gritty musings...Bright Shiny Pennies

Look, I promise that the very next blog will be about something other than my damned recuperation. This is a bit morbid and frankly not so bright or bloody shiny. That being said I would be a callous dickhead if I didn't point out the people in my life that worked tirelessly while I was dreaming of hunting lodges and bright blue bathtubs. If you haven't had the misfortune to experience propafol, it is unlike any drug that this old hippie ever inhaled, ate or swallowed. The hallucinations experienced were honestly, the only things I remembered from my time completely unconscious. This leaves a whole lotta life happening around the sedated and unconscious me. Some really important decisions had to be made to keep me "from pining the fiords" as it were. Those decisions were made by the two heroes of my life story. The beautiful girl. My rock, my best friend and my protector and my cousin, known only as "Doc". She stood next to Cindy explainin...

We start this tale with the loss of the sole inspiration for the last blog. Laughter and distain for all things political, all things restaurant related and even old age and driving, shared with my best friend. Ted up and dies and with him goes the course for this last blog. "Bright shiny pennies"...how can I describe this next chapter in my sexagenarian life. The intention is to challenge myself to provide, positive, life affirming observations. I really don't know if that's possible and frankly the name might change to "dark, slimy underbelly" quite quickly. Those that know me know that this year has not been a great year for me. I was sick at Christmas and that malaise hung around well into the new year and resulted in a seemingly endless barrage of tests, that found nothing. By late March I had lost 50 pounds( a diet I do not fully endorse) and checked myself into the hospital on April 10th...I awoke on May 2nd. What transpired ...

Today is your memorial service.  Today your friends gather at historic Gracie's to tell tales, laugh and drink to your memory.  I worked for Gracie, thanks to you, sneaky Pete and Steve.  Its fitting, a legendary spot, to pay tribute to the man that inspired me and unknown others to go chase our dreams.  I loved when we cooked together and I found my passion, standing next to you.  You shared your love and unfathomably incredible knowledge of music with me.  I found Jason Ricci, Eric Lindell, Los Lobos and David Migden in our "MO, wait till you hear this moments".  I endured your love of all things Zappa and I survived Zappa torture.  To those unfamiliar with this, it involved the can, copious amounts of inhaleables and song after song of your archives. Songs stopped only by you, translating the nuances that a rookie like me, most certainly missed.  The only rescue was SuSu and her, "honey enough! his eyes are glazed over and he has to drive...

Saturdays are busy times here in United States of stooped... Do I attend my local KKK meeting slash picnic slash poetry reading...or do I head to my nearest "defend the confederate statue" protest.  I know I am free to go to my nearest gay neighborhood to throw rocks at the queers, but that is sooo last week. Maybe I'll just head down to Lowes and get some more bricks for my own wall to keep my yard from touching my neighbors. Yup six months into the reign of Trump and I am realizing I have so much more to do than watch college football or sit on my beach.  I used to read but now I just feel useless and well...liberal if I try to enlarge my world with  fake news or facts.  I can now sit and dream of the oil derricks that will soon  dot the horizon, bringing cheap gas to my "really great" American car.  I delighted in the nostalgic nature of my friend in Guam reliving " duck and cover" drills while waiting for the other really great( I don't know ...

So is it the end of days...am I over reacting to the apparent insanity that surrounds us all??.,.  I have friends, dogged Bernie supporters, who have rabidly attached them selves to the beauty and flawed attempt of the Vermont senators bid to lead us to the holy land of good sense and political reformation.  they see no difference between a Hillary presidency and a drumpf duck dynasty...But I do...and it is illuminating the decent of our nation in the pathos of the video millennium...Yet I sorta get the whole outsider thing..."He's not one of them"... i hear that alot and I relate totally to the frustration of a electorate so disconnected from those they elect, that they need, nay want a radical change in their government...but lets get this straight... this isn't Jimmy Stewart's, "Mr. Smith goes to Washington"...no underdog sent to battle the evils of Washington with virtue and honesty... this is Donald Trump..a philandering billionaire, whose shortcut...

So is it the end of days...am I over reacting to the apparent insanity that surrounds us all??.,.  I have friends, dogged Bernie supporters, who have rabidly attached them selves to the beauty and flawed attempt of the Vermont senators bid to lead us to the holy land of good sense and political reformation.  they see no difference between a Hillary presidency and a drumpf duck dynasty...But I do...and it is illuminating the decent of our nation in the pathos of the video millennium...Yet I sorta get the whole outsider thing..."He's not one of them"... i hear that alot and I relate totally to the frustration of a electorate so disconnected from those they elect, that they need, nay want a radical change in their government...but lets get this straight... this isn't Jimmy Stewart's, "Mr. Smith goes to Washington"...no underdog sent to battle the evils of Washington with virtue and honesty... this is Donald Trump..a philandering billionaire, whose shortcut...

So as the two of you that read this know, I am a lover of facebook...I know its cool to dismiss it..the food pics, the baby pics...the sharing of ones feelings from one moment to the next..But as I scroll through my daily feed, what I find stunning, absolutely breathtaking...is the secrets I find out about people,  secrets I never dared guess... I never knew.... Jeff loves trains...Susie is a clog dancer...Bob gave his 8 year a gun for his birthday...and many, many people think donald trump would make a great, not just a good president.   Now that is a jaw dropper.  I try to delve into their reasoning...he's a political outsider..he'll shake up the Washington status quo...he'll have the fate of the entire planet in his tiny, tiny, boyish hands...I am amazed that people don't see or remember his stupid tv show.. That he brought dick size to the debate floor...dick size??.that alone is enough for me to dismiss him out of hand.. I hated gdub...still do actually..but he...

It took the news feed this morning to wake me.  Like most of you I have watched the primary season with all the awe of consecutive car crashes, Ridiculous reruns and Saturday night live spoofs.  I am stunned at what I hear, read and see. But finally this morning they finally woke my sleeping lion.  Smarty pants journalists, pasted fox news insignias on their mikes and ventured into a post Trump pep rally in Arizona and asked what they thought were absurd questions on entirely made up subjects that the Donald was supposed to have said.  In fairness they were really not things that he wouldn't have said, but to this point he hadn't.  One question, a query that stopped me in my tracks...that made me ask alexa, my morning muse to repeat it,,was.. " do you agree with Mr. Trump's assertion that all Puerto Ricans should be neutered"...what?? did they say that??? and then the answer, from a millennial woman,  all blonde white and smiles...festooned in red white and...

Sunday the fifth of July..(The beautiful girl chuckles every time I tell this story..makes her giggle.)   Its 1969 and my family is on its yearly pilgrimage to the florida keys.We are stopped in one of the nameless gas stations on a-1-a in Dillon South Carolina.  I jump outta the back of the camper truck, amazed at the green beauty that is the south.  Sweet air ... nothing like south eastern pa in the winter.   I survey everything that is a bustling, south carolina truck stop,  And then i see it...   a sign over the water fountain.   colored.   What!!!!..., I look around for any other sign that says..;"stop here for the Dillon's amazing colored water"...my 11 year old mind runs rampant with what will happen when I push the foot pedal...the south is so cool...   no snow and colored water...this is great!..and as I reach my lips to what is going  to be the most awesome water on the planet...before I get one sip of Dillon's fantastic ...

So... I arrive back in the states.  I was out of country for the better part of half a year and for the mid term elections.  Here in Florida there was a medical marijuana referendum and some train stuff and oh yeah, a governor to unseat. Nationally there were seats up for grabs, with our future in the balance.  On the night of the elections I was sitting in a local cantina with a group of ex pats.  As we watched the sickening results trickle in over the bbc.  I sat stunned  So when the conversation restarted and I had washed the vomit from my big lebowski t shirt.  What really amazed me about this group, and really all groups of displaced Americans I have met in my travels, is... they are mostly conservative.  I don't know why this is a surprise.  To live outside the states takes money.  Money to get there.  Money to buy a place.  Money to live.  Money to drink.  Liberals tend to vacation...

so...i'm here once again...back on the tiny island, surrounded by deep turquoise sea...people speak a language, despite Rosetta stone..,  still so very fast and foreign to me...i'm trying to teach  a core of students, so eager to learn... but the teacher is speaking martian...sometimes I am really amazed that life's path has brought me here..i'm taken back twenty some years...  standing on a corner in tsai kung, china.. looking around the sleepy village...just 35 kilometers from Hong Kong..not a sign in English, and definitely the only person who looked like me standing on that street corner I was an urbanophobic thirty something that never, ever ventured into Philly,... I never left the security of a pot smoke and hazy existence in Chester county pa. please don't get me wrong   it wasn't a bad life...life was easy, needs were met..I had a great woman to share my life with and a really sweet dog, lifelong friends were within a phone calls grasp...I played vol...

so in august i was enticed..venture south..build a dream restaurant on a space that holds a dear, dear place in my heart... blue water and my food...looking out the windows of the space to the turquoise waters of the Caribbean...live in a Mexican town...challenge myself to be better  it was all so exciting... so complementary... after years of honing what I do, a chance to go somewhere far away,.. and push it.. to teach what i do to people where the language would be an issue... where the food, the intrinsic food of a region could be joined with what i do .. a .new kitchen , brand new equipment (only a chef  knows how exciting that is!!)  so a few plane rides and cocktails later i was on my way..there were promises made, but there always are...a handshake was exchanged..the only agreement that ever matters between two people committed to something as hard as birthing a restaurant... but as it has in so many instances, the situation changed and the dream drifted away..t...

So the experiment that was and is Isla Mujeres has moved to a new place.  The experience was fantastic, the people were inspiring and the learning curve for this fifty something chef was worth all the world.  The restaurant is built, the menu, wine list, servers and bar are in place.  The space is fantastic, seriously one of the most beautiful rooms I have had the good fortune to help birth. So now I move on.  Did I want to live on in this beautiful job. of course!  But like all things in my career of opening peoples dreams in the form of restaurants, the track is unpredictable and the path unknown.  Ilsa proved to be like many challenges I have confronted during my life's passage in kitchens.   Language, infra structure, and the staffing, were all at once difficult, befuddling and gratifying. The cuisine, something I felt really conformable with, was even more enlightening that I had hoped.  The people were far more complicated than their gentle...

thanksgiving 2014...there have been some years with more life altering change than this...  but they are difficult to imagine...there was the move from Pennsylvania, almost twenty years ago...leaving all the friends I grew up with, my family and the comfort of a place that... i knew so well... but there were new friends..a new family of people that would surround me...and I was at home in St. Pete..loved the beauty of a small town...and the state of Florida...the keys... both coasts..loving the ease with which you can travel anywhere in 8 hours..and there was the birth of a fantastic little girl that made all our lives more exciting and love filled every day... . then there was that morning four years ago to the day...a tablesaw changed my everyday life..but with the help of the people most important to me..i recovered.. a beautiful mangled paw..but everything was still attached...there were a slew of restaurants...more fantastic people...some life changing..proving the adage ..yo...

 So those of you that read this, the very few  who actually see me...know something is afoot.  There was the weird face book "roller coaster" entry.  There were some strange posts from me in Mexico without the beautiful girl, a wholly unspeakable act.  Very few actually know whats happening and just a few are instrumental in the happening. And so it is the great reveal.  I am, at the ridiculous age of fifty seven leaving this country to try my hand at running a couple restaurants on my "lovely island".  I realize that I am doing this at a time when most people my age are gearing down.  I keep in mind that Georgia O'Keefe didn't paint until she was in her eighties.  But I was always slow on the uptake.  I have been told that it took a very long time for me to grow up.  I still hold some reluctance to that point. That I have grown.  It happened with a friend. This  friend  runs a hotel, We met through a suitcase of scho...

As I age, i find that I am far less accepting of life's little faux pas.  I am surly.  I growl. I snap at unsuspecting irritants.  I look in the mirror and see  what my life has pulled down on me.  Wrinkles, saddle bags, hair in very strange palaces.  I expect things...simple things to proceed as planned.  If my cellular bill, for example, is due on the 24th, I expect it to be taken out on that date. Not the 21st, because it falls on a weekend.  And when I call the huge multi-national  corporation, which I hate, to question why this simple act, cannot happen...when i question the scripted autonoton on the other end of the line...when i point out that the weekend constitutes no variation to a computer tasked with taking that money on the date in question...I am told, snubbingly, that that's how it works...I point out that the computer has no weekend plans, no beach party to attend, no dinner plans with friends.  That in fact the only fuck...

It came from the tube...A television show...But when I heard the line it struck me so hard that I found myself muttering the line all day.  I spent my time in the kitchen mulling over the context.  Still muttering, I drove home the sentence fragment hanging in my consciousness .  "all suffering and no salvation" Life's struggles, the endless drudgery we all endure.  The heartbreaks, the obstacles the injustices of life that wear down on us.  The suffering.  Some people find the call of this misery and accept, possibly even nourish the malaise that life's journey can bring.  I have a friend, whose life at this point is hard.  Every possible fucked up thing that could possibly happen to this poor soul does.  It is like watching a reoccurring car wreck in slow motion.  And  it happens daily.  To be around this, to be their friend is to embrace "the suffering".  I have had periods in my life that engulf, no...

I don't know if I walk a normal path.  Although I realize that everyone, not just chefs, must circumnavigate a life with more bends than a cavatappi noodle.  The road at this point seems to be strewn with obstacles to joy.  Impediments to the "ultimate success. This last joint, a happy, bubbling, cauldron of gastronomic joy, died far too soon and scarred my heart.. To say I have been bedside at the demise of really good restaurants, would be to deny my laying in the the bed next to the cadaver of culinary dreams.  I have seen more than a few, die that festering slow death  assigned to greasy, roach infested , dimly lit shacks. BUT THEY WERE NOT!  Some died for lack of interest, bad location or economic climes.  Some died from lack of start up capital, the number one killer of restaurant dreams.  Still others died from ownership and or mismanagement.  I suppose it really doesn't matter why they die. In the end, t...

The word is used without regulation.  It is tossed about like "nice" or "delicious".  The term chef.  I have met 23 year old men who call themselves chef.  Line cooks, great line cooks cringe when their uncle introduces them at family functions as "a chef".  It took me years of being in charge of my kitchens to be comfortable with being addressed as  "chef".  The chefs that I had met, on my path were not all great, or talented.  They were not all team leaders, insightful or creative.  But their were a few that set the parameters that I aspire to today. And to me they defined, "chef".   I write this as I bury yet another dream.  Hours of hard work and compromise down the drain in the flush of an owners pen.  Don't get me wrong owning a restaurant is in very rare cases satisfying or rewarding. It is in most cases all about your check book and nothing about the ego or idea that brought them to the table and ultimately, me. ...

came home from another half of the clock days at the restaurant...sparked up and came up with this...  the last time I was in Amsterdam, I did what all Americans do...at least the ones I know...I smoked pot in a coffee house..it was all at once exhilarating and forbidden...My whole life I, smoked stealthily, hidden away...towels under doors...secret hiding places for my stash in my car...eye drops at the ready.  The freedom of the "sensi bar" or the bulldog was so fuckin cool.  I had a friend who got a ticket for smoking on the street, on the grand platz...because it freaked him out to sit with a bunch of stoned strangers in an establishment designed for getting stoned... I can only assume that the pot was really good... and the paranoia grabbed him by the throat.  I bring this up because on the eve of our country finally looking seriously a decriminalization or in some cases of legalization, it will a bright and stony day ahead.  I saw that po...