Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Crawling Through Bars to Drown My Mopes

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As soon as I knew Elise was in the air for the first leg of her 24 hours of travel I was caught off guard by a rapid onset of moping.

I don’t usually mope when Elise is on vacation. Not right away, at least. Typically I spend a day or two delighting in my pseudo-bachelorhood, and by the end of day three I get bored and start to tidy things in anticipation of Elise’s eventual return. So, I was entirely surprised yesterday when the delight never began.

Maybe it’s because she’s nearly half the world away rather than in a known location like New Jersey or California. Or, maybe bachelorhood just isn’t as delightful as it used to be. In any event, as of three o’clock yesterday afternoon I was officially moping, which made it a perfect time for our friend Melon to send me an email to ask if I wanted to go to happy hour.

Between my need to drown my mopes in cocktails and the general never-ending stream of conversation that Melon and I effortlessly sustain, happy hour turned into a six-hour upscale bar crawl, which I periodically documented on film.

Mantra @ 122 S 18th St was dead when we arrived at 5:15 p.m. The bar looked cool, but their vodka selection was seriously lacking and they charged too much for basic drinks. Thumbs down.

It was at this point that we established our one-drink-per-bar rule, and crossed the street to Tria @ 123 S 18th St. Tria had a great wine list with very aptly categorized and described selections. I had a pinot noir with hints of strawberry and rhubarb. Now ever-so-slightly tipsy, we decided to initiate all subsequent center city bar crawls at Tria.

I don’t know how any Center City bar crawl could be complete without a visit to the Midtown Continental @ 1801 Chestnut St. We sat on the peculiarly stubby stools at the bar and nursed our martinis through a long and increasingly deep conversation.

At this point pleasantly inebriated, we headed to Alfa at 1709 Walnut St. Alfa had my favorite decor of the night, as well as our favorite waitress, but my rose martini smelled like dish detergent and their hummus and baba ganoush were bland. However, Our spirit were up, which leads me to believe we’ll give Alfa a second chance some other time.

Next we hit Monk’s Cafe @ 264 S 16th St. Per usual, Monk’s was crowded and armed with rude-to-the-max wait staff, both tolerable because they have the best selection of beers in the city. We split a bottle of one of my top drinks, Lindeman’s Framboise Lambic.

We ended up circling the same block a few times before settling on Tequila’s @ 1602 Locust St. Neither Melon or I thought very highly of Tequila’s when we ate there last November – it features plenty of over-expensive and under-impressive mexican food – but it had a fantastic drink menu.

Imagine our chagrin when after they sat us outside under giant metal air warmers we were informed that said list no longer exists. Strike one. Next, I was harassed by a waiter because I wanted a rum in my mojito rather than tequila, after which said waiter spilled Melon’s sangria over our entire table (and my camera) while trying to show off. Strike two. My mojito wound up great, but sangria-conneuseur Melon rebuffed her drink after one sip, which was a final strike for Tequila’s.

We were a little bummed to be ending with a poor showing, and almost headed to McGillin’s for some soul-soothing karoake, but decided to save that for our next crawl.

Speaking of our next crawl, we need five more bars to visit after our kickoff at Tria! Suggestions welcomed.

Spring Cleansing

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Following my successful computer reinstall everything in my life has seemed primed for refreshment and renewal. After work my desktop is the place where I spend the most time – if I can be organized in both of those places, why not everywhere else?

I cleaned everything partially-hydrogenated out of my refrigerator. I collected all of my bills and financial statements into neatly organized binders. I re-organized my dress shirts into roy g biv order.

This mostly-organized better version of me is now contentedly sipping a strawberry Limoncello martini***, windows flung wide open to let in sunny spring air. Everything in my house is now clean and reset with one exception: my links folder. Let’s see what’s in there…

I know I’m a touch behind on this one, but I thought Time’s article on 300’s impact in Iran was intriguing, if only because from my perspective this wasn’t a hugely calculated studio movie, but an independent work inside of a studio system. In any event, the movie was fascinating, if not terribly great. Definitely worth seeing on a big screen.

The more I work in (and love) a corporate communications culture, the more I appreciate the awesome Ad Verbatims a blog that features such gems as, “I’m not sure what the client wants, so let’s try and do something the client will buy,” and “If I give you approval, what can I still change?” I can’t even begin to enumerate how many times I’ve heard those two phrases in the last month.

Just for reference, since I had an inordinately hard time figuring it out: K.T. Tunstall uses a Akai E2 Headrush to create loops in concert. You can buy one here, however, through assiduous and lengthy research, i discovered that instead you should consider a Boss Loop Station before ultimately buying the awesome DigiTech JamMan, which runs on flash memory.

Um, this is a great photography article. I can’t remember any other reason I would have bookmarked it. Oh, because I saw his flickr photo of Easter crucifixions. Also, his Millau Bridge photo is stunning.

Alright, I’m out of martini, so this is the last link you’ll get: The Weather Market is a competitive weather-prediction site where users try to run up the best streak of forecasting. Fun.

Oh, and, re: my martini, I used 3 parts cranberry to one part strawberry stoli to one part limoncello. Shaken and served on the rocks. Delish.

The Belly of the Beast

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The closest I had ever been to a casino prior to Saturday was my twice-yearly reading of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, so when we stepped onto the floor of the Tropicana I half expected a neon carousel full of lizard-people to greet me.

It would have been better than the real thing; shabby carpets whose patterns snaked from side to side as they stretched across a hazy room filled with a fleet of leggy middle-aged waitresses in weird black corsets and hundreds of chain-smoking, hollow-looking gamblers, with a few cigar-smoking rotund gamblers thrown in for good measure.

I suppose I could have inferred the haze and the zombie-like patrons from Hunter, but i had been hoping for something more psychedelic.

In Vegas, maybe, but the nine of us were in Atlantic City. Wes and Karen sat down for winning streaks at black jack while I milled back and forth, nearly having my legs broken when i mistakenly wandered into the service-space between two active craps tables.

It occurred to me that there was really no instruction for the beginning gambler; I couldn’t have even sat down at a black jack table, let alone craps or some poker variant. While the hollow-cheeked undead of Atlantic City elbowed their way past me to get a closer look at the craps game I wondered if they all just expected me to buy some chips and lose until I understood … until I realized that anyone who spent any amount of time wondering about that wasn’t fit for gambling in the first place.

Eventually the more serious boys headed to poker while the rest of us made a pass at the slot machines, where I spent my first (and perhaps only) $3.25 on gambling before declaring that the fleet of corseted grandmothers were not going to keep me inebriated enough to make my gambling cost-effective.

We retreated towards the sports bar and, as the whir and hum of the shabby casino room faded behind us and as the ceiling gave way to rows of wicker fans and then impossibly-bright false-clouds, I thought that perhaps I liked casinos very much so long as I didn’t have to go into the casino part.

Either that, or calculate just how much I had to gamble in total to have my drinks and roomage completely comped and spend exactly that hour-by-hour over the slow course of a day. Because I’d rather spend my money on a steady and sure flow of Southern Comfort than whip it away on the whims of an eight-deck shuffler.

Eight hours later and we were all thoroughly drunk (some of us already hung-over) and mourning our poor Eagles while singing karaoke, me and Gina and our entire table screaming back the pitches of Bohemian Rhapsody at the pitch-deaf lump who had the (intentional) misfortune of selecting the song, and then carrying our scream-singing into the cool night air and back to Philadelphia as i sang the pitches i still could with my husk of a voice.

It took me the better part of Sunday to recover from the experience – just sleep and water, no speech or food, until finally this morning I felt as though the rest of me had returned from AC, where it had somehow become entangled in the hazy air on the casino floor.

Dangerous Liasons
(or, Where Everybody Knows Your Name)

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  • Mexican bar from previous post is on our way home from work
  • We get out of work around five, which lands us in the middle of happy hour
  • Happy hour includes $2 margaritas
  • The margaritas, they are good.

Having spent most of her life deprived of network television, Elise cannot understand my need to visit the bar regularly enough for them to scream “Norm!” when i enter.

Seriously, $2 margaritas that are actually good? I could drink one every work day for a mere $520 hit to my budget.

However, I do not always need to drink three.

Return of Girlfriend and Prickly Pear Mojitos

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After a week of her absence, every aspect of life involving Elise seems like an adventure. Let’s cook rice! Let’s light candles! Let’s go for a walk!

Okay!

The dizzying newness of every trip up the stairs to see the light on in her office only serves to emphasize the advice I received from my-former / Elise’s-new co-worker Dan: a couple needs to vacation together and apart.

Since I had Bonnaroo in June and we had St. Louis together in July, Elise was suffering from a one-vacation handicap. She needed time away from me to have an adventure, and I needed time to shuffle around the house and pretend to be a bachelor. With her returned from San Francisco it feels as though our balance has been reset.

Our walk this afternoon took us through the Italian Market*, and afterwards past Pat’s and Geno’s** to wander down Passyunk to find a fabled Mexican restaurant with excellent margaritas.

It had been fabled by an old professor of mine who, apparently, has only a relative sense of location. We didn’t have directions, or the name of the restaurant, but he told us that we would have arrived when we were able to see a mural, a parking lot, and the Mexican restaurant all at the same time.

We came to such a point, and were faced with a drab Mexican restaurant with multi-colored blankets in the windows. It did not look like the home of excellent margaritas.

“Do you think that’s the place he was raving about?”

“Well, consider the source.”

The source being my motorcycle-riding, monochromatic- dressing, ponytailed senior project advisor.***

“Well, i suppose…”

Elise tapped on my shoulder. I turned to regard her and noticed that we were standing in front of a giant orange slab of a building with no sign and a huge wooden door.**** It looked like it needed a moat.

“Yeah, that’s probably it.”

Indeed, it was. And, not only were the margaritas excellent, so were the mojitos. Several drinks later I learned how to use Elise’s new camera, and bit my poor drunken tongue so badly that we thought I would need stitches.

It’s nice to be having adventures together, again.


* Note to self: The Italian Market is a ghost town by two on a Sunday. Start getting out of bed before one.

** Note to the internet: No Philadelphian who enjoys cheesestakes would ever eat at Pat’s or Geno’s. They are for tourists and people in South Philly who don’t know any better. If you want a good cheesesteak go to Jim’s or Tony Luke’s. Trust me.

***Yes, essentially my father as a communications professor (except i don’t think prof owns several dozen rifles).

**** Name, undetermined. It’s just above Morris on Passyunk, and both we and Prof. Steggy highly recommend it.