Adventure Fantasy Day

Every so often I like to query my friends about how they'd spend a dream day. Time travel, teleportation and magic all exist in this fantasy realm. Usually I get a bevy of diverse responses to this semi-annual CFE, but this round was marked by low turnout and strikingly similar fantasy scenarios by 50% of participants.

SAM
wake up with the dawn in a woodsy lodge, full of energy. do yoga and enjoy it, then eat a light, oatmeal breakfast. then it's hiking time, and i hike in the brisk air up a hill in a woods:

upon my return, i have a business lunch (croque monsieur) with a surprise guest: an editor who wants me to write a book for money.

then it's pool/spa time. it's raining cats and dogs, but it makes the pool (pictured here) that much cozier!


after that, i get a call from someone who wants me to make and star in a movie. so i've got that going for me too. then it's time for dinner outside at dumont with my best girlz--burgers, ladies, am i right?--then we jam the night away, dancing, loving and whatnotting!

ERIN
I would time travel back to November 25th, 1976 to the Winter Ballroom in San Francisco and play tambourine in The Band's final farewell concert and then use my sexual mind control powers to bang Levon Helm & Rick Danko immediately after. Then I'd teleport every single person who participated in the concert (with the exception of Van Morrison and Michael McClure) to Mexico where we'd party for three consecutive days on the beach. Over those three days I'd become Eric Clapton's number one girl and we'd get hitched and live a life of wealth, excess and sexual healing together forever. I'd also become Emmylou Harris's best friend. Joan Baez would feel left out, but, you know, that's how it goes. I can't be best friends with EVERYONE. This game is kind of depressing.

LINDSAY
It's 1972 Los Angeles. I am 25 years old, a size 4, and working on the McGovern campaign. I go to a campaign event, some fancy dinner, and meet Warren Beatty. He asks me if I want to see his mansion. We go back to his place, get high, and bang each other.

NAOMI
I wake up in my pied-à-terre in Paris. My boyfriend Javier Bardem and I decided to fly out last night to go a party.

There are croissants and great coffee waiting for us when we rise. Before we get out of bed Javier insists on giving me head. Who can say no? That happens, then we eat the croissants in bathrobes on the balcony. With every bite of croissant, I lose a pound. I eat two croissants and at ten bites each I am at my goal weight. Looking fabulous, I leave the apartment and Javier to hang out with my best pals in mid 1980s New York. We go shopping and buy everything we want. I see a cheap townhouse in the West Village for sale and buy it. It's a great price and I have a feeling the value will appreciate.

We meet up with my other friends Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Karen Finley, Dara Birnbaum and Nan Goldin to go to a performance at The Kitchen. Then it's contemporary times again and, thanks to my intimate involvement with the art scene in the 80s (what was really mere minutes ago), I am a famous artist. I head to my opening at Gagosian. The work looks great and the turnout is spectacular. My best friends and I head to my West Village townhouse to have dinner. Tom Colicchio is hard at work cooking. I tell him to take a break and come upstairs for a minute. We fuck. Back downstairs, dinner is being served when there's a knock on the door. It's Javier come to surprise me! What a sweetie. We finish dinner and then head to a party that's playing all the best music. We dance all night and do a few drugs nothing major. Then we sleep deeply.

Hangover Prevention & More Encounters With Terrible People

Last night I had too many drinks and I got home and was like shiiiiiiiiiz I have work in like 8 hours. Has the same thing ever happened to you? I bet it has! Here is my fool-proof Hangover Prevention Method (HPM). First you can do your normal nightly routine if you are able. If you aren't able, skip it! Then take two Excedrin Migraine and two 4 hour Sudafed with a full glass of water. You should sleep sitting upright as much as possible (this is mostly only if it's allergy season or if you have a cold, but sometimes it's good to do regardless). You will wake up in the middle of the night, say like 2am, and have a really bad headache. You take one or two more Excedrin Migraine. Then go back to sleep. You will wake up again at about 5:30am and you'll say, 'please no headache' and luckily you won't have one. Then you can just slumber until 7:30 and you will be mostly ok!

When you head to work after this, you'll be functioning at about 85%. A smooth ride with no dramatically terrible people will help you relax and get back to "neutral." Unfortunately this morning Lady Luck was mad at me. This guy was leaning on the doors next to me and listening to his headphones loudly. Every time we were between stations, he would turn to face the door, look at his reflection and start playing air upright bass! EVERY SINGLE TIME. Like, dude get a fucking life and stop grazing my arm with yours b/c you want to admire yourself and practice strumming an air instrument. You are lame at life.

Listen Up, Ladies

If you see a Curves bar, you should eat it.

Definitely don't buy one, but if you have one lying around at work or on the street it is not a bad idea to, well, eat it! They contain almost no nutritional value, but also only 100 cals. No guilt! Chow down sistahs!

Brush With Death

I know I haven't posted in a while which makes what I'm about to write even more lame as the most exciting blog-worthy thing that's happened to me recently. Last night at dinner I was just rubbing my leg a little (just in a normal way one rubs a body part here and there) and I felt a bump. It was a hard, discrete little bump. And I thought, well this is it. I finally got the cancer I've been so sure is coming my way all these years. I made everyone at the table feel the bump. They said, it's nothing, but maybe get it checked out anyway. When we left the restaurant, my thoughts naturally drifted to what kind of invasive treatments I'd endure before my body finally succumbed to the disease and who would sob hardest and loudest at my funeral. Then we arrived at a light street corner. I looked down to inspect the nodule only to find that it was a tiny mosquito bite. A great wave of relief washed over me. It was the most timely and conclusive resolution to a bout of disease related anxiety I've ever had. So despite how ridiculous it was to mistake a mosquito bite for stage 1, I felt comforted that my anxiety can be quelled in a matter of moments if I have sufficient evidence to discount cancer as a culprit.

Million Dollar Synergy Idea

Hershey's/Nestle/Godiva team up with Midol. Every box of Midol comes with a bar of chocolate. I think it's genius. Who wants in on the ground level?

Medical

Sometimes you have a minor health issue, but the symptom makes you think that it is or could be a major health problem. Here is my list of scary symptomed minor health problems (my jump-to-conclusions diagnosis is in parentheses):

Clogged Sweat Gland (lymph(?) cancer)
Bad Headache (brain tumor)

Heartburn (heart attack)
General Pain in Left Arm (heart attack)

There are more but I think this is all I'm willing to admit/discuss on the blog.

Unrelated, everyone see "I Love You, Man."

Rachel's Tasty Travels: Mexico!

No, not THAT Rachel. My real life friend Rachel! She went to Mexico for two weeks and I asked her to tell me everything she ate. She went to Chiapas and Oaxaca, both places I've never been. I looked up some pictures so I could better picture her experience.


(Alex in) Chiapas



Oaxaca

Here is her thorough report.


while in Chiapas and Oaxaca for 10 days last month, I ate:

Chicken in salsa roja with refried black beans, guacamole, rice, handmade tortillas, quesillo, and queso fresco with herbs and chile. To drink: limonada, beer, mezcal
This was made by my friend's roommate who hosts a community lunch on their roof every Friday to make money. It was one of the best meals of my life.

Vegetarian Tlayuda. To drink: Cafe de olla

Tlayudas are sort of like a giant quesidillas but that description really doesn't do them justice. They are about a foot long and folded in half and crunchy on the outside. They are made from fresh masa and cooked over a charcoal fire, which gives them their smoky flavor. This one was filled with quesillo, black beans, tomatoes and cilantro, and was made by Diego's mom and served to me as breakfast in bed. It was heavenly!

Tejate, served in a hollowed out gourd:
Tejate is a pre hispanic drink made from flor de cacao, mamey seed, toasted corn meal and probably other things as well. Honestly, I don't even know. All I can tell you that it's heavenly. It's a little nutty and chocolatey and corn-y tasting, and forms an odd sort of froth on the top. This particular tejate was drunk in an organic weekend market in the shade of a giant flowering tree.

Mangoes. Many

Over the course of my trip I ate mangoes sliced with chile and limon, peeled and stuck on a stick like a popsicle, mashed up with limonada and mezcal for the best cocktail ever, and at least four mango pinas, the best type of mango of all.

Rajas con Queso:
Nopales, pepers, corn, cheese and cream, cooked together into a delicious sticky mess. Again, cooked by Diego's mom, and served to me in bed by Diego, who may be my favorite person on earth.

Black Bean Soup:
The Caldero, one of the best restaurants in San Cristobal, makes their black bean soup with three kinds of pork. The enormous bowl has pieces of chorizo and bacon floating among the beans and epazote. The plate of garnishes on the side comes with lime, cubes of cheese, and chicharones. It will kill you, it is that good.

Molletes:
Molletes are one of those foods that are so obvious you can't believe you didn't think of them yourself. They are toasted pieces of french bread covered in refried beans and melted cheese. They are deeply satisfying.

Falafel:
You might think it's dumb to eat falafel in Chiapas, but honestly there is better Mexican food in Chicago than there is in San Cristobal. This falafel came in home made pita, with thick garlicy hummus, raw cabbage, tomatoes, onions, and radishes. It was pretty great falafel.


Here's a picture of Rachel just to break up the text.


Juices, assorted:
The standouts include mandarin and carrot, and carrot, orange and beet.

Assorted foods on toast:
There's a new wine bar in San Cris that offers you tapas with every order of wine. The tapas are all crustini based, and all slightly disappointing. Think tuna salad, or a slice of deli ham on toast.

Things cooked in pots, accompanied by cafe del campo:
For my two days building a cistern in Comitan, we were served giant pots of deliciousness with every meal. Think delicious beans that have been boiling all day, or mole de olla- a country stew of beef, corn, squash, yucca, chayote and potato. With every meal there was coffee served as they drink it in the communities: sweet enough to put you into a diabetic coma.

Nieves:
Nieves are the official frozen treat of Oaxaca. Fresh fruit ices served in tall sundae glasses at charming wraught iron tables in a church courtyard. Mine was guyabana, a mystery fruit that looks a little like a giant, spiny, mishapen avocado and tastes slightly like guava but better.

Mezcal, Assorted:
Among the various kinds of mezcal I drank, there was the certified organic mezcal, and the mezcal sold in liter water bottles out of the back of a bodega. There was also a cocktail I invented out of everything in Diana's kitchen: Squeeze the juice out of one half mango-pina, then mash up the pulp in the bottom of the glass. Add a shot of mezcal, a spoonfull of sugar, and top off with limonada. Then celebrate international women's day by getting drunk in the living room.

Memelas:
Two hand made tortillas, one with potatoes and chorizo, shredded quesillo, guacamole, and salsa. The other with sauteed fresh mushrooms, quesillo, guacamole and salsa.

Comida at Viznaga's, accompanied by mojitos, margaritas, a pitcher of agua de jamaica, and a cranky baby:
For our last lunch in Oaxaca, we ate at Viznaga's, one of the top five restaurants I've ever been to. Our menu included fresh spears of slightly pickled carrots and jicama, dusted with sesame seeds, a salad of spinach, grapefruit, bacon and pecans, ceviche, sopes de tinga de pollo, seared tuna crusted with amaranth, served over mashed potatoes and garnished with pickled shallots, and flan covered in pecan/mezcal/caramel. It was unsane.


Terrible Breakfast:
At the airport in Mexico City, I ate breakfast at the only sit down breakfast place in my wing. I had huevos a la mexicana, a small pool of refried beans, three sad tortillas, coffee, and grapefruit juice. It cost about 2/3 as much as our entire lunch for three at Viznagas.