Pictures of food.
Dec. 5th, 2003 07:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishakI meet my friend K for lunch in Philly at this little café somewhere round U Penn, a sun-drenched crunchy urban hippie bistro where half the menu is taken up by narrative of how all their food is free range, fair trade, cruelty-free organic, sustainable biodynamic lets-give-the-earth-a-big-hug good. Even the little packets of sugar substitute are made from natural plant extracts. I'm not kidding. The food is indeed quite good, K and I catch up on fifteen years of life.
Back in my car there's a message from Dymentia saying yes I can crash at her house! She gives me her address, I pull out my maps and try to figure out how to get to Great Neck, Long Island. The roads are mildly congested with Thanksgiving traffic but it's no big deal, but close to Manhattan it gets intimidating. I've always been scared of driving in New York, it's so damn big and everyone's so aggressive and everywhere you look are these huge buildings that block out the sun and turn the streets into gritty, oppressive alleyways. It's actually not that bad, and I intend to get better at it by visiting the city more often, but for now it's still scary and these bridges and tunnels are so damn confusing and woah there's Manhattan and that skyline is really different without those towers, isn't it? It's the first time I've seen that changed landscape with my own eyes, the effect is so powerful it takes a conscious effort to wrench my eyes back onto the road and keep driving. Then the bridge arcs down and the buildings blot out the view and I'm back to navigating through Brooklyn.
I get to Long Island as the sun is going down and I'm driving past these huge mansions and manicured estates, majestic stone villas with driveways so long they have their own road names, and I'm wondering if Dymentia lives in a castle too. After some getting lost and fumbling up and down her street I call her and she directs me into her driveway and while she does not in fact live in a castle it is a lovely split level home with a birdbath and acre of yardage front and back so it's a palatial estate compared to the cramped condo and apartments of Boston. She's there at her front door in a blaze of cherry red hair. Dymentia is one of those people who is so beautiful that when I'm talking to her I lose my train of thought and I try to catch my balance and cover it up by babbling on about something else and I end up sounding like more of an airhead than I really am. Not only is she appallingly gorgeous but she has amazing great hair and fantastic cool clothes*, I think it's illegal to be so completely hot, she must get a special dispensation from the Czar Of Hotness.
We go out to this lovely sushi restaurant down the street with really tasteful and expensive-looking décor - flowers floating in pools, dark stained exposed beams, flowers in big floorstanding vases, it's elegant minimalist Japanese country chic. Then we open up the menus and there are pictures of the sushi! I don't know why but pictures of food look kinda tacky. I've been looking so long at these pictures of food, that I almost believe they're a meal...sorry. Probably because cheapo Chinese takeout restaurants always have those bright photos of their General Gao's and Moo Goo Gai Pan up on the big menu board above the counter. But that's not really fair, in some cultures, pictures and especially wax and plastic sculptures of food in the window is a completely acceptable option. I saw fake food sculptures everywhere when I lived in Taiwan, and there are Japanese places in Boston that do it...but the pictures in this menu aren't particularly well lit, and what's the point of taking pictures of maki rolls? It's all little trapezoids of color inside stubby white cylinders, what's the difference? Never mind, the sushi is delicious - the soft shell crab is excellent, the "Vampire Roll" has tempura fried papaya or mango in it, it's weirdly tasty, and the tempura lobster roll is really neat cuz for one piece they kept the lobster shell attached, they managed to tease the tail meat out, deep fry the whole thing and construct a short maki around the meaty bit so the bright red shell arcs over the roll as it sits on the plate. It's crazy and delicious and makes me want to try it at home. I'll take pictures of it.
Over the fishies she tells me about working at Illig and it makes me very very angy, people there are destroying the company and the work is burning her out, I tell her it's killing her but it's not like she needs anyone to tell her that, she's been living it for months. Grrr. The injustice of it all is so infuriating, I wish there were something I could do, the best I can offer is sake and raw fish. Nevertheless the fashion industry is fascinating, the networks of designers and creators, dream up clothes and construct them and send them to stores and labels, the ones they want send the technical specs to China, get samples back go through several cycles of rejecting them for quality and fit until the piece is acceptable. Then they make the clothes and ship them here and they get distributed to the stores and boutiques and mail-order houses and the process repeats endlessly, all this churning, intricate, high-stress, time-critical madness is all about people buying clothes to put on their bodies, it starts with Dymentia and ends with the strappy pants everyone wears out at the clubs. At least it used to, before the sales manager fuckwads started killing the company. It's just terribly depressing how something so good, clothes that make so many people look so good, could be killed. I can't talk about it anymore else I will cry.
Dymentia owns more J-Pop magazines than anyone else I know, and among the Malice Mizer and Gakt and is a picture of this uber-crazy band with prostheses and fiberglass armored suits, they're the most amazing thing ever. They look like an anime GWAR without the drippy bits. I wish I could remember their name. We watch downloaded Malice Mizer videos and Family Guy episodes till midnight then the approaching early-morning Monday, with her workday-from-hell and my four-hour drive make us crash and sleep.
* A chick who's fabulous hot, with outrageous great hair who makes cool clothes? That sounds like Dethany! Could it be they're the same person? I am unsure if I've ever seen them in the same room at the same time, hmmm.... No that would be impossible, if two such avatars of Hotness, Hair & Clothes came within a meter of each other there would form a singularity of fabulosity such that not even light could escape and the Earth would be destroyed.
Back in my car there's a message from Dymentia saying yes I can crash at her house! She gives me her address, I pull out my maps and try to figure out how to get to Great Neck, Long Island. The roads are mildly congested with Thanksgiving traffic but it's no big deal, but close to Manhattan it gets intimidating. I've always been scared of driving in New York, it's so damn big and everyone's so aggressive and everywhere you look are these huge buildings that block out the sun and turn the streets into gritty, oppressive alleyways. It's actually not that bad, and I intend to get better at it by visiting the city more often, but for now it's still scary and these bridges and tunnels are so damn confusing and woah there's Manhattan and that skyline is really different without those towers, isn't it? It's the first time I've seen that changed landscape with my own eyes, the effect is so powerful it takes a conscious effort to wrench my eyes back onto the road and keep driving. Then the bridge arcs down and the buildings blot out the view and I'm back to navigating through Brooklyn.
I get to Long Island as the sun is going down and I'm driving past these huge mansions and manicured estates, majestic stone villas with driveways so long they have their own road names, and I'm wondering if Dymentia lives in a castle too. After some getting lost and fumbling up and down her street I call her and she directs me into her driveway and while she does not in fact live in a castle it is a lovely split level home with a birdbath and acre of yardage front and back so it's a palatial estate compared to the cramped condo and apartments of Boston. She's there at her front door in a blaze of cherry red hair. Dymentia is one of those people who is so beautiful that when I'm talking to her I lose my train of thought and I try to catch my balance and cover it up by babbling on about something else and I end up sounding like more of an airhead than I really am. Not only is she appallingly gorgeous but she has amazing great hair and fantastic cool clothes*, I think it's illegal to be so completely hot, she must get a special dispensation from the Czar Of Hotness.
We go out to this lovely sushi restaurant down the street with really tasteful and expensive-looking décor - flowers floating in pools, dark stained exposed beams, flowers in big floorstanding vases, it's elegant minimalist Japanese country chic. Then we open up the menus and there are pictures of the sushi! I don't know why but pictures of food look kinda tacky. I've been looking so long at these pictures of food, that I almost believe they're a meal...sorry. Probably because cheapo Chinese takeout restaurants always have those bright photos of their General Gao's and Moo Goo Gai Pan up on the big menu board above the counter. But that's not really fair, in some cultures, pictures and especially wax and plastic sculptures of food in the window is a completely acceptable option. I saw fake food sculptures everywhere when I lived in Taiwan, and there are Japanese places in Boston that do it...but the pictures in this menu aren't particularly well lit, and what's the point of taking pictures of maki rolls? It's all little trapezoids of color inside stubby white cylinders, what's the difference? Never mind, the sushi is delicious - the soft shell crab is excellent, the "Vampire Roll" has tempura fried papaya or mango in it, it's weirdly tasty, and the tempura lobster roll is really neat cuz for one piece they kept the lobster shell attached, they managed to tease the tail meat out, deep fry the whole thing and construct a short maki around the meaty bit so the bright red shell arcs over the roll as it sits on the plate. It's crazy and delicious and makes me want to try it at home. I'll take pictures of it.
Over the fishies she tells me about working at Illig and it makes me very very angy, people there are destroying the company and the work is burning her out, I tell her it's killing her but it's not like she needs anyone to tell her that, she's been living it for months. Grrr. The injustice of it all is so infuriating, I wish there were something I could do, the best I can offer is sake and raw fish. Nevertheless the fashion industry is fascinating, the networks of designers and creators, dream up clothes and construct them and send them to stores and labels, the ones they want send the technical specs to China, get samples back go through several cycles of rejecting them for quality and fit until the piece is acceptable. Then they make the clothes and ship them here and they get distributed to the stores and boutiques and mail-order houses and the process repeats endlessly, all this churning, intricate, high-stress, time-critical madness is all about people buying clothes to put on their bodies, it starts with Dymentia and ends with the strappy pants everyone wears out at the clubs. At least it used to, before the sales manager fuckwads started killing the company. It's just terribly depressing how something so good, clothes that make so many people look so good, could be killed. I can't talk about it anymore else I will cry.
Dymentia owns more J-Pop magazines than anyone else I know, and among the Malice Mizer and Gakt and is a picture of this uber-crazy band with prostheses and fiberglass armored suits, they're the most amazing thing ever. They look like an anime GWAR without the drippy bits. I wish I could remember their name. We watch downloaded Malice Mizer videos and Family Guy episodes till midnight then the approaching early-morning Monday, with her workday-from-hell and my four-hour drive make us crash and sleep.
* A chick who's fabulous hot, with outrageous great hair who makes cool clothes? That sounds like Dethany! Could it be they're the same person? I am unsure if I've ever seen them in the same room at the same time, hmmm.... No that would be impossible, if two such avatars of Hotness, Hair & Clothes came within a meter of each other there would form a singularity of fabulosity such that not even light could escape and the Earth would be destroyed.
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Date: 2003-12-05 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-05 09:47 am (UTC)