He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
- Dr Johnson
I returned to the Holiday Inn -- where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms -- to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday's refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless, and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from.
- Hunter S Thompson, National Observer, 13 July, 1964
I have no idea who that Dr Johnson is, but he's got a keen sense of reality, as does the Good Doctor quoted below him.
I used to really pride myself on my sense of decency -- always considered myself one of the Good Guys, and gladly, because I absolutely believe there is a true shortage of Decent People on this planet, and felt good about being in their ranks.
But lately I've felt myself slipping into the ugly role of a real Heartless Bastard. I'm none too happy about this. I've done a few things over the last couple of weeks that I would never have done before, and I am quite Shocked and Appalled at both my behavior and the relatively low amount of guilt I've felt afterwards. Now, the guilt has finally set in, perhaps because I haven't been raging drunk the last couple of nights like I was most of last week, and I'm beginning to realize the possible repercussions of some things I've done.
I just hope I didn't realize this after I'd done any kind of permanent damage, to either myself or others. I feel myself becoming a Scumbag, and I don't like it at all.
I need to remember Who I Am, or figure out What I've Become, before it gets worse.
Obviously, coming to this realization is a step. I hope it holds out.
Maybe spending a couple days sitting on my Dad's back porch in Texas Hill Country watching the deer roam the field just behind his game fence will bring me some perspective. Hell, at least I'll be able to get some decent Mexican food out there.
Alright, then, that's enough self-loathing. I'm not going to put up with it, and you shouldn't have to, either.
Comedy moment of the week so far:
Walking down a side street with a gay girl I work with, we pass a girl that works at a bar down the street, and we all say 'Hello.'
Just after we pass, my co-worker mutters to me, 'Best ass in SoHo.'
I completely cracked up, and told her, 'I went out with her a couple times, a few months back.'
'You lucky bastard.'
She wasn't kidding, though ... that ass is something else.
Okay, and enough of that tomfoolery, as well.
All that whoopin' it up last week has done me in. My nasty chest cough has taken a vicious turn for the worse, and if I knew how doctors and things work for foreign students in this country, I'd go for a visit, but I don't, and in return I went to bed about 5pm Thursday night. I took a break for a few minutes for some toast & Nutella as well as a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, although I have to say, this is the worst damn peanut-butter I've ever tasted. Guess I shouldn't have gone with the store brand, but I'm trying to live cheaper these days. So I'll have to swing by a clinic when I get to Dallas on Monday; you know, the ones populated by those of us with no insurance, where you wait in line for a couple hours with hookers, domestic workers, service-industry types, etc. Can't wait! And I shudder to think what a bottle of antibiotics is going to cost me ... have to ask specifically for the generics, you know.
At any rate, besides the bruise on my right leg that seems to be getting worse-looking but (slightly) better-feeling, my nose is running like a faucet and my abdomen is sore from all the coughing. Monday and Tuesday nights I couldn't sleep through the night, since I wasn't drunk, so I only got about 4 hours of sleep coming out of a pretty violent binge all last week. I'll tell you, stumbling into work laughing like a loon and sweating whiskey is not a good way to impress your boss, however heavy a drinker she might be herself. Indeed, it was an ugly scene. I was told if I woke up in that condition again, not to bother coming in. I'm not sure if she meant because she's worried I might take a tumble down the stairs or slice off a finger, or if she meant don't bother coming in, ever again. I think it was the former, though, not the latter. I didn't try to argue that I actually cook better when I'm drunk, because for one thing, she wasn't in the mood to hear it, and I don't really do much real cooking there, anyways.
Wednesday night was the big graduation dinner for school. You get a diploma for each of the 3 levels of courses, which is kind of cool, I guess. I got the same speech from 3 of my 4 chefs; the other was too busy handing out awards to really talk. It was the same speech I used to get from all my high-school teachers: You aren't living up to your potential, so we're going to push you harder next term until you do. One of them told me, "I know you've got it. I know you can really cook. I want to see you do it." After cooking a couple of pretty savage meals for some school-mates last week, I found out that at least 4 of them had bragged on me to the chefs, one of them even being one of the best chefs in his graduating Superior class. That felt pretty good. It's easily discouraging when the only people eating your food are critiquing you from the standpoint of guys that have been in the business for over a decade, and all of them having worked in Michelin-starred restaurants. One of them has worked for Guy Savoy, Allain Ducasse, and a couple of the other Best Of The Best chefs in his career. These chaps are no fools, so when all you hear day-in and day-out from them is what you did wrong, it feels good to hear them tell you things like "I know you've got it."
The food at the dinner was pretty killer, I have to say. Pineapple "carpaccio" (pineapple that was sliced very thin with a meat-slicer) with marinated shrimp and crispy-vegtable rice paper wraps (basically, veggie soft spring rolls); roast supreme (breast with the wing bone sticking out) of guinea fowl with a big slab of pan-fried foie gras on top and a sweet red pepper / honey sauce; chocolate mousse in a gingerbread crust with orange ice cream; frozen chocolate-coated balls of Grand Marnier, and little mince-meat pies. The chocolate GrandMa balls and mini-pies weren't that thrilling, but the rest was pretty fantastic. That was a damn impressive-sized slab of foie gras, really.
After Thursday night, despite sleeping most of the time between 5pm and 8am Friday morning, I was still dog-ass tired all day Friday. I left right after work and headed home. Wandered over to the meet at HJB around 6.30 since it was around the corner from my house. I didn't plan on going with the way I felt, but I needed some hot food, not more peanut butter, so I ran over and had coffee, pizza, and 2 beers, then headed home as everyone else was headed back to Central to work over the Ship. There was no way I was going to make that trip again, and I'm glad I didn't, as within 50 meters of leaving HJB, every breath of cold air I took made me cough hysterically, so by the end I was taking the shallowest breaths I could take and still get enough oxygen in my system to make it home. Christ, I hate being sick.
I may look around for a new job once I get back from the States and Berlin, and have my new class schedule. I love the Ship, not least because of the staff, but this isn't the kind of cooking I need to be doing. It's so wild off from working in a brigade kitchen like my last couple jobs in Chicago, and, let's face it, those are the kinds of places I should be working in, to get my career going.
On the other hand, I know Charlotte will work around my class (and travel) schedule in terms of my schedule at the Ship, and I know how much she hates doing the cooking herself. I'll talk to her again, when I get back, about changing the menu around some, to get it full of items that are more easily handled. It's difficult, though, because the items ordered are so varied and unpredictable every day, that you can't prep properly, since the instant you start cutting things apart, they start to degrade, and you'd lose a lot of food to non-use. I'd like to see the menu restructured so I don't have to do a ton of prep to order with every ticket. It's a silly way to run a kitchen. Besides that, I think there are too many different things on the menu.
The problem is, I can already think of a lot of things I'd like to ditch from the menu, and enough things to replace them with, but it wouldn't be English food, and that's what most people expect when they walk in there. Left up to my own devices, that place would flip over to serving Cajun- and Southern US-style food
Damnit, I forgot I had a full glass of water sitting at my feet, and it just went over. Good thing I've got a laptop, because the first reaction I had was to turn off the power strip that everything's plugged into until I got it toweled up a bit. Sheesh.
At any rate, Cajun- and Southern US-style food, but I don't know how well that would go over with the SoHo lunch crowd ... silly bastards. I'm also not sure what we'd be looking at in terms of food cost, since I'm partial to seafood in my jambalaya instead of land- or air-based meat. Well, we'll see how it all goes.
Well, I'm sweating and don't feel hot to the touch now, so I think the fever I felt like I was coming down with might already be on its way out. Right now, I feel better than I have since Sunday (physically, since I was feeling pretty shit emotionally that day). The pseudoephedrine and ibuprofen might have something to do with it, but as long as something's working, who cares? This gives me hope that my 9-hour flight to Dallas on Monday might not be as miserable as I was starting to worry about. Maybe I just needed some written-word therapy, anyways. Hell, the fact that I just ate for the first time all day might have something to do with it as well. I didn't have any appetite all day, I just made myself eat because I knew I needed to.
Wednesday night was the first full night's sleep I've had since last Monday night ... that's a hell of a stretch, really, 9 days or so. But even after on Thursday, I was wiped out all day at work, despite the sleep. I left work around 4.15 and came pretty much straight home and collapsed in bed. Got up around 7 to do some reading, and then at 10.35 I was thinking about going back to bed. I have nothing else to read; I've exhausted my supply here. I have a few books at work I've been meaning to bring back here, but I always forget when I leave.
Well ... just pulled down and read through some bits of a book, Seven Centuries of English Cooking, by Maxime de la Falaise, mostly reading the historical stuff that's in it more than the recipes. Apparently, back in the Middle Ages, like the 13th - 15th centuries, English cooking was actually quite heavily spiced, and didn't become so bland until some monarch or other decided (s)he didn't like spicy food, and the whole of English cuisine went bland, until Indian food became popular. That amuses me: just because some King or other had a stomach condition, the cuisine of the entire country went to shit.
So I wrote Thursday night til about midnight or so, then slept til about 4.15am again, and it took me a couple more hours to get back to sleep, but I had to get up at 8 this morning again, so I was still knackered all day at work on Friday, and the coughing fits were still going strong. Good thing I was able to contain it when I was running food from the kitchen to the bar. The last thing a food customer wants to see is a guy holding his plate coughing and sneezing uncontrollably. Spent a whole lot of time washing my hands Friday.
Went to the SGUK meet for a bit on Friday night. Needed some grub and the meet was around the corner from my place, so I wandered over and had some coffee, pizza, and 2 beers, then headed home as the rest of the group decided to head down to the Ship. I was exhausted anyway, so I just went home and to bed.
Slept fitfully, of course. Couple hours on, couple hours off, that sort of thing. The coughing wasn't as bad as it had been the previous couple of days, though, and hopefully that will hold.
Anyways, this is probably my last update before I head to Texas on Monday. Back in the UK on the 28th, then headed to Berlin on the 4th or 5th for about 4 days. Don't know how much I'll be able to update from the road, so just in case:
Merry Christmas, gang.
Edited to add, I found out who Dr Johnson was.
- Dr Johnson
I returned to the Holiday Inn -- where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms -- to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday's refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless, and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from.
- Hunter S Thompson, National Observer, 13 July, 1964
I have no idea who that Dr Johnson is, but he's got a keen sense of reality, as does the Good Doctor quoted below him.
I used to really pride myself on my sense of decency -- always considered myself one of the Good Guys, and gladly, because I absolutely believe there is a true shortage of Decent People on this planet, and felt good about being in their ranks.
But lately I've felt myself slipping into the ugly role of a real Heartless Bastard. I'm none too happy about this. I've done a few things over the last couple of weeks that I would never have done before, and I am quite Shocked and Appalled at both my behavior and the relatively low amount of guilt I've felt afterwards. Now, the guilt has finally set in, perhaps because I haven't been raging drunk the last couple of nights like I was most of last week, and I'm beginning to realize the possible repercussions of some things I've done.
I just hope I didn't realize this after I'd done any kind of permanent damage, to either myself or others. I feel myself becoming a Scumbag, and I don't like it at all.
I need to remember Who I Am, or figure out What I've Become, before it gets worse.
Obviously, coming to this realization is a step. I hope it holds out.
Maybe spending a couple days sitting on my Dad's back porch in Texas Hill Country watching the deer roam the field just behind his game fence will bring me some perspective. Hell, at least I'll be able to get some decent Mexican food out there.
Alright, then, that's enough self-loathing. I'm not going to put up with it, and you shouldn't have to, either.
Comedy moment of the week so far:
Walking down a side street with a gay girl I work with, we pass a girl that works at a bar down the street, and we all say 'Hello.'
Just after we pass, my co-worker mutters to me, 'Best ass in SoHo.'
I completely cracked up, and told her, 'I went out with her a couple times, a few months back.'
'You lucky bastard.'
She wasn't kidding, though ... that ass is something else.
Okay, and enough of that tomfoolery, as well.
All that whoopin' it up last week has done me in. My nasty chest cough has taken a vicious turn for the worse, and if I knew how doctors and things work for foreign students in this country, I'd go for a visit, but I don't, and in return I went to bed about 5pm Thursday night. I took a break for a few minutes for some toast & Nutella as well as a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, although I have to say, this is the worst damn peanut-butter I've ever tasted. Guess I shouldn't have gone with the store brand, but I'm trying to live cheaper these days. So I'll have to swing by a clinic when I get to Dallas on Monday; you know, the ones populated by those of us with no insurance, where you wait in line for a couple hours with hookers, domestic workers, service-industry types, etc. Can't wait! And I shudder to think what a bottle of antibiotics is going to cost me ... have to ask specifically for the generics, you know.
At any rate, besides the bruise on my right leg that seems to be getting worse-looking but (slightly) better-feeling, my nose is running like a faucet and my abdomen is sore from all the coughing. Monday and Tuesday nights I couldn't sleep through the night, since I wasn't drunk, so I only got about 4 hours of sleep coming out of a pretty violent binge all last week. I'll tell you, stumbling into work laughing like a loon and sweating whiskey is not a good way to impress your boss, however heavy a drinker she might be herself. Indeed, it was an ugly scene. I was told if I woke up in that condition again, not to bother coming in. I'm not sure if she meant because she's worried I might take a tumble down the stairs or slice off a finger, or if she meant don't bother coming in, ever again. I think it was the former, though, not the latter. I didn't try to argue that I actually cook better when I'm drunk, because for one thing, she wasn't in the mood to hear it, and I don't really do much real cooking there, anyways.
Wednesday night was the big graduation dinner for school. You get a diploma for each of the 3 levels of courses, which is kind of cool, I guess. I got the same speech from 3 of my 4 chefs; the other was too busy handing out awards to really talk. It was the same speech I used to get from all my high-school teachers: You aren't living up to your potential, so we're going to push you harder next term until you do. One of them told me, "I know you've got it. I know you can really cook. I want to see you do it." After cooking a couple of pretty savage meals for some school-mates last week, I found out that at least 4 of them had bragged on me to the chefs, one of them even being one of the best chefs in his graduating Superior class. That felt pretty good. It's easily discouraging when the only people eating your food are critiquing you from the standpoint of guys that have been in the business for over a decade, and all of them having worked in Michelin-starred restaurants. One of them has worked for Guy Savoy, Allain Ducasse, and a couple of the other Best Of The Best chefs in his career. These chaps are no fools, so when all you hear day-in and day-out from them is what you did wrong, it feels good to hear them tell you things like "I know you've got it."
The food at the dinner was pretty killer, I have to say. Pineapple "carpaccio" (pineapple that was sliced very thin with a meat-slicer) with marinated shrimp and crispy-vegtable rice paper wraps (basically, veggie soft spring rolls); roast supreme (breast with the wing bone sticking out) of guinea fowl with a big slab of pan-fried foie gras on top and a sweet red pepper / honey sauce; chocolate mousse in a gingerbread crust with orange ice cream; frozen chocolate-coated balls of Grand Marnier, and little mince-meat pies. The chocolate GrandMa balls and mini-pies weren't that thrilling, but the rest was pretty fantastic. That was a damn impressive-sized slab of foie gras, really.
After Thursday night, despite sleeping most of the time between 5pm and 8am Friday morning, I was still dog-ass tired all day Friday. I left right after work and headed home. Wandered over to the meet at HJB around 6.30 since it was around the corner from my house. I didn't plan on going with the way I felt, but I needed some hot food, not more peanut butter, so I ran over and had coffee, pizza, and 2 beers, then headed home as everyone else was headed back to Central to work over the Ship. There was no way I was going to make that trip again, and I'm glad I didn't, as within 50 meters of leaving HJB, every breath of cold air I took made me cough hysterically, so by the end I was taking the shallowest breaths I could take and still get enough oxygen in my system to make it home. Christ, I hate being sick.
I may look around for a new job once I get back from the States and Berlin, and have my new class schedule. I love the Ship, not least because of the staff, but this isn't the kind of cooking I need to be doing. It's so wild off from working in a brigade kitchen like my last couple jobs in Chicago, and, let's face it, those are the kinds of places I should be working in, to get my career going.
On the other hand, I know Charlotte will work around my class (and travel) schedule in terms of my schedule at the Ship, and I know how much she hates doing the cooking herself. I'll talk to her again, when I get back, about changing the menu around some, to get it full of items that are more easily handled. It's difficult, though, because the items ordered are so varied and unpredictable every day, that you can't prep properly, since the instant you start cutting things apart, they start to degrade, and you'd lose a lot of food to non-use. I'd like to see the menu restructured so I don't have to do a ton of prep to order with every ticket. It's a silly way to run a kitchen. Besides that, I think there are too many different things on the menu.
The problem is, I can already think of a lot of things I'd like to ditch from the menu, and enough things to replace them with, but it wouldn't be English food, and that's what most people expect when they walk in there. Left up to my own devices, that place would flip over to serving Cajun- and Southern US-style food
Damnit, I forgot I had a full glass of water sitting at my feet, and it just went over. Good thing I've got a laptop, because the first reaction I had was to turn off the power strip that everything's plugged into until I got it toweled up a bit. Sheesh.
At any rate, Cajun- and Southern US-style food, but I don't know how well that would go over with the SoHo lunch crowd ... silly bastards. I'm also not sure what we'd be looking at in terms of food cost, since I'm partial to seafood in my jambalaya instead of land- or air-based meat. Well, we'll see how it all goes.
Well, I'm sweating and don't feel hot to the touch now, so I think the fever I felt like I was coming down with might already be on its way out. Right now, I feel better than I have since Sunday (physically, since I was feeling pretty shit emotionally that day). The pseudoephedrine and ibuprofen might have something to do with it, but as long as something's working, who cares? This gives me hope that my 9-hour flight to Dallas on Monday might not be as miserable as I was starting to worry about. Maybe I just needed some written-word therapy, anyways. Hell, the fact that I just ate for the first time all day might have something to do with it as well. I didn't have any appetite all day, I just made myself eat because I knew I needed to.
Wednesday night was the first full night's sleep I've had since last Monday night ... that's a hell of a stretch, really, 9 days or so. But even after on Thursday, I was wiped out all day at work, despite the sleep. I left work around 4.15 and came pretty much straight home and collapsed in bed. Got up around 7 to do some reading, and then at 10.35 I was thinking about going back to bed. I have nothing else to read; I've exhausted my supply here. I have a few books at work I've been meaning to bring back here, but I always forget when I leave.
Well ... just pulled down and read through some bits of a book, Seven Centuries of English Cooking, by Maxime de la Falaise, mostly reading the historical stuff that's in it more than the recipes. Apparently, back in the Middle Ages, like the 13th - 15th centuries, English cooking was actually quite heavily spiced, and didn't become so bland until some monarch or other decided (s)he didn't like spicy food, and the whole of English cuisine went bland, until Indian food became popular. That amuses me: just because some King or other had a stomach condition, the cuisine of the entire country went to shit.
So I wrote Thursday night til about midnight or so, then slept til about 4.15am again, and it took me a couple more hours to get back to sleep, but I had to get up at 8 this morning again, so I was still knackered all day at work on Friday, and the coughing fits were still going strong. Good thing I was able to contain it when I was running food from the kitchen to the bar. The last thing a food customer wants to see is a guy holding his plate coughing and sneezing uncontrollably. Spent a whole lot of time washing my hands Friday.
Went to the SGUK meet for a bit on Friday night. Needed some grub and the meet was around the corner from my place, so I wandered over and had some coffee, pizza, and 2 beers, then headed home as the rest of the group decided to head down to the Ship. I was exhausted anyway, so I just went home and to bed.
Slept fitfully, of course. Couple hours on, couple hours off, that sort of thing. The coughing wasn't as bad as it had been the previous couple of days, though, and hopefully that will hold.
Anyways, this is probably my last update before I head to Texas on Monday. Back in the UK on the 28th, then headed to Berlin on the 4th or 5th for about 4 days. Don't know how much I'll be able to update from the road, so just in case:
Merry Christmas, gang.
Edited to add, I found out who Dr Johnson was.
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
illbillzillbub:
thats a big fucking line up.....sheesh,i havent heard of most of em.....but Toyah? that seems an odd choice,still whatever....i looked at the Lurkers site, only one original member.I imagine thats the case with a few of the oldies
user8935778:
So THATS who Dr. Johnson is.