Saturday, October 13, 2001
JTF2
Currently, Mango Pudding Blues is operating under an almost complete shroud of secrecy. Like Canada’s Joint Task Force 2, we are highly trained and on the fucking ground, gathering intelligence and lying waiting in the weeds. We are maintaining strict radio silence. We have taped blackout paper on the windows here at HQ, which, like JTF2’s, is in Ottawa. So far, only two other people know MPB’s elite secret URL; our technical assistant and our, uh, girlfriend and sometimes editor, Killer (not her real name).
Unlike JTF2, however, Mango Pudding Blues’ secrecy is all about sniffing the bum of this whole blogging thing. Will we like it? Are we really ready to share our dispatches with the world? Is it worth it? A period of reconnaissance is called for. We are reconnoitering the landscape here. If you are reading this today, and you are not either Killer or my technical assistant, then you are the fucking torpedo sent by some loose lips, aimin’ to sink my ship.
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GLITTER
Where the hell is Glitter? Surely it’s opened in the major cities? When will it come? One critic sneered that it’s a "showcase for Mariah Carey’s tits," which I think is, in fact, a compliment of the highest order. I’ve got a good feeling about this picture. I’m serious. I think it’s either gonna be surprisingly touching or else a vanity project of such staggering proportions that it’ll function as a penetratingly funny meta-commentary on our celebrity-obsessed culture. Or else, at least, it’ll be a breakthrough in camp that will play for years to come at midnight showings in the rep houses all over North America.
Plus you get the tits!
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LIKE A GIRL
Whilst our web presence remains robust, the physical manifestation of Mango Pudding Blues is really a little shaky today. Although it’s late afternoon as we type this note, MPB is, in fact, lying in bed, listening to Schubert and waiting for the latest round of aspirin to kick in against the headache. MPB has a hangover.
Now, there was a time when I might have been known to topple a few. Perhaps well-known. Okay; famous. But that was then, boys and girls, and the me of now is more inclined to drink like, um, a girl (if you’ll pardon the sexist expression, which, I assure you, I am deploying with my tongue in my cheek). But there was this party last night and, well, there you go. I had a fine time and met some really neat new people, so je ne regrette rien, but jeeze! I actually suited up this morning and trundled off, wincing, on a run around the river for the first time in months, just to help my liver run off the toxins. It was beautiful out there, swans and cranes and ducks and red maple leaves and so on, and I’m gonna have to take up running again. And return at once to the girlie drinking program.
Thankfully, I’m better off than Killer, an actual girl who has always drank like one, with a very few exceptions. Last night was one of them, and the poor dear is right now snoring softly beside me, deep under the covers and clutching a half-eaten bagel to her chest. She dragged herself out of bed at around 11:00 this morning, while I was readin’ the morning papers (what a disappointment the Asperized National Post is turning out to be), and undertook to cure herself by marching around the apartment calisthenically, buck-naked, knees high, stiffly swinging her arms, breathing deeply and claiming she was re-aligning her chakras and determined to beat the hangover right then and there. The ritual, one of the queerest I’ve seen, lasted about five minutes and genuinely seemed to work for about five more, as she began to go about her business, brushing her teeth brightly in the bathroom. Then her puffed-up resolve simply collapsed, and she had to be led back to the bed, her lifeboat, where she has vowed to spend the rest of the day. Ouch.
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Friday, October 12, 2001
FRANZEN
Right now I’m readin’ Chip Kidd’s novel The Cheese Monkeys, which so far seems maybe just a bit too glib for my tastes. But what I’m really excited about is Jonathan Franzen. My brother highly recommended his first book to me just the other day, and the new one is, of course, enormous. I just read a short story of his in a New Yorker compilation, and if the novels are as well-written then I’ll be in heaven.
A character lookin' at his mother: “...even staring straight at her he had no idea what she really looked like.”
Shit!
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DRINKING NEWS
Here at Mango Pudding Blues, we believe strongly in the restorative powers of selected libations. We also believe strongly in cannibalizing our personal correspondence to feather our blog. Herewith, a snippet from a letter to C.:
No cocktail recipe today, but instead a hearty endorsement of grappa. I always wondered about it, but I was a little cowed, I admit, by its reputation as a difficult drink. And all the esoteric bottles! But a real drinkin’ man needn’t be put off. The warnings are directed at namby-pambies and beginners. Grappa is distilled from the last remainders of the mashed grapes that are left after winemaking, and really, it tastes like chewed grape seeds soaked in kerosene. It’s earthy, a little, uh, rotten tasting and maybe kind of resinous. You’ll love it. It’s masters drinking. Phd drinking. My brother says your basic old Italian fellows will slip a little into their coffee and call it a “corrected” coffee.
Corrected!
My brother’s boyfriend, however, warns not to get drunk on it. Fierce hangovers. Me, I’m still on the drink-like-a-girl program, so I’m safe.
In other drinking news, the LCBO here is offering a product here called Verisinthe, which, as its name suggests, is a modernized absinthe knock-off. Apparently it’s made with leaves of wormwood rather than roots, or something like that, rendering an absinthe flavor without the absinthe psychoses. Should I try it?
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COCONUT SOUP BLUES
Well, here’s the transmission of rules for the soup-off. Now, it just so happens that last night I went out with a pal of mine who’s handy in the kitchen. Would it be cheating if we brainstormed an idea or two? No, I don’t think it would. Research, pure and simple. I would detail some of the possibilities here, but what if some of the other contestants read this? No, you’ll just have to wait. Suffice to say that I have possibilities.
Hello contestants!!
Here are the rules for the up-coming (excuse the expression) soup-off (with respect to anyone named Soup).
1. The entry must be recognizably a savory soup; entries not conforming to this idea will be disqualified.
2. The ingredients are coconut milk, chinese angel hair rice noodles, sesame seeds.
3. Enhancements are limited to 3 ingredients, including flavorings (flavourings if your are in Ottawa). Salt, pepper and water are "free".
4. The entry must be vegetarian (who knows what the exit will be)
5. There is a prize, consisting of a soup thing (tureen, ewer, ladle, whatever, to a value of $20 max to be sought out by the Judge [Montreal]) but paid out of entry fees, as well as a bottle of wine from each contestant. The host committee [Montreal] will supply the 20 bowls required (capacity three-quarter cup to one cup), some purchasing may be required, which costs will be added to the entry fee.
6. The entry fee will be finalized before the contest, just before, but will probably not exceed $10 per person, not including liquid costs (wine---see above). The Judge may wish to provide a bottle of wine too.
7. The entries will be served concurrently and slurped up at the same time by contestants and Judge. The Judge's decision will be final. Though the Judge may have an awareness of which participant prepared what soup, his decision will not be based upon personal bias, lust, feelings of indebtedness, revenge, wishing to please, or family connections. His totally impartial decision will be respected by all. At least for 48 hours.
8. The soup-off will be held Sunday, Oct. 21
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BLOGGIN’ LIVE FROM THE CAPITAL.
On my way in to work this morning an older gent passes me and nods and says hello. Now, I live in Ottawa, but I’m an expatriate Calgarian, and where I come from, everybody nods and says hello to everybody they pass every damn day. Here, the prevailing public attitude is one of pinched-faced, shrivel-hearted, stone-cold indifference, so it was a little shocking to get greeted on the street by a stranger. Boy, was I a spectacle when I first arrived a year and a half ago, nodding and tipping my hat like a country bumpkin and meeting only icy stares.
Incidentally, it’s got nothing to do with Calgary being a small-time cowtown, either, because the two cities have roughly the same population. And Ottawa feels more like a town.
I myself have become pinched-faced, shrivel-hearted and stonily indifferent, but I did manage to squeak out a "hello" to this chap.
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Thursday, October 11, 2001
COCONUT SOUP
So I’m in this soup contest. My brother finds this recipe for soup that claims to be delightful in spite of containing only coconut milk, rice noodles and sesame seeds. Naturally, he finds the soup lacking. I mean, that’s just gonna taste like coconut, rice noodles and sesame seeds, right?
Anyway, so I’m over there this weekend, in Montreal, and he had already suggested some kind of “enliven the soup” contest, and he and his boyfriend and I somehow end up deciding on a cook-off in which the three of us, along with my girlfriend, are each gonna make the soup with three additional ingredients of our choice. Today I got the rules.
So what should I put in the soup?
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HEY
Okay. The place is a mess. The links don't work. You probably don't even like mangos. Nevertheless. Bear with me. It took me all day just to get here at all.
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What is it?
