Archive for August, 2009
By Belynda, August 31st, 2009 in Other | 2 Comments
Tags: ashton kutcher, breakup, dear john letter, facebook, fail whale, jerry falwell, kevin nealon, michael jackson, nate fillion, spymaster, Twitter, wil wheaton
By the time you read this, my stream will be gone.
But let’s not be sad or contemplate rash displays to prove your affection to me… we should just remember the good times. Like when Chris would say bombastic things about my birth control failing, or when you introduced me to Spymaster and I played and played that hamster-wheel of a game until that fad too inevitably ran aground. Or how about all the delightful updates about poop nuggets and links to deeply meaningful rants about the dilapidated publishing industry? Remember how much fun we had with those?
Alas, all good things… and let’s face it even some terminally distasteful things must come to an end (Just ask MJ and Jerry Falwell.) And so it is with a tear in my eye and a bitter-sweet mid-90’s breakup song in my heart that I bid you adieu.
I think it’s only fair to tell you that I’ve found someone else… and I’d really appreciate it if you’d respect my decision. I didn’t *mean* to start using Facebook. I definitely didn’t intend for it to turn out like this. It’s just, Facebook was filled with people I actually know… and c’mon, how could I resist typing more than 140 characters? Really?
What did you really have to offer me? Be honest. Did you ever give me cool quizzes about what kind of “Fucking Awesome Spirit Animal” I am? Or suggest cool things like being barefoot and drinking wine that I could be a fan of? You can’t even integrate my GoodReads list, or aggregate my college schedule seamlessly! I just feel like you have a lot of growing up to do. I mean, you don’t even have a revenue stream! You’re like… three years old! That’s practically middle aged in the social media world! Anddd yeah I guess sometimes you’re over capacity… or there’s something “technically wrong”… or you ignore me when I tell you to unfollow people. And you’re always trying to introduce me to these really slutty women, and guys who just want to sell me stuff. I dunno. It’s not cool.
I’m sure you won’t even notice I’m gone. There are plenty of multi-level marketing entrepreneurs and stay-at-home moms to keep you busy… and your celebrity friends! You’ll always have Will and Ashton and Kevin and Nate! You have your boys to hang with… It’s kind of like “Entourage” except without all the sushi and the angry agent.
So, cheer up emo kid. You’re gonna be okay without me.
You’ll see.
By Belynda, August 25th, 2009 in Other | 3 Comments
Tags: adulthood, beige, cartoons, drug use, mania, ponyo, psychology, work-life balance
Our recent trip to the movie theatre to see Miyuzaki’s newest flick “Ponyo” has restarted a conversation that began back in July concerning what kids watch growing up, and why everyone is now on psychotropic drugs. Bear with me, it’s going to be a rough ride. First, a review of Ponyo.
Ponyo, the story of a tiny little fish person who becomes friends with a human boy named Sosuke, is the latest movie from the creator of Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and (my personal favorite) Howl’s Moving Castle. Miyuzaki is known for his whimsical stories, and Ponyo was no exception to his signature style. It was great!
The first thing to know about going to see a Miyuzaki movie is that, if you are over the age of say… six… you should be high. Very, very high. Dangerously inebriated, even. Actually, picture the kind of drug saturation that typically results in thinking for the rest of your life that you’re a glass of OJ and that you’ll die if you tip over. Miyuzaki movies make very little sense to anyone who believes in the laws of gravity or chronology. If you can let go of those few trifles, you’re in for a treat. Ponyo is not the best animation I’ve ever seen, much less the most creative story, but it was still beautiful and fun. It’s a strange mix of ecological morality tale and strange child-like love story. At moments during the story, mainly when Ponyo turns into something resembling a chicken while running on the heads of magically-created fish that are the result of an unfortunate spill of rainbow-colored magic potions, you begin to think that maybe the girl at the concession stand put a tab or two of acid in the bottom of your tank of Sierra Mist. Don’t worry. You’re not in fact drugged (although as I mentioned before, it would be helpful.) This is just the way Miyuzaki does things. Style points!
During the movie of course, the grade school crowd stared at the multi-colored screen with rapt attention, completely accepting of the fact that a fish turned into a little girl and that toy boats turn into real boats, and that love really can turn you into something beautiful (it’s a long story…) They have no problem with the fact that reality checks out, and they let the spectacle of sparklies and craziness happen. They’re used to it, because of course all of their Saturday morning animated entertainment is equally as psychedelic and ridiculous.
So here’s the conversation Ed and I had after watching a morning of Saturday shows with his small cousins in Michigan… why are we surprised when small children who are raised on a diet of bombastic shows with no tether on reality, then grow up to smoke dope and drop acid and drink heavily?
After seeing a few hours of children’s programming, the two-bit armchair psych theory is this: Children, after formative years filled with the magical and impossible, grow into adults who desire these things in a world that is, for the most part, as bleak as gravel and sawdust. We go to offices every day that have beige printers, beige desks, beige eco-friendly recycled copy paper, bare whiteboards and grey, pitiful coffee that is not hot. Superheroes do not burst through brick walls and save boobular double-crossing evil-guy-groupies. Telekinetic-monkey-spiral-galaxy-invaders with robot arms do not try to steal platinum cockroaches from high schools filled with kids with x-men powers. (Hey, it’s pretty close to what we saw. I can’t remember the title. I just remember that it was electric colored and had spanish accents.) When none of these things happen at our dogshit-boring offices, in effect the world has welshed on the bet it made with us when we were knee-high to a midget and were being pickled with visions of two-dimensional splendor and jiggly men in red suits who brought us the items of our wildest desire.
So most adults do drugs. Heavily. And we drink. Heavily. It’s actually surprising in a way that office-dwellers don’t unanimously live in a Brave New Worldish chemical stupor from 5:15pm on Friday until they crack the door to their office the following Monday morning. It’s only a matter of our Freudian super-ego telling us to cut the shit and play the game that keeps us to three or four martinis and a hugging date with our toilets at 3am on Saturday, so we can recover sufficiently on Sunday to be reasonably functional for the start of a new negative feedback loop on Monday morning.
Could it be that if we were fed something a little more tame in our formative years, we might not spend our adult years (not to mention millions of dollars of dispensable income) trying to replace the euphoria of our youth? I don’t know, but I’d like to think so.
By Belynda, August 20th, 2009 in Other | No Comments
Tags: africa, book review, chris cleave, little bee
I came into Little Bee knowing precious few things about the author or the story. It was recommended to me as a “You Might Also Like” on Goodreads… I forget for which book. I threw it on my list and IMMEDIATELY people on Twitter were saying “Loved it. You have to read it.”
I bought it because it was the first thing to come to mind when I was showing a friend how to buy books directly from the Kindle. I remembered all the praise, and click-click… it was mine. I’m really glad I picked that one up!
I’m not going to tell you much about Bee, because much as it’s suggested on the Goodreads description, it’s just too good to be spoiled by explanation. I will tell you that it is a very sad story, the kind of thing you don’t want to read when your seratonin levels are slumping. It’s a book about the realities of war, the frivolity of the western world, and the brutality of the parts of Africa most of us would rather just forget about.
The story is expertly written, its atmosphere and narrative style intimate, at moments uncomfortably so. The characters are real to you, real in their failures and their fears, all snarled up in a world they can’t help but keep stumbling through. None are exactly what they seem at the outset, and none get out unscathed.
The savior of the entire story is Charlie, the optimistic and wide-eyed three-year-old in a Batman suit, “fighting the baddies” and balancing out an appropriately bleak-hearted adult cast of characters. Charlie makes you laugh even when you think you shouldn’t. He’s a gem. If I have a son, I’ll want him to be as sweet as Charlie.
Bee herself runs the risk of being a two-dimensional character, until you know all of her secrets. Like thousands in her position, a good heart is clouded by awful memories and terrible burdens. It makes her transformation in the reader’s eyes all the more potent. The Bee you know through the biggest part of the story is not the Bee you will walk away from when you close the cover.
There are certain stories that get under your skin, that just can’t help but cling to you long after you’ve moved on from them. Little Bee is one of those stories for me. If you’re okay with that type of book, then Bee is a must read.
By Belynda, August 20th, 2009 in Other | 1 Comment
Tags: ayn rand and her bullshit, bucket lists, challenges, crazy ideas, guardian, Reading
Not so recently (six months ago? More? 2008?? Yeah that sounds right. Who the hell remembers.) The Guardian put out a bucket list of the 1,000 books everyone should read before they die. At first I sort of rolled my eyes, because unless you’re this girl, it sounds like an impossible feat. But let’s really look at the numbers… obviously you’ll have to adjust the math for your age:
I’m 28 years old. Barring car crashes, swine flu, attacks by flying monkeys, cataclysmic war with one of the countries we’ve pissed off, or the rapture… I say that I should have enough eyesight, hearing capability, and mental acuity to read/listen to audiobooks until I’m 75. Call it 78 and I’ll hope for the best. That’s 50 years to read 1,000 books, or about 1.7 books a month. What the hell, I’m a go-getter.. I’ll read the whole second book and put it into the principle. Two books a month isn’t a ball-breaker right? I’m averaging about 5 a month for my New Year’s resolution self-challenge.
So fine. I can read the Guardian 1,000. It’s like eating any elephant… one bite at a time. And yes, yes, I know, I’m not the first person to dream this up. This dude and quite a few others beat me to it. And they’re trying to do it in 10 years, at 4 books a week. (My first question is, how friggin’ rich is THIS kid to have time to read 4 books a week… but I digress.)
Anyway, I’m going to take the slow-and easy, and read other stuff I want to read that’s not on the list, too. I’ve read 22 of them so far, and a few (like Don Quixote and American Gods) I’ve sort of picked up and put down in the middle. I’m just glad Atlas Shrugged isn’t on there. That was enough to kill someone. (Fuck you Ayn Rand, you’re dead and your Objectivist bullshit is languishing on a bargain rack somewhere, so ha.) Anyway, with a nice little dent in the list, I’m already feeling like a champion.
Now… I thought I saw some weird ones on a list today… such as How to Have Sex Like a Porn Star by Jenna Jameson (Ed says he approves of my reading this one) and Ron Jeremy: The Hardest Working Man in Showbiz I think someone made some adjustments to the list for their own amusement. Hell I might read those anyway!
Anyway, I think I’m going to pick up this not-so-little challenge just for the fun of branching out and reading some things such as PG Wodehouse and Agatha Christie… things I might not otherwise pick up.
Anyone else down?
By Belynda, August 20th, 2009 in Other | 1 Comment
Tags: "Ristening", 100 Classics Challenge, audiobooks, challenges, GoodReads, Reading, Writing
This year, I decided to do away with that dogshit resolution everyone makes about eating right and getting in shape, and decided to spend my time in a more constructive way.
I got some pretty serious heckling about the fact that I never found time to read. Between a full time job and three college classes at night, I didn’t really feel like doing anything but watching television and sleeping. But as someone who really does love to read (unfortunately I can’t do it three or four pages at a time on the can ::ahem!::), I took heckling to heart, and started picking up some audio-books** to occupy the spare minutes in my day (driving, groceries, laundry and the like.)
**Side note: The audiobooks of course then sparked the now-legendary debate of what is technically “reading”… if I’m allowed to say I “read” a book a listened to… issues of academic snobbery… and of course Beth’s clever compromise of calling it “Ristening” (ever the diplomat!) Nothing’s ever easy, is it? But whatever, I took the NEW heckling and used Ed’s guilt at having teased me to open an Audible.com account. I win 
So in January, I decided instead of promising myself that I was going to go to the gym three times a week and eat ridiculous salads and only drink, I was going to read/listen to a book a week. 52 books in a year, to make up for the paltry 13 from the year before. I was already off to a good start: When I left my job at the end of July 2008, I never turned on the television while I was home. I was finishing/editing a book at the time, and found that the best use of the quiet in the house was to write and read. I took a break from the job hunt to read “Love in the Time of Cholera” (I’d had it hanging around ever since I fell in love with the movie “Serendipity”) and looked up 5 hours later, wondering why I was hungry and why it was getting dark out.
I did a little thumb through my Goodreads list yesterday and realized that by month end, I will be a good 7 books ahead in my goal! Woo! If I can wrap up my current shorter selections, The Cellist of Sarajevo and Let the Right One In, House of Sand and Fog and maybe fit in a few quickies on my 100 Classics list (Camus’ The Stranger is only like 150 pages) then I should be a 41 by the turn of the calendar page.
I thought today of accelerating my goal to 100 books… but then I’d have to quit my job.
Hmm… actually…
The List So Far (parentheses denotes in-progress):
(House of Sand and Fog)
(The Cellist of Sarajevo)
(Let the Right One In)
The Sun Also Rises
Mother Night
Candide
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Pillars of the Earth
The Strain (The Strain Trilogy, Book 1)
The Painted Veil
The White Tiger
The Sociopath Next Door
The Road
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Little Bee: A Novel
Beloved
Crime and Punishment
The Catcher in the Rye
Dexter By Design (Dexter, #4)
The Trial
1984
Girl, Interrupted
Three Case Histories
Madame Bovary
Fool
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Nights in Rodanthe
Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO
Never Let Me Go
Brick Lane
The Rose Variations
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Eat Pray Love
Billy Budd
The Virgin Suicides
Brave New World
Waiting for Godot
By Belynda, August 20th, 2009 in Other | 1 Comment
Tags: answers to questions, cool art, day off, fire and ice, harvard square, india, people's republic, wheel questions
Last week, Claire and I decided to take in the touristy spots in Boston and the surrounding area. We went to the Omni Theatre to see “Mystic India” (It was my second time seeing it, it was just as mystic as the first, and it really made me want to plan a temple tour.) Afterwards, hungry and adventurous, we wandered over to Harvard Square to poke through shops and fill ourselves to the max on tasties from Fire and Ice.
We were bumping around the square down on the corner of Brattle and Mass Ave., and ran into THIS thing:
What the hell IS that thing?
Tah Dah. Meet the Question Wheel.
Basically you can take a colored card, write a question, and Johnny Monserrat will answer your question. It can be anything at all! Will so-and-so marry me? Why is there so much violence in the world? Wanna hang out sometime? You ask the question, and Johnny will answer it, and pop the answer cards back up on the Wheel. In addition, they’re available on the Wheel Questions website.
I thought this was really cool, for a few reasons. First off, it was an interactive art exhibit with some substance to it. It wasn’t some bullshit Jackson Pollack or some guy flinging a cow or some delusional college student claiming to make art out of aborted babies for her senior portfolio presentation. Secondly… no one seemed to be stealing the cards! Even in the People’s Republic, the sheer lack of vandalism was almost too incredible to be believed.
The questions ranged from the serious, to the clever, to the bizarre.
Some of my favorites were:
* (Of course) What makes you the authority on everything?
* I can go to Harvard. (To which Johnny replied “Good luck on the TOEFL!” ha ha ha!)
* I’m 12 and what’s this?
* I can haz cheezburger?
* What is the velocity of a coconut-laden swallow?
* Will gnomes appear today?
* How do I stop writing a finished book?? (A few readers will relate to this question!)
* Penis?
And of course, to test the theory, I had to put up one myself, and I must say I’m pleased:
Andddd the answer… Thank you Johnny. I couldn’t agree more.
By Belynda, August 19th, 2009 in Other | No Comments
Tags: bookgirl96, great ways to spend a night on the couch, Niffenegger, the time traveler's wife, tv series
This just in:
Apparently the Niffenegger gravy-train has not yet pulled into the last station.
@Bookgirl96 on Twitter made my day today by posting a link to this article about the plan to turn The Time Traveler’s Wife into a weekly series!!!
No word in the article about possible cast members, but I’m really excited that the series might address some of the issues I had with the movie.
Keep y’all posted on anything new I hear. Thanks BookGirl96!
By Belynda, August 17th, 2009 in Other | No Comments
THERE ARE SPOILERS IN HERE, TOO.
There okay. I feel better now.
District 9 was not at all what I expected it to be. I actually went into the movie with little knowledge but the fact that it took place in Africa, and that there were aliens being treated like Japanese work-camp prisoners.
A movie that didn’t promise much but flashy effects actually turned out to be REALLY good, and REALLY gory.
The story plays like a mockumentary of a civilian containment effort, documenting the 20-year saga of the “Prawns”, a clicky-speaking, crustacean-like alien race, who have crash-landed in Johannesburg and are unable to leave. With no place to go, a settlement area is set up… make that a hideous slum is set up… and the Prawns live out a miserable existence riddled with illegal trade and a strange narcotic obsession with… of all things… cat food.
When the intergalactic shit hits the fan, it’s mostly made of humans. This movie was FAR gorier than I had anticipated (to Ed’s delight,) with bodies turning into mist, random smatterings of previously intact humanity splashing the camera, crazy black alien-vomit shooting out at random intervals, and some truly nasty prosthetic special effects decorating the story’s main character, Wikus.
Wikus is sort of a bumbling UN/Halliburton contractor foil who gets a distinct taste of how the other half lives when a fluid-filled canister bursts on him and starts to turn him into one of the baddies. Wikus goes from clown to bad-ass faster than you can say “Interspecies Prostitution” as he tries to win back his arm, his humanity, and the blonde-bombshell wife who he now scares the shit out of because of his nasty lobster claw.
While the movie has some distinctly Troma-like moments, it also gives you a pretty horrid picture of the way we treat “them.” Whoever “them” is… neighboring countries, religious heretics, people who annoy and/or repel us. It’s a fine piece of satire, and well worth the money if you can keep your gorge down while the body count rises (by the atom, in some cases.)
By Belynda, August 17th, 2009 in Other | 3 Comments
Tags: Henry and Clare, movie review, Niffenegger, Spoiler-filled reviews, Time Travelers Wife
PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK. AVERT YOUR EYES!
Abandon hope all ye who enter here…
*****
*****
Theatrical Poster
Okay. There. SuperMegaSpoiler Buffer Zone.
So, when I first heard The Time Traveler’s Wife was being made into a movie, the first thought that occurred to me was “Oh no. They’re going to butcher it.” As with Memoirs of a Geisha, Lolita, and every other movie adapt I’ve seen, there is a tendency to leave out the things that make the book so gripping. I often think the film industry has very little faith in its audience, but that’s a whole other post.
The things the movie got right, it got REALLY right. The visual effects of Henry’s disappearance, the here-and-then-nothing shots with empty mirrors and running water… these work. They show the sheer inconvenience of a life, a body you can never depend upon to be there when you’re counting on it. It does a good job of conveying the frustration of being left behind, of wanting things so badly you can taste them, and yet not being able to grasp.
Clare and Henry were really well played as a romantic couple. You could feel the frustration in a furrowed brow or a heavy sigh, the tender “forgive me” stare of a lover who is walking gingerly, the sense of play they shared in the book.
The settings were lovely. The dingy Chicago streets, the gritty splendor of the Bow Thai, all the grandeur of the Abshire residence were captured with ease. Even Clare’s studio felt as it should have, warm and inviting, a place where order ceased and creativity dwelled. I would have liked to see a little nod to Henry’s “Wings” at some point during the movie, but it was a small thing to miss. Henry’s Flannel shirts were there, the scraggly feel of his stolen and mismatched clothes. The setting and atmosphere translated really well from the page.
While I won’t say that the film anywhere compares to the beauty, the tragedy, or the chemistry of the book, I will say that it was a decent take. There were a few things however ,that speaking from my own experience really robbed the film of the original magic.
1. Henry: Henry was brilliant in the book. A sensitive yet punk-rock man, who loved Rilke as much as the Sex Pistols. What a mix. He was a librarian, the alpha-nerd who rattles off love poetry and revels in the time-worn touch and smell of the special collections gallery. He could also cuss you out and kick your ass and pick a lock in ten seconds flat. While for obvious reasons the lock-picking remained, the romance of Henry was left out of translation and supplanted by the GQ-friendly face of Eric Bana. Eric made a suitable Henry, but the movie gave us a total of 30 seconds of Henry as the smart, swoon-worthy geek. The signature phrase “Had we but world enough and time…” (Borrowed from Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress”) never even *appears* in the movie. Call it nitpicking, but I missed it.
For the sake of garnering a PG-13 rating, the film shies away from the visceral sexuality of the book. The biggest example of course being the conception of Alba. It is no mistake that this little girl is brought into the world. A traveling version of Henry meets Clare in the street and tells her “Persevere”. The scene in the car with a pre-snip instance of Henry very cleverly supplants the very risque original, Younger Henry and Clare surreptitiously making love in the bed while Linear Timeline Henry snoozes six inches away, blissfully unaware. (I can’t even begin to comment on the inference of a man sleeping through the creation of his first child… call it a modern twist on an urban myth.)
Sex helps Henry stay, as well. I guess they needed him to travel a lot for the sake of a salable movie, because the paltry two or three times they allude to a lovemaking session before turning off the lights and drawing the blinds plays NOTHING like the sheer sexual energy of the book.
Film-makers also softened the blow of Henry’s reality for the viewer, based partially on test-audience reaction to the movie’s original ending. In the book, Henry’s condition eventually costs him both of his feet, and eventually his life. At an hour and three-quarters, the movie is unable to fully translate the deep depression and frustration of Henry’s life as an amputee. His death is played out as a train on a track, Henry the rider waiting to get off at the last stop. The floods of tears that came at Henry’s passing (which incidentally happened for me on a lunch break from work… sitting by my lunch spot at the lake SOBBING like a fool) just didn’t happen at the movie. If I were crying for any reason, it was because that final parting scene was close enough to evoke my original response.
2. Life After Henry: Life after Henry was not business as usual, as the film would have you believe. Clare went on in the world with what Plath would have called a “hole in herself, shaped like the other person.” Henry’s passing consumed her, mired her in sleep and self-pity, and for a time robbed her of her ability to be an artist and a mother. She tried anything and everything to reclaim some grasp on Henry, including a momentary lapse into a strange not-quite-infidelity with Gomez (”I am the time traveler now.” she says as she tries to use Gomez as a placeholder for her beloved husband.) None of this enters into the movie, for fear of tainting the audience’s image of Clare as the Madonna, a sinless woman removed from desire, a martyr. Likewise, moviegoers liked Gomez as the easy comic foil, who never adds to the tension of the plot. In reality, Gomez spends his life burdened by an unexpressed love for Clare, and in his one and only opportunity to indulge it, recoils when he finds that even in death, Clare can’t let go of the man she always loved. The movie doesn’t rock the boat, apparently in an attempt to secure our $12.
The movie makes a screaming dash from Henry’s death to the end of the movie, skipping everything about the ending of the book that made it truly magical. Much like the sweetness of Florentino winning the hand of Fermina Daza at the end of Love in the Time of Cholera, the victory over death experienced when Henry embraces Clare at the end of her life gives us a balm to soothe the heartache of the final chapters of the book. The film foregoes this sweet reward, moving instead to quickly wrap up the story-line in a gee-willikers ending where mother and daughter wander off into the sunset knowing that they’ll get to see Daddy even though he’s gone. It’s saccharine and contrived, and unfortunately it will make the movie sell better in the mainstream.
If you loved the book, buy the movie when it comes out, re-read the book while you’re waiting for the DVD release date. You’ll be spending more quality time with two people you love.
By Belynda, August 17th, 2009 in Other | 3 Comments
Tags: Amae, food reviews, Lowell, Viet Namese food
Eddie and I decided that tonight would be a good night to shamelessly gorge ourselves on Taco Bell and KFC, but fate had other plans for us.
We were buzzing down Westford Street when we went past Amae, a new Vietnamese restaurant in Lowell.
“Ooh! Want to try something different?” Ed says. Off we go. We — well, I — nearly caused a three-car pileup banging an illegal and highly unwise U-turn… but we got a spot right in front of the restaurant so the end justified the means.
Unlike many dressed up American-style asian fusion restaurants, Amae is the real deal, offering things like Pho, Glass Noodle soup, and a host of different seafood dishes in a fun atmosphere. Vietnamese television shows play on in the background, families come to enjoy authentic family-style Vietnamese dishes, and there is a GIANT SQUEEZE BOTTLE of tastebud-eradicating Hot Chili sauce on the table. Where can you go wrong?
*** Funny story about the Scoville punishment factor of Vietnamese food… My mom has a co-worker from Vietnam who eats possibly the hottest chicken and rice on the planet. Every time she sits with him for lunch, he digs into a giant dish of the stuff and about ten minutes in, says, “Jeez. My wife. I think she trying to *kill* me.” My mom always asks “Well then, why do you eat it?!” He mops his brow with a napkin, smiles and then says, “Cuz it GOOOOD.” ***
A quick look through the menu offered many choices for dinner. Ed decided on something tame - crispy chicken and rice.
I went for something a little more adventurous. I started out with spring rolls - not those sissy deep-fried things you get at the local Jade, but soft rice-paper rolls filled with shrimp, basil, lettuce, glass noodles, and something I couldn’t identify that tasted pretty good!
Things took a different turn at the main course. I decided on Clay Pot Pork… which is basically sliced pork simmered in scallions and a savory pepper sauce, served with white rice. When I ordered, our very sweet waitress gave me a sympathetic and hesitant look. “You sure? You probably won’t like it. Umm… It Vietnamese. It… smell.” She then complimented me on my jewelry, a diamond pendant with “Ai”, the Kanji symbol for love. She knew a little Mandarin, she said. I think she was trying to distract me into sticking with something more tame. Undeterred, I ordered it anyway. She gave me the three-second pause to back out of the deal, then went off to fill our order.
It’s possible she ran back to the kitchen to tell them to make the tourist version of “Clay Pot Pork” for the ridiculous girl who had made a horrible error in judgment, but whatever came out of that kitchen was damned delicious! The pork was cooked perfectly, wasn’t cuss-inducing spicy (although Ed did manage to wipe some chili sauce on my tongue and almost send me to the hospital.) She was still a little worried that I didn’t like it until her second visit back when I’d nearly wiped it out, and said I’d order it again. Ed nearly sent them to the store to restock on chili sauce, so a good meal was had by all. We wrapped it up with a Vietnamese version of miso soup, made with flatleaf parsley and morels.
Beside the food, the thing that charmed us most about the place was the sheer friendliness of the new owners. They were obviously in love with the place, and were thrilled that at 7 o’clock on a Monday night, the restaurant was bustling with families. Both of the owners came by to chat for a minute, making sure the meal was good and that we had everything we needed. We chatted a little about the lounge area (they’re still waiting on the liquor license - hop to it, Lowell!!) and how excited they were to finally be open for business. Just the personal attention to your visit is reason to stop by again soon!
