Category: Off the Menu

Hello dear readers,
Normally I wouldn't pull you into my day job drama, but Obi-wan Kenobi, I need your help. Please subscribe to the Penguin Podcast. It's all about books and authors. You can click here to subscribe in iTunes;
CLARIFICATION: You can only click on the previous link if you already have iTunes installed on your computer. You can download iTunes for free here. If you already have iTunes, and the above link didn't work, copy this link: http://us.penguingroup.com/static/html/podcast/rss.xml
Open iTunes, choose Advanced > Subscribe to a Podcast, then drop the link below into the window and hit OK. I know it is very confusing, but once you do it, you're in!

For those of you with RSS readers, you can also drop this link [http://us.penguingroup.com/static/html/podcast/rss.xml] into your RSS reader to subscribe, and check it out that way. I use the Google reader, but there are lots of free readers to choose from.

It should take you two seconds to subscribe, it gets updated weekly, and you can ignore it if you must. But who knows, maybe you'll learn something.

I need more subscribers. I'm loathe to say more because of Dooce-induced fears, but it would REALLY make me HAPPY if you downloaded the podcast. Maybe you could even listen to it once and a while. Here's a list of the fascinating people I've gotten to talk to:

• Funny, charming T. C. Boyle, author of Talk Talk
  
• Awesome outspoken Iraq veteran and war opposer Paul Rieckhoff, author of Chasing Ghosts
  
• Conscientious conservative and political historical figure John Dean
  
• Michael Ruhlman, guest blogger with Megnut and author of The Soul of a Chef and The Reach of a Chef
  
• George Saunders, regular New Yorker contributor and amazing storyteller
  

Some other things that might interest you in the podcast:

• Sometimes there are book giveaways -- listen to the current podcast for a chance to win an autographed copy of Daniel Silva's intelligent terrorism-themed thriller The Messenger, which I read and enjoyed
  
• There's a free 20 minute tai chi exercise led by one of the featured authors in Podcast 5
  
• The George Saunders podcast is from a New Yorker event with Tony Danza doing a very funny reading of onf George Saunders' short stories
  

Subscribe. It's free. I'll only add one new item to your reader per week. Help a sister out.

I'll be back with your regularly scheduled eating and complaining program soon. Thank you. I love you.

Super fun news. A few years ago, I tried to get into voiceover. Nothing came of it because I tend to sound like a 13 year old with a slight cold, as evidenced in my podcasts. But I got a call recently to audition for a role that required a Thai accent and, long story short, I got hired! I've overdubbed the speaking voice for Mali, a small character in the new Tony Jaa movie, The Protector! My girl's not the lead, but she's pivotal to the plot. I also redid the voice of one of the news reporters. (The actor's accent was fine but the writing was fresh off the boat.) Isn't that insanely awesome? The Asian nerd in me is super thrilled about having overdubbed a martial arts movie. I encourage you all to go see the movie and then go eat Thai food at Sripraphai or Zabb in Queens -- that's what I'll be doing. Opens in theaters across the nation on August 25! Incidentally, the original name of the movie is Tom Yum Goong, as in the soup. Of course I got hired to do voiceover for a movie named after a soup.

This weekend I got to hang out with so many great couples in varying states of commitment -- some married, some engaged, some living together -- and it made me pine a little, which is not something I usually do. I'm very productive when I'm single, and I love being productive. I rarely feel lonely. But occasionally I see beautiful couples and I envy the fact that when they get tired, they'll slip away, two by two, close the door behind them and slide into bed together, recapping the day to each other until they fall asleep.

Even as a teenager, I felt like being in a relationship was never going to be my natural state. I've never been good at compromise -- I either want to give it all away or have it all. I can honestly say I've never seen myself as a bride. I love the idea of romance, but I don't think it will happen for someone as aggressively independent and good at being alone as I am.

So if relationships, children, and all the trappings of family life will never materialize for me, I'd like to realize my single woman's dream. I want to be the kooky New York aunt with a million good stories. If my nest will always be empty, then I want to fill my life with gorgeous noise and grand music. Sometimes I dream of being an independently wealthy domesticate, throwing dinner parties for -- what did the Sunday Styles call it? -- the cultural aristocracy; playing hostess to the literati; being the literati.

I was so happy to be sitting at this picnic table with my friends, folding dumplings for the next day's lunch. I can't even tell you how happy it made me, how in the moment I am in this picture. My latest dream is to land some sort of moderate book deal, buy a big house in the country outside New York and stay there to write all summer long. My friends could visit in a steady stream every weekend, provided they come bearing groceries, Pimm's, and prosecco. I'd have an herb garden, alpine strawberries, radishes and lettuces for salads. Then I'd winter somewhere warm, maybe in Thailand or Brazil, eating tropical fruit for breakfast every day. I'd write all week long, on a laptop, laying out on an adirondack chair.

Am I so bourgie or what? Is my earnestness giving you hives? Mock me if you must. We all need something to live for.

Those Kanoodle ads are being banished forever.  Apologies for the severe lapse.

I'm singing with Charming Hostess at Joe's Pub this Monday, May 15 at 9:30 p.m.  We're opening for Bitch and the Exciting Conclusion, featuring Daniela Sea of the L Word.  I'm not guaranteeing hot woman-on-woman action, but I'm not completely ruling it out either.  Maybe there will be a John Cameron Mitchell sighting.  I love that guy.

For those of you who wonder what I mean when I say I sing avant-garde music, this is your chance to experience an out/downtown show.  This is an important gig for us so I really want you people to come check it out.  I'm told the show is going to sell out, so get your tickets online here.

Charming Hostess with Bitch and the Exciting Conclusion
Joe's Pub
Monday, May 15
9:30 p.m.
$15

Read more about my previous adventures with Charming Hostess here.

A very special off the menu announcement!  La Doug, my roommate, regular guest star on EDOW, and one of my dearest friends, is having a fundraiser for his new not-for-profit organization, Living Proof Productions.  To quote from his website:

Our first initiative is to produce and distribute a documentary video aimed at teens and young adults. This project has a simple, if ambitious goal: to illuminate the risk, and too often the great tragedy, of facing mental illness blindly.

The documentary will tell the story of his sister, Nichole Pagliaro, who took her own life at the age of 27 in 1999.  You can read all about the project at his website, http://www.proofonline.org.  This is not the kind of charity run by a gaggle of sorority girls with trust funds and ball gowns.  This is the grassroots efforts of one guy hoping to help people like his sister.  So many people have been affected by suicide.  I believe in the cause and I believe in Doug.

Here's where you come in: on May 25th, Doug is having a fundraiser in the Chelsea Market.  There will be fab hors d'oeuvres, wine, cocktails, and music.  Tickets are $75 presale, or $100 at the door.  Donations are tax-deductible.  You can donate by check or by credit card.  Can't swing the full $75?  Your donation, small or large, will be greatly appreciated.  But maybe you can get your coworkers to chip in a few bucks here and there so you can come and partake of the event.

I was trying to figure out a way to pimp myself out as some sort of funny raffle prize to people who read this blog but once I started googling, all the legalities seemed daunting. 

So let's say this.  I hope many of you readers decide to come to the event -- it will be a reward unto itself.  If you come, introduce yourself, and I'll organize an outing to Zabb Thai Queens for us.  It will be the inaugural event of the tentatively titled EDOW Diners' Club*, a new monthly event I'm hoping to organize in which five people join me for dinner and discussion at one of those great restaurants around New York which everyone talks about but nobody motivates to go to.  (If more than five EDOW readers come to the event, I will organize several different outings to choose from.)  Future outings could include World Tong dim sum in Bensonhurst, Sripraphai in Queens, DiFara's in Ditmas Park, and maybe a few secret aces I've got up my sleeve.

To recap: make a donation, deduct from your taxes, free food, free booze, free music, and feel good about how your parents raised you (alternatively, feel good about how much better you are than your parents ever were).  Added value: become one of the first members of the EDOW Diners' Club.  (Just tell Doug I sent you so I know to look out for you at the fundraiser.)

Cheers, you good people!

*EDOW Diners' Club members each pay for their own dinners.  I work in publishing, people, I can't afford to buy you all dinner, as much as I would love to.  But my organizational skills, my tour guide spiel, and my scintillating company will be free of charge.

I'm doing backing vocals for my girl Miho Hatori this Wednesday, March 29 at Tonic.  We're rolling out some new songs.  As usual, I will buy myself a cupcake and/or a cup of banana pudding from Sugar Sweet Sunshine and coat my throat with dairy after the gig is over.  So come for the music, stay for the phlegm.

Miho Hatori
with Mauro Refosco (percussion)
Thomas Bartlett (keys)
Masa Shimizu (guitar, bass)
and yours truly on backing vox

Tonic
107 Norfolk at Delancey
8 pm only
$10

I'm singing (a little bit) with the ever lovely Miho Hatori at Tonic on Friday night, 8 pm only. With Mauro Refosco (percussion), Shelley Burgon (harp), Thomas Bartlett (voice / pump organ / piano / wurlitzer), Gilmar Gomes (percussion) & me on backing vox, and maybe more peeps.

Come buy me a drink, give me my Christmas present, argue with me about cauliflower, whip me with gladiolas, whatever.  It's your ten bucks.

Tonic
107 Norfolk at Delancey
Friday, Dec. 16
8 pm
$10

Saw Brokeback Mountain last night.  Can't recommend it highly enough.  I'm still crying.  WORSHIP Ang Lee (who also directed Eat Drink Man Woman, another movie I obviously adore).  Heath Ledger is AMAZING.  THIS MARSHMALLOW NEEDS A HUG.

Read the Annie Proulx short story from the New Yorker archives here.

I got my left eye lasered today.  I'm laying off the computer this weekend.  Tomorrow you'll get a new You Are What You Eat.  Then me and Left-Eye (heh heh) will return for more on Monday.  Happy eating, and go see your optometrist!