9:27 p.m. - 2006-09-18
ConTROLL yourself!
BURRITO NIGHT, SEPTEMBER 11: Casa de Lara. The thing I most like about this particular casa is how the lights aren't too bright and it's never crowded on weeknights, just kind of quiet and a fairly cozy place to hang out when the weather is starting to turn chilly, as it (finally) was last week. Kia enjoys the vinegared strips of carrot that garnish the free corn chip baskets. (That is to say, baskets CONTAINING corn chips, not baskets MADE OF corn chips.) We both got the same variety of pork burrito, all done up with plenty o' cheese. So bad, yet so good.
BURRITO NIGHT, SEPTEMBER 18: Los Hermanos in Mt Horeb, on the TROLLWAY. We happened to pass this place a couple weeks ago and of course one of us remarked, This place would make a good Burrito Night Super Roadtrip Spectacular sometime. So we made the twenty mile or so trip tonight. Being not in Madison, the restaurant had both smoking and non-smoking sections: exotic! Again, there were free chips, but unfortunately the salsa was a little bland, but fortunately there were little bottles of picante sauce on the tables so we were able to zazz it up a little. The burritos were pretty inexpensive and we didn't order cocktails, so we got appetizers of guacamole (me) and cheese stuff (her). Both were very well executed, the guac all thick and chunky and the cheese stuff made from Mexican cheese and not the god-knows-what-all they normally put in melty cheese bowls. We both ordered chicken burritos that came with rice and beans. The burritos themselves were all right, but somewhat surpassed by the presentation: rice on one side of the plate, beans on the other, burrito forming a sort of Maginot Line between the two; the burrito festooned with the usual assortment of shredded lettuce and cheese, tomato, sour cream, but in such a way that it seemed not thrown together but somehow quite festive. Plus, we got a booth and the check was less than twenty bucks. Can't beat THAT with a stick.
BTW, there's not, to my knowledge, a restaurant or saloon or massage parlor or something in Mt Horeb called "The Comptroller", but there really ought to be.
AND SPEAKING OF ROADTRIP SPECTACULARS, plans for the Yid Vicious Japan trip continue apace. Last week we had orientation, in which most of the band and a few bio-mass scientists and a state arts board guy and three Japanese people and an origami lady sat for three hours in a fluorescent-lit state meeting room while a different non-Japanese lady who had printed a "Guide to Japan and its Mysterious Ways" booklet read most of the booklet aloud, with exhaustive commentary by herself and her assistant, a woman who introduced herself as "a retired writer". For me, the oddest thing about the whole experience was learning the term "retired writer". I didn't know such a thing existed. I've heard of dead writers, Russian writers, bad writers, great writers, young writers, alcoholic writers and tons more, but never retired ones. The other odd thing about the evening was how the lady's presentation appeared to be geared toward young foreign exchange students who had never travelled, whereas the youngest person who was in the room is around thirty years old. But who knows, maybe if we hadn't sat through the whole lecture one of us would have gone around Japan sneezing throughout the whole trip and eventually been beaten to death by gravely offended Japanese nationals who, according to the lecture, consider sneezing extremely rude. That three-hour talk by that patronizing, dour and totally humorless lady could have well saved lives.
But needless to say, the whole YV family is stoked about the trip and grateful to be going, and especially grateful to the nice folk-dance people who just gave us a bunch of money toward our considerable airfare expense, just out of the niceness of their hearts. Thanks, folk-dance people! Thanks to you, Yid Vicious is turning Japanese, I really think so!
Finally, to the couple of people who commented on my little bit that Serenade in Green put up last week and who will probably never read this but just in case:
Are you fucking kidding me?
