any bright ideas (other than liberating a bunch of bowls from the restaurant), please let me know. Especially if you've seen these bowls for sale somewhere with your very own eyes. I was thinking of offering some sort of reward, but I don't know if there's anything I can really offer other than my eternal gratitude (and a public thank you via this here blog thingy).

If all else fails, once summer ends, I suppose I just might swing by and ask Mac if he'd order a few more if/when he next places an order with the vendor.

Thanks!

The Juice

"Crazy-stupid good" - this is the phrase I've been using this summer for food which, in a snootier time, I might have called "sublime". I've run into a few examples of crazy-stupid good food this summer, and last night there were a few at the Juice, in Wellfleet.

I've been to the Juice several times, both last summer and this summer, and every meal I've had there has been great - and several items on the menu are most certainly crazy-stupid good (the clam fritters for absolute sure - they're purt-near perfect). Last night, I tried three things I hadn't had there before:
oysters in the rough (a half dozen raw oysters)
spinach & mushroom quesadillas
chocolate ganache tort

The oysters are local, Wellfleet oysters, and are served with a housemade cocktail sauce which was tasty. The really cool thing about the dish was the little leaf of fresh cilantro added on each oyster. Damn, that really made things great! Also, the price practically can't be beat - $9.95 for a half-dozen oysters, where most restaurants on the Cape charge *at least* $2.00 an oyster.

The oysters made a nice appetizer, and then came the quesadillas - holey schmoley, where have these been all my life?!?!?! How have I skipped over them on the menu all the other times I ate there?!??! Every bite brought a smile to my face. Really tasty, meaty mushrooms, and the cheese they use was gorgonzola, so there's a nice blue-cheese bite to it (though not super-strong). Definitely a new fave dish for me, and something to go into the rotation of meals to eat there.

While the quesadillas brought a smile to my face with every bite, the chocolate ganache made me positively giddy - I swear, I actually giggled as I was eating this, it was so damn good.

There are many fine restaurants to choose from in Wellfleet - there's Mac's Shack, the Wicked Oyster, Sol, to name a few - just be sure to keep the Juice on your list of possibilities when you're there - try anything on the menu - it's all good, and a whole lot of it is crazy-stupid good.

update (later Sunday, around 2pm): I forgot to mention a couple of things about the Juice.

First of all, the building housing the restaurant - let's just say it looks as if there's a right angle in the place, I think it just might be a mistake.

Second - if you're hippy-phobic, don't let the look and name of the place scare you - sure they have funky pizzas and great smoothies and the staff is filled with surfers and hula hoopers (seriously - at least a couple of waitresses are members of a hula hoop group - look for them around town and at this year's WOMR "Boogie By the Bay")

Third - they have Rain organic vodka - I don't like it as much as my fave vodka of all time, Tito's, but it's pretty darn good. Also, when beets are in season (we're getting into beet season now, I think), they make this really amazing beet martini with local beets and the Rain vodka.

"Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness." (*)

I have been selected by MDF ("my dear friend") Lady Trout to participate in a meme in which we are each asked to list six (6) random things about ourselves and link to six (6) more people who are then supposed to do the same.

*sigh*

OK ... WTF ... I'll play ...

Six random things about me:

1. When I was about 20, I was almost arrested (along with a few friends) for sleeping in Mount Royal Park (Montreal, Canada).
2. My maternal grandfather was President and Chairman of the Board of AT&T.
3. My father was a Presbyterian minister.
4. My name is Elmer J Fudd, millionaire; I own a mansion and a yacht. I have a shopping problem.
5. When I was a baby, my parents and I lived in a New York City apartment which was next door to the building where John-John Kennedy went to nursery school.
6. A lot of people ask me why I wear a hat.

Tag, you're it (sorry, folks!):

• Duplex Planet
• Doing O.K. In Spite of Myself
• Clarke Martty
• Heaven's Purgatory
• Not R
• paulette's hypermeaningful weblog

THE RULES:

• Link to the person who tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Write six random things about yourself.
• Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
• Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
• Let your tagger know when your blog entry is up.

* Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
(I found it on The Quotations Page)

I am a Cranky Old Man

Oh, it's summer on Cape Cod, and that means so many things to those of us who live here.

The other day I was on Route 6, in Eastham - I was in the left lane and passing someone in the right lane - I was probably going about 45, maybe a hair over (in a 40 zone), and the car behind me flashed his high beams because, apparently, even though I was passing a car at the time and driving over the speed limit, I just wasn't going fast enough for him.

But it's not just the tailgaters ... there are those that drive so slow as to make me understand why the speedfreaks might be so ornery ... the slowpokes, the timid drivers ... they drive well under the speed limit (30 in a 45 zone? is that really necessary?); they tap their brakes whenever a car is coming in the other direction ...

For the last few weeks, it seems as if I'm constantly either behind a car that's going 10 mph under the speed limit or in front of a car that wants to be going 10 or 20 mph over the speed limit - what ever happened to just driving the posted limit or at least fairly close, one way or the other?

Next time on "I am a Cranky Old Man": "When I was a kid ..."

Woo Woo

Steve "Woo Woo" Wood and the Incredible Casuals playing Link Wray's "Jack the Ripper" at the Wellfleet Beachcomber on Sunday, July 13, 2008

(also available on YouTube)

I shot the video and pics with my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5 camera and sync'd in an audience sound recording I made of the show, then added the still photos at the beginning because I didn't grab my camera in time to get the whole thing. The "Endless Summer gig" poster at the beginning was designed by Rachel Jarvis.

All-Star Game opening ceremony

"The greatest collection of baseball All-Stars ever assembled on one field."

Really?

I'm sorry, but the best they could do for catchers was to get Yogi and Gary "where's the camera?" Carter? I certainly understand Yogi being there, but if Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk aren't there, too, what's the point?

And is Willie Mays really the only great living center fielder left? I was thinking maybe he was, but according to baseball-reference.com, Duke Snider is still alive.

Also should've been there: Yaz, Sandy Koufax, and, of course, Stan Musial

I thought that introducing HoF managers and executives was a great idea, but it suggested a big improvement to me ... they should have used a Hall of Fame announcer (my choice would be Ernie Harwell) instead of Joe Buck, or at least along side Joe. Heck, they have possibly the greatest living stadium announcer right there in Bob Sheppard - let him introduce everyone!

Oh, and I thought it was great that Sheryl Crow played the National Anthem live, but that it was too bad she had such trouble with it (looking at the fingerboard when making chords, trying to hit that silly high note at the end) ... still, it could have been a whole lot worse!

Just my 2 cents ...

The Ginchiest

After her stunning, hip shaking, shimmying performance of Don Gardner's "My Baby Likes to Boogaloo" with the Incredible Casuals at the Wellfleet Beachcomber this past Sunday afternoon, I hereby nominate Sarah Swain as "the ginchiest"

Unfortunately, this is the only pic I got of her on stage (but that's because I shot video once the song started!):

Holey Schmoley, that was totally groovy - thanks, Sarah!

Update 7/23: Chef Tony sent me another pic of Sarah on stage with Los Casuals:

I think that must be mid-shimmy ... ginchy, I'm tellin' ya, ginchy.