The Writer, the Cook, His Wife and Her Fans

What happens when you put a Bulgarian animator, Filipina screenwriter, two Viets working in fashion journalism and landscape design and an appellate lawyer behind a giant curtain printed with bold red flowers? Lively converstion, new friendships and a shared love for ice cream sundaes thickened with hot fudge. Eileen, Alex and I struck up a conversation with our neighbors at Lou, a tapas and wine bar that opened in March next to a laundromat in one of those nondescript strip malls dotted all over Southern California. The Scandinavian-style curtain was an effective divide between the calm oasis of modern cooking and design and grimy urban life that can darken your mood and flip-flop-clad feet. The chef also used dividers for a deconstructed salad of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and red beets. I love beets, so I scooped up those roasted root vegetables with glee. Alex was impressed how a great olive oil can fancy up simple cherry tomatoes.

I wondered if geometry was the chef's favorite class in school. We nibbled on polygon-shaped pate and charcuterie circles aligned in a straight strip, and sipped on prosecco bubbling in elliptical flutes. We skipped the pig candy because Eileen said her friend -- and my future bandmate! -- Colette judged Lou's rendition to be sub-par to her own bacon candy.

But the highlight of the evening -- the hot fudge sundae -- was wild and unruly, like the red flowers bursting from the stiff curtain stretching the entire length of the restaurant's glass front. Considering that it was L.A., it was inevitable that conversation turned to cinema, or at least the connection between the restaurant and Manohla Dargis, the co-chief film critic for The New York Times. Though Dargis can be divisive (you love her or you hate her), I like the way she mixes pop culture, film theory and a sharp wit in her articles. Like the dandlelion greens and arugula in the flank steak salad we had, her writing has bite. I don't agree with everything she says and her essays don't make me rush to or stay away from a film as the works of A.O. Scott (the Gray Lady's other co-chief film critic), Anthony Lane (the British-born critic at The New Yorker) and Joe Morgenstern (the Pulitzer Prize-winning film dude at The Wall Street Journal) do. Word on the street is that Dargis' husband runs Lou. Since reporters are also known as being cranky consumers, I didn't care about the restaurant's pedigree as long as the food was good and the service was quick, efficient and friendly. I was not disappointed.

Cobras & Scorpios

Isabel celebrated her birthday on Friday with a flourless chocolate cake, chickpea pancakes, pork tenderloin stuffed with bacon, crab croquettes and other little plates of delight from Cobras & Matadors' kitchen. There was also lots of discussion about sex -- and posing for suggestive pictures involving churros -- at the table among Isabel's randy friends. I was the prudish one who kept telling the others, "TMI: too much information!" I talked more about sex tonight with my five dinnermates than I had in a year with my other pals. Scott, the uninhibited Floridian who lassoed our blond waitress into the raunchy tales with a question about the name of a certain sexual act, assumed the position of matador -- until the check arrived. The server bypassed him to take instructions from me on how to split the bill. "I'm the matador!" the baby-face Scott said to the waitress. "She's the cobra!" the waitress retorted, pointing to me. Ssssss!

After dinner, and some suburban debauchery, I crashed at Isabel's house. On the way back to my place the next morning, we stopped at Yuca's, my neighborhood taco stand that won a James Beard award for its cochinita pibil, or Yucatan-style baked marinated pork, stuffed in tamales, taco, tortas and burritos. Isabel ran into one of her co-workers who was picking up brunch for her rambunctious four-year-old son and hungover hubbie. The little boy liked my purple boots. "Cowboy girl," he called me. Once we learned that he and I share the same birthday in November, we gave each other high-fives and called each other birthday buddies. Scorpios rule!

SoCal Sistahs

Tonight I made three new friends who will be delicious additions to my growing SoCal sisterhood. The first was Emmie, a talented illustrator who shares my fondness for grumpy cartoon characters and Mani's Bakery. She is the founder and head of her own greeting card company, which is home to a coked-out chef, barista-panda named Shapiro and an unemployed tiger who looks adorably silly wearing a telephone headpiece.

Over dinner of a fava bean salad with grilled tofu and red beet vinaigrette (me) and a veggie burger (her), Emmie critiqued a children's short story I wrote about a panda that didn't like to be hugged. Her first tip: Trim the story from 3,000 to 1,000 words. Yikes! I need Shapiro to make me a double soy chai latte pronto. After dinner with Emmie, I met my Romanian sistah and bandmate, Sorina, at The Bar on Sunset Boulevard. She introduced me to my second new friend of the evening, Susan, who was visiting from Colorado. Susan rocked a Michelle Mason skirt as if she had never left the City of Angels to live in three feet of snow. Over whiskey sours and vodka tonics, the three of us dished about traveling in Asia and dealing with men. We also waited for a performance by Candis Cayne.

Candis didn't channel Kylie or Gwen on her SoCal summer tour. But everyone's jaws dropped when she did a cartwheel in the middle of the street during one song. If you couldn't see the outline of her black thong undies under her black-and-white floral babydoll dress, you had no doubt that it was her lingerie of choice when she pulled her gymnastic feat in Hollywood. Cars slowed down to check out the blond glamazon. Candis summarized the difference between New York and Los Angeles based on cops' reaction and proclivity to giving her a ticket for singing and dancing outdoors:
New York: "Yeah, dancing in the street again. Damn trannie."
Los Angeles: "Don't dance in the street again. Damn trannie."

Getting Freaky in 'Frisco

Well, I didn't get that freaky. But I had to use poetic license for a headline that encapsulated how much fun I had in San Francisco over the past four days. My summer vacation, as chronicled by my meals:

After a press screening of "Seros Queridos," a Spanish comedy that tormented me with a cliched plot and predictable characters before surprising me with an uplifting ending, I snacked on coconut macaroons flavored with lemon zest at Tartine in San Francisco's Dolores Park neighborhood. I must thank Mai for inviting me to the press screening at the Variety Club preview room and educating me on the etiquette not to discuss the film while still in the screening room. My innocuous question about Max Berliner's other movie roles could have tainted another (re)viewer's opinion of the flick. It was Spare-the-Air day in San Francisco, so we took the BART for free from Union Square to Dolores Park, where we sat at an outdoor table and watched all the folks walk by while nibbling on our cookies and sipping pink lemonade and iced white peony tea. "SSC," Mai said to me as a super-styling-couple (she in dark minidress, he in T-shirt and straight-leg jeans) strolled by.

After our snack, Mai and I walked to a boutique that recently opened in the neighborhood. When walking around San Francisco, I always make a point to look up to gaze at the colorful murals and clever graffiti. Mai reminded me to look down at the sidewalk. An emo street artist has been on the rampage recently in the foggy city, spray-painting stencils of non sequiturs that are simultaneously amusing and annoying. One such memento inspired a rebuttal by a citizen who found it more of the latter.

After Mai left to make her evening appointment, I wandered the Mission Park neighborhood and looked up to find an aged ad for pound cake.

On Saturday, my sister, Tu, and I went to Hayes Valley so that I could check out a couple of boutiques that a colleague had recently profiled. It was so hot that Tu and I slipped into Citizen Cake for something cold to drink. "Brunch or dessert?" the host in an all-black outfit asked us. "Brunch and dessert," we cheerfully replied. I had a bowl of polenta mixed with cheddar cheese and scallions and topped with a soft-boiled egg. The bacon was baked to be crunchy but not greasy. Tu had a scoop of plum ginger sorbet with a ginger molasses cookie. She said the combo of sorbet and an iced tea helped cool her temperature by 5 degrees.

Later on Saturday, Tu, her fiance, Travis, and I headed to Berkeley to see The Flaming Lips play with Ween and Liars. The Go! Team cancelled for some reason, so art-rock group Liars kicked off the show on time at 6:30 p.m. Travis wasn't impressed by Liars, but I liked them because I could hear the influence of The Boredoms on their music. Liars were more closely linked in sound to the Lips than to Ween. Still, Ween played a great 75-minute set with a sweet encore that almost convinced me that they, instead of the Lips, were the main act. The Lips finally came on. Wayne Coyne walked above the crowd in a clear plastic bubble. He also tossed balloons into the crowd and shot streamers out of a gun into the air. The band was flanked throughout the night by a group of sexy girls in purple and silver microdresses and green alien masks to the left and a band of Santa Clauses to the right. Coyne's voice was giving, but both he and the crowd were so sincere and happy and high on pot and life that everyone had fun. "Simply being around people enjoying life makes you enjoy life," he told the crowd.

Azumi Kicks Ass

Manohla Dargis recently reviewed "Azumi" in "The New York Times." She hated it. I watched the "Matrix"-meets-"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" flick when I was in Japan two years ago. I loved it. One thing I couldn't figure out then, and still don't understand now, is why did Azumi kill her childhood sweetheart. Lara Croft also slayed her lover in the second "Tomb Raider" movie in order to save the world from evil. Must all women warriors massacre their men?

This Is Why I Wear Sunglasses at Night

This is why I don't like covering Wall Street.
This is why it's a bad idea for a foodie to work in the food industry.
This is why I regularly tell my dear friends that I am glad they're my friends.
This is why I think Anna Wintour has balls the size of steel cantaloupes underneath her Prada skirt.
This is why I preferred Batgirl.

Chimay and Fritos

I went to Cole's on Saturday night to check out Nora Keyes. Her show started well after the kitchen closed at 8:30 p.m. The Chimay ale wasn't going to fill my empty stomach. So I forked over a buck for a bag of Fritos. The bartender supplemented my carb diet with a bowl of Pepperidge Farms' goldfish.

Perfect Summer Lunch

Rolando Relic and I nourished our writers' temperments and musicians' bodies with cups of watermelon gazpacho, tuna salad on wheat (him) and a savory tart made with roasted cherry tomatoes (me) at Auntie Em's Marketplace in Eagle Rock. We were about to head into a music studio with Vox Rox Vesilind and Devilish Diaconescu and go over song ideas. I outlined my song titled "Cube Moves." A stereotypical writer, I described the song using jargon such as lede, narrative and leitmotif. We also discussed the series of heartbreaks besetting my circle of friends. Rolando explained that Mercury is in retrograde. I wondered when Mercury was going to get its ass out of retrograde and leave my loved ones alone. Rolando said the end of the month. I pondered that while sipping my cold watermelon soup blended with cucumber, onions, cilantro and chili flakes. If he's not right, at least I have discovered the perfect soup to nurse broken hearts.

Ghettogloss Girls

I dropped by Ghettogloss on Bastille Day for a reception feting a new exhibit by graphic designers affiliated with X-Large. As usual, the Silver Lake gallery bucked the bourgeois tradition of serving red wine and cheese cubes by offering frosted cupcakes and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon dispensed cold from a vending machine. I dug Duel's life-size poster of a swaggering ape heading to a shoot-out in a cowboy hat and spurs. I also loved chilling with Fiora and Flo, the proprietress and designer behind Ghettogloss, and gazing at the Technicolor broads who guarded the boutique adjacent to the gallery like hip fairy godmothers. The portraits reminded me of this haiku I read earlier that day. Written for hot smart chicks, the poem goes something like this:
Go to school/Go to work/Never, ever, marry a jerk.

Simon Says

When I grow up, I want to be just like Simon Doonan, the creative director at Barneys New York and a self-professed fan of bondage clothing by Vivienne Westwood. I say that not because he is a witty British dandy who has known his share of wacky chicks, nor because I, too, am partial to grommets, studs and other hardware on my clothes. In his latest article for The New York Observer, he articulated my deepest concerns about the foam phenomenon taking over American cuisine and the impracticality of wearing skinny jeans in the summer heat.

The Health Express

I was one hour late for band practice on Saturday because I was getting a mani-pedi. I had to make sure my fingers were pretty enough for a Clara Rockmore-worthy performance. Rolando Relic, Devilish Diaconescu and VoxRox Vesilind threatened to kick me out of the band because of my tardiness. But when Rolando realized that I was getting pretty for the group, he let me stay. He also took me and the beloved devil to a street corner in Pasadena that is a fast-food junkie's idea of heaven. Next to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles is a KFC, which is next to a Carl's Jr., which is across the street from a McDonald's, which is adjacent to Orean. Our post-practice lunch was made by Orean, which advertises itself as a vegetarian fast-food drive-thru. We walked up to the front window and ordered our food to eat at one of the five picnic tables. I had the veggie chili cheeseburger with the veggie chili fries and a strawberry slush spiked with ginseng. I don't know why some people think that adding alfalfa sprouts to a dish makes it healthier. Sprouts were piled atop my cheeseburger. I hate sprouts. They taste bad and teem with bacteria that can never be completely washed clean. After I pulled the tangle of sprouts out of my sandwich, I was able to enjoy the mushiness of the beans and veggie patty. I think if the cooks replicated the chili from Tommy's with beans instead of beef, they would have the perfect chili cheeseburger. I couldn't eat all the chili cheese fries because the 90-degree heat made munching on anything that was at body temperature or warmer difficult. I didn't have a wet towel to tidy my nice nails that were smeared with chili. It was karma getting me back for being late to band practice.

Lucha Va Voom

Last month, two pals and I trekked to the Mayan Theatre in downtown Los Angeles to check out masked Mexican wrestlers, catfightin' cuties and burlesque beauties. At least, that's what the posters plastered all over town had advertised for Lucha Va Voom. I was not disappointed, especially after turning to my left in the balcony two stories above the fighting ring and meeting the Blue Demon. My neighbor wasn't the original Blue Demon. He was some beer-chugging dude who wore his baseball cap backwards and looked at his buddies for help to escape a margarita-induced Asian girl using her aggressive reportorial skills to catch a photo with him. The picture was taken by Em, my bandmate and co-worker who also chronicled her Lucha experience online.After scoring that souvenir, I bought a poster of the night's show. Lo and behold, at the merch table I found myself standing next to a burlesque babe who had stripped to one of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western theme songs. She was the only woman on this planet who I thought had the balls and boobies to pair a poncho with pasties and black patent leather boots. Due to the tequila, I unfortunately confused the buxom brunette with a tranvestite who had stripped to Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)." "You had a little bit too much to drink," the woman told me. "Perhaps I did," I said sheepishly, before asking: "Can I get a picture with you?" She amicably agreed. Deciding there and then that I wanted to be a burlesque dancer in my next career, I followed up with another question: "Where did you learn to shake it like that?"

Alcoholic Mash-Ups

On our way to the beach, Rolando Relic, Devilish Diaconescu and I thought of a new genre of cocktails called alcoholic mash-ups. The inspiration was the six pack of lemon shandies, or beer mixed with lemonade, that our beloved devil bought by accident when she was living in Berlin. True wordsmiths, we paid close attention to the witty names and weight of irony rather than the flavors. But we did keep an eye on high alcoholic content. Some of our inventions:
Sprite + wine = sprine
Sprite + beer = spreer
bourbon + ginger ale = binger
wine + vermouth = weremouth
sangria + wine = sanguine
Evian + bourbon + cola = ebola
We welcome suggestions for alcoholic mash-ups from readers in the comments section.

Sunday Morning, Praise the Dawning

On Sunday morning I got a wake-up call at 8:12. It was Rolando Relic, the trombone player and only dude in our band, FAB. Figuring that there must be a good reason for him to beat my own mother in setting a new record calling me so early on a Sunday, I answered the phone. "Do you want to go to the beach?" he asked. "When?" I replied, worried that he was already parked in front of my apartment building. Offering to drive the 40 miles to Malibu and giving me a 30-minute window to get ready, Rolando Relic convinced me to join him on his spontaneous excursion to the beach that day.
With me on his team, we recruited Devilish Diaconescu, who, three days prior, had returned from a two-month sojourn in Berlin. "You're in front of my house?" was our fellow bandmate's response when I called. The Romanian rock chick had only 30 seconds to get ready. She outdid Sienna Miller with a SoCal-inflected interpretation of Edie Sedgwick, tucking her platinum locks under a newsboy cap and slipping on a striped jersey with a screenprint of Andy Warhol's banana and sexy cutouts on the sleeves.

I had to catch a photo of her buying coffee at the quaint Susina on Beverly Boulevard. It was as if Devilish Diaconescu had never left Europe. We continued the Continentals-enjoying-a-morning-at-the-beach theme by picking up bottles of Volvic water and Chimay ale at a grocery store near the hidden cove that we selected for our dips into the cool Pacific. We spotted a school of dolphins doing laps about 100 feet away from the shore. Two hours later, tired and hungry, we returned to Los Angeles for an al fresco lunch at M Cafe de Chaya. I stuffed a huge BBQ seitan sandwich in my mouth.