Japan Dating Tales

Scrikkk!
Scrakk!
Skrunch!

In case you're wondering, that's the sound of a beautiful woman eating chicken nuggets in a Japanese movie theater.

Skralf!

Sorry, I got so excited about the whole chicken nuggets thing that I skipped over the beginning of this dating story. Let's start again, shall we...?

So. Last month, I arrived in Japan for a vacation -- in the midst of a typhoon. Needless to say, the first evening was a washout. Windblown, exhausted from my 16-hour flight, and substantially drenched from the rain, I decided to hide in my hotel for a while and dine in a small restaurant adjacent to the lobby. I'm sure that I looked quite bedraggled as I took my seat at the sushi bar; I may even have been a bit whiffy after that damn flight.

The first thing I noticed about the restaurant was that the waitresses were of varying ages, and all of them were attractive. Indeed, I initially considered describing them here as "a multi-generational staff of babes," but then I dismissed that phrase as being too politically incorrect for a blog post. So, I've settled for that varying ages/attractive thing I used above.

Damn, I'm getting off-track again. Where was I? Oh, yes, the restaurant. Well, it had a multi-generational staff of babes, and the cutest waitress appeared to be in her mid-twenties. I recall gazing at her fondly and thinking to myself, well, I'll never get another woman like her. I'm such a defeatist, I know.

When this cute waitress took my order, I initially requested "octopus" in English, since I don't know Japanese. She gave me a confused look. "Octopus," I repeated, unhelpfully. "Oc-to-pus?" Then I wriggled my arms as if they were tentacles. "Octopus!" She understood this time, and my little pantomime got a cheap laugh from her. Looking back, I think this was the magic moment that brought us together.

Nothing else happened during my first meal at the restaurant, but I returned a few days later, and the whole staff seemed strangely excited to see me again. I wonder why, I wondered. And then the cute waitress asked me out -- just like that! Apparently I had made quite an impression on her during my first visit, despite my disheveled state, and without even really trying. Magnificent! Now, why can't it always work like that?

So, for our first date, we went to a nice little place in Shinjuku called Bar Hermit. I'll spare you the play-by-play of events and simply describe two highlights: (1) at one point, the waitress (who revealed that her Anglicized name was Annie) tried to feed me bits of sausage off her chopsticks, but accidentally dropped one on my nice pants, staining them with mustard; (2) at another point, I tried to slip Bar Hermit's business card into my wallet, but I somehow managed to bend the card sharply -- sort of like a bowstring, I guess -- and accidentally launch it into Annie's face. Clearly, we were off to a great start.

I still have that business card, BTW. It features a stick figure who appears to be running and chugging down a bottle of whiskey at the same time, which I should think are two activities that are best kept separate.

Anyway. Our second date -- I know, I got a second date, isn't that amazing?! -- was the movie theater date. Here's where the chicken nuggets came in. She bought a whole greasy sackful of the things before we went to see My Sister's Keeper, a weepie drama starring Cameron Diaz. Incidentally, it costs $25 to buy a movie ticket in Japan, and I bought both tickets, so I'm $50 poorer for having seen that particular film. Indeed, I'm sure my contribution alone paid for up to two milliseconds of Cameron Diaz's screen time.

But it was all worth it, because I actually had rather a good time with Annie. We shared some hearty laughs over those chicken nuggets, because they were huge -- each was roughly the size of a baby's head -- and there appeared to be an endless supply in that greasy white bag. "Got enough chicken, there?" I would ask her from time to time. "I like chicken," she would reply, before playfully thumping my shoulder. Given that we spoke different languages, this was quite possibly the longest and most successful conversation we ever conducted.

Well, of course it couldn't last; after that date, I had to go to Kyoto and look at some pavilions, and then I had to go to Osaka, and then Hiroshima, and then back to Kyoto. By the time I returned to Tokyo, one day before my flight home, I was worried that Annie might've forgotten all about me. But I decided to show up at her restaurant anyway, as a kind of surprise.

At first, the restaurant was so busy that she didn't acknowledge me, and I felt like a complete tool. But then she breezed over to my table and slipped me a free appetizer. I couldn't tell exactly what the appetizer was -- pickled vegetables? Fish guts? More sausages? But the fact that she had brought it at all suggested that she was happy to see me, and that was what counted.

And so we ended up having a third date. And then ... I went home to New York. C'est la vie, eh? I quite liked Annie -- I hope my characterization of her in this post wasn't too tainted by my smart-assness -- but I can't see her again without dropping another grand on a flight to Tokyo. And that seems a bit unlikely.

Soooo ... I've returned to trying to find dates off Craig's List, where I routinely get rejected by women who are disappointed that my photograph doesn't resemble Robert Pattinson, or Harrison Ford circa 1977. What a fucking bore.

But I shouldn't end on a bitter note like that, because hey, this experience was nice while it lasted. As the famous phrase goes, we'll always have Shinjuku...

Celebrating 30 years of B-Dog

On Monday, I will turn 30. It's what you might call one of life's little landmarks.

Well, it's been a wild ride so far, and I've accomplished some pretty amazing things. I bet you're wondering, "What amazing things?" I'm glad you asked, dear reader(s), because in a spirit of celebration, I have just compiled:

The Top 10 Achievements of B-Dog's First Thirty Years

1. Writing the second-most-popular Internet review of Snakes on a Plane. Yes way! If you visit the Internet Movie Database, you'll see that I wrote the second highest-ranked review of this mediocre action/comedy vehicle. I've even received hate e-mail about it.

2. Inventing the bean and onion sandwich. Years before I became aware of the British dish "beans on toast," I invented a similar delicacy consisting of ... baked beans, on toast. Only I made a sandwich of it. And added the onion, which is key, believe me.

3. Crashing the 46th birthday party of Doctor Who actor Sylvester McCoy. I even stole a piece of his cake. Top that, Paul Cornell!

4. Coming up with a great title for a vampire story. And that title is Things Done in Darkness. Whenever I tell it to people, they always gasp, "Ooh, that's mysterious, that's sexy!" Slight problem, though; I haven't written the actual story that goes with the title.

5. Defeating Teddy Roosevelt's great-great grandson in a game of Heroclix. So Teddy Roosevelt was a real tough guy, with his Rough Riders and everything, but it turns out that his descendant is a total weenie at Heroclix, a strategy game in which players make miniature superheroes fight; I knocked seven colors of shit out of him with a team led by Thor and the Flash. Hoo-wah!

6. Exploiting my knowledge and love of Horatio Hornblower in order to get laid. I'll never get over this one. Thanks, Horatio, I still appreciate it...

7. Inventing the character of Chicken Lou, a mobster who loves chicken. Of all the fictional characters to leak out of my so-called mind, surely none is more fully rounded, dynamic, and compelling than Chicken Lou, the low-level mafia enforcer who eats chicken all the time. He appeared in one scene of a screenplay I never completed, in which he intimidated a man who was behind on protection payments by taking away his chicken nuggets. Classic stuff.

8. Working for a hedge fund manager background investigation firm for three days. It was a great period in my life, and a great place to work. Right, Shannon?

9. Staying in a Tokyo hotel that was destroyed by Godzilla in the 1991 film Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. What's more, I had three dates with a lovely sushi waitress in the very same hotel! I have many fond associations with that building now.

10. Memorizing the basic timeline of events in the Peloponnesian War. Let's see: during some-year-or-other B.C., or B.C.E. if you prefer, Athens imposes economic sanctions on Megara, prompting Sparta to declare war, which forces the Athenians to hide behind their walls like a lot of wusses, and then a plague breaks out, and then Alcibiades changes sides 17 times, and then the Athenians go to Sicily and get their asses kicked. At some point, a statue of Hermes has its penis cut off. And then the shit really hits the fan. Yeah, I've got it memorized, sort of.

There you have it. It'll be tough to top these achievements in the next 30 years of my life cycle, but I'll try my best.

Sex, Peloponnesian War style

So I've been reading The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan, and I'm shocked that it contains not only a host of interesting facts about the hostilities between Athens and Sparta, but a fair amount of smut and raunchy gossip as well. Consider the following passage:

The Athenians had tried to open negotiations with the Persians at the same time, but King Artaxerxes died before anything could be accomplished. His death unleashed a struggled for the succession, and the winner took the name Darius II. He was one of seventeen bastard sons of the late king, and because the other sixteen remained, his position was insecure.

I mean, wow -- seventeen bastards! Way to go, Artaxerxes! Kagan doesn't mention how Artaxerxes died, but I think it would be fitting if the king's heart exploded while he was having sex, swilling down a flagon of red wine, and trying to stuff an entire glazed ham in his mouth at the same time. Assuming that the Persians had flagons. And ... hams.

Anyway. I got more for you; Kagan also serves up some juicy tidbits about the Athenian general/playboy Alcibiades, who was accused of taking part in an unusual act of sacrilege that scandalized the entire city. As Kagan describes it:

On the morning of June 7, 415, the Athenians awoke to find stone statues of Hermes throughout the city with their faces smashed and their distinctive phalluses hacked off. [emphasis mine]

Amusing as this may sound to us, the mutilation of stone penises was apparently a big deal in ancient Athens. So Alcibiades fled to Sparta to escape prosecution, seeking the protection of the Spartan King Agis, a longtime enemy of Athens. But, dear reader, Alcibiades chose to repay Agis' hospitality in a rather unusual manner. As Kagan puts it:

An earthquake ... drove Alcibiades from the chamber of Agis' wife into public view, probably in late February of 412.

What a rock star that Alcibiades was. Despite his status as a friendless refugee, with an accusation of stone phallus mutilation dangling over his head, he still had the chutzpah to have sex with his host's wife. Fantastic. And if it wasn't for that meddlesome earthquake, he would've gotten away with it!

The upshot of all this is that I think Artaxerxes and Alcibiades were a couple of great guys, and if they were still around today, I'd be honored to have them as my wingmen.

All this chatter about the Peloponnesian War reminds me that I have an idea for a great Doctor Who story -- Steven Moffat, are you paying attention? That's right, I've got a great idea for a Doctor Who story based on -- yo! Steverino! Moff-meister! Pay attention! Ah ... where was I? That's right, I have a great idea for a Doctor Who story based on the Peloponnesian War, about a well-intentioned but ultimately misguided time traveller who tries to alter history by helping Athens to win, thereby enabling democracy to take root centuries early. So Doctor Who [sic] has to sort this guy out before he fucks up the established flow of human events.

Cool idea, huh? I could make Alcibiades a character, and have him try to seduce the Doctor's female travelling companion, which is exactly the sort of smutty subplot that Doctor Who specializes in these days. Anyway, Steve, if that Richard Curtis script ends up being a bomb, rest assured that I can churn out this Peloponnesian War thing in, like, three days. And we can get Kagan to fact-check it and add in some more sexy bits. Hoo-wah!

Bibliography

Kagan, Donald. The Peloponnesian War. New York: Penguin Books, 2004.

"Moffat, Steven." Wikipedia: The Free Encylopedia. 11 November 2009, 12:03 EST.

Discussion Questions and Activities for this Post

1) In your opinion, what qualities must a stone phallus possess to qualify as truly distinctive?

2) Do you think Steven Moffat reads Floating Dweebs? If not, what's wrong with him?

3) Do you think King Darius II could have gotten away with assassinating his father's 16 other bastard children and making it all look like one big accident, thereby securing his throne? Devise an Action Plan for Darius with this goal in mind.

4) Draw up a speculative daily schedule for King Artaxerxes that balances his duty to conduct affairs of state with his biological imperative to have tons of sex. Does he have enough free time to give me a few pointers?

Pancakes

"The perfect pancake should be lighter than air. Literally. You should be able to grab onto it and float up to the clouds." -- Matt from Philly

It's been over a month since my last entry. For a while, I didn't blog because I was in Japan, eating sushi. But now I'm back in the U.S., eating pancakes. So I figured, why not blog about pancakes?

Believe it or not, the themes of Japan and pancakes are connected, since a Japanese author is responsible for my current pancake mania. Specifically, I have been obsessed with pancakes since I read the following passage from Haruki Murakami's short story Where I'm Likely to Find It:

I stood up from the sofa, and as I made my way up the stairs again I started to mull over the notion of freshly made pancakes [....] The more I thought about it, the more it whetted my appetite. I'd had only one small apple since morning.

Maybe I should zip over to Denny's and dig into some pancakes, I thought. I'd passed a sign for Denny's on the drive here. It was probably even close enough to walk. Not that Denny's made great pancakes -- the butter and syrup weren't up to my standards -- but they would do. Truth be told, I'm a huge pancake fan. Saliva began to well up in my mouth. But I shook my head and tried to banish all pancake thoughts for the time being [....] Save the pancakes for later, I cautioned myself. You've still got work to do.

Makes you hungry, don't it?

I read that story in Kyoto, where good pancakes are in short supply (to the best of my knowledge). I therefore had to wait several weeks, until I returned to the U.S., to satisfy my sudden craving for them.

I had my first opportunity to do so on November 1. After I spent Halloween night with a lady of my recent acquaintance, she took me to a diner in Sunset Park, assuring me that the food was good. But this was an untested diner, with untested pancakes.

And it was disappointing. The pancakes were barely competent. Too thin, too chewy, not fluffy enough. Damningly, I left a pie-shaped segment of the triple-stacked goodies untouched. And to think, this lady had given me her word that the diner was good. Her word!

But fear not -- this story has a happy ending. This morning, I woke up early and headed straight for a reliable diner on 4th Avenue and Union Street in my home 'hood of Park Slope. And the pancakes there were the bee's fucking knees.

Of course, the experience was still somehow disappointing. It reminded me of the profound thing that Shakespeare once wrote about eating -- something like, "It's ironic how you get all hungry, and rush to the banquet table and stuff your face, and then you feel all bloated and worse off than before, so what's the point, really?" I believe the original quote, which I have paraphrased here, appeared in one of Shakespeare's comedies. Or possibly a tragedy, or ... a history. My friend Anne would know, for sure.

Anyway. I like pancakes.

The $10,000 Beverage

To prepare for my trip to Japan, I've read two travel guidebooks -- both of which mention that certain Tokyo bars charge up to $10,000 for a single alcoholic beverage served by a beautiful hostess. Ten thousand bucks!

I know what you're thinking; that's enough money to buy four full-sized Dalek replicas for use as living room decorations. I was thinking the very same thing! The beautiful hostess is a nice touch, of course, but still ... I wouldn't pay 10K to have a drink with an 18-year-old Cleopatra, never mind some anonymous hostess.

I have therefore decided that it is extremely important for me to devise a series of Action Plans to cope with the eventuality that I will be charged 40% of my life savings for a single beverage. I now submit these plans for your review and approval:

Action Plan #1: Demand to see the owner of the bar. Bow low to him in a sign of respect. Say something polite about his ancestors. Bow a second time, even lower. Then kick the owner in the nuts and flee at maximum foot speed.

Action Plan #2: Point to a spot behind the bartender's head and shout, "Look, Godzilla!" Run away during the resulting panic and chaos.

Action Plan #3: Convince the bar owner that he has behaved dishonorably by overcharging for drinks. Order him to restore his honor by committing harakiri on the spot.

Action Plan #4: Morph into a giant robot. Join with other giant robots to form an even larger composite robot. Step on the bar and squash it.

Action Plan #5: Become a famous sumo wrestler to pay off debt to bar. Gain 100 pounds eating all the tacos I want. Marry overpriced hostess, stay in Japan forever, raise army of small fat children.

On the other hand, I could simply memorize the Japanese for "so how much is this fuckin' drink gonna cost?" before I take the trip...

Brownstone Tales #6 - When a good joke goes bad...

Recently, my beloved landlord Davey was in a sort of boastful mood, and he bragged to me that he once had composer John Cage over for dinner at the brownstone.

"Really?" said I, genuinely impressed. Then, after a moment, I added, "Did you and John Cage actually talk, or did your conversation consist only of chewing, clinking silverware, and ambient sounds?"

Davey's bushy white eyebrows scrunched together in a sign of confusion. "Uh...what?" he replied.

"I mean, did you and John Cage actually talk, or was there just, like, four-and-a-half minutes of silence?"

"What are you suggesting?! Why on Earth would I invite the man over for dinner and then not actually talk to him?"

"It was a little joke," I hastened to explain. "You know how John Cage's most famous composition is simply four-and-a-half minutes of silence, with no notes at all, and the 'music' is supposed to be the ambient sounds, like people shifting in their seats uncomfortably and coughing and stuff like that? In other words, the random noise in the environment is the piece?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, I remember that." Davey still looked confused. "So what was your joke, again?"

"Well, I was wondering if your dinner conversation was like that. A lot of silence--"

"Oh yes, yes, I get it now.

"--and forks clinking and stuff, but no words spoken."

"Yes, I understand the joke now. Yes."

"I guess a good alternate joke would have been, did you actually serve food at dinner, or did you and John Cage just pretend to chew on air?"

"Yes. Hmm. Yes."

Geez -- tough crowd, huh? No wonder Davey didn't laugh at a single line in my screenplay!

Discussion Questions and Activities for this Post

1. Do you think John Cage's composition 4'33" is really clever, or really dumb? Explain.

2. Give me your best guess: how many times have audience members farted during performances of 4'33", thereby elevating farts to the level of music?

3. Who's the most famous person you've ever had over for dinner? It's me, isn't it? You don't know any really famous people, do you? I bet it's me, isn't it, isn't it me?

4. Try to compose a piece of music that consists entirely of a sustained stretch of silence. Your only limitation is that the silence cannot last exactly four minutes, thirty-three seconds; consider alternate lengths such as two minutes and forty-four seconds, or ten minutes and two seconds. How do you think your sustained stretch of silence compares to John Cage's?

Will B-Dog miss Park Slope?

I recently picked up a book called Brooklyn Noir, mainly because I liked the photo on the front (which is of a woman's high-heeled shoe stepping on a manhole cover). The book is a collection of short stories, and each one takes place in a different Brooklyn neighborhood.

In the introduction, the book's editor, Tim McLoughlin, makes some piercing comments about my home 'hood, Park Slope. "The communities across Brooklyn depicted in this book are for the most part not representative of the popular image of the borough today," he begins. "The Park Slope of Pete Hamill's 'The Book Signing' is not a latte-drenched smoke-free zone celebrating its latest grassroots civic victory over some perceived evil, but the neighborhood of those left behind -- the handful of old-timers living above stores on Seventh Avenue...having to walk further every day to find a real bar or grocery store."

I happened to read that part while I was riding the subway, and I busted a gut laughing at it, because McLoughlin really nails everything that's annoying about Park Slope in a very short space -- the smug atmosphere, the cheesy bars, etc. But while I find such things irritating, part of me admires the Park Slope community's self-awareness and political engagement. In short, I have a love-hate relationship with this 'hood.

I've been pondering on this recently because, at some undetermined point in the future, I'm going to have to leave Park Slope. I happen to have cheap rent now, but most other apartments around here cost about 200% more. And I'm not sure I like this neighborhood quite enough to stick around when the price tag goes up...

It's hard to put a finger on it, exactly, but something about Park Slope is unfriendly. And this atmosphere extends even to certain very famous Park Slope "institutions."

Take, for example, Le Bagel Delight near the intersection of 7th Avenue and Carroll Street. If you've ever tried to buy a bagel at this particular deli, you'll no doubt have noticed that (a) it has the worst layout in the world, forcing customers to cram into a tiny space to order, and (b) the allegedly friendly Park Slope hipsters who frequent the place will happily push past you or shout over you to get the attention of the remarkably catatonic staff, even if you were there first. It's less of a deli and more of a terrifying experiment in Darwinism gone awry. As my housemate Ralph once so eloquently put it, "That place can go fuck itself."

Then there's the Tea Lounge on Union Street, where you can order some coffee and crash out on disintegrating couches, while some annoying local band plays bad music loud enough to distract you from reading. This is the kind of place where fascinating discussions with strangers should be possible, but somehow this never happens for me. Every time I go in there, a bunch of hipsters are sitting around tapping at their iMacs and not saying anything. Note, by the way, that everyone in there has an iMac ... and everyone wears similar clothes, and reads similar books. These nonconformists are all alike, aren't they? As my housemate Ralph once opined, "Fuck the Tea Lounge."

I don't mean to suggest that I always feel resentment towards Park Slope. I bet it's a great place to be if you're newly married and you want to raise your kid right (by drilling it into her head that she must recycle toilet paper tubes at all times). But maybe it's not such a hot place for a free-wheeling single guy such as myself.

Indeed, I recall a time when I went to Great Lakes, a 5th Avenue bar, for a drink. A woman was sitting in there alone, reading some famous book or other -- let's say Great Expectations. At one point, I said to her, "I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I never actually read that book, and I know I should've. Are you enjoying it?" In response, she said absolutely nothing, and instead just hit me with a shocked, angry, and accusatory stare. Only in a wacky community Park Slope, I think, would such a question be interpreted as harassment.

Bottom line is, I'm a little down on the old Slope lately. Maybe I'll miss it when I'm forced to leave, and maybe I won't. I'll let my Dad have the final word on this subject:

"God, look at all the people on bicycles. This neighborhood is crazy! Look at all the bicycles!"