Aanie and Eve came over in the morning, letting themselves in with a set of keys I'd given Aanie the night before, to sing Happy Birthday to her in Polish. She does this every year. It goes like this:
Sto lat, sto lat, niech żyje żyje nam.I've tried to learn the words, but I don't know that I ever will. She brought with her some delicious egg cocottes with panchetta, goat cheese, and some other kind of cheese; some orange juice; and some champagne, with which we made mimosas. Eve got Nina an awesome Coney Island t-shirt. Aanie got her these very cute mugs with pictures of pigeons on them.
Sto lat, sto lat, niech żyje żyje nam.
Jeszcze raz, jeszcze raz, niech żyje, żyje nam.
Niech żyje nam!
In the evening we went with her brother to go see Kaiju Big Battel at Webster Hall. For those of you not clicking the link, it's a kind of live-action, semi-satirical mash-up of Toho-style monster battles and pro wrestling. There's a kind of running narrative, I think, involving this evil guy named Dr. Cube -- in this performance, he was pitting his protege, The Grudyin (a kind of overgrown rat thing), against last year's champion, Call-Me-Kevin (a red, crustacean-like dude). I'd never seen Kaiju before (Nina'd been a few years back), nor had I been to WH. It's (Webster Hall) surprisingly chintzy, like a nightclub inside a casino in Vegas or something. Kaiju was exciting and funny, though. The suits were really well-articulated and colorful -- The Grudyin's suit featured four (or was it five?) pairs of nipples, and Call-Me-Kevin had awesome-looking lobster claws and was covered in flappity yellow spikes -- and must've weighed a ton, though that didn't stop the wearers from climbing up the turnbuckles and doing some fairly professional-looking leaps onto the mat, destroying a bunch of styrofoam buildings and municipal infrastructure that happened to get in the way.
Michael and I petitioned the staff dudes who were sweeping up afterwards for some of the cardboard set detritus -- "It's her birthday!" we yelled, pointing at Nina, who cringed. We managed to score an office building facade and a cube face from one of the "black boxes" that featured heavily in deciding this year's champion. I brought the cube face to work! It's on my desk.
After Kaiju was over, we met up with some of Michael's friends and caught a late dinner at Veselka. Even though we were both strangely tired, we ate a bunch of Ukrainian meat dishes.
I got Nina a copy of We Love Katamari. She was, she says, a devotee of the original Katamari Damacy, so, despite her protests about her academic standing, this seemed like a must-buy. This one takes place in a universe with a kind of postmodern awareness of the success of the first game -- in which you play as the son of the King of All Cosmos and have to roll up objects of varying size on your magnetic ball, amid demands and insults, so that you can replace a bunch of stars that your dad wiped out. The prestige you garner for your dad in that one lead to all the people in the game world in this one seeking katamari-related favors from him that he sends you out to do. They're always yelling things like "Katamari Damacy is the coolest!" It's such a weird and unpredictable game. I mentioned to Aanie that it reminds me of the Giant's Drink game from Ender's Game. Also, I could've sworn that "damacy" was an English word -- that it meant something like "fiefdom" -- but we looked it up, and it's a variant pronunciation of a Japanese word for "soul." "Katamari damacy" means "soul clump." Or "clod spirit."
We didn't leave the house on Sunday, because it was freezing outside! The wind keeps blowing around the alley with the garbage cans and rattling the windows in the hallway. I think I'm coming down with a cold.
On Monday night I made a vegetable soup with a bunch of beans and panchetta using this recipe. It's really good, but it took forever to make, and it makes you really regular. And I've still got gallons of it.
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