I’m not saying my football team is any good. I’m not saying we didn’t lose 59-0 to a bunch of Mormons. But then, we’re not supposed to be the #1 team in the country. Figures that the lads from the University of Small Cocks couldn’t lick the Beavers to save their lives/season.
What am I paying you idiots for?
I’m on my way to woodland hills to meet this guy Carlo Venti about joining his band. Myspace/carloventimusic. Um…yeah. It pays though.
It’d better be worth it to sit through this fucking traffic. That Witch We Do Not Mention isn’t here anymore, so I was thinking about moving back to LA; here’s a friendly reminder of why that’s not a good idea.
Notice the speedometer. It’s 8 in the pm–what the hell??
At the Santa Monica Bar and Grille, I’ll be playing jazz (pronounced “yaz”) with saxophonist Dave Brennan and friends. Located on Pico just west of Centinela. Admission is free. We’re playing 3 sets from 6-9, so stop by sometime for some xxxtreme tuneage. And once you’re there, order a lot of drinks as that’s the only way we’ll get paid. Stay tuned to the blog as we’ll be playing more shows around the Los Angeles area in September and ROCKtober.
I had an overnight layover in Boston, so I went to Fenway Park to see the Red Sox play the Blue Jays. Everything you’ve heard about Boston sports fans is true. I wish I had brought my Lakers jersey, or at least been feeling crafty enough to construct a “Fuck Tom Brady” shirt or something. Seriously, one of the drunk girls I spoke to claimed that people had died as a result of Büttchen’s injury. Not, like, emotionally dead. As in, they died of a broken heart. Yep, everything you’ve heard about Boston sports fans is true.
The game was actually really exciting, with the Red Sox coming back to win it in the 8th, prompting a “Sweet Caroline” sing-along that you have to experience to believe/appreciate. The Fenway Park area is pretty cool, too, with a lively bar scene surrounding the stadium on all 4 sides. I had some really good duck tacos and a margarita before watching the scene outside Jake Ivory’s, a piano bar that’s one giant asinine Boston stereotype. Two gawd-awful singing piano players butchering your favorite tunes with the crowd eating it up. It was amusing, but I miss Knyght Ryder.
I couldn’t get a hotel room, so I crashed in the lobby of a Howard Johnson’s before the guy at the front desk told me I couldn’t do that anymore. I went to the airport at 3 am via an unmetered cab ride (wasn’t in the mood for asking questions) so I could try to get an earlier flight back home. Success! 6 am to Minneapolis, then Santa Ana, and now, mega-huge naptime.
“But it was worth the night/I caught an early flight and I made it home.”
Well, I’ve been awake for around 2 days, so I can’t say I’ll be able to remember it much, but here goes. After another excellent dinner at Orange, I headed out on the town once more. Nina, the super-adorable waitress from Orange, invited me to meet her at Cafe Paris, giving me her “new” phone number to get a hold of her later. Women in this country are good at lying!
See, earlier in my trip, when I was tracking down the owner of a camera and set of keys that I accidentally took from one of the bars here, I discovered this incredible utility that lets you find down anyone in the country simply by entering their name, phone number or address. It’s like the white pages on steroids, and while it seems like a complete civil liberties violation, it proved very useful in determining that Nina was full of shit.
All was not lost, however; on my way back to base camp, I heard the siren song of Nordic death metal crunchiness emanating from the place with the cheapest ($5 pints) beer in town, Belly’s. I’m pretty sure this is where the alcoholics go because in addition to the prices, the chalkboard with beer specials lists the alcohol content of the various beers. Good times.
So the name of the band was Noise, and they rocked incredibly hard. They weren’t death metal, either, more like a more depressing Guns N’ Roses, but their singer can WAIL. Their myspace page doesn’t really do the band justice–they sounded awesome. Apparently, they’ve achieved some measure of success back home, so I don’t quite understand what they were doing playing for crowd of 20 people at some random bar, but they have plans to come to America, and when they do, I’m going to be there for sure. And you should too. Their drummer had a gong set up, Def Leppard style!
So the next day, I crammed down one last free continental breakfast before going to tourist trap Blue Lagoon, an outdoor geothermal pool filled with milky blue saltwater. It was cool and all but it’s really the kind of place you bring your wife, especially if you’re German. Still, it was a nice, relaxing way to wrap things up–and my skin feels so silky-smooth now!
At the airport, I got my sales tax refund–about $60, and saw some cool fish lamps hanging in the food court. Yes, the lampshades are made from tanned fish skins. On the flight back to Boston, we passed over Greenland, affording some amazing views of the ice caps there. I thought the Icelandic glacier was epic, but this was something else. Combine that with a chicken cutlet and curry risotto for dinner, and you have the makings of a pleasant flight home. Icelandair wins. Coming back to California proved to be another story altogether…
I’m on the last leg of my journey home, I’ve been awake for around 48 hours, I feel, look and smell like a bag of crap, but look what I found in the Minneapolis airport! It’s like they read my thoughts (or maybe even my blog)
Orange, on the edge of Reykjavik harbor, is maybe the best restaurant in the world. Okay, the food at Per Se is better, but do they have alcoholic slurpees? No.
So I was wondering where to have dinner tonight, knowing that today was my last chance to eat the famous Icelandic lamb. I walked past several restaurants before I said “fuckit, I’m going back to Orange.” and while the second time lacked the personal service that comes from being the only one in the place, it was no less tasty or fun.
Basically I got a lot of the same gimmicks, but with different flavors. I also got Nina, the cutest waitress in the whole wide world. Here’s what she brought me:
Amuse: duck confit in a pickle jar.
Second amuse: roasted langoustine with confit tomato floating on a helium balloon.
1st course: Smoked artic char, apples, celeriac
2nd: wild deer soup, foie gras, mushrooms
3rd: monkfish, chorizo, olives, potato purée
4th: lamb, celeriac gratin, natural jus, sauce bearnaise
Dessert: brownie, skyr mousse, sorrel ice, liquid nitrogen ice cream
To prove that I’m internationally adept at crashing parties of large groups of women, a super-gaggle of Icelandic cougars bought me a green apple alcoholic slurpee. I also had a Dracula cocktail, made with blooberri, razzberi and red chile. Mmm and only 20 dollars! And when the kitchen was about to go down like a sack of shit, they stopped everything and the whole restaurant played Bingo for 5 minutes. Umm. Yeah. Let’s rock.
There are a lot of places that do this kind of gimmicky shit, but none can match the quality of food. Orange is clearly deserving of a spot on the top tier of restaurants worldwide.
I said *ice* spelunker. ICE.
Walking through a glacial ice cave was probably my number one goal of coming here (number two hasn’t been accomplished, but I have one more Friday night left), so my trip to the Solheimsjokull glacier didn’t disappoint. Words and pictures can’t really describe how majestic and awesome it is to stand on the precipice of a deadly crevasse or drink ice-cold glacial meltwater straight from the source, but here’s some pictures anyway. The weather was absolutely perfect (at one point I was walking around in a t-shirt) you could see the ocean from the glacier, our mountain guide was a burly Viking dude, and we were in a small group of 6 so it didn’t feel touristy at all. I even convinced the group to climb out of the ice cave the hard way, Gollum/ninja-style! Even if the rest of my time here had sucked, the glacier walk pretty much would have made the trip worth it. Everyone should do it sometime, whther here or in Alaska or wherever. Get ‘em before Dick Cheney makes them all melt into the oceans!
After the glacier we made a couple quick stops at two more waterfalls, which in my opinion were more impressive than Gullfoss, the main touristy waterfall. This was probably because you could see them from the ground, from the top, from behind…wow, I sound like Amber Waves talking about Dirk Diggler here. When combined with the football match and the dinner I had at Vox, this was definitely the best day of the trip. Where else can you walk through an ice cave and behind a waterfall, attend a World Cup qualifying match and eat a world-class meal within 6 hours?
So, Wednesday night I attended the Island v. Skotland World Cup qualifier match. It. was. awesome. In addition to thousands of kilt-wearing Scotsmen (and approximately 2 skirt-wearing Scotswomen) patrolling the streets of Reykjavik, you had kids wearing Viking helmets in the Icelandic color palette and other displays of national pride. In US and A, wearing anything with an American flag on it makes you retarded, or Texan, but here the nationalism is quite charming.
Icelanders, you'd have more goal-scoring celebrations like this if you had better fight songs!
So, Iceland lost, 2-1, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. They had many more scoring chances, they had better kits, they had the home crowd. Why, then, apart from taking a stupid penalty and giving the Scots a free kick, did they lose?
In the eyes of this impartial observer, the answer is simple: Scotland had MUCH better chants. The main one seemed to be a version of “Let’s Go,” you know, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap, clap-clap-clap-clap, SCOTLAND! They also had a tight-knit version of “Hey Baby,” and some other melodic chants that sounded very well-rehearsed. They brought bagpipers, they were loud, they made the difference.
Iceland, meanwhile, has two lousy crowd anthems: “Island, clap-clap-clap,” and “Afram Island (Go Iceland), clap-clap, clap-clap, clap.” What the fuck? If I were in charge of the Icelandic Sports Federation, my first duty would be to commission some new fight songs using a percentage of the 38% income tax and 24% sales tax everyone pays here. Icelanders, you deserve better results from your exorbitant tax rates! And another thing, if there’s any country in the world that needs its own national cheerleading team, it’s this one. Other countries would scarcely be able to focus in the face of gyrating, leggy, ridiculous-hot blonde girls! Get it together, Iceland.
After the match, which clocked in at a tidy 2 hours, I walked a couple blocks to Vox, home of lox that rocks your socks. Actually, I can’t speculate as to the quality of their smoked salmon, but the tasting menu I had was pretty good. They emphasize traditionl Nordic flavors and ingredients, but with soigne technique applied. It turned out pretty well, though it wasn’t as good or as fun as Orange. The Duckling was amazing though, paired with a Hautes Cotes de Nuits Pinot Noir. mmm.
It’s a beautiful day today, 60 degrees and sunny, so today I’ll be walking around randomly some more. My first stop is the Seafood Cellar, a restaurant that comes highly recommended by my flight attendant on Icelandair. There’s a bit of a problem, though: what am I supposed to do with bread, oil and chopped nuts??? I settled on dipping the bread in the oil, then the nuts–whither bread with nuts baked into it? The bread is straight bush league compared to the other bread I’ve eaten here. I’m pretty sure they buy it frozen, par-baked, and bake it here.
First course is cured hamachi with cream cheese and some sort of jelly. Ummm. I like the idea of cured hamachi, and the cream cheese and jelly go great with the bread. At least the plate was cool.
Next up is tuna with pumpkin and sesame seeds, and my hopes are low. I should mention the techno-accordion music that’s pounding away.
But wait, the tuna saves the day! With a spring roll of eel and langoustines (of course), enoki mushroom and miso sauce, it’s effing delicious. A bit over-garnished (raw bok choy???), the fish gets a little lost, but all the flavors are there. Good. And filling.
Dessert is called savarin “I’m a donut,” which I hope is a reference to Eddie Izzard’s take on John Kennedy’s line, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” wherein he meant to say “I’m a citizen of Berlin” but actually said, right, “I’m a donut.”
And…the plate is covered with Pop Rocks!
Okay, sjávarkjallarinn, you win. This was a comeback of 2004 ALCS proportions, as you’ve keep my good food streak alive at 7 days.
