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Wednesday, Mar. 20, 2002 / 7:08 p.m. ~Happy Vernal Equinox!!!~ Last night's "A Cook's Tour" was amazing! Finally, a new episode - this time, Tony Bourdain was in Vietnam, eating his way through Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City. A lot of what he ate looked REALLY good, but then he tries local "delicacies", the stuff that is rumored to make one "stronger", or more "virile", basically odd animals, or odd incarnations of animals, or portions thereof, like the Fetal Duck Egg. That was just too much for me. And apparently for him too. I honestly doubt he finished it, though he kept a straight face, as he usually does, and tried to describe it objectively. Right! Vietnamese Spring Rolls, and Pho (noodle soup with all kinds of ingredients optional), the more traditional, but then he moves on to a "family restaurant" which serves rice cooked in clay pots. The waiters crack the pots to remove the rice, sort of formed into a patty, then throw it around from one to the other, via plates. Tossed across the open air restaurant, over the heads of the occasional motorbike drivers/passengers passing through the center aisle. And heaping plates of steaming hot wonderful fresh vegetables and stir fries. It looked wonderful! Last, but not least, Tony ventures to the odd animal restaurant, where you can order basically any local critter cooked up and plated just for you. Kind of like the Cajun restaurants here that serve alligator and frog's legs. Kind of, but not at all. Tony's heard of eating freshly removed, still beating, Cobra heart, and he HAS TO TRY IT, because he's Tony Bourdain, the coolest man on Earth, well, in my humble opinion. Some wrangler brings out this Cobra, well, a couple or three wranglers, and everyone is backing off while they get it into position and finally cut out its heart, the cutter wearing a large bandage on his cutting hand�too funny. The heart is placed on a little plate for Tony, he takes it and slurps it down, as if it were a raw oyster, which, as you know, is also live, and we see a close up of it still beating, the heart. He says it beat all the way down� The bile in the drink was too much for him, he actually told the waiter he didn't care for it. But hey, they cooked up the whole snake for him, and he tried all of it. It seemed like a "Hey, let's cook up the weirdest crap for this guy and serve it to him on plates and in bowls and glasses and see if he eats it!" thing, and he did. He tasted it all anyway, and commented, objectively as always. After his grand adventure, he admitted he did feel "stronger". Funny, wild, good, good, show! I love it!! And why did no one suggest to me that I could hook up the cable in the bedroom directly to the TV, bypass the box, the digital receiver which is clearly malfunctioning? At least I figured it out myself, as with most things in my life, and I was able to watch Letterman in bed, again, to fall asleep. Yea! (I see a lot of folks spell Yea "Yay" here on Diaryland, but you know it's actually Yea, right? Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. Yea. And Yeah, too, which is totally different.) Also, last night, "24" was on, and that plot keeps thickening and thickening and someone may have to throw in some water to thin it back out before it's all over, but it was good, as always - most notably, on one commercial break I counted FOUR car commercials in a row. Manufacturer spots, not local dealerships. First, Mercedes Benz, a rather elaborate spot showing the popularity and continuance of the Benz throughout the decades, and the ability of the style to reflect the times, not that great a spot, but the new Benz SL, I think it was SL, is COOL! Second, the Acura spot with the guy driving so fast on the pretty winding road the trees are all just a blur, and at the end it says, "FYI, that was Aspen". Third, Lexus, something boring, but Lexus. Fourth, a new Jaguar spot, a guy flying to London to order his new Jaguar directly from the company. Boring. Still, four car ads in a row! Wow. Sunshine and I had a good day today. I even took her to lunch at the Chinese Buffet place. Frankly, I had a horrible craving, and her beau took her there yesterday, and I wasn't going to invite myself, and today I preferred to eat there with her than alone, though I was tempted to go alone, and I invited her, she has no money, so I offered to pay, since I have money, not a lot, but yeah. It was so good! We both sat there making "Unnnnnnnhhhh" sounds, over and over, then giggling because we were doing it. She says her beau makes fun of her and she couldn't wait to tell him I was doing it too! I told her I did that once on a first date and the guy was clearly annoyed, asked me if I was enjoying my food. Idiot. I even agreed to sit in the smoking section so she could light up afterward! Something I never do! And later, after we came back from eating ourselves silly, going, "Unnnnnnnnh, this is SO good!", and talking about our co-workers and the fact that we're white in an all black world there, we talked a bit about the anti-war stance I've taken, and she really disagrees with me, so I tried to enlighten her, but she has her mind all made up. Period. We didn't argue though, it was really cool, and she even listened when I told her about seeing Cheney taking tea with some Saudi Prince the other night (last night?) on the evening news, that he's drumming up support for our War on The Evil Axis of the World, aka "Bomb the Fuck Out of the World". She says, "Really? He was having tea with the Saudis?" and I say, "Hell yeah, and their guys were the suicide hijackers! Isn't that fucked? But do you think we'll bomb Saudi Arabia? Are they in the Axis of Evil? Hell no, we NEED THEIR OIL!" It's all about the oil, baby. But she's cool. Tomorrow is her last day, she refuses to buck up and take a meeting with the Manager (M), to see if she can stay, says she's a coward. We've exchanged phone numbers and email addresses and Yahoo Messenger ID's and hopefully we'll stay in touch. I like her. I don't know her that well, but she's easy to be with. She tolerates me, seems to like me too, and we can talk, we agree on a lot, not everything, clearly, but she is easy. Not easily persuaded�but easy. Tonight is a big TV night. You've got your "Survivor", your "Amazing Race" ("Survivor" is supposed to be on Thursdays and "Amazing Race" is supposed to be on Mondays, so this is fucked, but we must go with the scheduling flow, if you can call it that), and "Felicity" returns for its first of 11 FINAL episodes, tonight, so I must watch that in the bedroom, now that I've figured I can get some cable channels, not all, the TV is not that advanced, but some, and tape one of the other two in the living room. Oooo, big night! And work is sloooooow, the phones have all but stopped ringing. I'm still helping to program the new program, okay, not program, but test it. That's almost over. And it's officially Spring. Yes, it's sometimes on the 21st of March, sometimes not, and someone other than myself will have to explain why that is, I forget, something to do with the number of days in every year versus the time it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun, or something, and anyway�there is already pollen accumulating on everything, so today's rain was nice and cleansing. The sky was wonderfully stormy looking most of the day, the wind blew and the air temp was really perfect, mid 70s, just really nice. Just not a bad day, not really, not at all. I wish I could head back to that Chinese Buffet, I really do, load up another plate� Cost of the War in Iraq
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