Mystery Train

I'm a Spalding Gray in a Rick Dees world.

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Location: Seattle, WA

Say hi to your mother for me, okay?

Monday, July 18, 2011

Burning Beast!

I've been to carnivore foodie heaven. Twice. Burning Beast has been running four years. Jessica has been to the last 3, I to the last 2. Each year at the non-profit creative Smoke Farm, just over an hour north of Seattle but off the grid enough that nobody can successfully use their hand-held toy of choice while there, a handful of the area's top chefs is each assigned an animal and tasked with creating something without electricity or running water. They show up a day or 2 ahead of time and create their space. Most dig a hole and create a makeshift BBQ pit, others get more "out of the box" based on what they're cooking.

There's a covered area with beer and wine. It's okay to bring a tent and camp for the night. There are a couple bands, this year a bluegrass band that's played Highway 99 Blues Club a few times called the Half Brothers, and a band of local theater actors called
"Awesome"
(yep, the quotes are part of the name) who decided to start making albums after doing a number of live scores. They are aptly named, so back off! There's also a DJ playing all vinyl. I'm a DJ myself, stupidly critical of DJs as a result, and I must say: Dude has superlative taste in tunes. And a bonfire at the end. The organizers construct an animal of choice - this year a moose, with balls (last year, a pig, no balls that I recall) which is burned after the chefs are all out of food, everyone is chilling, and the aforementioned DJ plays a nice soundtrack.

What'd we eat?
Duck. Goat. Rabbit. Ram. Sheep. Pheasant. Salmon. Beef. Chicken. Water Buffalo. Elk.

Veggies?
Tons of fresh grilled Northwest produce, the best you'll have, but seriously...

What'd we drink?
Bathtub Gin - a bar had a stand with (standing by the meat motif) chorizo-infused sidecars and a prosciutto-infused gin lemonade.
* I had one sip of the sidecar and elected to stick with water.
** in related news, next year I will not make the same decision.
*** in even more related news, next year we'll be camping overnight.

This event is all kinds of crazy good. If you're a meat lover and/or a foodie, it is paradise. They sell roughly 200 tickets, everyone here paid a hundo and most drove an hour or so to get here, so the Knucklehead Factor is virtually (if not, per my experience) non-existent or dare I say, "priced out." Yeah, homepeeps, I said it. $100 is a lotta dough. It sounds like a lot because it IS a lot. As we all save and pinch for the important things, if you've dined at 4-5 star spots and then come here... Burning Beast ia a steal, the kind of unique gut-busting, free-for-all tasting menu you will not experience anywhere else. You can bring your own snacks, beverages, booze, just no pets (service dogs allowed). This is the Lollapalooza of food, only better.

Arrive anytime from 3pm, some chefs are serving tastes while preparing, the DJ is spinning records, official dinner bell rings around 6, bands play before and after, then around dusk (9?) the bonfire begins.




goat w/ polenta, ram slider


the oysters are gone, baby


duck w/ feta crumbles & cucumber, pheasant & waffle w/ pickled peach


oysters are cooked here


salmon is smoked here


peaches, cherries, and such are pickled here




gas heat in the bottom. dough in the middle. outer cylinder is sand and rock. they're making bread.


a serving station






this guy means business. the guy in the "bacon is a vegetable" t-shirt was not less approachable, he just moved faster.




rabbit salad w/ papaya slaw, pig on flat bread w/ a thin-sliced pickle


elk sausage, smoked kielbasa-style in the wood shed, some beer-braised & grilled


water buffalo chili (left), 2 styles of elk (right)


fun & games


(ram or sheep) blood sausage






to the above, add smoked salmon w/ cucumber yogurt to the left


When all is said, done, and eaten... they burn the beast!









video

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Fun with the BlackBerry spell checker

In the course of text messaging with my brother, one can rightly imagine the kinds of unsavory words flying back and forth. I find the spell check function on the BlackBerry quite amusing. You can run the spell check anytime, and like MS Word any words it doesn't know or like will be underlined in red, but the 'Berry will pause for the cause and offer the unsolicited suggestions only if the last word of your message isn't in their dictionary. Naturally, the nature of communication between me and my brother is such that many messages end with a colorful expletive. Here are some of the suggestions offered by the BlackBerry spell check, in word: suggestion format.

jerkoff: jerk off
* apparently, this term is an action verb and not a proper noun.

dickhead: dick head
* similar to above, but here it's a concrete noun and not a proper or pronoun.

asshole: assholes
* the BlackBerry must know what kind of crowd we run with. Seriously, though, why is the plural acceptable but not the singular? Maybe BlackBerry insists that if you're going to be casting an "asshole!" you must make it count, get a little bang for your buck. I like the way you think, BlackBerry...

prick: price, pick, trick, brick, pricks
* again with the plural.

motherfucker: motherhood, mothering, motherland, motherboard
* bo-ring!

pussy - no suggestions, this one's okay by BlackBerry, but it reminds me of hearing Andrew Dice Clay explain to Howard Stern back in '92 what makes the difference between inoffensive language and what may earn you an FCC fine: "It's okay if I say, 'see that guy over there, that guy's a real pussy' - but if I say, 'hey, that's a nice girl, I bet she has a nice...' - that's when you get into trouble." Back to the BlackBerry.

asswipe: as swipe
* I see what they're doing here, kind of cute, but someone at BlackBerry has a wonderful sense of humor. Aside from being an adjective to describe my brother, an asswipe (also underlined in red by blogger.com) is a legitimate product. I use one every few days on my pets. There are few rules in my house, but one of them is, if you're not gonna wipe your ass, and you insist on not wearing any clothes, and you're gonna put your ass right on the floor or maybe even on the couch... get over here, pal, let's use an ass wipe and getcha clean.

"c-word" (hey, a lady might read this): cut, punt, mount, hunt, cult, bunt, aunt
* eh, not terribly interesting, unless of course you an aunt who is a c-word, in which case there's a mild trace of ironic double meaning to be enjoyed here.

douchenozzle: (empty)
* HA, BLACKBERRY, FOR I HAVE STUMPED YOU!

SCUMBAG v. DOUCHEBAG, BlackBerry v. Wikipedia:

douchebag: doughnut, doubleday, doubter, doughy
* BlackBerry gets extra points here for doubleday, which, incidentally, is underlined in red by blogger.com. Wikipedia says it can mean (1) device used to administer a douche, (2) pejorative term in slang use similar to but arguably less harsh than asshole, or (3) a 2010 film directed by Drake Doremus. I must call b.s. on (1) - the bag doesn't administer anything, that's the nozzle's role. The bag is a holding tank. I don't even douche and I know this. Goddamn Wikipedia, so bush league...

scumbag: scum bag
* while the BlackBerry splits hairs on this one a la dick head and jerk off, Wikipedia says it can mean (1) a contemptible person, (2) a used condom, (3) low income working class Irish youth with aggressive anti-social behavior and little respect for police, or (4) the title of a song performed by Green Day in the film American Pie 2.

Monday, July 04, 2011

Well Papa go to bed now, it's getting late

Coincidence, I rented three DVDs from my neighborhood video store, all were good and one was incidentally topical. I enjoyed Still Bill, the 2009 documentary about the brilliant (and one of my favorites) Bill Withers. Another was a stand-up special by the comic Norm MacDonald.

Then there was The Tillman Story.

PLEASE RENT THIS FILM.

I may write more about this soon. Tonight, I simply don't have enough in the tank to exert my complete thoughts and feelings, deep and far from casual they are. For now, just click on the names below - these reprehensible, morally bankrupt, sorry examples of the human kind... COWARDS:

Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich - COWARD

Donald Rumsfeld - you pansy-ass slimy piece of SHIT

Gen. Richard Myers - COWARD

Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger - COWARD

To you named above: Go Fuck Yourselves, you shameless whores of fictitious values and lies.
Happy Fucking 4th of July, assholes.