Simple social stuff
Aug. 12th, 2003 01:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzillaI don't write enough about my actual life. Usually this is because I don't have that much to say about it, but there are a few things I'd like to mention.
I was delighted to attend a mini-bloggerfest in New York on Sunday night. Patrick Nielsen Hayden e-mailed me on Saturday to let me know that his band, Whisperado, had a gig on Sunday at a Lower East Side bar called "Otto's Shrunken Head", and, oh, by the way, Jim "Unqualified Offerings" Henley and The Talking Dog would both be there, and that there would be drinks and chatting afterward.
So I hied my heinie down to the fringes of Alphabet City, surprised myself by finding parking relatively easily, and had a great time. Whisperado play what used to be called "rock and roll" and is now mostly not called anything at all. Jim opined that they reminded him of X; my own sense of the sound was more convoluted, and I finally settled on a composite of Jefferson Airplane without the psychadelia, early Bruce Springsteen without the Dylan wannabee, and George Thurogood without the celebration of stupidity. (This last occurred to me before they performed Thurogood's "I Drink Alone".) Good stuff.
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agrumer notes, most of his posse was in attendance as well, as was Teresa Nielsen Hayden. We introduced ourselves by our various blog-names ("Yo! Unqualified! Meet Bugsybanana!") and a good time was had by all.
Dinner followed at the 2nd Avenue Deli, where I had my usual bowl of cholent and a great mass of coleslaw and pickles. (Cholent is one of my comfort foods--it's a traditional Eastern European Jewish dish, a thick, slow-cooked meat-and-bean stew. It became a comfort food for me on first taste, because it reminded me of good old North Carolinian Brunswick stew, which in turn became a comfort food for me in college because my favorite diner in downtown Durham made a kick-ass version. Alas, that diner is no longer.)
Jim does make the point that we spent altogether too much time bashing libertarianism, but then, he was obviously having fun needling us commiesymps by dropping names from his list of "The Most Evil Americans of All Time", such as FDR.
My favorite moment: It transpired that the 2nd Avenue Deli serves cola by the pitcher much less expensively than by the can, but the cola in pitchers is RC, which is mostly despised by people who care about such things. I noted that it's sweeter than either Coke or Pepsi (which is why it actually does very well in blind taste tests). Patrick then mentioned that you can still get Coca-Cola made with cane sugar in Canada. (We didn't, surprisingly, branch into a discussion of the evils of Archer-Daniels-Midland; perhaps we all knew that it could be taken as read that ADM's bought-and-purchased US government policies which make cane sugar 500% more expensive in the US than in the rest of the world were approved of by none at the table.) I noted that it was, of course, possible to get sugar-sweetened Coke in New York City, around Passover, because of course you can't drink corn syrup then. Teresa's eyes grew big in wonder, and she asked, "Why can't you drink corn syrup at Passover--and why am I asking you?", since of course she was sitting directly across fromladymondegreen, who actually keeps kosher. The obvious answer to the first question, provided by at least two people, is that corn syrup doesn't split the hoof, though it does, of course, chew the cud; the answer to the second is just one of those mysteries. (Perhaps one of the as-yet unrecognized Bogus Mysteries of the Rosary.)
I was delighted to attend a mini-bloggerfest in New York on Sunday night. Patrick Nielsen Hayden e-mailed me on Saturday to let me know that his band, Whisperado, had a gig on Sunday at a Lower East Side bar called "Otto's Shrunken Head", and, oh, by the way, Jim "Unqualified Offerings" Henley and The Talking Dog would both be there, and that there would be drinks and chatting afterward.
So I hied my heinie down to the fringes of Alphabet City, surprised myself by finding parking relatively easily, and had a great time. Whisperado play what used to be called "rock and roll" and is now mostly not called anything at all. Jim opined that they reminded him of X; my own sense of the sound was more convoluted, and I finally settled on a composite of Jefferson Airplane without the psychadelia, early Bruce Springsteen without the Dylan wannabee, and George Thurogood without the celebration of stupidity. (This last occurred to me before they performed Thurogood's "I Drink Alone".) Good stuff.
As
agrumer notes, most of his posse was in attendance as well, as was Teresa Nielsen Hayden. We introduced ourselves by our various blog-names ("Yo! Unqualified! Meet Bugsybanana!") and a good time was had by all.Dinner followed at the 2nd Avenue Deli, where I had my usual bowl of cholent and a great mass of coleslaw and pickles. (Cholent is one of my comfort foods--it's a traditional Eastern European Jewish dish, a thick, slow-cooked meat-and-bean stew. It became a comfort food for me on first taste, because it reminded me of good old North Carolinian Brunswick stew, which in turn became a comfort food for me in college because my favorite diner in downtown Durham made a kick-ass version. Alas, that diner is no longer.)
Jim does make the point that we spent altogether too much time bashing libertarianism, but then, he was obviously having fun needling us commiesymps by dropping names from his list of "The Most Evil Americans of All Time", such as FDR.
My favorite moment: It transpired that the 2nd Avenue Deli serves cola by the pitcher much less expensively than by the can, but the cola in pitchers is RC, which is mostly despised by people who care about such things. I noted that it's sweeter than either Coke or Pepsi (which is why it actually does very well in blind taste tests). Patrick then mentioned that you can still get Coca-Cola made with cane sugar in Canada. (We didn't, surprisingly, branch into a discussion of the evils of Archer-Daniels-Midland; perhaps we all knew that it could be taken as read that ADM's bought-and-purchased US government policies which make cane sugar 500% more expensive in the US than in the rest of the world were approved of by none at the table.) I noted that it was, of course, possible to get sugar-sweetened Coke in New York City, around Passover, because of course you can't drink corn syrup then. Teresa's eyes grew big in wonder, and she asked, "Why can't you drink corn syrup at Passover--and why am I asking you?", since of course she was sitting directly across from
ladymondegreen, who actually keeps kosher. The obvious answer to the first question, provided by at least two people, is that corn syrup doesn't split the hoof, though it does, of course, chew the cud; the answer to the second is just one of those mysteries. (Perhaps one of the as-yet unrecognized Bogus Mysteries of the Rosary.)
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-12 05:24 am (UTC)The Canadian stuff is sweetened with "sucrose/fructose" according to our samples from Manitoba and Ontario. That doesn't suggest cane sugat to me, and I find it impossible to believe that the Manitoba bottler isn't using beet sugar; they're in the Red River Valley, after all. Fructose, mostly commonly, is HFCS.
There is some difference between Canadian and American coke; nearly everyone could taste the difference. But I'm not convinced that cane sugar and not HFCS is the answer.
K.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-12 02:06 pm (UTC)Tell me more -- 2nd Ave is a big place and I don't get into the city very often, but that's worth knowing about!
no subject
Date: 2003-08-12 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-12 02:34 pm (UTC)2AD is one of the archetypal "Jewish Delis", like Katz's or the Carnegie; a key difference is that 2AD is actually kosher. As a result, everything has the kosher surcharge, but everything I've had there is also very good, especially the pickles. The full-sized sandwiches are bigger than your head.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-12 06:02 pm (UTC)MKK
no subject
Date: 2003-08-13 07:03 pm (UTC)While you guys were busy bashing libertarianism, did anyone mention that libertarianism doesn't support price supports for anything, including cane sugar?
Vague impression on kashrut: Observant Ashkenazic (though not Sephardic) Jews don't eat corn or rice during Passover because somehow they're not as perfectly unleavenable as wheat.
2nd Avenue Deli
Date: 2003-08-14 01:18 am (UTC)Don't forget to mention the waiters.Thirty years ago it was a sign that you had truly "arrived" as a New Yorker when they treated you like utter shit, with the greatest disdain.
Most of them were Jewish in those days, and liked to remind you (with their through lack of manners) that they REALLY could have been a contender in some field or another, but, instead were wasting their lives serving you.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-14 03:05 am (UTC)While I am mostly in favor of free trade, I don't find the doctrinaire libertarian position on it particularly helpful, because it comes from an assumption of the active desirability of the absence of governance in all human affairs that I find unsupportable, a "just say no to the rule of law!" approach to government that I find no more likeable when it is promoted by people who just want to be left alone than when it is promoted by people who want to sign me into a freely entered contract of lifetime indentured servitude.