Thanks to MadCity Music, I now have Still Moving by Justin Adams & Mauro Durante. Their show here in Madison last month at The Bur Oak was great and I'd been meaning to get an album of theirs ever since. And now I finally did so.
While there I spied a zine and grabbed the last copy - Jenny's Show by Moritz Junker. Why yes it is weird for a comic artist to interview himself in a comic strip.
A bit bright for Pipe.
Later that night...
"Hello, hooman."
Good news. We're getting direct flights to Boston and so no more antelucan bus rides to O'Hare for me. This shall makes things easier as I've gotten into the habit of heading out there to visit a friend and his family as well as to explore the New England. Back in October my friend and I decided to visit Salem next year. Perhaps we can do our version of The Crucible.
Somehow I have found myself at restaurants rather a lot this month. This is partly due to a dance card that has been more full than I could imagine until very recently. Although I am looking forward to my social life slowing down a bit so I can catch up on things, having a busy and rewarding social life is a problem I gladly take on.
When the cold settled in at the beginning of the month, a friend and I took our dinner at Fratelli's Trattoria. Not our first choice nor our second nor our third, we settled on it as our initial choices were all closed on a Monday night and Monona Drive threatened to become the Donner Pass if we didn't get food into our bellies soon. I'd been to Fratelli's once before while this would be my companion's first time.
The minestrone was tasty with a lovely tomato flavor despite missing an ingredient I've had in every previous take on the soup that has crossed my lips. Alas, I cannot recall what it was. Beans? Gah!
My salad was very tasty with the dressing adding a nice herbal accent. I.e. - no iceberg lettuce and a nice Italian dressing. I missed having freshly ground black pepper sprinkled on it straight from the mill, though.
My fellow eater had a hankering for fried calamari and it proved to be delicious. I appreciated the lemon wedges and enjoyed the bright flavor the juice added.
The pizza was mighty fine. High marks for the generous application of pepperoni and I only wished that it was been a bit more well-done. Brown that cheese! I take that back. Brown the cheese and sprinkle some herbs on there.
The oil-vinegar combo for dipping ended up being a culinary Rorschach test. What do you see?
My previous visit had been with my wife and I found that my dinner there with someone different made new and happy memories.
I spied some ghost pepper caramels from Madison Chocolate Company at the co-op.
While they were tempting, I was just not a big enough fan of caramel to make the purchase. Still, my curiosity remains as to just how spicy these treats are.
Last month I chronicled my venture to Stoughton and the Sons of Norway lodge there which was having their annual Christmas bake and craft sale. I bought a bag of Norwegian meatballs and they remained in my freezer for a couple two tree weeks until finally becoming dinner.
The nutmeg was just the right strength and they made for a fine, hearty meal that kept the cold at bay.
There was a fellow of Norwegian extraction at the Historical Society when I worked there. He knew many an Ole and Lena joke, lived in Stoughton, and visited family in Norway every year. One day not long after having had Swedish meatballs I approached him with a query of some import.
"So Jim, what's the difference between Norwegian meatballs and Swedish ones?"
He replied with characteristic Nordic seriousness, "Norwegian meatballs taste better."
A couple weeks back I did my duty and made sure that Ahan's tom yum soup was still delicious.
I can assure you it was and it almost makes me stop longing for Wah Kee's soups in the winter. Almost.
Not too long ago I made my second stop at Molten Monkey for some of their fine Detroit-style pizza but I think I accidentally deleted the photos of that fine pie whose only defect was that it was missing garlic. This was my failing.
Also missing was a stop at Tipsy Cow in Sun Prairie with my stepson. There I had some delectable cheese curds and finally noticed that their burgers contain about half a cow. A multi-patty delight.
I took stepson out more recently before a stop at the supermarket so he wouldn't deplete my bank account by merely grocery shopping. We went to Fin Sushi at his request.
My salad was fine and the cucumber-avacado roll I ordered proved a fine vehicle for large doses of wasabi. The kid enjoyed the King roll and another type that was all decked out.
I do believe that I ate all of his julienned cucumber.
Last night a co-worker and I dined together to celebrate the holidays and send him off on an extended vacation. He was in the mood for pho. We made a last minute audible and so, instead of our usual meal at Saigon Noodles we ended up at Viet Town.
I revisited the spring rolls which were excellent. They still had that stick of rolled and fried rice paper wrapper which gives you a surprising crunch on your first bite. Ingenious.
I called the spring rolls with the crispy egg rolls. Here the crunch was on the outside.
Delicious.
My companion's pho:
He commended it highly saying that the broth was even more flavorful than that of Saigon Noodles.
For my part, I tried the Quang-Style Noodles.
They were very tasty indeed. Quail eggs? I think it was chicken broth with a nice dose of turmeric plus other seasonings. It had a nice mellow taste which was soaked up by the noodles. There was much slurping at our table, I will confess.
I shall conclude with a photograph of the Westworld pizza guy at Woodman's in Sun Prairie just biding its time before springing to life and going on a rampage.
The Robin Room is a nice little place. Set in a small storefront on the 800 block of E. Johnson, I found it to be warm and comfortable when I met someone there for a couple drinks and a chinwag earlier this month. It felt as if I could turn around and see a roaring fireplace behind me yet there was only a bar there. Our little table proved to be quite cozy, the perfect setting for the intimate conversation we had. And I found it to not be overly trendy. The Surly Hell was tasty and my company was magnificent.
I heard recently that The Borough Beer Co. & Kitchen had closed. Now I see that it happened back in the summer. Black Rose Blending is also no more, it says here. This is further evidence that I am quite out of touch with the Madison craft brew scene. Neither of these businesses folding had quite the impact of, say, Ale Asylum closing its doors but, coupled with no new breweries opening (I think), demonstrates that the craft beer industry ain't what it used to be in these parts.
And now Yuengling shall be expanding their distribution to include Wisconsin next year. Hmm. I wonder how that will go. Isn't the beer market still contracting?
In addition to my inaugural visit to The Robin Room, I also stopped in at Karben4 recently where I met a friend who shared some of his homebrew with me, an old ale.
And, since we were at Karben4, we sampled this year's batch of Night Call, their smoked porter.
I certainly wouldn't mind more smokiness but it is still a great brew. I also wouldn't mind if it was still brewed year-round but I'll take what I can get.
All at once the gates of Sleep were thrown wide open and my waking ears took in the purr of a cat anxious to break her fast. I had awoken from a dream involving my wife. Oh, and Piper too. I am unsure which part of it was the most distressing: my wife rejecting me in some way that I cannot recall or Piper joining a gang of miscreant cats that caused mayhem throughout the neighborhood. When I was told that Piper had joined the gang of felines reprobates, my dream cut to a crawl space underneath the house that the dream took place in and arrayed on the dirt were several cats with my beloved Pipey in the middle. Despite the nightmarish quality of this stress dream, as a friend called it, the morning went rather well.
Still, Wednesday proved to be something of an odd day.
Later that afternoon I listened to a podcast in which two women talked about cleanliness vs. clutter. There was something positively eerie about one of them remarking that her apartment is rife with clutter and that it doesn't bother her one iota. It was something that could have come directly from the mouth of my my wife. Indeed, something very similar did. Probably more than once. The conversation just struck a little close to home as this very subject was a major factor in the dissolution of my marriage.
And then that night I went to my wife's favorite tavern, Mickey's. Not once but twice. Thankfully I didn't run into her. My first appearance there was to meet up with some folks for a drink before going to the cinema while the second was an after-movie nightcap. We saw Rolling Stones - At the Max.
I knew one of the people I met at Mickey's and found the rest of the folks to be splendid company. They were all music nerds of varying degrees who had all seen the Stones live and were endowed with great senses of humor. I was hoping that "Midnight Rambler" was in the film and even sang to one of my companions:
Well, you heard about the Madison
Bucky, it's not one of those
The woman who drove us to the theater had a fancy, newish car. At one point we were asked what we wanted to listen to and I told Alexa or Siri or whomever lived in the dashboard that I wanted to hear "Monkey Man" by the Stones. My request was met by silence as the dang computer didn't play it at first and so I felt a bit like Dave Bowman.
I cleared my throat and a second, more authoritative try proved more fruitful as the opening tinkling of the ivories came through the speakers. It was my first successful attempt at getting a car to obey me by voice command. I felt confident that the vehicle would let me back in after the movie.
Rolling Stones - At the Max was a blast despite the glaring omission of "Midnight Rambler". There's something a bit unsettling about a giant Keith Richards strumming away before you. I thought it was a bit funny to see those guys looking like leviathans on the screen while knowing full well that Christina Aguilera was quite a bit taller than they were. Or Mick Jagger, anyway. (Thank you Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.) But what can you expect? The guys in the Stones grew up in post-war England, raised on a diet of rationed powdered eggs and potatoes.
Jagger was a bundle of energy and he ran around the enormous stage set throughout. After the show, some of my cinema companions theorized that his moves were inspired by Bowie's. The giant inflatable women that came out for "Honky Tonk Women" were hilarious. One sat with legs crossed, a huge cigarette dangling from one her ginormous hands while the other woman sat there with legs splayed open. While Jagger hoofed it from one end of the stage to the other, Richards and Wood spun and kicked and skipped around the main stage area. Bill Wyman, however, was having none of that and stood still in largely the same spot throughout.
The performance was shot in 1989/90 on the Steel Wheels tour and so many things reeked of the 1980s that I just had to laugh, not the least of which was Chuck Leavell's shirt. However, Bill Wyman wore a blue dress shirt and, um, colorful vest. Furthermore, he sported a mullet and played a Steinberger.
The giant IMAX image was marvelous and the sound fantastic. The experience was loud and the band so in your face that I nearly started clapping after the first song, "Start Me Up", had finished.
A grand time was had by all.
This house may not have the most number of lights, but it surely takes the prize for the most number of yard figures.
The residents of that house are going to regret it when the snowmen and snowwomen come to life and go on a murderous Yuletide rampage.
I like this photo for its The Searchers vibe.
I had dinner with my youngest stepson earlier this week and he presented me with my Christmas gift: a moon with lights inside. You can even change the color.
It is now my night light.
The interior decoration of my place continues its slow pace. However, I did adorn a wall with this recently:
It's a scratch off poster of the Wisconsin state park, trails, etc. I immediately scratched off my beloved Chippewa Moraine State Recreational Area.
Honestly, going over the poster revealed that I have gone to precious few state parks, biked only one or two state trails. This means that A) I have gone to many county parks and B) there is traveling to be done!
Gordon Ranney came up in a conversation recently and then a couple days later as I was consolidating the contents of a couple boxes, I came across a PROG handbill and setlist. They now adorn a door.
I saw this and snagged it immediately. I suspect it will taste like the Elixir of the Gods.
