Foster's Game Dinner October...

Last year's Halloween Game Dinner at Foster's was my first experience there. I still wish I had pictures of the roasted giant fruit bat we ate! Since then, we've been to quite a few dinners at Foster's. They're always interesting and the food is unusal as well as delicious. For this year's Halloween themed game dinner, they may have out done themselves with the presentation! Check it out...

The PRE-GAME: Crickets? Yes. Crickets.
Katie from Pulse LOVES a good cricket!


Denise Rodriguez won the cricket eating competition, taking down 5 roasted, skewered buggers. Joe Capobianco and I tied for second eating 4 monsters each. I think I still have legs in my teeth!

1st COURSE: Charcuterie board with head cheese and blood sausage
"What's in head cheese?" A close up.
Julio Rodriguez from Hope Gallery teaches us to make Headcheesebloodsausagesandwiches.

According to Wikipedia:

Head cheese is a cold cut originating in Europe. Head cheese is not a cheese, but meat pieces from the head of a calf or pig (sometimes a sheep or cow), in aspic, with onion, black pepper, allspice, bayleaf, salt and/or vinegar. It may also include meat from the feet, tongue and heart. It is usually eaten cold or at room temperature as a luncheon meat.
Historically meat jellies were made of the cleaned (all organs removed) head of the animal, which was simmered to produce stock, a peasant food made since the Middle Ages. When cooled, the stock congeals because of the natural gelatin found in the skull. The aspic may need additional gelatin in order to set properly.

Blood Sausage is a type of sausage made by cooking blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled. It is also called blood pudding. Pig or cattle blood is most often used; sheep and goat blood are used to a lesser extent.

I tried both the head cheese and blood sausage on their own, and was surprised to find them less repulsive than I thought they would be. Combining the two with the bread for a sandwich per Julio's suggestion actually made it good!

2nd COURSE: A skeletons bone marrow with sea salt and toast points and parsley salad

The marrow was my favorite course. It was a section of a bison bone. You dig out the gelatinous center with a little spoon, spread it on the toast and sprinkle it with the coarse sea salt. Sounds gross, tastes delicious!

3rd COURSE: Pumpkin lasagna with Lucifer's ox tail and sun dried tomato pasta sheets

This was awesome! Unfortunately it was very difficult to photograph inside the pumpkin... so we improvised... for your entertainment of course!
Vinn and Jill Lattanzi of Paradise Tattoo showing off their pumpkin tops!
Julio shows us his stem... we're very mature, I know.

4th COURSE: Rodent stuffed with black trumpet of death mushrooms Talk about presentation! There was dry ice hidden under the salad so the plates came out billowing fog!

Soon I'll be ready to eat a puppy.

Look at the teeth on this guy! Creepy.

Jimmy "The Barber" Dillon got the rodent from Sleepy Hollow.

Alethea Capobianco plays with her food!

I had to take and post a ton of photos of the rodent, because I still can't believe we all ate it! It was a Guinea Pig. To me, the meat was the texture of a dark meat section of chicken while the flavor was more like a fish or water fowl. Very strange. I can't really say that I loved it, but it was fun to try and unnerving to pull apart. I only at the hind quarters of mine as well as some of the front legs. Katie has an extreme fear of squirells http://pulsetattooblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/just-squirrel-trying-to-get-nut.html and she had the hardest time dealing with the monster on her plate. Always a trooper, she picked at it with her fork and gave it a good old college try. At the opposite end of the spectrum... Joe, Jimmy and Julio ate everything including the brain! Leaving only a little skull behind.

5th COURSE: Candy Corn Cake Can you say delicious? And of course that's PUMPKIN ice cream!

http://www.fostersrestaurant.com/

There will be another game dinner on 11/19. Call to reserve your spot today!

Buy Some Books...

We've got some new books coming in, and we have to make some room for them on our shelves. We're having a sale (rare, I know!) on some older titles to help clear some space. Get one today!
http://207.126.62.99/home.php?cat=284

Alex and Katie from Pulse show off some available titles... and speaking of available, Alex and Katie are both also available for dates. Inquire within.

A Degree of Murder

I just scanned these from an old issue of Bravo magazine from 1967. There are captions (in German) under each picture, but obviously I couldn't read them! I've only ever seen clips of A Degree Of Murder (I need to get around to buying a copy on Amazon), but it certainly seems to have featured Anita at one of her most lovely times. Brian, as you probably know, worked on the soundtrack for the film and they attended the Cannes showing of it together, but this was at the end of their ill-fated romance, and Mr. Richards was already waiting in the wings.

It's National Boss's Day...

According to Wikipedia, It has traditionally been a day for employees to thank their boss for being kind and fair throughout the year. The holiday has been the source of some controversy and criticism in the United States, where it is often mocked as a Hallmark Holiday. Controversy or not, we'd like to take this occasion to give BIG UPS to our AWESOME boss Mr. Brett Bryan. Who is not only kind and fair, but also handsome. Check him out...
Thanks to Brett for creating the amazing environment we get to work in every day! I'm not sure where we'd all be with out you! Happy Boss's Day!

Inside the PI (Volume 4)...

The Customer Service Center. You call, we answer. Orders, questions, and concerns are all processed here. The Customer Service Center is actually in a secret location and is like our Batcave. OK, it's not really a secret, but it is separate from the main building and the noise of production, shipping & receiving. We are attached but removed from the main building, with an interior short cut through the warehouse. We have a ton of art and toys in here, more details on that in a future volume.

Lou Jacque stops by (usually with coffee and sometimes with beer) and bothers Melissa. Alex is just avoiding the inevitable.

Brett jumps in to help with some customer service.

Katie and Melissa doing their thing.

Brett "The Boss" paying and mailing them bills.

Katie from Pulse processing a web order.

Joe and Alethea Capobianco stop by.

He's Just Not That Into You...

The picture is terrible but I love this guy, so I'm posting it anyway.

It's Greg Behrendt! He's a stand-up comic, musician and writer. He's hilarious and I love funny! He used to write for Sex and the City and he co-wrote the book He's Just Not That Into You and had a cameo in the movie his book inspired.

http://www.gregbehrendt.com/

Faithfull Forever

The point has been made before, but it bears reiterating: Faithfull may be the single greatest book ever written about the Rolling Stones (and this is coming from a girl who owns at least 50 of ‘em). Of course, it’s not all about the Stones, and thank God; Marianne is just as interesting as Mick or Keith anyway, if not more so, and this book is her masterpiece. But it does delight us with offers of unparalleled insights that could only be observed by someone so close to the boys, the music, and the whole scene of Swinging London. And unlike Spanish Tony, whose book Up And Down With The Rolling Stones was considered an insider’s guide to the Stones and their wicked ways, Marianne wasn’t just a hanger-on. She was the real deal. So many of the various personas that Jagger adopted (and indeed continues to perpetuate to this day) -- Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Lucifer, Turner from Performance – are due largely to Marianne. From Bob Dylan’s lost poem he wrote about Marianne when she was hanging out in his hotel room in ‘65 (enraged, he threw it in the trash after learning she was about to wed student-cum-gallery owner John Dunbar) to seeing Hendrix in a tiny club (he too had his eye on her, naturally) to spending a secret night in ecstasy with Keith Richards, and stories too numerous to even begin to list, Marianne travels back through the highs and lows of her life, literal and metaphorical, in this book that can only be described with oxymorons: funny and heartbreaking, beautiful and tragic, entertaining and disturbing.

It seems that many people conjure images of a virgin teenaged beauty queen turned debaucherous rock star girlfriend turned junkie when they hear the name Marianne Faithfull, if they even know that much. What images come to your mind? A Mars Bar and a fur rug? (That bit of slandering – the Mars Bar – may seem humorous in retrospect, but it irrevocably tarnished Marianne’s reputation – all due to the complete lie of perverted cops with a vendetta to avenge). Do you picture a detached angel with long, blonde bangs humming “As Tears Go By”? A mini-skirted siren on Jagger’s arm? A poor little junkie? That’s exactly the kind of thing Marianne would hate to hear (for possibly the millionth and one time). With this book, Marianne deconstructs all of the stereotypes foisted on her, all of the myths and legends and headlines and sensational dramas. So what is left underneath? A portrait of an incredibly honest, funny, intelligent – often brilliant – woman who has tried to make sense of her life – the past 30 years of which (this book was published in 1994) have been lived in the public eye. Incredible to think that now, in 2009, she’s been a celebrity for 45 years.

Faithfull is distinct from other “rock n’ roll memoirs”, if we can call that a category. Marianne appears neither to sugarcoat nor gloss over the bad times/unflattering things about herself and her cohorts, nor does she recall them with that embellished, overly dramatic, pompous sort of self-importance. She just states things as she recalls. In fact, her diplomacy is rather incredible, and extremely refreshing. It makes what she is saying much more believable. And Marianne by nature is a performer, an actress and a story-teller, so her prose are witty, warm and delivered with an unmistakable voice. One thing that struck me in this book was just how smart she really is. David Dalton, no stranger to the Stones (his book The Rolling Stones: The First Twenty Years is a great collection), undoubtedly helps, but the ideas, stories and words are all Marianne’s. Due to being “out of it” for so many years, I’m sure Marianne needed help piecing things all together (especially times and dates and such, which she admits to having difficulty with due to all the lost years).

Marianne was not only in the studio and the bedroom with the Stones during their creative peak (a high of sheer artistic brilliance that they rode in 1968 and 1969), but her influence on Mick and therefore the music he created is considerably greater than most people know. She inspired songs from “Let’s Spend The Night Together” to “She’s Like A Rainbow” to “Sympathy For The Devil” to “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (and there are quite a few more). Although Marianne and Mick parted ways for good in August of 1970, her memory is all over 1971’s Sticky Fingers (besides “Sister Morphine”, for which Marianne penned the lyrics herself, I feel sure that “Sway” and “I Got The Blues” are about her too – and of course the epic love song “Wild Horses”).

Another thing I love about this book is that its stars, besides the usual suspects – Mick, Keith, Brian, etc – are some of the lesser-known-about characters in Rolling Stones folklore (Chrissie Gibbs, Robert Fraser, Michael Cooper, etc). Anita Pallenberg is all over the book, which is a real treat for fans of hers (like myself) that don’t have many sources to go on.

Marianne pretty much dropped off the radar in peoples’ minds post-Jagger (until returning in 1979 with a hit album), but what is revealed is just as incredible (albeit considerably more depressing). In 1970, addicted to heroin, she was recruited to play Lilith in Kenneth Anger’s mind-screw of a film, Lucifer Rising. This is around the time that Marianne’s permanent residence was not the Persian rugs and hardwood floors of 48 Cheyene Walk, but rather The Wall in Soho, where she lived as a homeless registered heroin addict for two years. She recorded some new songs that appeared on the 1971 compilation Rich Kid Blues (which Marianne mocks for her dreadful, heroin-sick voice and the ridiculous title – another falsity of her image was that she came from a wealthy upbringing; her mother was a penniless baroness). And of course she found love post-Jagger: Oliver Musker, who got her off the streets; Ben Brierly, the punk prince and eventual husband, who wrote some of Broken English; and Howard Tose, the mixed-up outsider she met at rehab who tragically committed suicide at the end of their relationship (he suffered from paranoia, schizophrenia, depression and other awful things).

Throughout Faithfull, Marianne takes us everywhere with her – from St. Joseph’s convent school to Courtfield Road, on wonderful holidays to Tangier and Brazil, through seedy apartments and rehab clinics, to the remote quietness of the Irish countryside, and pretty much everywhere in between. She even takes us inside her dreams, which are always fascinating and often prophetic. There’s no wonder that a movie about Marianne’s life, based on this book, is in production (last I read). Although doubtless, whoever is cast as our heroine could never possibly capture the charm, beauty, strength and story of this inimitable queen.

Read this book. I've just begun it again, for the fourth time.

Scans and words by me.