Ven Don't

I fancy myself an adventurous eater, and aside from super-spicy food, or the deepest of deep fried, I'm down to try just about anything. Alternately, my mother has always been somewhat of a conservative diner, passing on all things raw or tentacled (understandable), and warning quite often of the dangers of the dive restaurant. Avoidance of the cheapy eateries is a strategy I just can't abide by in New York City, as it would eliminate about 70 percent of the best dumplings, burgers and ethnic delicacies in town, and while scarfing down shumai in a Chinatown basement I occasionally congratulate myself on my well-rewarded rebelliousness. This shit is amazing! Mom doesn't know everything, now does she.

Street vendors have always been another big "no no" for Mama Jones. Pretzels, yes, but street meat, no way. I ate my first vendor hot dog at a cart in Times Square in the five minutes I had to kill between two New Yorker Festival events last fall. I vaguely remember spitting out a tiny pearl of what may have been plastic (or probably just congealed pig intestine), but aside from that, I remember tearing into that bun and feeling so alive. Just a New Yorker eating a New York hot dog. I've probably eaten street dogs about three or four times since, always with confidence that my mother's warnings of cart food illness were an exaggeration. Until it hit me.

Mom and pops came into the city yesterday afternoon to run a few errands and swung by my apartment to pick me up on the way. We drove down Fifth Avenue into midtown, the streets lined with smoking vendor carts that stirred a craving within me.

"Yes. " I thought. "I'm going to eat something from a cart, in front of my mother, right now. I will prove it can be done."

We parked the car but mom separated from pops and I on our way to get the grub from a lonely cart on Madison. I ordered mom's requisite hot pretzel, "and one hot dog please." My father's eyes lit up. He's the man who taught me how to chow down. He's the man who eats the fried shrimp heads - eyes intact - that come with his ama ebi sushi. The man who braved Woodstock-esque festival, Watkins Glenn, with only cans of cured oysters to keep him alive. The man is not afraid of any food item on the planet. And standing there ordering that little log of unidentifiable "beef" parts from the Pakistani vendor, I could see a gleam of sly pride in his eye.

I held mom's pretzel with one hand and watched the vendor flip open the lid of a metal compartment housing about fifteen tan links, floating in water. I thought about my friend Caroline's warning:

"I've seen the place where they keep all the carts at night. It's filthy. There are rats and roaches crawling all around. They never clean the carts."

Fuck that. I was starving.

The vendor dipped his tongs in the water, clamping down on one of the skinny dogs.

"No, the big one!" my father instructed.

"That's a sausage," the vendor told my father.

"Yeah, sure, that's what she wants," dad replied.

Umm, sure. A sausage. From a street vendor. A sausage that looks like a giant hot dog. Can't be any WORSE than a hot dog, right? I bit into the mustard-covered meat. A hot dog with a kick. Not terrible, but nothing I'd willingly buy again. Ravenous, I tucked the sausage away in under a minute, following with a bit of mom's pretzel and some Diet Peach Snapple to normalize my palette. Okay, feeling great.

Fast forward six hours. Errands have been run. A massive Italian dinner of beef carpaccio and tortellini has been consumed. I am curled on my bed in the fetal position and I think I might die. I call Caroline.

"I ate street meat today, and now I think I might die. I just thought I'd tell you so if I call out sick tomorrow, you can vouch for the fact that I am, in fact, dying of food poisoning."

"Awww, Stace," Caroline chuckles. "Did I ever tell you about the time I saw where they keep the car..."

"Yes, yes," I interrupt. "I should have known better, but whatever, what's done is done, and now I feel like..."

Belch.

"Gotta call you back Car."

And then the puke.

And then more puke.

It's midnight and I call my mother. She's sleeping. I ask her if she or my father was feeling sick from dinner and she answers that they aren't. I tell her I just vomited and that I think I have food poisoning.

"The fucking sausage," she says.

"Maybe, " I answer, "but maybe not. It could have just been the sheer volume of food I ate today."

"No way Stacey, that shit is poison! What have I told you about eating meat from the vendors. Pretzels, okay. Chestnuts, okay. But the street meat, that shit will kill you."

Now I want to die because not only is vendor sausage is wreaking havoc on my insides, but I know I will never hear the end of this vendor banter from my mother.

This morning I wake up feeling sick and call out of work. Then I call mom. She's in the office chatting away with the other ladies and asks me how I'm feeling. I tell her I'm feeling better and one of the girls in the office asks my mother what's wrong.

"My daughter ate a sausage from a street vendor yesterday," mom answers in obvious disgust. I can hear the ladies groaning, their matching squished up noses flashing across my brain. I feel my temper start to rise as my mother returns to the phone and begins yet another lecture on the dangers of the vendor hot dog.

I decide then and there that when mom is too old to care I will feed her nothing but street meat.

But regarding the more immediate future, I plan to stay away from the carts for a while. Until the tempting vapors of unidentifiable steamed meat reel me in once again.

Grandmas don't lie.

An email from mine this morning:

you must have brought the mets good luck--hope it carries over to today. dad must be in 7th heaven. i was out playing mah-jongg last night but we had the radio on to listen to the game. the mets will come thru tonight. love you. grandma

Arugula is making a comeback...

And broccoli rabe is the jam. But I just want some spinach in my motherfucking omelette already.

The Name Game

Miss Stacia's afternoon musings on her parentally-furnished name, Stacey (Lauren) Brook:

1. A VP in my office, with whom I had had no direct contact before an interaction this morning, apparently attended a summer camp in upstate New York that contained within it's grounds, nature's very own Stacey Brook. As in the running stream of water bearing the exact same name, "e-y" spelling and all.

2. I already knew of the existence of said brook from a vain Google search.

3. For some reason I decided to inform the VP of my search engine-facilitated familiarity with his childhood tubing grounds. He did not seem impressed.

4. In addition to the aforementioned "Babbling Brook" (papa dukes' college radio tag) or "Stacey Stream" (nickname coined by elementary school gym teacher, Mr. Cyr), there also exists Stacey L. Brook, co-author of The Wages of Wins, a non-fiction book that has been described as "Freakonomics meets ESPN." I first encountered Stacey L. Brook's sports myth dubunkage in a New Yorker feature earlier this year, just as my Fantasy Baseball season was kicking off. Maybe my twin-in-name would have passed on A-Rod as her first round pick. She definitely wouldn't have chosen Edmonds over Lee in the outfield.

5. Stacey L. Brook is probably responsible for the heartbreaking unavailability of staceybrook@gmail.com. But I beat her to staceybrook.com, so we'll call it even.

Hip hip, José!

Read my review of the Zero 7/José Gonzalez show at Webster Hall.

Do it. Now!

Yom Kippur with the Joneses

Totally normal, break fast conversation for the Jones family:

(In the living room of the Cohen family in Annapolis, MA, about thirty minutes from the U of M campus. Papa Jones, addresses his friend Ricky from Podiatry school. Ricky’s 25-year old daughter Lindsay, the College Man and I are all in the room, clearly within earshot.)

Papa Jones: So after we all ate dinner together on Friday and you fed my wife that Grey Goose, I tried to get her in bed. She put on her nightie and I went in for it, and she told me she was tired and that she’d give it to me in the morning. So the next day I wake up to take a piss and get back in bed. My wife asks me what time it is and I say, “nine-thirty” and give her that look like, (sing songey) “It’s time!”

(By this point, the College Man and I have curled into the fetal position with our hands over our ears, and Lindsay is staring off in spacey denial.)

Papa Jones (cont’d): So when we’re finished, I look over at Debs and say, “Sorry honey, but I told a little white lie.” And she asks me what I’m talking about, so I say, “It’s only six-thirty!”

I know we just finished Yom Kippur, but in my opinion my father should immediately repent for telling this story in my presence. Adam would agree, but he’s too busy chain-gagging, while pushing these thoughts down deep in his subconscious.

The College Man: On Home Turf

This weekend, I consented to spending four-and-a-half hours listening to Steely Dan in Papa Jones' hybrid to accompany the parents to Maryland for a long overdue visit to the College Man. After some much needed napping, an extensive NYC realty discussion and analysis and a New York Magazine read-aloud session from Mama Jones (she would have made a great first grade teacher) my parents and I arrived at the College Man's apartment around 6:30 where we examined his sweet and surprisingly clean living quarters. The bathroom was almost spotless and the kitchen, crumb-free, although there was a major explosion of titties all over the apartment walls:



"There seems to be a beer and tit theme to these apartments." -Papa Jones


It's Adam's sophomore year at U of M, and the man has learned a lot. He can maneuver kegs past his apartment security guards, no sweat. When multiple hos are primed and ready, The College Man knows where to go in for the kill.

One thing the man has not yet learned is how to make a good rumrunner. This drink in my hand is fucking toxic. But I can't hate on the kid for pushing his weekly kegger from Friday to Saturday night in my honor. I'm 99 percent positive I'm getting sexiled from his room later, and I'm being forced to listen to shitty 50 cent songs, but I'm ready to kick it College Style. Live blogging or morning reporting on this jam is soon to come. For now, stay fresh. Roll them blunts. Rock them hos. Or something.