After a thorough search for recipes for banana pie that actually involve bananas as something more than, you know, a topping, I settled upon this recipe and made it. It was difficult but ultimately pretty rewarding. Word to the wise: You cannot substitute half-and-half for heavy cream.
On Friday the company was celebrating my friend Joe's birthday; we took him out for Korean barbecue at a place on 31st St. I'd never had that stuff before -- it really is, you know, a barbecue. I totally dig the proscribed method of consumption (cook some shit, bundle it up with rice and kimchi in a big floppy lettuce leaf; homph it). That stuff is pretty expensive, though -- good thing the 'Monkey comped it.
After dinner we went looking for a karaoke den. After rejecting one for price reasons, we walked around K-Town for a good 15 minutes, despaired of finding a joint that could accommodate all of us at the price we wanted, and ultimately settled on a place with a lobby tricked out with lasers and a fog machine. A little while after we'd settled in, Libby and Steve, who'd gone in search of a B.Y.O.B. solution, reappeared carrying a case of Korean plum wine, which they'd been recommended by the locals as being the best thing going for karaoke. Unfortunately, there were cameras in the private rooms, and, naturally, the staff swooped in and briskly removed the offending bottles -- save two, which Libby secreted in the folds of her coat. "What's under here?" they asked. "It's water, it's water," she said, in total bad girl mode. After the fracas concluded, she and Joe (and anyone else they could induce to taste the stuff) nursed their contraband in the corner underneath the security camera.
Some of the Monkeys were reluctant, but Nick and Margaret sang a Madonna song and Matthew led with a funny, super lounge-y rendition of some R&B song. And I tried to be good, giving, and game, to the extent that my half rasping, half hollering style of karaoke delivery allows me to be. (In the absence of songs by bands I'm actually, you know, up on, I think "I'm A Believer" might be my new karaoke go-to.) The little karaoke display system would give you a "grade" when you finished singing a song, via a little cartoon spaceman who'd spray-paint a score on a brick wall or sommat. After attempting to analyze the mechanism behind a bunch of seemingly incongruous ratings, we decided that they were based pretty much entirely on volume.
After a good two hours, our party split up -- management went on to some king of swing-dancing club that they do, other people hit up a bar. I lurched over to Duet 35 where a whole mess of college people were already singing: Tom and Colleen, Emma, Katharine, Nani, li'l Greg; Nina joined up as well. My throat was already pretty sore -- I didn't know if I'd be able to . Nani (not Nina, although she was admirably participatory) did a fairly stunning (Michigan J. Frog-wise) solo performance of that Nat King Cole song "L-O-V-E." "Two Princes" sure as fuck got sung again, as did Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again." Circa 3:00 AM we finally called it quits and piled into cars on the C.A.B. line -- except Nina made her way over to Williamsburg to hit up her friend's birthday party. She made it, too! Truly indomitable, that one.
I've been playing on a pub trivia team. It's held on Sunday nights at Pacific Standard, a slightly fancy California-style beer bar over on 4th Ave. near Atlantic Terminal. Eve got me into it; it's a semi-rotating crew of people from our high school and friends and friends of friends of theirs. She made the initial mistake of selling the virtues of attending based on the intellectual rigors of the questions: "It's all stuff about history and literature! You don't have to know any stupid pop-culture stuff." And maybe it's true that there's something for the Harvard types on our team to chew over, but I got serious brownie points for knowing that Chuck Norris volunteered to be president of a seceded Texas and that the Italian press had nicknamed some murderous American chick "Foxy Knoxy."
The name of our team is Toledo Despair, a failed answer to a question about the name of a minor league baseball team in Ohio. We've been consistently hovering around first place in a set of rankings that supposedly determine our fitness to enter "the playoffs," which stand to net us a private, budgeted party at the bar. Our success also nets us weekly discounts (sometimes of 100%) on Sunday night booze, leaving us lurchingly attempting to tilt the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine long after the questions are over.
Before I forget: You know how I bought that fancy electronic trap that Tom'd turned me onto? Before leaving for Florida last month, I set it up on my desk. The Monday that I was away, I got the following picture in the mail:
Jason, the guy who sits behind me, found the trap sitting in the material shown, which he describes as "liquid mouse." The office consensus was that possibly two mice had wedged themselves into the thing, overloading it such that it, uh, pureed them. Suffice it to say, Jason is owed some Snapples.
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