Regional Delicacies Part II: Oysters

Since doing it drunk in Christmas Eve, I'm pretty into putting raw oysters in my face. Any food you practically have to make-out with to eat is kinda the tops.

As far as the vegetarian thing goes, well, think of it like this: Oysters are either really retarded fish trapped in a calcite box or plants of slightly above average intelligence, at best.

This Week (the "awwwww, who's a sad bastard?" edition)

Most of these are NOT new songs. There are, however, a couple of pre-new songs here that are probably on the internet or something.

! Barr - "Half of Two Times Two" (5RC)
@ Beach House - "Some Things Last a Long Time" (Carpark)
# Burial - "A Distant Light" (Hyperdub)
$ Electrelane - "I'm on Fire" (cover) (Beggars)
% Elizabeth Anka Vajagic - "And the Sky Lay Still" (Constellation)
^ Human Bell - "Hymn Amerika" (Thrill Jockey)
& Jana Hunter - "A Goblin, a goblin" (Gnomonsong)
* M. Billy - "Weight of Gravity"
+ Magik Markers - "Empty Bottles" (Ecstatic Peace)
= Sian Alice Group - "As the Morning Light" (Social Registry)
= Sian Alice Group - "Days of Grace III" (Social Registry)

Regional Delicacies

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while now, but something happened that made me drop everything to post about this insanity:

One of the interns, coming back from the corner sandwich hole, said these words: "I dunno why, but every time I ask for a kosher dog they give me a regular hot dog wrapped in bologna."

To the natives, this isn't much of a statement. (Though someone at the office accused the corner sandwich hole of antisemitism). See, the bologna wrapped hot dog is a real thing. As in, people order it. As in, a certain subsection of Baltimore has the thought on a regular basis well, I sure could go for a hot dog, wrapped in bologna. And, actually, since I first posted this, it has come to my attention that hot dogs are almost always wrapped in bologna. As in, saying "I'd like a hot dog" means "I'd like a hot dog wrapped in bologna." In this article it's referenced as a "Baltimore Dog."

Wouldn't it make sense just to make the hot dog that much bigger in the first place? But, what do I know? I'm not a food writer.

But, I shouldn't have been so surprised: Baltimore has some fucked up food quirks. A sampling:

Scrapple

Random pig parts mixed with cornmeal and fried. Mmmmmmm...like sausage but more absorptive.

The hot-dog-bologna thing

I don't think it has another name.

Lake Trout

...is neither from a lake, nor is it trout. Wrap your head around that. Most fried-stuff corner joints carry it.

New York Fried Chicken

You can find this at many of the same places you find Lake Trout. No one can tell me what's "New York" about it. It's like the "Alabama" Fried Chicken we used to get in Detroit that was served in little plastic produce bags.

Crab Chips

You might recognize this from the Wire. The corner dealers are all about crab chips. After verifying that there's nothing remotely like crab in them, Vanessa and I bought a bag a few months ago. They taste like regular chips with a lot of seasoned salt on them, which is called "crab seasoning" in the ingredients. Seriously inedible. Your mouth prunes up and you piss rocks for the next week there's so much salt on these things. I imagine. The bag is still in my cabinet.

Natty Boh

I ordered it for the first time as "um, National beer" (the proper name is National Bohemian) from the same bartender at the Mount Royal Tavern that now has a can waiting for me before I can close the door. It's a step above Pabst or Hamms and a bit cheaper. I've never seen it anywhere else.

The Luckiest Dragon

Have you seen this?

I skipped, for various reasons I now realize are lame, some three Lucky Dragons shows in Portland. Like for sleep. Or food. Work. Had-other-shit-going-on.

Sunday, after a cool seven hours in the office trying to write 600 words on Matmos in a surly mental fog brought on by a pair of seriously late nights, I'd all but given up on the show. Besides, it was raining, my bike had just snapped a brake cable (front, natch), and, well, I just really wanted to read for a scotch or two at the Tavern. Mainly, I just wanted to be alone, and there's something to be said for being alone in a public place. With Scotch.

But, after about a page and half, a pair of loose friends came in to get a couple of take-out bottles for the show. Ten minutes later I'm riding my rear brake down from Bolton Hill in a heavy rain.

Lucky Dragons played at Floristree, the sixth floor of a six-floor warehouse building (that has, like, two other pseudo venues in it) in a part of Baltimore that's, oh, 6 out of 10 on the sketch scale. But I've never heard of anyone getting jacked and the neighborhood lurkers seem pretty accustomed to the steady stream of hipstery, arty looking white kids coming and going every day. It's a cool thing they have going. No one in the DC/Baltimore area can match it for booking. Good sound. Big. Friendly. All door monies go to the band. And, again, it's a lived-in warehouse.

Back to Lucky Dragons. He played some album stuff--cracked out laptop folk stutter, mainly--which was beautiful and musically un-live, aside from some vocals and play with a MIDI pressure pad of some kind. His part was mainly an entirely possessed and sort of sexual interpretive dance. Thrust and genuflect, thrust and genuflect. That sort of thing.

The second half was "Make a Baby" and that's really why I'm writing here now. Fischbeck passes out these tapestry shrouded cables with metal contacts at the end. A few people in the audience know what's up and get really close. He doesn't explain anything, just demonstrates. He grabs a girl's hand, one of the folks holding a cable, and it makes a sound, a sort of droning bell sound. And he grabs someone else's hand and the pitch changes. He grabs a hand and puts it on another person's arm. People start getting it. More crowd around. Fischbeck goes around the room, inviting people into the circle. Strangers are touching and grabbing other strangers. Suddenly, you're stroking someone's fingers while someone's holding your elbow. The sound gets more and more complicated, and more and more beautiful.

Everyone's smiling because they get it, get that this isn't just some technological magic trick. You can't make these sounds (in the end, it doesn't even matter what they are) by yourself. You could have all of Fischbeck's pretty cables to yourself and you couldn't do much with them. You could hit them against things, whirl them in the air, jump rope; nothing will happen. You need the people around you to make it work. You need to touch them and you need to let them touch you. "Make a Baby" is like an aural schematic of this beautiful animal thing that doesn't have a name really.

The other bands were good, but that's for another time. In the end, I stayed at the Floristree until well past three, drinking beer, playing with cats, and talking about these things with a friend.