Soup is Lonely Food

Tuesday, October 23, 2008

Yes, I'm here again

Does that mean I care?  Uh, no.

It's cold.  Soup's hot, 'kay?

Wednesday, October 25, 2008

The daily special

It did not change today, Chris

Big shock, you're a cheat.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Thought we had something

Then you took home the hostess.

My plate, my heart.  Empty.

Thanksgiving 2008

You're open?  Surprise.

Turkey and three kinds of starch

Wow, totally unique.

January 2, 2009

Moving up, I see.

Part owner of this dump now

A discount pour moi?

Valentine's Day

Dated for three weeks

Spent hours here ever since

Math is so crazy.

Sunday, March 7, 2009

Three Michelin stars?

Who did your hostess friend blow?

The monkfish is dry.

Friday, March 12, 2009

Dating Gordon now.

He's on Food Network, you know.

He hates this place, too.

Sunday, March 14, 2009

Gordon?  No, we're done.

I don't really like redheads.

Or wives of redheads

Sunday, March 21, 2009

I've been Food blogging.

It's called Soup is Lonely Food

I gave you four tears.

How to Date an Alcoholic

Many of you think dating an alcoholic is difficult.  Take it from me, it SO isn't!  For those of you who are bottle shy, here's a few pointers.

First, and this is very important, you will have to decide which kind of alcoholic you would like to date.  Broadly speaking, there are two kinds: active drinkers and those in recovery.  

The active drinkers are fun yet frightening - especially when they burst into tears during dinner, while drunk driving, or in the middle of what you thought was about to be sex.  Active drinkers like to spend money (theirs or their mothers'), can be the life of the party or the weird brooding mannequin in the middle of the room.  It's like playing Russian Roulette but instead of one bullet, the whole gun is full.

Alcoholics in recovery take very seriously whatever it is they have used to replace alcohol - bargain hunting, baseball, AA, rare breeds of cats.  About these things they are particularly fond of statistics.  "See this coffee?  I got nine pounds of it for 40% off the retail price.  That's a savings of 3/4 of a penny per sip!"  

Both types of alcoholics are wildly obsessive and both types love alcohol more than you so when you get down to it, don't worry: they're kinda the same. 

Secondly, you will have to figure out what you'd like to waste on this relationship.  Time?  Money?  Your two front teeth?  Rest assured, you will lose something when dating an alky weather it's your dignity ("Come on, just pull over here so I can shit behind this church") or the sparkle in your eye.  Youth will surprise you by effortlessly slipping out of your body like a too-full tampon.  You forget to restock on hope as well as toilet paper and joy.

Thirdly, take a deep, cleansing breath to prepare your headspace for Alky Wisdom.  The cleansing breath is to wash your mind of anything you've ever learned before because whether they're drunk or sober, Alky Wisdom 'tis a bewitching thing!  Here are a few chocolates from my very own heart-shaped sampler box.  Now, I want you to guess which quotes came from a stinky-breathed Drinker and which were espoused from high atop Mount Judgement by a Sober.

1. "I have to use the bathroom.  Let's go in this bar."
   
2. "I feel sorry for you and my mom because you don't believe in God."
   
3. "Listen...pst...pst...hear the high hat?  Okay, and, over here...tcha, tcha, tcha...the snare...you know, house music, George Harrison, alright, it's all about the Beatles and what Bowie meant, 'John, I'm only dancing,' alright.  That's how it's done in the music industry.  It's eating pizza, man."
   
4. (Said as he's polishing off a quart of mango sorbet which contained a single tablespoon of rum) "Well next time, just remember, if you want me to eat it, don't put any alcohol in it."

This is a secret I will let you in on.  If you want to make a happy life with a drinking alcoholic, become one yourself.  I have found that the best way to schedule this is to fight all morning when you're hung over so nothing gets in the way of the happiness found by way of boozing all night.  If you have chosen to dedicate your life to one in recovery, then I suggest you measure everything in 12 Steps.  It's the language they best understand.  You can have Twelve Steps to Marriage, Twelve Steps to Childhood Super Hero Fantasies, Twelve Steps to Cutting your Fingernails or the Lawn, etc.  Everything from the common cold to the financial crisis to dumping his ass and moving to another state can be solved in twelve steps.  Believe me.

Imogen

My name is Imogen.  It's pronounced "Emma Jean" but that's not how it's spelled.  I can see you.  

I is for imagine I've got a video camera pointed at you.  

M is for maybe I really do have a video camera pointed at you.  

O is for "Oh, my god.  Does that woman have a camera pointed at me?" 

G is for "Gee whiz, that's a nice camera she has!"  (Thank you.)

E is for excellent, that's the kind of footage I shoot.

N is for night after night for that's when I shoot it.

Imogen.  I can see you.

This is who we are now

Jan wasn't sure what to do.  The man she loved had run off with the man he loved.  

Well.  

She had had suspicions but it was 1976 and Fresno, California was not San Francisco, California.  In San Francisco, you marched and shouted about your private preferences in the middle of the street.  In Fresno, you kept those sort of things to yourself and just quietly ruined other people's lives with your declaration of self-importance, thought Jan.  Your stupid, "I gotta be me" rap.  Jeff had packed up his stuff in small boxes, got tenure at the university, maintained a shocking amount of "their" friends (HA! thought Jan HA! HA! goddamn HA!), and suddenly started calling himself Jefferson.  

Jan found this particularly insulting.  They had been a wonder couple.   Jan and Jeff.  Jeff 'n Jan.  One syllable each.  Both starting with that cute little hook: the letter J.  Symmetry.  Sweetness.  Togetherness.  Forever.

Now he was Jefferson as in "Jefferson and Jackson."  How presidential, thought Jan as she dug through other people's trash or treasures at the flea market.  How fucking royal and s

elf-centered and pretentious.  Who was Jackson?  He was Jack Neidermeyer, that's who.  Librarian at the college, former racquetball opponent, and apparently the true fucking love of her husband's fucking life.  

But Jan always made nice because nice is what housewives were.  Not that she had ever gotten her house.  "Divorced apartment woman" didn't really have the same allure.  Oh, but she was nice, nice, nice.  She would invite them over to see her new found flea market art.  The Las Palmas drive-in had closed for good and the marquee letters were for sale.  She sifted through them carefully, paid the gristly old guy with the coin belt for them, and carefully placed them in the back of her car.  

"Look," she would say.  "Look, Jeff-er-son.  Look at what left-to-rot-in-her-own-fat Jan put on the wall of our old den."  Den.  It was going to be the baby's room.  When she was pregnant, right after high school, Jeff brought her flowers and said, "Anything for you."  A week before college they drove to Tahoe and married in The Chapel of a Thousand Aquariums.  Fishbowls, really, but to be surrounded by all that glass and water.  It was magic.  In her mind it was a cathedral, it was Atlantis.  When she wasn't pregnant after all, she looked at her ring and thought about the goldfish swimming around that glass chapel.  Cute little hook.  

Jan giggled to herself as she nailed the letters to the wall: YOU ROTTEN PRICK, it read.  

"Jefferson, you don't really believe I ever cared, do you?"  No, she would keep it simple.  Less like a soap opera and more like a movie with Meryl Streep.  "Look Jeff.  Jack," she rehea

rsed.  "This is who we are now."

A likely story

I hate that this person wants me to believe that he fell asleep on his books and that somebody with a magically light touch came over and made razor art on his head.  Yeah, sure thing, pal.  Whatever you say.  Oh, I know, this guy - his name is probably Ben Wilson or Ben Simpson - fell asleep in a chemistry lecture and, lo and behold, guess who just happened to be auditing that lecture?  That's right, Edward Scissorhands.  Why auditing?  Because Edward already has a BFA in textiles and he's only taking chemistry to better himself.  So Edward looked at Ben who was sleeping on his a pile of books he hadn't even cracked open - Jesus, Ben, don't make me laugh - and snipped, snipped, snipped away in his sad goth-pansy way.  No, Ben, I don't buy it for two seconds.  Okay, I believed it for one second but now I am sure this is a joke and you were in on it. 

Wine from Water

This one really knows how to milk a chicken, get blood out of a stone, wine from water, etc.   She's a one trick woman pony with a wildly unattractive collection of ex-husbands and yet, correct me if I'm wrong, she seems pretty happy.  Flag waver.  She couldn't get away with that if she was from Kentucky.  Something about her being from the ice hard land of wind and snow makes her hot pants that much more hotttt.  We didn't know you made 'em like that!  Her career has been built on the idea that the whole world wants to touch her nunavut.  This is the thing: I truly hope she finds other strengths to exploit.  I don't want Pam to be like Charo, wearing faded sequins on reality shows that don't deserve her.  That audience has no knowledge of Charo giving the coochie coochie coo to Merv Griffin or even Gopher from the Love Boat.  Ingrates.  You'll respect all of them when they're gone!

Morning Becomes Generic

And maybe you're not special.  Maybe you're just like all the others and if not just like, well, then really fucking similar.  Maybe you got your haircut like that because you saw some girl on the train whose hair you admired and you quietly appropriated it. You were inspired by it.  You copied it but don't ever use that word.  You sampled.  You used it as a jumping off point.  Perhaps your entire existence has been borrowed this way.  You touch it and yet it's not yours.  You listen and others can hear, too.  Well, listen to this, chick: you're lost in the supermarket again. There's a cracked bottle of cranberry juice flooding aisle three and I think it's your fault.  Here's a mop.