Struck

We have the worst luck . Iain gets his green card and production on just about everything shuts down thanks to this ridiculous strike. Sigh. Thank God the megamediacorporation currently screwing the writers is continuing to pay my rent.

Other annoyances:
Friday Night Lights is probably going to get the bullet now, which is beyond depressing.
I'm going to be forced to watch more news. Also beyond depressing.
I have no place to channel my rage now that the Daily Show is in re-runs.
My tivo is lonely.

But as with so much in life, there is always a silver lining.

The Upside of The Strike:
Bionic Woman is circling the drain. I had big hopes, but the show blows and deserves the flush.
The World's Greatest Reality Show, OJ's Life, is about to start a new season.
I'll get to catch up on Netflix.
Kenny the Torturer has returned to my life for a whole new round of gym-based waterboarding.

If you need a handy guide to what's what according to the writers, check this or this out. YouTube is pretty rich hunting for vids from the writers. The producers: not so much.

Tacowhores Anonymous

My blog viewings go up everytime I write about tacos... so tacowhores, this one's for you.

Actually, I'm not a massive taco fan. I havent really mastered the art (and apparently, it is an art) of eating one without bathing in it first. I often end up doing the totally gringo thing and eat the damn thing with a fork and knife. Still, there's something infinitely attractive about tacos. Most burritos are actually physically larger than your stomach, enchiladas and chimichangas make me feel guilty - tacos are kind of a little bit of perfect in their simplicity.

Anyway.

My favorite local taco place is called Cactus. I order the carne asada with avocado, cheese, and sour cream - all of which I'm sure will horrify the purists. Taco Purists are the distant cousins of Sushi Purists ("Eaters of California Rolls Will Be Prosecuted To the Fullest Extent of the Law") and Steak Purists ("My grandma eats filet mignon"). Whatever. I dont care. I like me some tacos. I've tried the carnitas and the chicken at this place, both were rather unremarkable, but the carne asada rocks.

Hollywood is rapidly gentrifying, but this little corner of the world is so not. Kind of funny story from a kind of funny website to give you an idea of what the neighborhood is like.

My absolute favorite. No place is better. Stop your hunt, you've already found the best taco. The orange sauce, I believe it's chipotle, is deadly. I spilled some in my car long ago. Several days after that, I had forgotten about the spill and saw an orange stain on my seat. I scratched at it, saw a little disappear and vowed to attack it later. About five minutes after that, this was during my morning commute, I rubbed my eye with that hand. Bad, bad idea. I was blinded and in pain for about 10 minutes. I had to pull over.As for the homeless vibe at this taco stand, that's not all: it's just down the street from the Hollywood mental health clinic. The last time I went to Cactus, I was approaching the seating area when I saw a pretty normal looking latin guy with long hair walking along the sidewalk. He was approaching the ordering window but was clearly going to walk past it. Two well-dressed young guys were seated at the tables, enjoying their tacos. A family was there as well. Suddenly, one of the well-dressed guys starts yelling and has a look on his face of total disbelief. "WTF!? W. T. F?! That's fucken blood, man!" Sure enough, he had blood all over him. In fact, there was a trail of bright red blood all along the sidewalk right behind the long-haired guy. His arm was pouring blood and he was waving his it to and fro, lazily splattering blood from side to side. He had gotten some all over the now angry diner. The family fled and the blood-covered guy said "get the crowbar". They went to their car and got a tire iron. The long-haired guy was now across the little street just south of Cactus. The blood-covered guy was threatening to make the long-haired guy bleed some more. The longhair got on his knees and begged to not be beaten. He acted rather out-of-it and crazy (duh). Mr. Blood realized that he was dealing with someone missing all of his faculties and spared him. I'm guessing that he put his fist through a window on his way down from the clinic. He didn't look homeless at all. The two guys complained about how they wouldn't be able to return to work covered in blood. I ordered, had a seat, and enjoyed two wonderful carne asada tacos.

BTW this place is ugly. But good. mmmm.

More Sassy Girl's Guide to Europe

A couple suggested adds/subtractions to the Sassy Girl's Guide to Europe:

Mom & V suggest adding Lisbon: "Easy, affordable, friendly, no hassles. Doesn't reach the heights of Paris, Rome, etc, but very little downside."

Mom also chastises my shocking omission of Venice: "Only the MOST romantic city on the planet!" I found it cold and overpriced, although it IS Venice. So you gotta go, I guess.

Sonia disputes my Budapest description: "I think it's a great place for a weekend. Small enough to have a great wander around but big enough to have some adventures. Perhaps the group of five girls getting invited into an after drinks party by the waiters at a posh restaurant and drinking half the lovely wine the cellar added to the experience..." Yeah I'm sure the cellar of wine made the city a little more welcoming than I found it!

My lovely husband likes Siena: "Less touristed than Florence but equally important and The Palio - the crazy horse race around the town - is memorable".

And gotta love Linda's recommendation for The Hague: "she must must must go to the torture museum in the hague! it's like abu ghraib on less than 50 bucks a day."

Dorkus Maximus

This is Chaim Gur-Arieh, Owner and Winemaker at C.G. Di Arie. He wants to be your friend.

I like this wine, but this picture is totally dorky.

Lovely Ljubjlana

Joanna's sister is living in The Hague (I always liked the sound of that. Is there another Hague so they got all shirty and decided to call themselves THE Hague?). Jo asked me for my 5-top destinations in Europe to give her sister some ideas. I figured, everyone likes different things on holidays, not everyone likes eating reindeer, so I broadened it out a bit. I present to you My 5-Minute Guide to Europe. Let me know what you think!

The Obvious, but have to be done
- Florence
- Barcelona
- Rome
- Paris
- London

Underrated
- Sardinia – great place to get away from the Eurotrash of it all. Good beaches and cheap food n wine.
- Mallorca – Stay away from the mega-tourist resorts, but the rest of the island is really interesting and beautiful. Great food.
- Glasgow/Edinburgh – scrubby fun arty city and its beautiful sister. Make like a local and get drunk and get in a fight in a pub! Great jumping off place to the Scottish Highlands which are also awesome
- Vienna – good food, good art, beautiful city. Shame about the Austrians.
- Brussels – good food, good art, beautiful city. Shame about the Belgians.
- Stockholm & Copenhagen – Too trendy for words and all the beautiful people can be intimidating, but fun nights out and great shopping.
- Helsinki – love love love Finland – like Sweden only more Russian and fewer Europe’s Next Top Models. They have tango clubs and you can eat reindeer. LOVE.
- Zurich – Switzerland is gorgeous, the skiing is great, you can sing The Hills Are Alive, and the glaciers are melting so go now.
- Counties Clare and Kerry in Ireland (west coast) – the people are simply the best in the world. Truly atmospheric – you can roll into a pub on a rainy day, listen to music, drink beer. Some would call that wasting a day, but I call it superawesome. Ennis is a good place to start.

Off the Beaten Track but awesome
- Talinn, Estonia – weird and looks like a movie set – like Helsinki only more foreign. Don’t go expecting edible food.
- Vilnius, Lithuania – small compact town that is very well-preserved. They have a really fun night life.
- Istanbul – one of the food capitols of the universe. And the sightseeing – the mosques and the Bosphorus – cannot be beaten.
- Reykjavik, Iceland – to be honest, I’ve only flown in and out of here about 10 times, but it looks wild. I haven’t spent a serious night in town, but I hear it is awesome and the Blue Lagoon is supposed to be unmissable.
- Dubrovnik, Croatia – Ad campaign’s tag line is “like the Mediterranean used to be”, whatever that means. A little weird, but in a fun way. Dubrovnik is now a UNESCO Heritage city so most of the bullet holes are fixed. Island hopping off the coast is fun.
- Wales – if you like your holidays adventuresome – walking, horse riding, hiking and pub fighting – you may like this. Some cool towns tucked away in unlikely places. Do your research ahead of time so you don’t end up in some bombed out Welsh mining towns.

Overrated
- Athens – Athens is essentially a 3rd world city. It can be tolerable if you know someone who can take you around, and the islands in the south are amazing.
- Prague – populated by expensive (I'm told) prostitutes and film crews. Things that should be cheap aren’t, and things that aren’t cheap are yucky.
- Oslo – So expensive it hurts to breathe, but the rest of Norway is unbelievable, esp the west coast/fjords like Bergen so don’t count Norway out completely
- French wine country – breathtaking, but you feel like a giant tourist the whole time (except when drinking vast amounts of rose and being bombarded by bats, but that's a different story)
- Dublin – I love Dublin and I feel like I could go back there all the time and never get sick of it, but most people I know disagree with me.
- Budapest – inedible food and brutalist architecture. It is interesting and creative, but can be a little impenetrable if you’re only going for a weekend.
- Monte Carlo/French Riviera – I guess you have to go at some point just for the ridiculous wealth on display, but really really not my scene.
- Milan/Genoa – They work hard there. You can tell.
- Stuttgart/Frankfurt – occasionally people try to convince me that Stuttgart is the home of great German food and Frankfurt is, well, convenient. Yeah, not so much.

I’ve never been, but I hear is nice
- Madrid
- Ljubljana (seriously. supposed to be nice. whatever.)
- Munich
- Berlin

Rachel's Kitchen Nightmares

One of the great pleasures of my mom's adopted hometown, Ashland Oregon, is the restaurant reviews in the local newspaper. The area actually does have a lot of great food at all points on the spectrum, from creative-fancy American cuisine, to classic French, to great little Mexican holes-in-the-walls. The reviews, however, seem to be most concerned with the size of the portions and how they package your leftovers.

Victor kindly forwarded me the latest review, which I excerpt here:

It is early Sunday night when my dining companion and I enter the G Street Bar and Grill. The sushi chefs are making hand rolls, the aroma of french fries wafts from the kitchen — and a duo of belly dancers gyrate to hip hop music. The boom box is so loud, it reverberates in our hungry bellies.

If that aint enough to give you nightmares...it gets worse.

Between the East-West menu, the mishmash of seating and the variety of original artwork ranging from stylized murals to the nature scenes adorning each booth, this place desperately needs a cohesive makeover. The net effect is a tilt-a-whirl world reminiscent of a Baz Lurhmann film. My beau wants to head for the door. But there's something oddly appealing about the crazy jumble. It hints of culinary adventure. I want to stay.

I'm with her beau.

He graciously concedes, transfixed by the undulating bejeweled women of all shapes and ages. "This is the weirdest place we've ever been to," he says, as we slide into a ringside booth. "Might as well have a view."

Uh. I guess so. Doesnt sound like that's going to help. Trust me on this.

I suggest he order the chicken soba noodles ($7). Since he's being such a good sport, I want my soup-loving beau to order a dish he'll like.

Break up with her. Now.

But in keeping with the wacky vibe, I select the strangest item on the non-Japanese side of the menu — Halibut Foster ($15.95). The chef has morphed a fish dish into an homage to the famous dessert. My 8-ounce halibut filet will arrive covered in caramelized banana wedges and brown sugar liquor. This could be killer good.

Ok, definitely dump the cow. In case you werent paying attention, that is HALIBUT COVERED IN CARMELIZED BANANA WEDGES AND BROWN SUGAR LIQUOR. I'm pretty sure the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution at some point about a dish like that.

Her verdict on the halibut once served:

The halibut filet is smaller than expected, and has a tropical flavor due to the bananas. Its mood is very Hawaiian.

Thanks for the insight.

As an aside, I once accidentally ordered a chicken breast in a strawberry-banana sauce at a restaurant (what can I say - it was Budapest in 1993 and no English menus). When I know it might be awhile before I eat again, I sometimes think about that dish to kill my appetite.

I wont torture you with any more. But if you can believe it, she actually recommends the restaurant...and suggests you visit on belly dancing night. Might have to give that one a miss.

I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass

I posted the wrong address for the wedding website: its http://www.iainandrachel.com/.

We have our interview by the Department of Homeland Security on December 7. I believe this is the meeting where we have to convince them that Iain and I are a real couple and they ask us questions like what are his favorite foods yadda yadda. Like The Newlywed Game, only the stakes are much, much higher.

A friend was recently diagnosed with lymphoma. Particularly cruel, because she has 2 kids, is younger than me, never smoked, and plays basketball at least twice a week (she mistakenly invited me to play with her once, not knowing that this is NOT a sport in which I excel. I'm probably more use at cricket). She is of course amazing and brave and positive. Anyway, she was asking for some "I'm going to kick cancer's ass" music for her ipod while she's doing chemo. I started on this list, but feel free to add some more:

Miracle Drug – AC Newman
Meds – Placebo
Nausea - Beck
Smile – Lily Allen
I Fought in a War – Belle & Sebastian
Wake up – Arcade Fire
I Feel It All – Feist

The Eye of the Tiger Principle:
Sweet Emotion – Aerosmith
Hey Ya – OutKast
As – Stevie Wonder
Panama – Van-bloody-Halen

And just because I like the title: I Am Not Afraid Of You and I Will Beat Your Ass – Yo La Tengo