Date with the Night

Does squishy do it for you?  It doesn't do it for me.  I'm a crunchy girl - I like my toast crispy, my peanut butter chunky and anything fried to be verging on the charcoal.  Mmmm... charcoal.  Texture is such a massive thing to me, I almost can't eat things when the texture is off.  That's not to say that all my food is crunchy; I like to eat soft things, slurpy things... it's just squishy that I have a problem with.

Which is why my unholy love affair with the humble date loaf is so fundamentally strange.  Of course, the version that I make (the Edmonds version) has walnuts in it, so it does have that kind of contrast-y texture.  I really dig that contrast-y texture.  I've even done a bit of an experiment where I substitute about half a cup of the flour for a half cup of cocoa, but I made a mental note not to do that again, because it made it kind of dry and weird.  Not brutally unpleasant, but just not really great.

Dates and walnuts - the gin and tonic of the baking world, that's how well they go together.

So that's all the baking that I've been doing.  It's nice to have a project though, so I've been madly looking up Lego cakes for the Lad's birthday in June.  He's going to be an *ahem* significant number, as I've already mentioned, so I'm going to practice my fondant icing skills so I can be all "Man, this is super easy! I should have been a baker... or something." when it comes time to do the actual Lego cake.  Just a recommendation though, if you are a beginner cake decorator (like myself), for the love of Great Grandma's Spatula don't look up on the internet "Lego cakes", because you will be so disenheartened (is that even a word?  Whatever) by the professional efforts of professionals that you will really start to question your sanity in volunteering to make a cake in the first place.

In other news, your humble writer here has just had her 29th birthday.  The Lad made a big fuss of me, and my parents even came to town specifically to take me shoe shopping and out for lunch, which was all totally lovely.  I didn't do any baking for my birthday, because quite frankly library school is really sapping my strength when it comes to the domestic arts.  I bought myself a vinyl edition of Queens of the Stone Age's Rated X (the tenth anniversary of Rated R), and also managed to find the Distillers' self titled album and Fight Like Apes' Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion. 

Maceo is also doing good: well actually, he's a pain in the arse. I have all these scabby scratches on my hands to prove it, but I really just wanted an excuse to post this cute-ass picture of him.  This is the look he gets right before he tries to claw your face off.  He's going in for his de-manning on Tuesday, so maybe that will settle him down a bit, but I really have my doubts.  Boy is a crazypants.  Speaking of pants, I saw a good interview by Ellen DeGeneres of Tina Fey a few days ago, and have subsequently ordered her book, Bossypants.  Dunno if it will be any good, but the interview was really funny (though Ellen did make it patently obvious she'd never done improv before... yikes), and they're both really charming women.  Though Lord knows when I'll get time to read it, because it's taken me about three weeks to get half way through the first trade book of Fables: Who Killed Rose Red?  Probably doesn't help that I'm reading about three other books at the same time though. 

Midlife Crisis

Wow, so here we are again.  I'm going to skip the apology for not writing for ages, we all know how that goes, so I'll just go straight to the fun stuff that's been happening over the... shoot, a month since the last post?  Mother of pearl, that's pretty slack even by my standards.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I haven't been totally slack.  I have at least made an attempt at blogging, I had this great one on these cupcakes I made for St. Patrick's Day (Guinness and chocolate, nothing, nothing can go wrong with that combination, I'm telling you, the recipe is one of Nige's, I'd thoroughly recommend it.  Especially if you can go all out and put cream cheese frosting on them - holy wow, is all I have to say about that). And I've made hot cross buns and cakes and pies and stuff... but I haven't taken any photos of any of it, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Library school is going... kind of well.  I submitted my first assignment on Friday, it probably could have used a bit more work, but we'll see how it goes.  The first one is always a bit of an experiment, plus it's been ages since I've done any academic writing.  It's one of those things that you get into the mode of (just like academic reading, I thought I'd given that shit up forever, but it appears not).  Speaking of libraries, when going through my feed reader this morning, Louder than War had this little post on this really great initiative called Get it Loud in Libraries, which is... kind of amazing.  I don't get why everyone seems to have this mental image of librarians as being stuffy... at least ten of us are cool!  Heh.  Unfortunately it's an inititive which is based in Lancaster, England, but it wouldn't take much to do a local version, I'm sure of it.  Now, if only I knew some public librarians...

Oh yeah, and one of my short stories got a place in the AUT Short Story Competition.  Admittedly, it's a highly commended placing, but that's not too bad.  In fact, not bad at all, since that's only the second one that I've ever submitted.  So... quite proud of myself there.  But I really need to get going on the writing, I'm hoping I haven't lost my mojo too much (the fact that my inherant laziness can't help but come into the equation probably isn't helping either).  If you want to read it, the story is here, it's called One Night.  Oh, and it's in the 21 and over section.

It was Record Store Day yesterday too, so I hope you all went out and bought lots of lovely aural treasure from your local store.  Real Groovy and Slow Boat were both mobbed yesterday here, which was kind of beautiful to see; a little bittersweet in the case of Real Groovy, since that store is closing down (amongst much speculation as to what might actually be happening - are they closing down for good, or moving to smaller premises?  Mysterious).  As you can see from the 'official seal' (*snicker*) below, Ozzy Osbourne was the spokesman this year.

I can't help but think a version of this could be a go-er for my 'official correspondence'.

And, in about two weeks I'll be 29.  How the hell did that happen?  I have to keep kind of quiet about it, since I scoffed at the Lad when he was starting to go through this, but I have to admit to feeling a tad... elderly.  Not in a totally bad way, but still, a bit... it sounds stupid, doesn't it?  But I guess that's why there's a name for it, because lots of people go through this kind of 'what am I doing with my life?' kind of gicky feeling.  Whatever.  I'm just going to keep doing my thing, and to heck with the second guessing.  The Lad is turning 30 in a month, so I've got a few things in the pipeline for that (which of course, I can't say anything about, suffice to say that I'm frickin' amped about it!  I wanted to make this birthday so rad for him that he'll forget the attendant 'woe is me, I'm thuuuurrrrty...').   So, of course, I'll have to get back to you on how that goes, but I'm practicing my fondant rolling as we speak.

My Cat's Name is Maceo

There's been quite a lot happening in this neck of the woods lately.  Firstly, school has started for the year, which means that not only am I studying (only part time, but that's quite enough when one is working full time as well, thank you very much), but also it's the busy season at work since all the students are back, I've been baking for Christchurch (more on that later), and we got a new cat!

The cat part first.  The Lad has been mad keen to get another cat, but I've been reticent for a few reasons.  Firstly, our old cat, Saffron-Yoda, never liked me very much (probably because I named her Saffron-Yoda, but also probably because I read a theory that girl cats prefer the company of boys, and boy cats prefer the company of girls... something to do with the pheromones, I guess).  Secondly, I'm actually allergic to cats - they make my nose run and my asthma go haywire.  I usually develope a tolerance to them after a while, but it takes the old body a while to get used to all that fluff in the air.  But anyway, so the Lad emailed me with this picture of a kitten who needed a home, and was all 'Can we? Huh? Can we?' and I caved.  This little blighter is so freakin' cute, I would challenge even the most cat-hatery individual to not have their icy heart melt just a little.  Here he is:

He's a little man, in a cat's body.

Maceo is, of course, named after the Jane's Addiction song, My Cat's Name is Maceo, which is off an album called Kettle Whistle.  The version of the song that appears on the album actually has the guy that Perry Farrell's cat was named after guesting on the saxophone, which is pretty awesome-slash-weird.  All that comes from Wikipedia, by the way, so take it with a grain of salt.  Oh, and good luck finding that song on youtube, by the way - it's been removed from a couple of vids by the youtube staff because of copyright infringement, so I spent like, fifteen minutes watching videos of other peoples cats in the hope of finding a video that actually had the song.  Guess you'll just have to find it yourselves.

Anyway, in other news, Monday was the big bake-sale thing for Christchurch.  I baked up some dinosaur shaped gingerbread (the only stipulation that they had was that the baking had to be something that was going to travel well - no cupcakes, in other words).  They came out really good, though I was worried about them for a second, as the dough was really crumbly.  But like I said, they came out fine.  Wellington has been having a few wee earthquakes of our own lately, which has been freaking everyone right out, though it's pretty usual for us.  Still, impecable timing.  Anyway, I did lemon icing in rough bone shapes on the dinos, which was really nice, actually kind of refreshing.  So I hope that whoever got them in Christchurch got a wee giggle out of them when they opened them up!

The leg bone's connected to the... back bone?

Library school is going well so far, I've got my second class tomorrow, and so far so good.  It's not going completely over my head, and one paper was a good way to start off.  Not too much work, just enough to keep things interesting.

Beast of the Yeast

I don't feature enough pizza on this blog.  Don't you think?  As far as I'm concerned, pizza is the Perfect Food.  I mean, it's bread, with anything you want on it.  How could that not be perfect?  Okay, so sandwiches are bread with anything you want on it, but I guess the sandwich is a good representation of the phrase 'familiarity breeds contempt'. 

Strange Days

The Big Day Out has come and gone for another year.  Usually I feel a sense of ho-hum-edness around this time, a sort of 'oh well, it'll be back next year'.  But this year, because I was actually there, in Auckland in the mad humidity, then the rain, I feel a completely different thing.  It's hard to put my finger on it, really.  Part of me is super glad that I went, and the other part is super glad that it's off my list now and I never have to go again.

Just a few friends, Mum.  We'll totally clean up after ourselves.

It's certainly not the line-ups fault that I feel that way.  For the most part, the bands that I saw were amazing.  (Here is a brief explaination: they were all bands, as in, guitars and drums and such.  There were amazing electronic artists at the BDO too, but I didn't see them, just because that's not my bag.  It's not to say I don't listen to electronic music, I do, it's just given a choice I'd rather watch someone play a guitar or whatever than spin a turntable.  Just my opinion, and I'm sure I missed a treat or two for holding it). 

Particularly, the Jim Jones Revue were brilliant, and it still boggles my mind that anyone could listen to their music live and not find themselves boogy-ing like a madman all over the show.  There were people in the audience that resisted the urge, but I wasn't one of them.  Spastic gyrations were go!  For those that aren't familiar with tJJR, I guess I'd call them a sort of psychobilly band.  I'd never heard of them before the BDO, but man I'm thankful I caught that show.  The Greenhornes were another unexpected delight.  They are part of the Third Man stable (Jack White's label), but on reading their liner notes (since I went and bought their album on the day after the gig), it seems that they recorded it at Ben Fold's studio.  So if that's not enough to whet your interest (all I had to say to the Lad was 'Jack White' and he was in... he's obsessed!) they are bluesy rock, but lots of energy.  They were meant to open for the Black Keys when they played in Wellington, but that gig got cancelled when the Black Keys cried exhaustion.

The Jim Jones Revue: do-wop-sha-waddy-wop mudda-ukers!!! Yeeahhhh! Ow!

The only problem with these two shows were not of the bands making - there were sound problems (something was cutting out, either vocals or keyboards for both bands, like all the time... frustrating), which seemed to plague Shihad too, and there was some kind of whacky guitar mixup going on there too.  Shihad were one of the two bands playing an album in it's entirety (the other was Primal Scream with Screamadelica - who unfortunately we missed, due to a timetable clash.  I wouldn't have missed it for anything if they were playing Vanishing Point, that was the third album I bought on CD.  Ah, nostalgia!)  Anyway, Shihad had an hour to get through the whole of their album The General Electric, which since the album runs to 49.7 minutes, is quite do-able on paper.  But the amount of energy expended is quite another matter.  I mean, you've got the pretty little 'Brightest Star' reprise-y type thing, and then straight into 'My Mind's Sedate' (which for the longest time I thought was 'buy my CD'... what a dork).  I give Shihad a lot of credit as a live band, they have great energy and stage presence, so it was super cool to see them go through a whole album like that and not let up at all.

Speaking of not letting up, both Iggy and the Stooges and the Deftones played great sets.  Chino Moreno is a freakin' maniac, I still don't know how he can manage that crazy scream and then sing so bloody beautifully a beat afterwards.  Truly, truly amazing.  As well as leaping off amps and carrying on like a general loon.  They opened with one of their best tracks from the new album ('Rocket Skates', off Diamond Eyes, which took a while to grow on me, but has been on heavy rotation on the old ipod for a while now), but also played some old favourites ('My Own Summer (Shove it)').  However, everyone was kind of holding their breath for 'Passenger'.  There had been lots of rumours flying about that Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer from Tool, would join Deftones for this song, but Chino had said beforehand that the ball was kind of with Maynard; they would do it if he was up for it.  Since the Deftones had a seriously early slot (honestly, before Wolfmother?  Before Shihad?  Weird), and Tool weren't playing until last, it was always unlikely, but nothing like a little hope. 

The Deftones: Kings of all they survey.

Iggy... was... brilliant.  He's a legend, what can I say?  He got, like, thirty people up on stage with him before they started playing 'Shake Appeal', on the proviso that they'd dance the whole time.  And who was the last one dancing?  Iggy. 'Nuff said, really.

Rammstein!  Sweet Lord, I didn't tell you about Rammstein!  No words can do them justice, but I may as well try, since this is turning into a bit of a novel of a post anyway.  They had the stage covered in a big black curtain while Iggy was performing (the two stages, Orange and Blue, were right next to each other, so that one could be set up while the other was in action), and there was much speculation about what the treat behind the curtain would be between the Lad and I.  A couple of minutes after Iggy's set finished, there was a sort of strange sussurrus that ran through the masses, and then the operatic opening of 'Rammlied', the first track from Liebe ist fur alle, da starts up.  The curtain is still up.  On the first chord, the black curtain drops to expose a huge German flag, and the song continues in it's build.  Then on the next heavy bit, the flag drops, and there is Till Lindemann in what can only be described as a latex apron with a feather neckpiece, looking for all the world like Hannibal Lecter's scary friend.  His mouth is glowing.  How on earth that is possible is anyone's guess, but it looks like he swallowed some fiery coals which are about to spew out of him at any second.  With all this theatre (that's really the only way to describe it) going on, you'd think that the music would suffer, but it didn't.  They are amazingly tight, not a hair out of place (a good thing, considering the amount of fire in their act). 

There were a few 'meh' moments, musicwise, of course. I'm still not really sure why Wolfmother are still touring, if they've got nothing much new to give us, and I'm still trying to figure out what the fuss is about Airbourne. Masses of stage presence, gotta give them that - their lead singer climbed up a huge pylon thing between the two stages to do a guitar solo (sans safety equipment - it was pretty hilarious watching the faces of the St. John's Ambulance people on the ground too), but they just sound like AC/DC. Whatever though, I've never been much of an AC/DC fan, and plenty of other people like 'em. The final 'meh' moment for me though, was Tool. Okay, so the poor buggers had to follow Rammstein, but... I dunno. It seemed like they just didn't really give a crap. Which is sad really, because they are all really gifted, creative musicians (and creative people in general; very, very clever guys). Although, it was a total treat to hear 'Intolerance' live, I have to admit.

Airbourne: Look Mum!  No brains!

So I still don't know how the Big Day Out has made me feel.  I'm really glad that I got to have the whole experience, to have seen bands that I might not have seen if they had played shows on their own, got to hear some fantastic new music (and real glad that I bought my sweatshirt for later; there must have been some very cold young ladies at the end of the night, silly wee things), and amazed at the energy and professionalism and sheer awesomeness from most all the bands.  But some of it has left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, and I have to say, if I go back to a festival, it won't be the BDO.

Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth.

Back in December I wrote a bit about how much I hate the gift cycle.  Well, now I have to take it all back, because I loved all my Christmas gifts.  Seriously, how often can you say that?  I mean, yadda-yadda, I know I shouldn't be concerned about gifts, it should be spending time with family, and believe me, I totally appreciate that, especially seeing my sibs again, I love those crazy diamonds.  But seriously, accusations of crass materialism aside, I love getting presents.  Who doesn't?  More importantly, why don't you?  Have you never got a good one? 

Yeah, okay, if you're a someone that's hard to buy for, or you have very strong political beliefs about stuff which comes from certain places in the world, fair call.  For a person such as yourself, I'm personally not above either making something (even if it is just cake), or Felt -ing you something.  Hell, even if I just make you a card (I make pretty much all my cards these days, because I totally resent paying for trite, homogenous sentiment), I'll still do something.  I guess all that might have to take a backseat now that I'm a full time worker and a part time student and a person who might like to have a social life and do fun stuff as well.  Ach well, we'll take it as it comes.

So yes.  All of that was basically in aid of telling you that the Lad got me a copy of the Desert Sessions 9 & 10 for Christmas, which I've been looking for for ages.  It's a CD, rather than a vinyl, which is totally fine with me, because I don't have a record player (despite owning a few records... weird, huh?  It's because I'm a sucker for cover art).  I still don't know where he got it from, he's a very mysterious individual.  Oh, and I'm all excited because I found out last night when the Lad had come home from watching the football with his buds that Queens of the Stone Age are coming on a three gig tour to NZ!  *hyperventilation ensues*  This year is sure shaping up to be a good one so far... hopefully it won't turn around and punch me in the jeans, but hey - I'll take that gift horse, even if it's teeth are rotten and it's got horrible rancid hay breath.

Whoa.

Frickin' heck, I've got so many plans at the moment, I'm like... a plan monster, or something.  It's the first proper-nice day of the spring season today, and with remarkable good planning, I'm not at work... nice to be doing something right.  Mum and Dad are down in Wellington tomorrow, so it will be sweet to see them (and sweet to have all the frickin' cleaning out of the way... *sigh* I know they don't care, but I do it anyway), and we're going to the World of Wearable Arts show on Sunday, which I'm so looking forward to it's not even funny.  Plus I'm trying to write my letter for library school next year, which is into something like it's eighth draft... and so I'm ignoring it for a little while, just to get my mojo back on it.

Oh yeah, the baby shower!  Damn, it was so good, I am King Organised, nothing was a total failure (read that as: nothing failed so badly that I couldn't fix it), the new Mama was completely surprised (muahaha), and I've had several really nice emails from guests saying how much they enjoyed themselves... sweet!  It was actually surprising easy, in the end of it - I think that the most stressful bit was having a bunch of people that I didn't really know very well coming over to my house.  You just never know what you'll be inviting through the front door.  Still, we didn't have any chronic undressers or kleptomaniacs (yes, I have been rereading 'Choke' by Chuck Palahniuk - how did you guess?)  All the baking was an unmitigated success too - no reports of food poisoning, which is just fab.

I think that I'm most proud of my pistachio macaroons, because I'd never made them before, and I'm now cautiously optimistic that I've conquered my brain-block against egg white baking... but I'm gonna make a sponge or a pav or something before I get too excited on that front.  They were so good - I actually liked them better without the ganache in the middle, but that's just because I'm not really a sweet tooth kind of lady.  But there were also cupcakes (der, of course there were, I'm kind of bored of baking them to be honest, but now it's getting to be something that people expect), savoury junk (wee tomato and olive tart things, thyme and gruyere gougeres, just to be fancy), and a fantastic chocolate and raspberry cake that the fine lady helping me organise made... it was so awesome.  *drool*

Time to Say Goodbye

Oh, muffins... where have you been all my life?  I'm on a real muffin kick at the moment, if I'd known how flamin' simple they are, I'd have started makin' the darn things sooner.  Well, maybe.  We all know that I'm a woman who just loves to make life hard for herself.  But still.  The sentiment is there.

So the puppies that I've just made are cream cheese, smoked salmon and chive mini-muffins.  How hoity-toity can you get?  Yes, they are pretty ritzy, but honestly, someone who had mislaid some of their mental picnic could make these without much bother.  There are only two pitfalls with these muffins - they are a tad on the expensive side to make (though if you get the smoked salmon pieces, you know, the ripped up shready stuff, it's not too bad), and they are almost irresistable; but resist!  I implore you!  Take it from one who knows, all you will end up with is a burnt roof-of-the-mouth and a broken heart.  Well, maybe not that last one.

Um, in other news, Mark Lanegan is in town tonight, which I totally wish that I could go to, but being the Nana that I am, one thing per night is about my limit.  The muffins are coming with me to a farewell shindig for a work buddy of mine tonight.  In order to not cause too much kerfuffle for people, its one of those 'clear out your booze cabinet' type affairs - everyone brings the mysterious bottles that lurk in the back of the cabinet with a centimeter or so of liquid at the bottom and we make them into glorious cocktails.  At least, that is the idea.  Getting back to the original topic, if you don't know who Mark Lanegan is, you need to go to the Library (or the indie record store, or itunes if you must) and get the Screaming Trees album Dust.  It is an amazing album, and I'm sure that you'll love it.  What am I saying, I don't know if you'll love it, but it's always good to listen to some new shit once in a while.

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round

So, International Independent Record Store Day.  It's happening kids, happening on the 17th of April!  How exciting!

Seriously though, I'm totally issuing a challenge to myself this year, which is to no longer suckle at the teat of Big Music.  My plan is to start buying actual physical music (as opposed to merely downloading stuff from itunes, which is so passive it's not even funny... I don't even have to leave my living room), and to buy that music at an indie store.  NZer's will know that after the demise of the Real Groovy franchise, the Real Groovies (Groovy's? you know what I mean) have become independent of each other (well, Auckland and Wellington have... when we were in Christchurch a few weeks ago their RG was still going, but I don't know what the situation is there), and there are loads more succulent treats of record stores dotted around the country.  

The wicked thing about them is that the people that work in there know their onions, so if you choose a good time to go in (when they're not bonkers with people, I mean), you can generally strike up a pretty good natter with the People of the Store, and they might just shine a light onto a new and fascinating musical path.  Anyway, the IIRSD, as I mentioned, is happening on the 17th of April, a Saturday, and most of the indies that have signed up will have interesting things happening.  You can check out the Record Store Day website for a list (this is the New Zealand list, of course), and watch the video below for a bit of a larf.  But, even more importantly, do it because Henry Rollins reckons that "Every time you buy your records at one of these places, it's a blow to the empire".  

Okay, here's the vid: