granular. germy.

This is the reason I have remained open to quinoa, this.

 

Martha Stewart has the recipe here.  I added a couple of thinly-sliced scallions because I just throw things into things.  Yk, and I still don't like quinoa, but what I have to say is this: bulgur is no fucking great shakes, either.  The quinoa tabbouleh works.

 

Our holiday weekend was good, quiet.  We were at home a little, and in NYC a little, there were a lot of movies & shows, family time, alors:

• Moonrise Kingdom.  I suspected Fifille would like it, just from the reviews of it, and the fact that it reminded me when I first kept reading about it -- in its harmless-yet-edgy fugitives' defiance -- of that audiobook I overheard in pieces & parts a couple of summers ago and know her to love.  And if she didn't exactly love it, it would kill neither of them to see it.  Well!  Again with the movie neither of them heard of because it wasn't marketed to them & still they loved.  Loved.  We really enjoyed it, too.  I felt like it was Anderson's most dynamic, most generous piece yet.  It had real feeling, instead of a theatre of feelings under glass.  A+



• The Amazing Spider-Man.  In which we realize that a superhero movie need not trash the fucking shit out of Manhattan.  Honestly, because The Avengers made me sad, a little, like, Do we not remember what happened in NYC?  Respect!  But also, in its denouement, it featured the best, very best, feature of NYC which is the humanity of New Yorkers, how they will give you the shirt right off their backs when you need it, so long as they know abt it.  Mari & I were so open to this franchise do-over; we thought Tobey Maguire & Kirsten Dunst represented the worst casting ever in a comic-book adaptation.  Did people not know Mary Jane Watson is supposed to be smoking hawt?  Ron Howard's kid as Stacy in the last movie was nothing special, either, plus they had the chronology wrong -- they really gave it all over to Mary Jane & whatever.  Who ever cloned Mary Jane Watson?  That's right: nobody. 

  This chronology is completely fucked-up, too, but we have given up on the comic-book narratives ever being compelling for screenwriters & will just settle for characterizations.  Hiss.  Anyhow, I felt like this casting was better, and not just because I love Emma Stone so much.  Because, listen!  About 20 minutes in, I squeezed Mari's hand, and shook it a little till he came closer to me.  Honey!  I whispered.  I don't want Martin Sheen to die!  You guys!  I was seriously broken up about the fact that Uncle Ben was going to die, once he was Martin Sheen!  I experienced true anxiety about what I knew was to come!  I cried real tears when it happened!  Then Sally Field, as widowed + destroyed Aunt May!  It tore me apart!  So terrible, you guys!  This is what casting can accomplish!  It was good, we thought (obvsly). 

• Potted Potter.  The air-conditioning in the Little Shubert was not working on Saturday.  That's pretty much the whole story with Potted Potter.  There was not as much suffering as I thought there would be when the theatre manager addressed us all in a great & apologetic tone about the outage, but still.  There were several points at which I wanted to cave into a pool of self-pity about the lack of cool, climate-contrology but then every time I firmly reminded myself that the guys putting on the show were in the same un-air-conditioned space, plus under those lights, putting on a show.  It was fine.  I peeled off my shirt about halfway in (I was wearing a bra, it's ok.  It was very Madison, Wis, 1991, Take Back the Night.  But with a bra).  Anyhow, it was fine.  I'd never been to a show before, in spite of Sal's best attempts.  Because I hate Midtown.  I still do hate Midtown.  Also, it was really freaking expensive.  I dunno.  I guess it was about the same as our ballet theatre tickets, but our seats are way better there.  Way.  Anyhow, the show:  it was a lot of fun.  We enjoyed it.  It would have been way better with air conditioning.

 

Speaking of the magic of quotidian, not-Midtown Manhattan, while we were on our way to the show, winding aimlessly uptown on Ninth Ave from brunch at Cookshop by way of a trip to Ricky's on 23rd -- it makes me sad that in my regular NYC-visit life I am so easterly, because I want to eat at Cookshop all the time now, every trip -- Fifille had to pee.  So did I.  We had both gone before we left the restaurant, but it's a tricky balance between being well-hydrated on a hot day & not needing to pee every 25 minutes.  It's hard to work out.  But I knew we had to get into a spot before we got too Midtowny, where the shopkeepers are weary of requests for facility-use, and I picked an excellent dive bar on the corner of 26th St.  The very minute they saw Fille, they knew why we were there & everyone waved us in the direction of the ladies room, while in a conference of assent about Fille's adorability.

Ok, the bathroom.  When we pushed open the door, we both said, Omigod, but Fille's was with apprehension & mine with nostalgia + total recognition.

Just being crammed in there with her made me feel wasted!  It was tiny, tiny, and dark, no toilet seat, WTF? A mirror and no light, because, well, OK!  You wouldn't want to see how drunk you are!  Holy crap!  It was hilarious, being crammed in there with her, not just because she wanted me to stay with her because "The toilet is emanating a weird coldness, Mom," (ahahaha!), but because it was so Girls Gone Wild, with our sweatiness and urinary desperation. 

This will not surprise you, but in that time, crammed in the bathroom with her, inside the bar, I picked up on a truth about Fille:  that even as she has been chomping down on gum every day like Violet Beauregard since her braces came off last week, putting a terrible dent in my Juicy Fruit supply, she will probably not have a Wild Girl's Phase.  I know, I know, you're like, We know.  Ok, I'm just confirming.  I mean, we know she likes things to be orderly.  But we also know that my wild streak was fed in large part by my love of rules, of law & order, that if people couldn't follow the rules, I would show them and they had better not come crying to me.  It was a kind of vigilantism, an inebriated + pantsless rejection of hypocrisy.

We were at Target in June, Fille & I, and while I was juggling with the swiping & signing of the checkout, I saw her out of the corner of my eye doing something ridiculous.  Fille is a goofy girl, one of those children who has always amused herself playing little games with herself, role-playing & imagining like a storybook girl.  So when I was finished, I asked her, in bafflement, What are you doing? knowing the answer but not understanding how it could be, she dissolved into gales of giggles, gasping out, "I was pretending to be a Secret Service Agent!"  

Right!  That is exactly what she was doing!  Standing still & straight, with her hands clasped behind her back, expressionless in her unceasing visual sweep of the Target landscape.  Then she -- this is the part that kills everyone who has ever lived in Washington -- smoothly brings out her left arm, shakes the wrist a little as if she were wearing a sleeve, checks a pretend watch, returns her hand to the other, and resumes her still survey.  But what the fuck?  She reminded me she saw agents last year when we were at Arlington National Cemetery -- they were advanced for the President's Veterans' Day visit.   Ok, fine, that's where she saw it, sure, but a. she drank it in and b. decided to play one?  Omigod, this girl. 

Comments

[nancyblackett]

ooh, Moonrise Kingdom sounds marvellous. What was the audio book Fille liked? I love those kind of books. Like my namesake Nancy Blackett in Swallows and Amazons

[lala]

I meant to link to it. It's here:

http://www.scholastic.com/browse/book.jsp?id=884

She really loved the movie. It will be a defining moment in her life, I suspect. You know?