Green Tea Mochi

So. I'm having lunch with myself in a little Asian deli around the corner from my new job. Third day. I love the place. I will rue the first day I don't. I mean come on, I'm typing my bloggy thing out right, here at my desk 'cause 1. I can and 2. it is encouraged. Dig it.

Anyhoo...lunch...in Soho, Asian deli...I choose sushi (yes, I'm starving now) and next to odd shaped cookies and sweet things I see this cute little green blob that says something about cream filling and green tea on the label. Why not?

I buy my food, sit down by the window and break out my book (thank you Mom) . I eat my Dragon Sushi remembering that I always have the following issue with sushi and never remember it until I'm eating it:

"Do you put the whole thing in your mouth or bite it in half?"

I recall having many little pretty sushii disassemble and fall to their deaths down my chin and on my plate...after I've struggled trying to use my front teeth to cut through the outer seaweed layer thing.

I put the whole piece in. I feel like the fat guy in the Monty Python sketch. I should look this up. What is the flippin' sushi etiquette for silly Americans using disposable chop sticks?

Again, I digress...after I decide to mangle each piece before I place them in my mouth, I finish the sushi and I unwrap the green blob.

Mochi, I think.

I wipe the avocado off the sticks and poke the blob. It doesn't rupture. So I pick it up and take a bite. Weird, like semi-sweet dough and then, yum, cream, like, fresh-from-a-cow, no, angel, no, Madonna's breast, ok, ew, angelic-cow-cream-filling. I didn't notice a Green Tea theme though. But then again, I wouldn't have noticed Clive Owen dancing on my head. I was a little distracted by the cream. New to my palette and yum.

I decide to walk around as I have another 15 minutes and I round the block.

There. Is. The 'Ohio Theater'.

I'm suddenly blasted back to last year. The last show I worked on, Largo Desolato. In the Vaclav Havel Festival. Where I met Greg. Performed with many of my favorite folks. Really nice memories. Aren't those great?

Then I realize, the very back of the building I'm calling my 'job-home' now...the back of the building I have keys to...IS the VERY little spot we, the Largo cast, used to hang out at before the show and run lines. Every night. Such tantalizing times. Flirting with Greg while we thought no one was looking. Laughing and joking and loving my colleagues. Within minutes we were all about to take some big risks together...in a couple of hours...you gotta trust, respect and love those folks and we did! Such good memories. Such good folks. Good times, good times...

And to think...almost exactly a year ago...I was standing on those little stairs...not knowing my happy future...not knowing I would be inside that very building typing these words and having these good memories. Crazy!

New flavors and old. That is so New York man.

I'm going to try the pink blob tomorrow.

Picneral

Everyone should grill raw meat over a charcoal pit outdoors at least once a year with their family.

If every family did this, I think we could end wars. And I think you should have to invite people you don't necessarily want to see, maybe even people who aren't in your family anymore. This way, everything is out in the open...literally. You are faced to be with your kin and make a choice, "do I forgive, forget...do I even care..." And you are faced to look at yourself, "do I forgive, forget...care?" It almost makes things that everyone makes such a big stink about become as dark as a cartoon in a free newspaper.

What really matters is that moment, outside, in nature...staring at the lineage and seeing where your small small world came from and where it might go. The kids can watch, listen and learn. Grandma might give strange advice about caterpillar bites, they might watch their grumbly Dad actually hug his estranged brother, Uncle Calvin may have certain secrets to life only someone like he could share...having just gotten out of prison for the fourth time.

Then, of course, there are the babies. All of the adults huddle and smile, giggle and wave for Baby Ashley's attention. When she picks you out of the paparazzi circle, hands you her little pink sunglasses and waddles away clapping her hands, your heart turns to mashed potatoes and you are Queen for a moment. Then you go stuff more brownies in your mouth. Life is good.

I used to work in the funeral industry at a cemetery in Los Angeles. People used to ask me how I could stand working in such a depressing environment. Well.... 1. Thanks to my awesomely strange parents, I love cemeteries. We used to visit them as often as we could. I have great memories of walking around and reading the tombstones and wondering about how Mrs. Marion Laughly made it to 89 during the depression and if she had a good sense of humor...and isn't that what cemeteries are about?...2. Good memories. Rarely do you attend a funeral and sit around and bitch about the dead guy. He's dead. That is as bad as it can get, so everyone agrees to talk about his good points. Even if he was a Crip. 3. Friends and Families come together to forgive and forget...sure to gossip too...but they are all face-to-face with the fact that there is only so much time on this earth so they better get their stuff together...including getting over the fact Janie wasn't a bridesmaid in Erin's wedding...she's divorced now anyway. Funerals are such an everyday thing in life - we die, we do - and funerals are a big going-out party. How honorable is that? Plus the food and the occasional kooky happening...the delayed viewing 'cause the wig was missing, the voodoo doctor that insisted on sacrificing 'something' (it was Los Angeles), the mocking bird that wouldn't stop circling and chirping over "Birdy's" casket. Cool stuff, man.

Family picnics are like funerals with out the dead guy. We should do them more often.