lollardfish

Thanks to the folks who came out to my show with Corwin. Was a good time. Now I need to think about the next gig. Maybe December.

Reminder:

I will performing at Ginkgo Coffee House (the first place I ever sang into a microphone) in St. Paul, tomorrow, Saturday, October 1, from 9-11

Admission is free
Corwin Brust will be accompanying me for the "Reverend David and the Traveling Salvation Show" part of the evening.
I will also be wearing a hat.
Feel free to spread the word and invite several hundred of your closest friends.

The Ginkgo is at:
721 N. Snelling Avenue, St. Paul, MN
(651) 645-2647

These are all over the blogosphere, but ... check out the captions. There are other examples. African Americans 'loot' and Whites 'find.' Click to see these pictures.

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(from This blog)

Anyone know a nice place to stay in Minneapolis where they let you have a dog? My parents are coming to town on the 14th-16th of September, it seems. With their dog, Zucca, the star of the show of course.

My friend from gradschool neogrammarian is back in Minneapolis this weekend and last night we (me, her, buttonlass, and her friend named Heather) went to Auriga. Auriga used to be her favorite restaurant, the first 'good' restaurant she had ever gone to regularly. So we went back there, even though the chef has changed (I think? Like a guy who was sous chef is not head chef? He won "Best local chef" this year from the city pages) and its not really the same place. We figured, hell, it's a good restaurant still and we'll see what happens.

Result: Good wine. One good entree. One pretty good vegan entree. Two bad specials. Pretty lousy service. Neat amuse bouches. Decent starters.

We got there on time and our table wasn't ready. No big deal, but the entryway had no good spot for real loitering, and we didn't want to sit down. It was also odd because half of the restaurant was empty (on a Saturday night?) and yet the table they wanted to shuttle us to wasn't prepped. A big obnoxious New Yorker came in after us, also with a table of four. They got seated first and consistently served first throughout the night. This was irksome.

The waitress was nice enough and had perfunctory answers about the food, but seemed to lack any real knowledge. She certainly didn't have any good answers about the wine. I picked (I am not used to being the guy to pick the wine, though I am getting better at it. I wore a blazer. They called me Mister Perry) the "Venica, Collio, Tocai-Friuliano, Friuli, Italy 2003" because I like Tocai's from Friulia and Surdyks, where I buy my wine (thanks to a discount) only has one Tocai and it is miserable. It was refreshing and tasty and went well with their little amuses.

They were not prepared for a vegan. They were also not really prepared for a vegetarian, although they could have thrown together some pasta things easily enough, and they have nice little gourmet pizzas. This is fine - I didn't know Heather was vegan so didn't prep them, and the chef, ultimately, produced a very nice cooked veggie plate that seemed to make Heather happy. The problem is that the waitress was incoherant and not reassuring about the process. When asked if Vegan food could be produced, she should have smiled, told her that the chef would be happy to put a dish together, and asked her if there was anything she didn't want. Instead she seemed to expect Heather to tell the waitress what to cook ... not very comforting.

The amuses: a "truffled dwarf peach" (it looked like a caper berry) and salmon carpaccio were delightful. My starter of lamb tartar and polenta was lovely. Shannon had a nice little spinach/chevre pizza we shared. Heather had an odd cold melon/artichoke heart soup which she enjoyed, but didn't seem to quite work as a dish (bites with artichoke were entirely different than bites without). We switched to "Abbona 'Papa Celso', Dolcetto di Dogliani, Dogliani, Italy, 2001" which was really a splendid red (I lack the lexicon to describe wine. I need to learn that someday) and went marvelously with my roast squab. It did not go particularly well with the swordfish special (which we knew, but decided as a table to order red anyway). The real problem is that the fish was terribly salty (with big crystals. I think it was a choice of the chef. A bad choice) and no one really liked it. It was served with fiddlehead ferns - ferns are fun, but these didn't seem to be very interesting. A little flavor from the olive oil on some, but unevenly applied. It also didn't seem to go with the fish particularly.

So lousy service. Ok food. About 60$ a person price tag all told. Next time, we'll go to Levain.

Grading done. Birthday yesterday. Picnic today!

The girl bought me a really nice Italian Red at Solo Vino, a St. Paul vineria. Looking online, I see:

Oracolo 2000
Az. Agr. Inama
IGT Veneto Rosso
Codice Prodotto: INORACOLO00R

Il vino, di colore fittissimo, rosso cupo. Naso esuberante di piccole bacche scure, ciliege passite e vaniglia. Al palato molto potente, di grande maturità fenolica, morbido e rotondo, fruttato senza impedimenti acidi e tannici. Lunghissimo il finale.

Sounds tasty.

Also saw Star Wars. I liked it much more than the other two cause the action was great. Still not a good movie because there's no emotional content worth having. I had thought it was just bad acting, but then I realized that Samuel L. Jackson /also/ had no emotional content. I wonder if it's because the actors have no 'space.' They have to fit perfectly into this digitized world. Well, and Darth Vader's actor is just lousy.

And ate sushi.

When I lived in Venice and did my research, by sheer chance, I happened to live next door to the best bookstore in Venice. They published Venetian sources, old prints, and other arcana of Venetian culture. Mom and pop (Signor e Signora Filippi) ran one store, next to me, and their son ran the other. Like so much of Italian publishing, if you wanted to buy it, you had to buy it at their store.

Within a week or so of my arrival, I had become friendly with la signora (who saw me as a nice Catholic american boy who spoke Italian and was researching the Venetian church. And since at least some of that was true, why bring up the whole complication of being a Unitarian-Universalist American Jew). She corrected my Italian, periodically sold me books, thanked me when I brought visiting friends there to buy old prints of Venice (or prints of old prints), and was one of my 'Venetian mothers' (along with the waitress and owner of Alla Carampane). Signor Filippi took about three months to become friendly (I remember the first time I walked into his shop, he was shouting at someone that he did not speak Italian, he spoke Latin!). A gruff man, at least to outsiders and foreigners, his knowledge of Venice's history, culture, and his sheer pride of place made the eventual opening up all the more priceless.

I just learned Signor Fillipi died this last March or April. I will never think of Venice without remembering that wonderful store of treasures, both in its products to sell and the people who owned it.

It's raining. Holding off on driving to northfield right now.

AAAARRRRGGGHHHH

More later.

Verizon Wireless, American Airlines, and Nissan have pledged to give no more money to Tom Delay's legal defense fund.

Also, after Nickel Creek plays at St. Olaf, it seems more and more likely that I will burn things in my backyard (there's a fire pit). If you're coming, bring folding chairs. We also have a grill!

Discussion will ensue in Northfield. :)