Unravel Me . . . .

So yesterday my friend, the bunnyfaced one, sent me a link to this knitting blog entry to a supercool exhibit at my very place of employment. (Well, one of them, anyway.)

The pointer was just in the nick of time, as the exhibit closes on Saturday. I managed to subvert my usual slothful tendencies and get there today before my evening class. That's the good news. The bad news is the Sullivan galleries were hosting a benefit for the Ox-Bow School of the Arts.

Ok, so classifying that as bad news is totally narcissitic. But when I got up to the 7th floor, clearly security was on the look-out for slovenly hangers on (like yours truly), and the guard at the desk was totally baffled when I asked for the Redress exhibit. In fact, I had to make knitting motions before I could get her to understand what I was asking about. There is nothing sadder than a mime miming knitting.

The second barrier was the general bustle in the galleries themselves. There were big signs for "BENEFACTORS" to check in. Some people reporting for the caterers were sent around to the non-BENEFACTORS door (which, one assumes, was smaller, out of the way, and generally more scabby). In between me and Redress were tables for ticketholders to check in. The handful of folks milling around them were youngish and had the look of volunteers about them. I asked if it was ok for me to go into the exhibit and they looked at one another in confusion. One said, "Are the galleries open?" I told her that the website said they were open until 6, but I hadn't known the benefit was there . . . so . . . As is fairly typical in my experience, indicating that I didn't want to cause trouble or be an inconvenience won the day, and they thanked me for asking before barging in.

From the photos at Panopticon, I'd been thinking the exhibit was a bit bigger than it was. It's probably about 10 x 10, and I was a little at a loss for where to stash my stuff (eventually settled on tucking it into a corner. I also felt more self-conscious than I had anticipated, ironically because I was the only one there except for those engrossed in setting up for the benefit. Nonetheless, I'd come to knit and knit I would!

There are seven stations set up. On one side of the space, the bicycle wheels are mounted upside down on two stacked wooden pallets. The working strand of yarn is wound several times around the rim, then goes up through a hook above the wheel, swags across the center of the space, goes through another hook above the hanging row of sweaters, and descends along the wall behind the "seats." In front of each wheel is a neatly folded piece of fabric which I assume is a remnant of the garment from which the yarn has been harvested. Next to each wheel is also a small ball of the same yarn, wound. In addition to the pendant sweaters, there are more piled in the corner.

Opposite each wheel is, of course, a station with a piece in progress. There are bits o' pallets for sitting, and needles for each piece. I found myself dithering about yarn to sit down by. None is particularly pretty or soft, which isn't particularly surprising: You can pry my favorite sweaters out of my cold, dead hands, after all.

Finally I settled on a rainbow-colored, chunky yarn. This, of course, turned out to be the one station where the yarn had gotten completely fucked up in coming off the wheel. Furthermore, my dumb cracker mind was, of course, too befuddled to figure out how to right the situation. Plus, I felt weirdly anxious about trying to fix it, as though it was a violation of the imaginary velvet rope that always exists around art in the mind of someone as profoundly unartistic as I am. Although that piece had, at one point, been quite wide, it was decreased to a narrow strap by the time I got a hold of it. I did a few rows of seed stitch on it, then played around with k2togs and kfbs before I just couldn't deal with the lack of slack anymore.

Being fundamentally lazy, as well as nonartistic, I simply picked up the tweedy dark grey piece to my right. This one was more satisfying to me, as it was wider, and I could really play with stitches across its length. Also, I could reach up and give a big tug to the strand and get the pleasant, productive-sounding clicky noise (made by a thin piece of metal arranged to hit the spokes—I rather wished it had been a clothespinned playing card!) as the wheel turned to release more yarn.

I'm jealous of Franklin's experience, as mine was missing the sociability of knitting. Not only was I there alone, I felt in the way because of the prep for the benefit. And to cap the experience, I was rereading an article on female genital mutilation in Sudan in preparation for my class. In other words, circumstances conspired to keep me from my happy art-brain place, which I'm usually so ready to go to. I did have some of the same out-of-context, disjointed, disconnected thoughts he mentions. At one point, I stared down at the next row in the seed stitch I was going to do an I literally could not remember if seed stitch was purling the knits and knitting the purls or maintaining the stitch type across rows. I then suddenly couldn't tell reliably if a stitch had been knit or purled on the previous row. Unfortunately, rather than it being a sort of cognitive sorbet, I just felt frazzled, frustrated, and weirdly alone.

Oh! Another weird thing. I had my Jesus!Phone out to take a few pictures (again, I felt self-conscious and invasive even though I'd seen pictures on Panopticon). The phone rang, or rather, the "Lai-dai-dai, lai-dai-dai, lai-dai-dai-dai-dai-dai-dai" part of Janis Joplin's "Me And Bobby McGee" sounded, revealing the caller to be the bunnyfaced one herself. Without thinking, I answered it. But a few seconds later we got disconnected, and I suddenly thought, "ZOMG! YOU JUST ANSWERED YOUR PHONE IN AN ART GALLERY! YOU ARE LIKE A LEVENTY-SIZED ASSHOLE!" So when she called back, I didn't answer and was all anxious about not answering. (We did eventually have a conversation, the first part of which revealed just how freakin' LOUD downtown Chicago is.)

Anyway, it was a cool and interesting exhibit. I wish I'd been more in the right headspace and/or hit on a more convenient time to see it, though. I won't even bother with my iPhone pictures (I mostly took them for Twittering purposes) as Franklin's are much better. Sorry to not have reported on this sooner for the convenience of my Chicago knitting peeps!

Radio . . . off? High Tea @ 103 and Radio Macbeth @ Court Theater

I recently inherited a very fancy Franklin Covey day planner from my sinister sweetie, who ditched the big 3-ring arrangement in favor of the spiral bound incarnation. Since I've begun to use it, I've double booked myself at least 3 times. And yet my gänger has remained stubbornly undöppeled.

The worst part of my double booking yesterday morning was the fact that I didn't feel like going anywhere at all. I recently incurred the rage of the karmic keepers of migraines by telling my doctor (at my long-overdue annual visit) that I hadn't had one in a long while. She didn't rewrite me a prescription for my medication, and thus I have had at least 2 since then, one of them yesterday.

Despite feeling pretty awful, and despite the fact that I should have been attending my song-writing class, I was determined to attend the high tea at Cafe 103, which had been arranged by the superexcellent owner of my beloved, doggie-friendly local yarn shop, My Sister's Knits.

As I was pondering my wardrobe for such an occasion on Twitter (I suppose it is possible to clothe oneself without recourse to cannabis [so far removed from Texas THC am I that it took me 4 tries to spell that correctly], government hand outs, and Twitter, but I don't recommend it), pointed out that high tea was definitely a hat-wearing occasion. I located the MPage Memorial Hat and finished it off with a skirt, tights (which definitely squish), my insaneoid (but oh-so-cute and oh-so-conveniently-mammoth-calf-fitting) boots, a black top, and my newly blocked dragon-scales scarf, and dived into my trusty Corolla with about 5 minutes to get me to the tea on time.

Foolishly considering the Bears' interception of the ball deep in their own territory to be some kind of good omen, I headed in and slotted myself into the Matilda axis. (The Cafe can seat 30, 3 of us were named Matilda, and we happened to be sitting next to one another.) My hat was widely complimented until someone turned up in a tiara. (Let the record show that I, of course, HAVE a tiara, but I had not gotten the memo that this was a tiara-wearing occasion.)

The tea was lovely. We started with a basket of miniature scones and various breads and cakes (lemon-poppyseed, pound cake, etc.) served with jams, lemon curd, and so on. Next up were mimosas (Carol providing the champagne) and the first course of finger sandwiches, which included open-faced cucumber-dill on rye, turkey with an apple-cranberry chutney on a whole-grain pita, and something else my sleep-deprived brain cannot recall at the moment. The second course of sandwiches included spinach-walnut minitarts in phyllo, classic egg salad on white roles, and chicken salad with smoked grapes and walnuts on a croissant. I was a huge fan of everything, despite the fact that both the chutney and the chicken salad are things I normally would have shied away from trying.

There were various door prizes from the shop. Winning seemed to be a function of proximity to her majesty with the tiara (although the last person picked her own name out!). In addition to the prizes Carol had arranged, the owner of Cafe 103 (who, as usual, had on perfectly beautiful jewelry) announced that everyone should check the bottom of her saucer, because one person at each table would find a sticker indicating that she had won the centerpiece, which was a lovely antique cup and saucer filled with unique and gorgeous arrangements from the Blossom Boys, the super-excellent florist's shop (and more) just 2 doors down from MSK.

Before we could to anywhere, there was, of course dessert. First up, both by choice and necessity, was ethereally delicious orange mousse served in a chocolate tulip cup: One million times better than the average dreamsicle in part because of the spot-on evocation of all aspects of the dreamsicle experience. Next I tried the caramel-apple square, which was a little over-cinnamony for my tastes (almost any cinnamon at all has this effect on me, though, so take that in context). The chocolate walnut brownie was a marvel of brownieosity: Chocolatey, rich, and wonderful without being at all overly sugary. I kept telling myself that it was so rich I could only eat a tiny portion, and yet the whole thing disappeared. The final dessert had (presumably in error) described to us as something strawberry based. It was, in fact, a kind of chocolate cream cheese brownie. The slightly sour topping was in perfect balance with the chocolatey goodness underneath. Oh, there was a lemon bar in there, too, and I am a failure because I did not try it.

They owners opened the Beverly pantry to us as well, and I did lumber over there briefly. (My crazy!boots proved to be particularly ill suited to conveying my post-tea bulk around a shop filled with fragile and expensive things.) Many of us headed back to Carol's shop, which she was opening to us for an hour after the tea. Of course in our eagerness to get some food-coma-combatting fresh air, we arrived at the shop well ahead of her. I had parked in front of the Blossom Boys shop and noticed that they had a picture of Barack and Michelle Obama on their door (a specific picture of the two of them going to or coming from the kids' parent-teacher conference right after the election), and I stopped to examine it. (Turns out that the lovely arrangement that Michelle is holding in the picture is one of theirs.)

In my food-induced haze, I failed to note that there was someone inside the shop, even though it was close. Naturally, my mug pressed to the screen door was sufficiently alarming that he came to see what was up. He immediately recognized our gaggle as having been at the tea and invited us to come in until Carol arrived to open her shop. I narrowly escaped buying a number of pieces of jewelry and some other things. I did not escape buying yarn, however.

In the car on the way home, I discovered the awful truth about the Bears game. We have no wish to discuss it.

In the evening, we were scheduled to have dinner chez Editrix, as she was eager to cook dinner in her new and improved kitchen, and thence repair to the theatre to see Radio Macbeth. We were of the impression that RM was not, you know, The Scottish Play, given the different title and all. In fact, we were under the impression that it was a play about a group doing a radio version of TSP, which would be interesting. Sadly, it is not. Not about a group doing a radio version of TSP and, really, not interesting.

It's important to note that the performance was by a group called SITI. Although this seems once to have stood for Saratoga International Theater Institute, it seems now to be SITI forevermore. SITI is dedicated to training actors in a combination of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training (which, apparently, has no relationship to the Suzuki Method of Musical Instrument training, although I think a foot-based approach to musical instruments will soon be sweeping the globe) and the Viewpoints method .

It is further important to note that Kate Bredeson, the dramaturg for RM says:

In the world of SIT, the Scottish play is a 1940s radio drama in rehearsal . . . the company tells the story of the play through the ebbs and flows of sound. As in the most masterful classic radio dramas, the focus on sound in lieu of sight creates a world in which chatter is heightened and screams are more devastating — a world where silence creeps and menaces. In this stylish take on Shakespeare's tragedy, SITI gives us a full, albeit subdued visual terrain as well. The resulting crash of sight, sound, and a classic, iconic text is pure SITI: grounded, full, stylish, smart, raw."

Um. Sure.

There's almost no set for the show. Which is fine. The black cinderblock wall is exposed from floor to ceiling, except where a single, paint-splattered white drape descends from the ceiling to puddle on the floor up left. An upright piano is against the back wall up right. Other than that, at the top of the play, a small table is down left with two folding chairs in front of a microphone upstage between it and the aforementioned drape. A long boardroom table is set diagonally, running from down right to up center, and a handful of mismatched folding chairs are around it.

As the audience filtered in, a lone individual was visible slumped in a folding chair at about center stage. As a crowd of people was heard off stage left, he jumped up and ran off stage as the lights went completely down.

Four people seemed to enter in the dark with only a lighter's flame to guide them. As the lights came back up, two women were revealed. One was a young Japanese woman in black plastic-framed glasses and a convincing 40s-era skirt suit, another was a young woman in high-waisted, wide-legged trousers and a blouse and scarf. The former bustled around helpfully, the latter sat at the small table, seeming to concentrated on spiral-bound script. Also on stage from the moment the lights came up was a small, dark man in an argyle sweater.

Shortly, a man (apparently the one with the lighter) entered from the right-hand wings, presumably having been responsible for getting the lights working. He wore a cap and flannel shirt and had a pencil tucked behind his ear. This group was soon followed by a man and woman, also entering from the right, who were altogether more flashily dressed. The man had a pin-striped suit, the woman a red wrap dress, very 40s hat, and a fur coat.

Probably close to 5 minutes elapsed during which the Japanese woman continued to bustle, the woman in the red dress stalked about giving people the hairy eyeball, the woman in the trousers continued to focus on her script, and the men seemed to wander around whispering to one another and making "whaddaya gonna do?" gestures at one another.

It did seem as though relationships among these people were being subtly established during this time. For example, it seemed to me that Trouser!Woman and Red!Dress Woman were being contrasted: T!W was clearly a METHOD! actor, whereas R!D was a soap opera diva type who relied on histrionics. The Japanese woman was a Girl Friday type intent on convincing everyone of her indispensibility. There wasn't much to go on with the men other than perhaps a class difference between the two men who had entered first and the man who entered later with R!D.

With little obvious impetus, W!T launched into "When shall we three meet again?" reading all parts with very little differentiation between them. She moved more into characterization as Macbeth (the richly dressed man in the pin-striped suit) and Banquo (the guy in the newsie cap) entered the scene. From there it seemed as though the players were established: Pinstripe = Macbeth; R!d = Lady Macbeth; W!T = witches (and later the Porter, Lady Macduff, and Lady Macbeth's maid); Newsie guy = Banquo, Malcolm, and a handful of other characters; Argyle guy = miscellaneous characters; Japanese skirt-suited woman (who turned out to have a very heavy Japanese accent) = Various characters.

EXCEPT!

Right around Act I, scene iv, when we see Duncan for the first time, the pinstripe guy started to read the part, pulling out one cheek and doing a very distinct voice for him.

AND THEN!

When Macbeth is next set to speak, the guy who was on stage before the lights when down appears at the top of the house left audience, starts to say Macbeth's lines over pinstripe guy, and does some directors' notes type dialogue about what the play is about.

So, thought I, we are finally, after four scenes, getting into what this play is about! Sort of a leisurely pace for self assertion, but now we're cooking.

Yeah, not really. The second guy just read Macbeth for the rest of the play, while pinstripe guy moved into playing Duncan and then Macduff, and no attention was ever paid again to this godforsaken mid-performance improv freeze tag. In fact, there seemed to be no further acknowledgment of any other identity for or interactions among these players. They just . . . did an abridged staged reading of the play. And lo! We were mightily confused in an apathetic way.

Certainly, they used those mics to good effects sometimes! There were person-created storms. To be sure, there were a handful of radio foley techniques—slapping the big table with a piece of 2 x 4 to simulate the knocking at the gate before Duncan's murder is discovered, for example. Yes, there were some coffee moments among the players, but they seemed reducible to nothing more than a minimalist way to stage the various banquets. But other than that it was just sort of Speed!Macbeth. Why the 40s? Doesn't matter. Why the markedly different styles of dress? Who knows? WHY GOD WHY DO WE HAVE 2 MACBETHS? This question is as elusive as the truth about the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

The performances weren't bad. In fact, I thought Barney O'Hanlon (newsie cap guy) was quite good in particular, and once I realized that nothing interesting in the way of interpretation was going to happen, I clung to hope that I'd at least get to see some of his Macbeth. The Editrix did forcefully question whether Elizabethan English is really the best medium for a non-native speaker with a very heavy accent. M and I were divided on whether Akiko Aizawa's accent was real or part of her character-not-really-within-a-character. (I gave up on this idea toward the end, but the ZK still thought he'd heard her making some accentless witch contributions.)

In terms of the text presented . . . I'm not sure why one would include the bulk of the extended witches scene that most agree was not written by Shakespeare and not performed by the company in his lifetime, especially if one is going to cut "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" down to about five lines, delivered in painfully flat style that cashes in on none of the possible readings of that speech.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all a Bard purist, but the shaved down play, as presented, did little to make me think. The additions, which included random stage directions (more frequent toward the end), the aforementioned replacement!Macbeth entrance music and pyrotechnics, and W!T ending the Macduff/Macbeth confrontation with a whimper as she yelled "Enough!" (This last was particularly snicker-inducing for M and me, as the two men were facing one another with folding chairs raised in menacing fashion. Been there, done that, bought the Luchador mask.)

RM would probably have been disappointing to us on the grounds that it was not at all what we thought it would be, and I think that SITI bears some responsibility for creating those expectations and not delivering. Observe:

“A great ghost story is best heard in the dark or by the shadows of flickering candle light. Darkness plays tricks on the mind and the ear; the smallest rattle will make our imagination churn. Macbeth—in my mind the ultimate ghost story.”
–Co-Director Darron L. West


But despite being doomed to disappoint, it needn't have . . . bored . . . to the extent that it did. Perhaps if we'd arrived a little earlier (we were enjoying QUITE TASTY chicken with potatoes and kale chez editrix until sauntering theatre-ward quite late), the boredom would have been prophesied in this from the OTHER director:

In the heat of the shared theatrical experience, an audience becomes its own society. You are here with a roomful of other people. Can you handle that? We are a community of people dealing with one another and challenging one another. The theater is about social systems and how individuals in communities function in concert. Can the planet be shared or does it just belong to me?


Why I do believe those are the second worst director's notes I ever did see. I'd have said they were the worst, but I presume that they are directed toward agoraphobic virgin theater-goers from Mars, rather than, you know, normal people like us.

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept it, Is to Whip It

Telecommuniculturey was on the road this last weekend, visiting the scenic central California coast for the birthday of Brother D, and neither hell nor high headwinds could keep us from our destination.

Although we weren't quite on the o-dark-thirty flight from Midway, it was early for us, and we had dreaded "Group B" boarding passes, so we needed to be at the airport pretty early. In fact, M opted to deal with checking the bag while I went ahead and parked my ass concavity in the B line. I did, and we managed to be first in said line, freeing me up to relax and knit the shawl that will never, ever be finished.

Knitting in public seems to be equivalent to having a cute and fuzzy puppy on one shoulder, a cute and fuzzy kitten on the other, and a shirt that says, "Please talk to me. I love people." Clearly, I need to think of something that will counteract this before there are casualties. I'll let M speak for himself, but I'm pretty sure he was planning an exit strategy when he walked up and saw the entirely uncaffeinated Og talking to someone in the A line while knitting a lace pattern in extremely fine mohair on wooden needles. But Og later showed her by getting into a cheerful conversation about lamb mutilation with another woman in the B line.

Once on the plane, I switched to working on the Jayne Cobb hat in classic Packers colors, which was Brother D's Christmas present. I'd delayed making it, as I'd hoped to find a workable white yarn for doing the "G" logo on the earflaps, but alas it was not meant to be. The hat, save pompon, was finished by the end of the protracted flight (seriously, I have flown to California many, many times, and that was one long-ass flight).

When M had been checking the bag, someone had asked him if he was going to LA for "the festival" (a pair of words I cannot hear without adding "The festival? The festival!? You wish to go to the festival? The poor girl's mother had died! The festival." This is more dada than my being compelled to add "pig" every time I say "It's possible"). We'd noticed a pretty high concentration of musicians on the flight, and I've suddenly found an area in which I am extremely nosy: I wanted to demand that each and every gig bag be opened so that I could fondle the instruments. At baggage claim in LA, I feel certain that I recognized a guy lurking around: Frizzy black ponytails, striped suit, but I couldn't place him at all.

On the road north, our plan to miss traffic on the 405 was not as successful as we'd hoped, although it was a million times more successful than the same journey in May, when it took 90 minutes to go 6 miles on that stretch of fresh hell. Lingering at the Camarillo Sizzler and the Fry's in Oxnard (I have a newsflash: Oxnard smells really really bad. When considering this statement, please adjust your understatement meters for the fact that I work in freaking Gary) cost us around Santa Barbara when we hit very bad and inexplicable traffic. All in all, though, it wasn't a bad drive, as I had my endless shawl to knit, and M had edited the XM broadcast of October Robbie's Secret Country Show with John Doe (yes, that John Doe) and Nora O'Connor and put it on the iPod.

We rolled up to the homestead around 7:30 or so, and N was there to greet us. The resident bipolar cat, G, made me feel welcome by getting in a good, blood-drawing swipe at my hand, then, just to let me know it wasn't personal, giving N an even better slash to the fingertip. C, the new feline addition, was friendly at a distance, but proved to be a total slut for my green brocade Chucks. And who could blame her?

Later in the evening, we were joined by Brother D himself, fresh from the dojo. Apparently having sustained a head injury (I'm inclined to blame the hair he's growing, as it freaks me out), he immediately instructed M not to poke him anywhere in the chesticular region, as he was really sore. I think you need to brush up on your Brer Rabbit tactics, son. After some raucous chatting that thoroughly renewed my determination to seek out a dojo and a martial art this year, we realized that eating might be a good thing. This being, functionally, the middle of nowhere, Denny's was our only option, and we were lucky enough to come in hot on the heels of a party of 20.
Food obtained and no casualties suffered, we then headed back to the homestead and our life-sized, wife-sized, full-grown, blow-up plastic bed (which I find perfectly comfortable, incidentally, but which Brother D seems to think brings shame on his house).

Friday, I woke up with an incredibly rotten nonmigraine headache that felt rather like someone had grabbed the fascia over my splenius capitus and was pulling the whole works as far away from my dorsum as possible. A hot shower seemed in order. At first, this idea seemed truly inspired, because the water pressure at Fortress Surly seems to think that only hitting the epidermis is for wimps. Fortress Surly wants you to shower to the bone. This pounding with needles of extremely hot water is great for a muscular headache, but once that starts to wane, one finds oneself huddled at the back of the shower, completely at a loss as to how to get to the faucet to make the barrage stop. I pity the menstrual boobs of J.

After my coffee minion (Brother D has rightly learned to fear Og) had plied me with a few cups, we headed off in search of lunch. We found ourselves at Bon Temps, a creole restaurant that is far, far better than anything attached to a Ramada Inn thousands of miles from Louisiana has a right to be. I had a half muff with freshly made sweet potato chips, M had some very good alligator etouffee, and Brother D had the bacon and ham jambalaya, which is normally only available for dinner. Add to this delicious, steaming hot cornbread (served in a mysteriously cool cast-iron skillet), and you have a wickedly yummy meal. Our only regret is that we'd forgotten to try the boiled peanuts.

After lunch, we headed to my second Wal-Mart in two days, which is more Wal-Marts than I have entered in the previous 2 years. However, I needed to pick up some Claritin-D (having cleverly forgotten my Zyrtec-D), and M was in search of Ong Bak: Thai Warrior and The Protector for Brother D. Despite an additional trip to a nearby Hollywood Video, we were only successful in obtaining the latter.

Back home, Brother D began laying the groundwork for forcing M to buy an X-Box 360 by introducing him to Dead Rising. With the two of us looking on, M spent 4 hours playing the wrongest game ever. He'd decided from the outset that his mission as a photojournalist was to kill zombies and take pictures. To underscore this point, he killed the first survivor he'd inadvertently rescued, beating him to death with a golf club, after taking crotch shots of the guy's dead wife. Things got progressively wronger from there. But we all learned an important lesson: There is nothing funnier than a zombie frustrated by his inability to reach you because you've smashed a framed picture over his head and he's now wearing it around his waist, unless it's a zombie with fountains of blood streaming from the lead pipe you've installed in his abdomen.

Once M was well and truly dead in the area of the mall that under construction, we began to think about dinner. Although we'd initially thought of turning Japanese, the place was positively crammed. Fortunately (oh so very fortunately) Brother D recalled that Old Vienna was just up the road a piece. We had eaten there on our last trip out, but N was a Viennese virgin, and so we were resolved to take care of that.

From the street, we could hear music. I vaguely recalled there being a stage inside. Yet, even with these pieces of information, we were wholly unprepared for what we would find inside. The main guitar lick from Billy Idol's "White Wedding" is pretty well known to me, as we did that song for one of my guitar graduations. I assure you, you have not heard that lick until you have heard it on accordion with backing from an upright bass and drums. The band followed this up with "Whip It." If we retained any resistance after that, it was utterly broken by "Du Hast."

Shortly after this, they introduced themselves as Trio Internationale, and the bassist said the magic words: "CDs available." When they took a break between sets, they walked around the tables, chatting with folks, distributing buttons, and talking up Mardi Gras at Old Vienna (um . . . . ) and Oktoberfest (ok, an undignified American version, no doubt, but at least geographically sound). We traded jokes for a while and were soon regretful that we weren't able to meet Frantz, their regular drummer. As if major CD purchases were not already in the cards, I asked to have a look at "We're An Accordion Band," which has so many wrong things on it, it could be the soundtrack of our collectively wrong lives. (A track listing to follow, but I can't lay hands on the CD at the moment.) And as if this weren't enough, Michael/Freud enticed us with a sneak preview of the cover art for their upcoming CD: A donkey in lederhosen, kicking a tuba.

Despite having consumed more pretzels, spaetzel, and schnitzel than is advisable, we still needed to have dessert. It's not so much dessert as a pilgrimage to Doc Burnstein's, which has test tubes full of sprinkles and awesomely inadvisable flavor mixtures. (I also obtained an item that will make me extremely popular with a certain soon-to-be-four-year-old, but I will keep it secret and safe for now.)

On the X-Box front, zombies were abandoned in favor of Madden, which I somehow got roped into playing, despite the fact that my experience at this game consists of about 10 minutes of play on the PS-2 on Christmas Eve. Brother D kicked my ass as the Packers (I had foolishly failed to choose the 85 Bears 46 Zone Defense, in my defense), and I then kicked M's Patriots ass, with my 46 Zone enjoying a lot of tasty Brady sandwiches in the course of the game. I continue to really hate and be utterly baffled by these new-fangled controllers with 17 ways to control direction, etc. This is a problem, because I really, really want to play Dead Rising when the inevitable 360 purchase happens. M and Brother D then tried to freak me out by playing the Burger King games, but I studiously ignored them, and so to bed.

For the day of the main event, we backtracked to the Japanese place, where I enjoyed my rainbow roll and others partook of the generous lunch combos. To mixed regret and relief I did not investigate the "Monkey Balls" drink special. I feel certain that it had nasty-ass fake banana in it. Postlunch, we hung out at Fortress Surly for a while before heading Grandmaward for a surprise visit. Not that visiting Grandma isn't always a pleasure, this turned out to be a particularly fruitful and fortuitous visit.

You see, Grandpa Wolvie was a tail gunner on a B-24 Liberator during WWII. We'd long known that he had drawn the Nose Art for the "Lookin' Good," (a woman in a green bikini bottom, hugging a bomb to her chest) and that Grandma had been the model. He'd also done copies of the art for the guys, offering to do individual versions of it with the hair color changed to match that of each guy's wife/girlfriend. Back in May, Brother D had asked about it, because he had some nefarious plans. Grandma said that she believed the original sketch had been donated to a museum, along with most of Grandpa's other things from the War. For whatever reason, she'd been rooting around in a hutch in the dining room the day before and voila! There it was. I don't think even having house guests like us could've ruined the birthday for Brother D after that.

After taking our leave of Grandma, we were headed toward Sanata Ynez and the Chumash Casino resort. There was something going on on our intended route and we wound up taking a dark, twisty, gravelly road through vineyards (which, by the way, look quite creepy with fog writhing around the sorry, blackened bones of trees in the dark of night), which did, thankfully, dump us out near where we wanted to be. At the restaurant, we met up with about 8 other friends, some of whom I'd met before and some of whom were newbies (I tried not to traumatize them unduly).

Dinner was fabulous. I did have a moment when I though my husband had been replaced by a pod!Zombie!King when he ordered asparagus as a starter. I then realized that it was asparagus wrapped in prosciutto that had been breaded and fried. It was crazy awesome. Also on the starter list were the world's biggest, tastiest prawns. The lobster bisque I had was good, but I've recently been spoiled by Susan Goss's bisque, so I'm snotty. For the entree, I'd waffled between the seafood lasagnette and the scallops and risotto, finally opting for the latter. Judging from the head-down-can't-talk-eating demeanor of everyone at the table, I'm guessing they were all as satisfied with their entrees as I was with mine. For dessert, most of us opted for the chocolate ganache. The vanilla gelato was superb, as was the chocolate-covered toffee cookie on top. The cake was a touch dry for my tastes, but overall it was yum. On top of the good food, they had a nice wine list with one of my favorite blends on it. Good stuff and I'm very grateful to Brother D's boss and stand-in mom, who treated us all.

After dinner, we gambled for a bit and experienced the joys of being in one of the few places surrounded by California in which smoking is still allowed. My lungs were unhappy all out of proportion to the smoke to which I was being exposed, although there was one gentlemen who seemed to be following me with his lit, but unsmoked cigarette. I wound up spending the bulk of the evening at a Blackjack table where I ended the evening $65 up, so I can't complain too much. Despite the giant meal we'd eaten, there was a general cry sent up for fried foods, and we made a visit to the cafe. Afterward, we split up and headed homeward where I was very happy to crawl into bed.

Sunday morning, Brother D proved himself to be a great host, a good brother, and an all-around mensch as he'd gone out to obtain doughnuts for M. (M has this thing about the dearth of maple [gack] bars and good doughnuts in our fair city. I really couldn't care less about doughnuts, and the more distance I can put between me and anything maple flavored, the better.) We then took in the first half of the Bears game (only after I plaintively asked Brother D to make the TV show me TV) before setting off for LAX.

On the drive, we found the local ESPN for a while, and Brother D was kind enough to text scoring updates to us. All in all, I'm glad to have missed the Saints runback for a TD and only heard the good parts version of the second half. We started to lose ESPN, but fortunately found a station out of Baja (!) broadcasting the game. Naturally, I'm stoked more than I can say to have Da Bears in Da Bowl, especially against the Colts. My Payton jersey and I stand at the ready for the Big Game.