eat what you kill

p and i just got back from a 3 day culinary course in santa barbara. it was so top chef and i highly recommend it if you're into that kind of thing. our cherubic looking teacher julia (named after ms. child) taught us how to chiffonade, julliene, and brunoise. she taught us how to organize our pantry, how to flip over a tarte tartin, and how to make foccacia from scratch. but perhaps the thing i was most proud of accomplishing was not barfing up my homemade croissant at the fish market when she revealed that this was going to be our last lesson/meal:

just look at the terror on that fish face...the one on top. look! it's like the funny face i make when i'm pretending to be really really scared except this fish ain't pretending.

here's another shot:


the blobs on the right of the head are his EYES. his EYES!!! and yes, we had to eat it, too.

a tip to santa...

REALLY NOW? is this gigantic psychedelic headband really the PERFECT christmas gift? come on!!!

i'm the master of hyperbole, but this is ridiculous. if i gave anyone this gift for christmas, i'd expect a sock in the face in return. a well deserved one, at that.

i miss nyc shopping. i really do. which is weird because i actually hate it. nyc shopping is wonderful in theory, but in actuality, it's too crowded, too expensive, too impulsive, and too time consuming. not to mention all that walking and carrying bags! theoretical shopping in san diego shopping is SO MUCH BETTER. you go to a single location, walk around in the sun without ambition, and buy stuff from pleasant sales people. when you're tired, you go to the food court and eat delicious mexican food. when you're done, you go get your car from valet, and with a flick of your wrist, your bags are in the back of your car and you are driving home recklessly (everyone in san diego is a bad driver except for my husband who is just an angry driver because everyone else is such a bad driver.)

there is one problem: there is nothing to buy in san diego malls. this got me thinking...maybe i'm been looking for love in all the wrong places. so, i did a quick yelp search for "san diego boutique" and these were the stores than came up.

Temptress
Ooh La La
Girly Girly
Love Me
Dream Girls
Lusty Lady
Bubbles
Unicorn**
Kyss

i seriously had to scroll up to the "search for" box to see if i had accidentally typed in "san diego finest strip clubs" instead of "boutique" but no, i did indeed type "B-O-U-T-I-Q-U-E-S".

this is a huge problem. next time you see me, i'm going to be wearing eddie bauer jean pants with a tucked in Gap Tee. either that, or i will be wearing nipple pasties and 5 inch clear heels and nothing else. i don't know which is worse.

**i know i'm slagging off all of these names, but w/regards to "Unicorn", it's simply the BEST STORE NAME EVER. i'm SO mad someone else took it before i thought of it.

wax on, wax off

i just got an email from a friend. men may not want to read this. it involves hair removal. come to think of it, women may not want to read it either. but what the heck! i'll post it anyway. i took out some of the words to make it less graphic and more mad libby.

here's the email:

"First of all, I haven't had a wax in awhile. Fair enough, & you know how [insert color here] people have a LOT of [insert body accoutrement here], not like our friends in the rest of [insert country here]. So the Eastern [insert country here] [insert noun here] comes in, & she's like, "oh no you've never been waxed? We have to [insert verb here]." I was like, I've been waxed, just not in awhile. She says, "Oh, you have to wait maximum [insert number here] weeks between each waxing. I will have to [insert verb here]. So she gets out [insert common household tool here] & literally [insert verb here] my hair down there. I've NEVER had any one do that! So I'm already thinking this is a little weird. But I'm like, ok fine.

Other things she said/did during the course of the waxing:

1. She kept saying "good [insert noun here]." I think she doesn't speak English so well. One time she said "ok baby".

2. After she pulled off the [insert noun here] she set it down in between my [insert body part here, plural]. So by the end of the waxing it was as though I had pooped out an entire pile of [insert noun here].

3. She made me get up off the [insert furniture piece here] immediately when the wax was done so she could remove the pile of [insert noun here] asap.

4. On her left hand she was wearing a plastic [insert noun here]. It would accummulate [insert noun here], but she would still hold my [insert body part here] taut with that hand. So after she removed a strip of wax there was an additional moment of pain when she had to remove her hand from my body. It hurt more than the regular strips because it had old [insert noun here] on it!

5. When she put the [insert noun here] on me she patted it down and said "do you feel like a baby when I do that hahaha?"

6. MOST SHOCKINGLY: when she was almost finished she was more deeply in my "area" than any one's been for a long time, & definitely more deeply than any waxer has been ... & she goes, "ok just a little [insert type of shrubbery here] now, almost finished"

At least it was clean but I would NEVER recommend this place!

(ed: i feel traumatized and violated)

this commercial hurts...

have you guys seen the cymbalta commercial? an authoritative and melancholy voice asks you if you are depressed. and if you weren't depressed before you saw the commercial, you certainly will be after.

it's the most depressing thing i've seen in along time. excuse me as i cry my heart out into my pillow for 5 minutes....

*5 minute sad music interlude. the background music for cymbalta will do just fine*

ok, i'm back.

what is UP with that commercial? it's nothing if not predatory! catch me on a bad day and i'll be chomping on pills in no time. and i used to think this guy was bad:



(that sad, cute little dude is the zoloft mascot. heartbreaking, isn't he?)

it's time to leave NYC when...

i had the most embarassing encounter at home depot the other day.

the home depot in san diego is not at all like the one on 23rd street. it's super hardcore and intimidating. the people who frequent the SD home depot are building skyscrapers using only their teeth and maybe their left arm if they're feeling weak that day. NY home depot is to SD home depot as bell pepper is to habanero pepper times infinity.

we needed lots of stuff...a propane tank for our new grill, some wooden slats to fix our bed, some work gloves so as not to contract splinters when handling aforementioned wooden slats, and some WD... wait. WD...

SHOOT! i'm doing it again! WD-40 or WD-50*? which is the metal lubricant and which is the uber high end molecular gastronomy watering hole for NYC epicureans?

i gambled and i this is what i said in a high pitched, nervous voice: "can you tell me where i can find some WD...um. some WD FIFTY?????". well, i lost that bet, my pride, and my home depot street cred, too.

remember kids. WD-40 is what you're looking for if you're in a hardware store.


*www.wd-50.com/
so yum. ken and yael took me there once.

this, not that

one of the best things about moving back to san diego is that national public radio is back in my life. i love NPR, but for some reason, I enjoy it best when driving, and i'm happy to say that my NPR famine is officially over.

anyway, I just listened to a fascinating segment was on pat robinson - you know, that freaky televangelist. side note – back in the 80’s, when televangelists were all the rage, didn’t you JUST KNOW that something was not right withTammy Faye and Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robinson? If it’s not obvious from this picture below, then I hope your job doesn’t require you to operate heavy machinery:



Even as children, we knew something was not right. They they gave you Sunday Morning heebie jeebies even if you got a glimpse of them when flipping through the channels. Then, we found out that not only are they weird, they are bad people, too.

Take a look at this Wikipedia list titled, “List of Christian Evangelist Scandals”. It’s crazy!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_evangelist_scandals

So back to Pat Robinson. To be perfectly honest, I have now forgotten most of the details of the story because I was so distraught after hearing it, but this is the gist of it: pat robinson is allegedly involved in some situation involving blood diamonds. Supporting not just any blood diamond cartel, but the most violent one. meaning, the cartel that coined the phrase "blood diamonds" because they chopped off PEOPLE’S HANDS. I KNOW! ICK!!

FURTHERMORE, he was involved in the trafficking of ARMS!!! DOUBLE GRODY!!! ARMS?!?! who the heck buys ARMS? who WANTS ARMS?

it wasn't until i was parked in my driveway that I realized I was thinking about the wrong kind of arms.

Not this kind of arms:
That kind of arms:

land of dum dums

I took a picture of this cheese at the place I always go to for lunch. For those of you who can’t see the image above, it says, “GOODA REDUCED FAT” on its label. As if sucking the fat out of her wasn’t bad enough, they then called her “GOODA?” Is that like “Krab Meat”? Are they trying to tell me that I'm not actually eating cheese, rather, processed FISH?

Wanting to give the manufacturers of “GOODA REDUCED FAT” cheese the benefit of the doubt, I did a quick Google search. Sure enough, I got a “DID YOU MEAN GOUDA (ya dumbnut)?” (the “ya dumbnut” is editorialized, but you know that’s what the Google is thinking).

Of COURSE I meant GOUDA!

This reminds me of an encounter I had with a travel agent in 2005. I was booking an annoyingly elaborate trip that had me stopping over in all sorts of places. For reasons still unknown to me, flying out of San Diego and into Palma, Mallorca proved too difficult for the itty bitty red-hatted gnomes working behind the scenes at Travelocity so they asked me to call a booking agent and speak to a real live person.

Real Live Person: “This is Bernice. I see that you’re trying to get from San Diego (also known as whale’s vagina (quote from Anchorman (she didn’t really say that))) to Mall Orca.”

Me: “ummmm. Right. It’s actually pronounced “Ma YORKA”, unless you’re South American, then you’re more likely to pronounce it with a slight “J” sound. Like this: “Ma chorka.” But I digress. Yes, Bernice. I’m trying to get to Mallorca.”*

Bernice: “well, it looks like you can get there if you don’t mind a stopover in Pragway.”

Me: “Pragway?"

Bernice: “or maybe it’s pronounced, “Pra-goo.”

Sigh.

PRAGUE is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Nicknames for Prague have included Praga mater urbium/Praha matka měst ("Prague – Mother of Cities") in Latin/Czech, Stověžatá Praha ("City of a Hundred Spires") in Czech or Zlaté město/Goldene Stadt ("Golden City") in Czech/German, and PraGOO, if you’re a Travelocity travel agent.

*i didn't really say this, but i definitely thought it.