Annuals Are For Pansies.

Last year, understandably, the only annuals permitted to exist in my garden were the ones I could eat. As it was my first summer with a yard of my own, frankly there was no time to waste my heart and soul on annuals. If they could be eaten, they were acceptable because they paid their way. But otherwise, I suppose I've always regarded annuals with some suspect as perhaps being a little too carpe diem for me.

They say that you can't achieve the same kinds of colors with perennials, and this is slightly true. Annuals are bright, at times brilliant. But, on the other side of the coin, certain annuals can also be rather showy and flamboyant, somewhat too liberace for my tastes. I've seen my mother wear dresses with patterns exploiting the color of annuals. That alone should be enough reason to keep them out of my garden.

This year, however, I was given a couple of packages of nasturtium seeds as a birthday gift and hence, already had them by early spring. I do like the gorgeous blooms of the nasturtium, so I dutifully wrestled with peaty pellets and pots and started them indoors, rather early if judged by my own schedule. I then painstakingly hardened off these seedlings.

And for what: not a single bloom.

It says on the package that nasturtiums are edible flowers, and indeed, they would look spectacular on any buttercreamed cake. However, if there are no flowers, there is nothing to eat.

So next year, vote no on nasturtiums.

In fact, for the most part, most of my started-indoor efforts fell flat on their face. There was the lettuce I planted too early - now sickly yellow and probably permanently stunted. The basil that for whatever reason decided just to die (maybe I should have kept up with watering). Various other flower seeds that also did not flourish. And above all, many of my peaty pellets got moldy after someone dropped almonds from a cake onto my miniature farm.

Next year, vote no on starting indoors.

Of course a real gardener and lover of land has to start something from seed, so I hear. But in our short growing season in Alaska, it is the antithesis of natural growth to mess with seeds in the darkness of April, setting up grow lights in your basement for confused seedlings, hardening off, covering your kitchen table with dirt, etc., etc.

Most of all, it's all way too much trouble for a lazy gardener prone to disaster.

In fact there are plenty of things to plant into the ground as soon as you can work the soil - things that will even survive a mild spring frost. For example, lots of varieties of peas seem to thrive in the colder climate. I grew them last year, which means even a pony could grow them. And although the gardening gurus say start planting gladiolus bulbs in March, the truth is when I plant 70 bulbs, I can't be bothered with finding coffee cups for each of them and transplanting them into the garden.

After all, gardening, for better or worse, is an exercise in realism. It is about working with, against, and within Nature, gently negotiating what we can achieve with human hands. Of course, if left entirely to her own devices, it seems Mother Nature would prefer a yard of chaotic dandelions. I'm still negotiating with her on that one.

In addition to my non-blooming nasturtiums, I have a few annuals this year due to a sudden rash, live-in-the-moment-loss-of-pragmatic-sense morning I spent at the lovely local nursery. While delicate and beautifully colored, I look upon these annuals with some sadness knowing that they have limited lives and will die out with no long-term future better than feeding the worms in the compost pile.

In contrast, my perennial bed is truly flourishing this year. Sure, there were some Home Depot perennials that didn't make it, but a surprising number of sorry specimens have managed to regain strength now that we are solidly in the growing season. A burning bush that had been painfully pruned by moose has re-leafed itself with enough foliage to provide an exciting vibrant display come fall. Daylilies, columbine, irises, wild geraniums, meadow sage ... they've all been putting on a good show. Strawberries that I tore out my first year thinking maybe they were weeds (that's how little I knew) are back with fierceness and have stretched out their runners to claim more of the garden. Even raspberries planted late summer, on one of the hottest days most hostile to transplanting, will probably bear fruit this year and spread next year.

And of course, there is the perennial, quintessential, Forget-Me-Not. Not only is it the state flower, but it is truly oh so lovely. Delicate, perfectly blue blooms with yellow center ... Forget-Me-Nots capture the true heart of a perennial. Without much care or attention, they beg us to remember them forever - which we do - because they come back every year.

I love perennials because they are seemingly loyal - despite winter's cruelest deliverances, they come back to say hello and make me happy. Beyond being beautiful in the moment, they are also something that I look forward to again and again, year after year.

How could I possibly keep myself from falling in love with that?

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Weeding Is Good For the Gluteus Maximus!

The problem (or blessing) when it comes to a private blog is that one is never accountable to the masses. I can blog with irregularity, about the most undesirable topics, the innermost grumblings of my belly.... I can, for example, have a blog entry touting the benefits of weeding for purposes of firming up the derriere!

Solstice has blown through this joint, "joint" being myself. After a rollercoastery two months of rain, intense sunshine, and so much daylight that I've taken to sleeping with my sports bra wrapped around my head, the pendulum now swings the other way as we are technically on our way to... is it winter??

Don't tell the garden about this turn of events. It is just getting warmed up, starting to share its blooms, and offering glimpses into the harvests to come in the upcoming weeks. This year, I've delayed nuclear warfare on the dandelions, mostly due to a sudden surge in yard traffic thanks to sundry friends and barbecuing folks. Last year, I engaged in a questionable scientific experiment in which I retained a control group (organic lawn) and nuked half my yard. Although it pained me to kill my microbes and threaten the livelihood of my worms, I have to admit that chemicals accomplished over the course of a few days what months and months of devoted, back-breaking hand-weeding could not deliver: some semblance of control over the Chaos that is called Dandelion.

Unfortunately, the organic control lawn has basically turned into a dandelion patch. As for the rest of the lawn, the unintended side benefit of not getting serious about war has been that the lawn has not grown exponentially on steroids as it did last year, thereby allowing me to escape with fewer mowings. In fact, I am so indifferent to the front yard lawn that I am rather pleased to put it through the throes of starvation - anything to avoid that "furry" look it had going on last year!

Weeding can be magical if you have the right temperament and set of circumstances. I find that it maintains my tenuous sanity, and truth be told, I am probably slightly addicted. Rare is the occasion when I'll enter the house NOT bearing a bouquet of puffy dandelion seeds freshly yanked from the lawn. For anyone who doesn't have a pair of idle hands, weeding is second nature. It is my very microcosmic way of trying to create order in a world that will otherwise choose chaos ... if only it were so easy to yank puffy dandelion balls from my psyche. In the meantime, this emotional exercise also yields physical benefits. Very few positions required for weeding can happen without engaging in a set of muscles that would otherwise lie unused.

So get weeding - it's good for the soul ... and the gluteus maximus.

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The Danger of Edible Accoutrements....

Sometimes it is lovely to dine alone. I find that it is an excellent opportunity to make your food your best friend. You can't be distracted by the commentary of a dining companion; the eating experience becomes a one-way conversation between you and your entree. And the food has only one thing to say -- Eat me.

I decided to dine in a manner uncharacteristic for me. The restaurant at the top of my hotel in Dallas this week, Chaparral, rated *four stars* by the esteemed AAA. It's no Zagat rating; my experience with Triple A recommendations has been confined to finding a hotel/motel when stranded with a van of crazy family members without housing in the open Southwest. Still, the advertisements in the hotel elevator and all over my room seemed to invite a visit. That and the fact dining in the hotel restaurant would spare me from the hot mugginess that is Dallas in June.

crudite
assorted bread
ice tea
roast sea bass
coffee
lemon chantilly mousse

CRUDITE
This was an unexpected house complimentary offering which although fetching to look at and good for passing the time while waiting for my entree, was unexciting. It came served in a giant martini glass with young veggies embedded in shaved ice. The garlic hummus spread that was to serve as a dipping sauce of some sort was confused, neither hummusy or garlicky. Just kind of brown with green herbs in it. Nevertheless, I enjoyed cleansing my palate with a few stalks of jicama. Left the celery untouched.

ASSORTED BREAD
I like it when a restaurant brings out an assortment of special breads rather than slapping some run-of-the-mill stuff on the table, as if to say, you look like you need to feel bloated today for no reason - try some bread. There was butter in one of my breads; I could smell it when it hit the table. Can't find fault in that.

ROAST SEA BASS WITH TOMATO COULIS SERVED WITH SPINACH AND LOBSTER RISOTTO
Most waiters don't know that if I've had the opportunity to do so, I've previewed the menu on the Internet. I find that in the quiet space away from the din of the restaurant, away from the foreign-accented descriptions by the waitstaff of tonight's dishes, I can shrewdly calculate what I want to eat. Tonight was such an occasion. I had pre-selected roast sea bass although I permitted my waiter to go through the motions of explaining the day's specials. He actually independently recommended the sea bass at the end, which I took as a green light.

My first bite of the sea bass was quite good. It was cooked just enough - still tender but flaking gently with the push of a fork. Had a nice little crust to it. Had the fish been served alone like this, I might have joined Triple AAA in its quadruple star rating.

The problem with the word LOBSTER before anything other than MARKET PRICE or WHOLE is that usually whatever it is, it doesn't have enough lobster soul in it. Tonight's "lobster risotto" was no exception. I don't think it is enough to treat "lobster" as a mere color of cream sauce for some otherwise unexciting rice. (Nothing arboriol about this risotto.) While the entree as whole had pleasing colors, I of course had to taste the colors as well. The tomato coulis over the fish was decent, but not exactly the right accompaniment. I thought that perhaps if served in another context, I might have enjoyed it more. And then there is the subject of other obligatory vegetables: in this case, a small bed of spinach, one carrot, and two shaved spears of asparagus. The asparagus was nondescript and the carrot, while young and full of carroty flavor, seemed misplaced with its perfume. Lying next to a big steak, it (and I) might have been happier. The only nonintrusive accompaniment was the lightly seasoned spinach.

In finishing the sea bass but leaving the various accoutrements, I decided that the Chinese (or more inclusively, Asian cuisine in general) have the right idea when it comes to fish. Don't dress up fish like it's poultry or steak. All of it robs the fish of its most exciting flavor, which is that of the fresh open sea. There is something to be said for serving a bowl of plain rice with fish - let the fish be on stage, not standing behind senseless vegetables and costumed in directionless cream sauce.

(Note: The sea bass also came with an interesting garnish/condiment - a half lemon wrapped in what appeared to be yellow muslin-like fabric, complete with green bow, ostensibly so that when you squeeze the lemon, the seeds do not fall onto your precious fish. At first, I wondered if a bouquet-garni had wandered onto my plate, but I am sure that many other restaurant goers have unwrapped this surprise not understanding its utility, despite its obvious aesthetic acknowledgement.)

Overall, however, the sea bass was decent enough that it was a pleasing meal. It did have the unfortunate experience of tasting less and less good as I continued to eat, but you can't have everything.

COFFEE
The menu offered an array of "specialty" coffees for $8.95 each, apparently made "special" by the addition of a splash of some type of alcohol. That is way too much for any coffee unless it comes with a bottle of booze attached to it. The fancy splash was not enough so I ordered plain coffee, which nicely turned out to be solidly good.

ICE TEA
Never-ending refills when you dine at the top of a hotel! I drank buckets.

LEMON CHANTILLY
After I interrogated the waiter regarding the chocolate used in the "Godiva Chocolate Bread Pudding," I decided I had enough of having my chocolate hopes and expectations dashed by inartful American sweetness. So I elected to get the lemon mousse chantilly. It had a decent pistachio cake crust to it, but the lemon mousse was about average. A little too greasy feeling. A little too much of store-bought lemon flavor. Also, there was a cookie-like curly garnish on the top of my mousse which of course I tried to eat. It tasted stale, like an after-thought. Word to the wise: don't put garnish on top of anything unless you're ready for someone curious like me to eat it. Still, at the end of the meal, I no longer needed chapstick, which I had earlier noted was being sold at the hotel gift shop at the highway-robbery prohibitive price of $3.00.

SERVICE
Only nerds eat early, which meant I was given a large table right by the window with a less than most flattering view of Dallas. Probably no fewer than six different staff members either greeted me, refilled my drink, brought my crudite, cleared my table, etc., etc. And given it was Dallas, it was like being served dinner by a kindly troupe of Hispanic grandfathers and uncles. Very pleasant.

THE BELLY'S RATING: 2.95 out of possible 4 cow bellies. I'm feeling generous tonight!

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Hot With Hooligans!

Anyone who has been down the Seward Highway lately will tell you that the hooligan crowd is back. You'll see many slovenly clad fisherman bearing buckets off the highway, seeking the hooligans that run this time of year, small herring-like fish resembling smelt. In Anchorage, dipnetting for hooligans in the rivers starts in May and serves to whet the fisherman's appetite for the real fish yet to come.

Hooligan fishing requires a much smaller dipnet (with maybe a two-foot diameter) a pair of waders, some patience, and a love for oily fish. In a town where everyone can get fresh wild Alaskan salmon without much trouble, the hooligans lie pretty low in the hierarchy of fish. Most people will scrunch up their noses at the sound of "hooligans" and snootily say, "Aren't they really oily?" But if you press these skeptics further, they will admit that they've never fished for them or eaten them. For the hooligan, its reputation precedes itself. As someone who has fished for them and eaten them, I'll say this. They are oily, which translates into being soft-fleshed. For this reason, I am not a big fan of the hooligan. They also do not have a very characteristic flavor. Nonetheless, Hooligan dipnetting is popular among the Alaska Natives here as well as non-white immigrant population. In fact, dipnetting for hooligans is one of the few activities in Alaska in which a Chinese person doesn't feel like a minority. I've met Indians, Filipinos, Koreans, South Americans -- all kinds of people harvesting buckets of hooligans.

For me, the appeal of hooligan dipnetting is the thrill of getting multiple fish in one dip. Try this with salmon and you'll be floating down a river to your demise. When the river is hot with hooligans, it is not unheard of to have six or even seven hooligans squirming in your net at once. At the end of the day, you can sling your net over your shoulder with a sizeable bounty of miniature fish and feel like a real bad-ass fisherman of tiny tiny fish. Hooligan dipnetting is also a great activity for couples. It is customary to have a hooligan "wife" or "bitch" depending on your relationship with your partner. One person stands in the river dipnetting, and when the net catches something, he throws the fish to said hooligan "wife" or "bitch" who stores it in a cooler or bucket of cold water. Without the hooligan wife/bitch, the fisherman would have to wade out of the river every time just to deposit a single fish, so he/she/whatever is really instrumental to the process. Behind every good hooligan fisherman is literally a hooligan wife or bitch. There's nothing sadder than fishing for hooligan by yourself.

Before you run off the side of the highway with your hooligan net, a couple of warnings about hooligan dipnetting. First, it's reserved only for residents, so tourists have no choice but to stop on the highway and gawk. Second, the river can be cold - wear socks, maybe long underwear under your waders and certainly gloves. Third, the fish are frisky. It is not uncommon for the hooligans to give one last reproductive spray as you try to drop them into the bucket. So don't take it personally.

The best thing about warming up with hooligans is that it means the salmon will be coming soon.

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Gyrating With Gordon

Many months ago when I first started this blog and referred to the young kids with fingers poised on the dials of their iPods, I considered them to be creatures who lived in a different world not my own. Now I have become such a creature. This morning, I found myself using my own index finger to swirl the smooth surface of an iPod in order to rock out to J. Timberlake's Sexy Back in my basement.

I know little about this iPod except that it is black and shiny and that its shiny black surface picks up fingerprints very easily (a passive-aggressive warning to anyone wanting to steal it!). It has some permutation of gigabytes for memory and may have lots of interesting features, but my familiarity begins and ends with knowing how to plug in earphones and rock out.

Previously, I was a user of the iShuffle, which I think was probably not very cool among the young kids with the low-riding jeans despite the iShuffle's convenient small gum-stick size. I also may have mitigated what little cool factor it had by 'snoopifying' the device (and by that, I mean sticking a small Snoopy sticker on it to mark it as my own). The iShuffle, despite its moniker, seemed not to shuffle very much. I often experienced weird long stretches of Madonna or Michael Jackson (my iShuffle seemed to have an eerie proclivity for these artists) and then random strings of Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations. (A word of advice: while nobody plays the Goldberg Variations like Glenn Gould, putting him on an i-Device is like making David Bowie have lunch with my mother. The universe does not agree with such things.)

But those shuffling days are now over. I now use an I-POD. Not wanting to make party guests suffer through my Snoopy i-Shuffle's personal opinion of what kind of dance music should be playing, I loaded 172 songs onto the iPod for an evening of play. But in the end, our party guests ended up suffering through my personal opinion of what kind of dance music should be playing. Although we danced until 5am, the gang probably heard the same 10-12 songs. So much for diversity in music. Still, the high-quality color screen of the iPod made it very easy to select these same 10-12 songs over and over again. Plugged into a set of very large vintage speakers in an unfinished basement, this iPod was magical. We named it Gordon.

It was so magical that I spent many days after the party recreating the experience. I've spent many morning rocking out in the basement with Gordon providing the tunes and the speakers filling up the basement with delicious sound. This went on for two weeks until the speakers were abruptly repossessed by the friend who had loaned them to us. Not that I should have expected that the speakers were mine to keep simply because I DESPERATELY LOVED them.

Since those speakers were tragically ripped out of my life, I had not returned to the basement until this morning. Rocking out had become my morning workout, and it seemed ill-advised to just mope and get fat. I found Gordon's white factory earplugs, put on my hoochie-mama jeans and stuck him in the rear pocket of my jeans.

It was then that I realized life can go on without speakers. With Gordon plugged close into me, I suddenly gained great insight - for example, I finally understood what Beyonce and Shakira have been trying to say to each other in Beautiful Liar. Although I've danced to that song a number of times, up until now, I had been dancing to breathless, albeit sexy, gibberish.

Dancing with an iPod plugged in also means I become the vintage speaker you can buy at a garage sale; the music seemingly flows from within and then out of me. Like my mother, who is someone who will vibrate like a weird doll whenever Elvis is playing, I am someone whose dance is closely tuned into what I'm hearing. With Gordon plugged straight into me, I've cut out the middle man.

There are a few bugs to work out, however. Gordon is big enough that I don't want to hold him in my hands when I dance, but the rear pocket of my hoochie-mama jeans is apparently not the best place for Gordon either. For one thing, there's not a whole lot of room there, so every time I gyrate or spin, the friction from my butt cheek apparently spins Gordon's dial, making him get louder and louder. While exciting, it could prove dangerous for my ears.

But otherwise, there's nothing like rocking out "silently" at least vis-a-vis other people. Gordon and I can get lost in our own world, our own sound space. Whoever designed the iPod knew what he was doing. Gordon is sleek, powerful, and his white cordage is a clever marketing tool for branding. For a while, I used black earphones specifically to avoid telling the world that I was listening to my iShuffle. With Gordon, though, I somehow don't care. And I confess I even like the look of his factory white cord twisting out of my pants.

I suppose I've fallen victim to those iPod billboards depicting the bright white iPod accessories grooving against the hip black silhouettes. The whole get-up makes it possible for anyone, even someone with no musical skills, no rhythm, and even no battery power left, to at least look really cool.

Even with a Snoopy sticker.

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You're Worth Crab!

This weekend, we long-suffering residents of Anchorage were finally rewarded with two beautiful sunny days. It was a great moment for being outside in the yard and enjoying the 58 degree weather (chilly by southern Californian standards but quite blissfully balmy for an Anchorage spring day).

Inspired by the decent-looking weather, my friends and I decided to hold a Crab Night. We've had a number of crab nights this year in response to somebody's realization this winter that everybody loves crab, yet nobody buys crab for himself. Somewhere deep inside all of us is a small little person who thinks he does not deserve crab unless he is inviting guests or putting on a fancy spread to celebrate a special occasion. It is a sad statement of low self-esteem... especially in a state where we have such delicious indigenous wild crab all around us.

You've probably seen these Alaskan beauties before -- long spindly crustaceans with legs which seem to go on forever, available in either the Red King or Golden King variety. I once tried to conduct a very scientific experiment to determine which is better but after they got mixed up on my plate, I had to abort my quest for knowledge. Generally speaking, the Golden King is more affordable -- whether it is due to an inferior flavor or due to its spiny shells which may cause injury (or at least certainly materially slow down crab-eating), I do not know. If I weren't so crazy about crab, I could remain level-headed enough to conduct another experiment.

I did have some apprehension about our first Crab Night; like others, I did not think I was worth crab. As a kid, the family ate crab to celebrate birthdays or when the supermarket was having an unbelievable sale. At no point would anybody in my family buy crab alone and go off into a dark corner by yourself to eat crab just for the sake of having it. So for our first crab night, it took a great deal of determination to buy a bag of these luscious crustaceans, just for me and no one else.

Despite my trepidation, the first Crab Night was a smashing success. It ended up being a ladies-only affair, a group of women huddled on the kitchen floor, with crab and happiness dripping from our chins.

Sucking the rich flesh out of the shells with reckless abandon, I felt a great sense of inner peace.

The success of Crab Night One spawned a series of other crab nights, the best of which occurred this year on Valentine's Day. In the past, Valentine's Day had been about little more than the unfortunate proliferation of pink junk, overpriced bouquets, and cheap and unwanted milk chocolates. This year, however, the ladies and I decided that We Were Worth Crab.

I realized then that my problem with V-Day past was not that I had been spending the "holiday" alone or with imperfect men, but rather, I had not been spending them with Crab.

You see, nothing says I LOVE YOU like the Gift Of Crab To Yourself.

From now on, rain, sleet, or shine, man or no man, I am having crab on Valentine's Day! You're worth it! You're worth crab!

(not to be confused with You're Worth Crabs... nobody is worth crabs.)

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You Know It's Spring When You're Eating Rudolph!

Some might think that living in the one long beautiful sunny day that is California might make its residents completely oblivious to the changing of seasons. If anything, though, my years spent in the sunny land have left me more heightened to seasonal details. Be it a brilliant crimson fall or a budding spring abloom with magnolias and fertility so rich you can taste it in the mud - the seasons keep life dynamic and pose excellent opportunities for renaissance.

In Anchorage, there are a few clear signs of that Spring is finally here:

1. The Park Strip starts to melt, which unfortunately unhides The Poop of One Hundred Dogs. These are the dogs who frequently made their mark in the park during our many-monthed winter.
   
2. Everyone's yard starts to melt, magically revealing The Poop of Many Moose who may have crunched away at your most expensive bushes and fruit trees.

3. Slow, dim-witted mosquitoes begin to appear. As someone who was born with the pheremone that drives these buggers wild, I can't say I am fond of this sign of spring. (Right now, the mosquitoes float slowly as if drunk, but even in this relatively harmless state, I see them only has Harbingers of Doom.)


4. Wild geese are afoot everywhere. With them, they bring their own poop, but it's fresh spring poop that seems to act as a fertilizer to help green up the Park Strip and other currently brown spaces.


5. And finally, the reindeer dog stands pop back up in downtown.

Today, I took advantage of #5 and had my first reindeer dog of the season. My decision to do so today was no coincidence. First of all, we finally got a bona fide sunny day. Second, there are only a handful of days before May. Why should this matter, you might ask?

The downtown Anchorage area is a tourist drag, lined with shops selling the kitchiest souvenirs you can think of. (While all souvenirs by definition are kitchy, this state is predisposed to hawking what might be considered exceptionally bizarre down south, such as chocolates in the shape of moose poop.) A sure mark that tourist season is warming up is the sudden proliferation of reindeer dog stands.

The reindeer dog itself isn't really as exotic as tourists might think. It tastes much like any other kind of delicious sausage; it doesn't come with antlers or anything weird like that. But for whatever reason, it seems to give tourists a lot of satisfaction to chow down on Rudolph. My suspicion is that running a reindeer dog stand in downtown Anchorage is a very lucrative business.

Like all small businesses based on shacks and stands, a lot of the reindeer dog establishments use sex to sell the goods. It's not uncommon to find a pretty lady flipping your dogs. But the locals, and by that I mean the subset of Anchorage residents who work right in downtown (and by that I could probably further winnow the pool down to young lawyers who work downtown), they seem to favor M.A.'s Gourmet Hot Dogs.

M.A. was my first and has been my only reindeer dog guy, unless you count that one giant package I bought at Costco for a camping trip (which I don't). He was introduced to me by another young downtown Anchorage lawyer, and I've been going there ever since. M.A. himself does not appear to use sex to sell his dogs. Don't get me wrong; he's a decent-looking man, but I think he wears a fanny pack which leads me to believe he is not using his body to sell his wares. The protocol at MA is to know what you want and be ready to order when you get to the front of the line. At noon, when the line winds around the Federal Building where he has set up shop, a failure to do this may incur some wrath or at least certainly a few dirty looks from more seasoned customers.

I think M.A.'s stand was recently, in the last two years, featured on TV - either PBS or the Food Network or both - and this newfound fame was no doubt responsible for the rather ridiculous price hike we saw last season. The standard reindeer went up at least one dollar, and when you're talking hot dogs, that's a material increase. I stopped ordering "the Special" (which includes chips and soda) and elect instead to devote my funds purely to reindeer. M.A. carries some other varieties of dogs - I remember the summer he started doing this and how excited he was about the expansion - but trust me, stick with the classic Rudolph.

So why do I choose M.A. over the other sexy hot dog vendors? Since I am not a man, I am immune to the wiles of M.A.'s competition. But I see other men buying high-priced dogs from M.A., so what's the draw?

Well, the devil is in the details.

M.A. sautes his onions in Coke Classic. Not some knock-off soda or RC cola, but the real stuff. No diet. Just the good stuff out of the red can. This isn't just a party trick; the Coke adds sugars and caramelization to the onions. A savvy business man, M.A. maintains a Rolodex of "Frequent Wiener" cards so that his regular customers can earn their way to a free dog. Unfortunately, you have to eat something like twelve dogs, or at least some other highly significant number, before you earn your free sausage. Surprisingly, I've never made this summit. My first year, I got very close by going very often and by treating my tourist out-of-town guests to reindeer dogs. Just when I figured I was just on the brink of getting my free dog, I could not find my card anywhere in the official Frequent Wiener Rolodex.

M.A. explained that if you don't re-activate your Frequent Wiener card in April, when he first restarts his stand, he throws the card away. It's not a mean business tactic - if he didn't, he'd have to start rolling a giant Rolodex instead of his hot dog stand. Needless to say, I was crushed by this business policy. After all of that diligent consumption of reindeer, I had to start over.

So today, April 26, 2007, I knew that I had only moments before I would suffer the same fate again. With the sun out and a friend who never had been to M.A., the stars were aligned.

I'm happy to report that the Rudolph I got today was exquisite. Just perfect. I won't say it was magical because after all, it's a hot dog, but there wasn't anything else I would have asked for with respect to this dog. Most importantly, I am now a re-activated Wiener and am looking forward to many many wieners to come.

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Rolling With Rolando

For those who live in Anchorage and frequent the Carrs (otherwise known across the country as the Safeway) at 13th and Gambell, you probably already know Rolando. Rolando works at what locals affectionately refer to as the Ghetto Carrs. I think every city has one of these - a grocery store in not-the-best-neighborhood, stocked with a rather meager inventory, and frequented by somewhat questionable clientele. That's Ghetto Carrs - open 24 hours, 7 days a week - a small little space for your most urgent 2am needs.

Ghetto Carrs used to be my neighborhood Carrs. My most memorable trips, before yesterday, included (1) the time I was asked to open the bottle of vanilla extract in my shopping basket in order to verify that somebody had not already drunk it and (2) a 3am drunken stop with an out-of-town guest in search of "peaches 'n' cream." What can I say? Breyer's was on sale that night.

Yesterday, however, when I stopped by to pick up some fruit on the way to a friend's house, I met Rolando. I had heard of Rolando before. Other friends in my neighborhood often spoke of the little man in the Ghetto Carrs produce department - the one who always tries to feed you free fruit. The mythical Ghetto Carrs fruit man was also reputed to be particularly fond of a certain strawberry sauce. Legend has it that it was not unusual for him to run to the back of the store and come back with a piece of fruit dipped in strawberry sauce. I only halfheartedly believed these stories, thinking that such treatment was reserved for the pretty lady customers who for whatever reason found themselves stopping at Ghetto Carrs. I didn't think it would ever happen to me.

But yesterday night, when I reached for the last carton of strawberries on sale, I heard a "psssst."

"Pssssst."

By the salad bar, a somewhat short Hispanic man of medium build was beckoning me and holding a fork skewered into a piece of watermelon.

"You want?"

Had I not previously heard the tales of Ghetto Carrs Fruit Man, I might have started running. But for once, offered a strange piece of fruit by a strange man, I felt completely at home.

"Sure."

I was dubious - we are still scratching at the surface of spring here in Anchorage, and it seemed unlikely that a piece of watermelon would taste very good in April. But to my surprise, it wasn't at all bad. He motioned for me to dispose of my fork in what appeared to be his cart of rotting fruit, the rejected dregs of the day.

I finally picked up my strawberries and as an after-thought, piled on a bunch of asparagus also on sale. No sooner had Fruit Man observed my arms full of produce did he quickly run off, returning with a shopping basket to place my strawberry cartons inside. And then, with the kind of lightning speed exhibited only by supermarket superheroes, I kid you not, he bagged my asparagus.

But our interaction did not cease there.

"Anything else? Want anything else?"

I realized that he did not mean, did I want to buy anything else, but rather, was there any other piece of fruit in Ghetto Carrs that I wanted to eat for free. On top of his cart, he had just placed trays of cut-up fruit from the salad bar, no doubt retiring from service given that it was now already 7pm. He pulled out yet another fork, stabbed a piece of cantaloupe and offered to me. And then it was the honey dew. Out of politeness, I tried to accept no more, but having gone this far, I did not have the willpower to abstain from myself skewering a piece of pineapple. The pineapple was not great, and this was what brought me back to my senses before I traveled too far down this hazy road of freely given fruit.

During this interlude, I spotted Fruit Man's name tag. "Rolando." I was tempted to say, "Rolando, that's a beautiful name," but then remembered that I was not in Ghetto Carrs to start an intimate relationship with the produce section but rather, was on my way to dinner which was probably already waiting for me. So I rubbed my belly, much in the way a Santa Claus might, and said, "Full. I'm full. I've already eaten too much."

Rolando did not buy this explanation. He looked at me in a way that was both shy and skeptical. "You just started. You only ate little."

Of course, I had already eaten far more free fruit at Ghetto Carrs than I ever had in my life. I tried to act like I had other items to buy. He disappeared for a moment behind the mysterious black plastic curtains separating the real world from what I imagined to be some kind of Narnia of magical produce. I speculated that he'd had gone to Narnia to retrieve the famous strawberry sauce I had heard so much about, but in fact, he returned with a whole slice of watermelon which he shoved into my mouth, no questions asked.

Like I said, the watermelon wasn't bad that day. Although somewhat taken aback, I decided that since the watermelon was already in my mouth, there was little left to do but chew.

I did finally manage to get out of Ghetto Carrs that night without eating any more fruit, but I have to admit, I am now intrigued. It is somewhat out of my way, but somehow, the prospect of the strawberry sauce of Narnia has piqued my interest. Stay tuned for more adventures of Produce Man.

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Leave My Dude Alone.

Ah... there's nothing like an untimely movie review! Casino Royale was released in November of last year, with second run theatres playing it months ago, and no doubt the film has long since hit DVD, maybe no longer even crowding the queues of Netflix customers. It has been months even since I've seen the movie and first started chewing this cud of criticism.

But alas, opinions are timeless.

The press and fans had been all abuzz about the new James Bond, giving me high hopes that we were finally embarking on a new 007 era, finally free of that corny Pierce Brosnan who to my dismay, during his reign managed to woo many first-fans not even gametes when I saw my first Bond flick. No doubt all the talk had set within me high expectations for a great Renaissance, perhaps something worthy of the Cold War?

Not quite. While we've definitely left Remington Steel behind, this was not the return to the James Bond whom I fell in love with so many years ago.

Let's start with the basics. Bond does NOT ever say, "I love you." Doing so will immediately result in DEATH (as older fans will recall was the fate of his wife Teresa Bond, whose matrimonial bliss and lifespan did not extend beyond the ending credits of On Her Majesty's Secret Service). Bond may have muttered some crap about "love" a couple of times in the Brosnan era, but that was reason to stop watching the movies. 007 also does not give the pink slip to God, Country, and the Queen, and again, certainly not for love. And he is not a robot. The Daniel Craig version is entirely binary without any nuances reflecting the spectrum in between extremes. As the more classic Bonds have shown us, it is in fact possible to:

• kill for the love of your country,



• "love" women for the moment,



• and be human at the same time.

And if God forbid, Bond finds himself mired in a moral struggle, he keeps it private - he certainly doesn't talk about it. Eww.

In Casino Royale, as soon as this Bond left the Her Majesty's Service in order to spend the rest of Forever with Random Bond Girl, predictably, I leaned over to my companion and whispered, "She's either EVIL or GOING TO DIE." Or both, I suppose.

And I guess I am the only one who thinks that the real James Bond can be clever and witty without being corny and sappy. It frustrates me when people think Bond is inherently corny. As one friend has described me, I belong to that "radical faction" of Bond fans that really likes Roger Moore. And no, I do not think Roger Moore is corny at all. (He has a good sense of humor, let's just say.) I tried recently to look up on the Internet statistics to verify whether I truly stand in the minority of the fan base, but the search was inconclusive. In my opinion, the truly unsufferably corny James Bond came with Pierce Brosnan, and I wish he took that Bond with him. (I'll note here that I was actually fond of Brosnan's Reminington Steel work, but Remington is no James.)

Puckery Daniel Craig did a good job with what he had, but I found the script generally lacking. Only the dialogue between Bond and Bond Girl on the train ride was mildly interesting. They even gave poor Oscar-winning Judi Dench lame lines. Over the years, whoever has been in charge has soured Bond movies into regular action flicks, a genre which has recently suffered from an over-proliferation of testosterone-indulgent, drawn-out, seemingly never-ending violence. (See giant-insect killing scene in King Kong; Orcs fighting in second Lord of the Rings movie. Yes, I know all of you men are still drooling over these cites.) That men enjoy watching minute after minute, scene after scene, of boring arbitrary repetitive boring action suitable for only fast-forwarding leads me to believe I will never ever be compatible with the opposite sex.

And to top it off, Casino Royale was a remarkably unsexy movie. Bond movies are supposed to be super sexy! What happened to the not-so-subtly-implied sexual escapades worthy of only indecent international spies? The slow, slinky unzip of a sequined gown that used to make my five-year-old heart turn all a-flutter???

In Daniel Craig's defense, he is undoubtedly the most athletic Bond ever and could beat Bambi in any contest of leaps and bounds. And certainly even the dear and eternally smooth Roger Moore would not want to compare pecs with Mr. Craig. Despite my opinion that the movie's plot was generally unsexy, the word HOTNESS did inexplicably and randomly HOTNESS cross my mind a number of HOTNESS times during the film. HOTNESS HOTNESS HOTNESS (Ladies, you know exactly when.)

In the end, I question the constant effort to reinvent 007, to bring him into "our time." If I want to think about "our time," I would not watch a movie about a man who probably packs a helicopter in his attaché on a daily basis. The point is that James Bond is classic and timeless. You want to do a movie about a spy who likes strange girlie concoctions with curly lemon peels, well, invent a new dude.

Hands his shaken martinis, and leave my dear 007 alone.

All in all, Casino Royale was certainly not a waste of the three dollars I spent at the second-run theatre. And there is the business of HOTNESS HOTNESS probably being worth a few extra nickels, too.

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Bring Back The Five-For-Five!!!!!

I may be skirting the fine line separating the Blogworthy from the Better Left Unsaid, but this is a one-woman-one-stomach campaign to bring back the Arby's FIVE-FOR-FIVE deal. For those of you who sadly missed the promotion, it permitted a hungry customer to buy five items of food (your choice of Arby's Melt, Curly Fries, Drink, Cherry or Apple turnover) for five dollars... and ninety-five cents. That's the annoying fine print. It's not really "five-for-five" but rather, "FIVE-FOR-FIVE-NINETY-FIVE." Arby's had the good sense to know that "five-for-five-ninety-five" would not be a good slogan, so they elected instead to defraud their customers with "five-for-five."

Ninety-five cents and fraud aside, I am mostly upset that the five-for-five is gone. I am even more upset that it has been replaced by a disturbing TWO FOR FOUR FISH SANDWICHES. Not only has the price per item of food doubled overnight, but the previous array of diverse options has now dwindled to a single fried fish sandwich, not very promising from an establishment that specializes in roast beef (and even this specialty is suspect). The extent of your choice is to get two of these unappetizing sandwiches.

What Arby's doesn't know, and perhaps this is why they pulled the FIVE-FOR-FIVE, is the cessation of this promo is really cramping my style. The five-for-five used to be my default bet. "I bet you a five-for-five that you're wrong!" was a win-win situation. If I lost, I had to buy a friend a five-for-five, which said friend would usually graciously split with me. If I won, the friend footed the bill. But in all circumstances, everybody gets to eat five-for-five. Everybody wins!

"I bet you a two-for-four-fish-sandwich!" however, does not have the same ring. Nor is it likely to invite anyone to wager against me. With the departure of the five-for-five, I've ceased being a betting woman, rolling with Vegas odds. Life in the fast lane cannot be had with fish sandwiches in your convertible. Nobody wins!

So to anyone else similarly grieving the loss of the five-for-five, please contact your local Arby's and bring the five-for-five back. And at all costs, don't be suckered into the two-for-four fish.

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For the Love of a Gladiolus

The very end of January is about the time when I notice that the light is better in the (late) morning and when March feels like it's within striking distance. But when thoughts of March enter my head, something deeper inside stirs -- some strange call of nature telling me not to forget that I am supposed to be planting gladiola bulbs that month.

This all started the spring of last year, months after I had purchased my first home in the fall. I had bought the little house at the bubbliest time of the housing bubble, and in that competitive market, there wasn't much time then to ponder the state of the lawn or figure out whether any flora was flourishing outside. But as spring started to remove the snow revealing the yard that had been a stranger to me, I realized for the first time that I had never before had any real jurisdiction over any yard. In fact I had never used a lawnmower in my entire life, not that I had ever avoided it. It just never happened.

I started to read dutifully about gardening in the daily paper, although by the time I got around to it, the recommended moment for planting gladiolus bulbs (which take a whopping 90 days to mature, that's right, just about an entire summer) had long since passed. A month past the ideal planting time and against the suggestion that corms (code word for baby gladiolus bulbs) be started in cups and planted days apart "for a continuous display of blooms," I crammed all of them into the muddy ground one night before a redeye flight to the lower 48. The "continuous display of blooms" is a luxury reserved for those who are not procrastinators and who have some clue regarding gardening. I was not one of those so fortunate.

Given the lateness of my gardening efforts, one might ask why I bothered at all. The truth is that the gladiolus is my mom's favorite flower, and it was the flower that she always bought for my grandmother because it was my grandmother's favorite. They have tremendous height and blooms that really can be appropriately described as glorious. I bought a bag of 60 bulbs at Costco and figured late planting was worth an $8.99 experiment.

I waited very patiently (did I mention ninety days) for those blooms to appear. The gladioluses did steadily grow in my garden but spent most of the summer in rather boring and modest green sheaths. It was as if I had planted a row of corn in the back of my garden, except without the corn part.

When the buds and then blooms finally emerged, however, they were absolutely worth every minute of wait and every penny of the $8.99. I truly felt like a Miss Universe when I cradled them in my arms, and I swear the self-esteem of my vases improved whenever I put these gorgeous flowers in them.

My hope was that my mother would come and visit around blooming time so that I could show her the flowers I had planted just for her. Discordant schedules prevented her from coming up, and so I decided to visit my family in LA in late August. After ninety days, however, I was not about to leave those blooms in Alaska. I harvested all of them, coincidentally and appropriately right before my redeye flight to California, and carefully wrapped them in tissue paper along with frozen gel packs I usually use for shipping fish and slid them gently into a box. I had never transported flora in the belly of a plane before, but I figured it would be just like a giant florist's refrigerator, except plane-shaped. For the gladiolus that were already in full bloom, I saved these to hand-carry as a bouquet on the plane, to greet my mom with "Surprise! Gladiolas!"

What I didn't realize was how fetching this bouquet would be. My bunch of gladiolas turned out to be like the beautiful best friend. It literally turned heads. I have never had so many people make small talk with me at the airport. And what was most unexpected was that they were mostly men. First, someone at the baggage check wanted to know what was the name of these beautiful flowers so that he could get them for his girlfriend. The TSA agent who checked my ID remarked how beautiful they were. Another TSA agent almost let me carry on my dangerous bottled water (almost) and asked me if my boyfriend had given me those flowers. (I believe a bitter "I WISH!" was my response.) The blooms inspired the imagination; perhaps people thought that I had just come from quite the emotional and passionate farewell at the airport befitting such flowers. Maybe they remembered a time when they had such a thrilling airport goodbye. And I daresay my own attractiveness improved with these beauties in my arms. Suddenly I became someone worthy of them. Everybody looks better cradling a bunch of pretty flowers.

It turned out that a beautiful bouquet of homegrown gladiolas is something that brings a smile to people's faces, much like a cute puppy or a toddler doing something unbelievably adorable. It is an instinctive response we have to the works of Mother Nature. To each person who asked me where I got these flowers, I proudly told them the truth.

"I planted these myself in my backyard. I planted them for my mother because she loves them, and I am bringing them to her, from Alaska to Los Angeles!"

While not the romance-novel-cover story they perhaps hoped for, this narrative was still warmly received. In LA, where everybody thinks Alaska is a frozen tundra, the irony was even more poignant. "You grew these flowers in Alaska?!" And I am happy to report that the Anchorage Gladiolas were beautiful enough to more than rival those I saw in local farmers' markets in southern California.

That sunny place apparently has nothing on us.

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Sharing Is Caring

It has finally happened. I am joining the youthful masses, those who are clad in low-riding jeans with fingers poised on the dial of their iPods -- yes, I, too, am joining the blogging community! My anachronistic presence here reminds of a similar venture many unspeakable years ago when I started my first (and last) webpage. It was a pitiful thing, at first grey and bleak with default fonts and a some kind of message akin to that of an answering machine, until it later careened out of control - was it something like javascript that allowed it to slowly and painfully change bright colors while loading, to the dismay of my few visitors who no doubt never returned?

Who could blame them.

In great hopes that a similar mutation will not happen here, I will keep this personal archive private for now, if blogs can be private. If no one looks under this rock, who knows what species of moss might grow here!

I chose today to start this blog because I think one needs to vent something when one is blogging, and recently, I've been rather dormant in this department. But yesterday, a small minor twitch in the cosmos happened. I received a piece of mail addressed to Mr. ___________.

This would be of no significance if it were not for the fact that I am a MISS _________. While generally reasonable about most matters of the earth, for some reason, when people wrongly assume that my name is a man's name and then proceed to send me bills, junk mail, or the worse yet, attempts to hire me in the name of Mr. ____, I have a fit. Granted, I have a Chinese name that I've never encountered elsewhere, but why assume?

Any of us who have made it through grade school knows that it only makes an Ass out of U and Me.

I can handle mispronunciations; in fact some are endearing, but the error of gender is simply unforgivable. Some might ask, but how are anybody supposed to know by your weird Chinese name that you're a woman? Point taken, but this does not excuse the failure to use simply my full name when in doubt. You can't take anyone seriously if they can't even get your gender straight. And aren't prefixes supposed to be honorific and polite? "Mister" is not likely to be taken politely when you're talking to a woman.

So I HATE it when people call me mister, even if just on paper. There it is. That piece of Mister Mail provided me with the requisite critical mass of Outrage to start this blog. So everybody write to the San Francisco Bar Association and give them a piece of your mind.

And I share the Outrage because I care. I care that others know this about me so that I give the world a chance to cease offending me, and I care that others understand this reaction so that other ambiguously named individuals will similarly be free of this offense. And hence, the title of my first blog entry. My college friend BJ would often utter this phrase after listening to one of my rants and vents or a bit of useless but mild-mannered commentary. He also used to say it after making an unsolicited observation, like when he found me in the dining hall after a rough night -- "Gee, you don't look too good. Sharing is caring."

Since then, I've taken BJ's words to heart. "Sharing is caring" disseminates the good in life and better packages the bad. If a sentiment is not shared, how is it to proliferate? I guess this is how I'm justifying this blog.

It's certainly not a one-way street, though. I appreciated BJ's advice that I didn't look too good because maybe it made me go back to my dorm room and brush my hair. And I appreciated it when a friend told me that I had a giant pizza stain on my sweatshirt when I showed up to fifth period biology unknowingly wearing a slice. And I appreciated it when someone told me that there was something wrong with the peach cobbler I made when I accidentally used salt instead of sugar. This is all useful information, so keep it coming! The eternal work in progress can't get better without feedback.

So onward with sharing and caring....

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