Locavoracious Weblog

Okay, I admit it: I’ve always wanted to try karaoke. Remember when Neil Patrick Harris got trapped into belting out Petula Clarke’s “Downtown” on an episode of ”Doogie Howser, MD?” Or Cameron Diaz’s wretched performance in “My Best Friend’s Wedding?”

From its 1970 origins in Japan to its having passed into the American cultural lexicon by the 1980s, karaoke is one of those things that everyone seems to have an opinion about, whether or not they’ve actually tried it.

So here’s the deal: I’m part of the Asheville Women @ Work group that meets once a month. Unlike most groups, we have no agenda. We don’t want your money. We don’t want to organize a community service project or do hard-core networking. We want to eat, drink, and be merry–and talk about our work and our lives. That’s it. No dues, no drama. Show up when and if you can. We’ll miss you if you’re not there, but we’ll probably see you next time. A very fun group of women that includes business owners, life coaches, legal assistants, marketers, writers, real estate agents, managers, event planners, stay-at-home-moms (that’s hard work, in my book), and a whole lot more. In fact, it’s such a great group that it deserves its own post at some point.

After dinner on the patio at Wild Wing (Biltmore Avenue), a karaoke splinter cell broke off and headed to Razcals–a bar and karaoke club just off Fairview Road. (If you’re an Ashevillain, Razcals is located in the former B.B. Barnes building. If you’re not an Ashevillain, take Exit 8 off I-240 and look for the sign.) Disclosure: I’d seen the sign plenty of times, but the “c” in Razcals looked like an “e” and I thought it was something like “Razeals.” Duh!

Razcals proprietor Dave met us at the door and welcomed us in–the place has a pretty dark and dive-like interior, and most of the decor involves raccoons (since they’re rascals, I guess). Not a big crowd, but it was a Thursday, so that may keep some crooners off the late-night circuit. The karaoke “stage” has a backdrop of a big band outlined in red neon, a variety of microphones, and the requisite equipment off to one side. The computer offers about 40,000 choices, apparently, so there’s something for everyone.

After Elvis and AC/DC left the building, we indulged in a Bob Seger group-sing, belting out “Old Time Rock and Roll” to the best of our (limited) abilities. No Tom Cruise in tighty-whiteys-and-socks intro for us; just a video monitor with the words and a row of bright lights that kept us from making eye contact with the audience. Said audience was nice enough to clap and cheer for our performance, which was kind of them (their mama’s raised ‘em right). We were followed by a decent version of the country song about keying the cheating boyfriend’s four-wheel-drive, then “Independence Day,” “Copperhead Road,” “Cool Change,” and David Allan Coe’s 1975 classic “You Don’t Have To Call Me Darlin’, Darlin’,” which is a perennial crowd pleaser, apparently. I’m sure the music continued, but I couldn’t stick around as long as they would let me (let me, let me, let me, let me, let me!), because my dog was waiting up.  

We were better than Cameron Diaz, but I think Doogie and Pet Clarke could have cleaned our karaoke clocks. Oh, well. I wanted to try it, and I did–and on a work night, even!

A friend emailed me a few days ago to ask if I’d given up blogging. That caught me by surprise; I thought I’d been blogging fairly regularly. I considered her question and looked back at my posts. I hadn’t written anything in over a week. Hmm…what to make of it?

I love to write, to noodle around with words, to dress up a blank page and add accessories, or to take away what blurs the edges in order to reveal the bones of the underlying thought. Doesn’t matter so much about the topic; I can enjoy writing about almost anything. I’m not very interested in technical writing, for example, but I do like to explain and illustrate with words so that even the technical becomes a little more accessible.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been involved with a writing project at work: an annual report, so to speak, that’s narrated in the voices of senior leadership. The company’s senior leadership is full of smart, accomplished people who make lots of decisions, but none of them are writers, per se, so it’s my job (well, one of my jobs) to create a communications piece that 1) explains the state of business during the past fiscal year, and 2) explains that business in a “voice” that reflects the personality of the person speaking.

Luckily, I happen to have the ability to put myself into the heads of others, gather up their thoughts on a topic, and transfer the raw material into print. I can’t take any credit for it; it’s like a writing and editing software package that was pre-installed before I was born. I’ve taken classes, of course, and added upgrades over time, but the basic program is just “there,” running on its own, prompting me to poke around in words and phrases, collecting vocabularly like the greediest whatever-a-phile, and storing and stacking ephemera in some sort of fashion that allows my mental server to retrieve it…most of the time.

So, I’ve spent all my time lately wandering around in the thoughts of others, writing what they’d say if the time/interest/ability to say it. I’ve written about one topic (the fiscal year) in eight different voices, which means each voice talks about exactly the same things, but from an individual perspective. Good heavens! No wonder I haven’t been blogging for myself; I’ve been so busy Being John Malkovich that I haven’t had room or time or opportunity to fit in any thoughts of my own.

Luckily for me (and for you, Dear Reader), there’s an end in sight: the annual report goes to the printer at the end of the week and I’ll be able to close that file and put it in storage. Ever wonder how much of your mental capacity is taken up with such things? Remember the Keanu Reeves’ pre-Matrix futurepic Johnny Mnemonic, in which his character acts as a courier to transport massive amounts of information in his head? To make room for the dangerous amounts of information he carried, he had to delete a chunk of his own memories–namely, his childhood. Not a choice I’d care to make…maybe it’s time to consider some off-site storage? Oh, wait–that’s one of the reasons I blog. It’s a great way to make some headroom!

Just as promised, here’s a post re: my recent permanent makeup touch-up:

Arrived at Earleen Bennet’s new studio (Asheville Permanent Makeup) at 131 McDowell Street and instantly felt at home–the reception area was really nice and welcoming, and I was glad to see her poufy leopard-covered sofa that I remembered (and coveted!) from The Secret Spa location.

She took me into the treatment room and looked at my existing makeup. We talked about what I wanted this time (a little darker coloring), and Earleen took standard “before” photos. In short order, I was relaxing on the padded adjustable table (much like a dentist’s chair) with a comfy pillow tucked under my knees while Earleen prepped her equipment.

She numbed my eyebrows with a topical cream made to her specifications by a local pharmacy. After that took effect, she used a new needle to scratch through the skin of my eyebrows to ready the area to receive ink. Once she started working, I could tell that her new needle machine operated more smoothly and with less vibration than I felt several years ago–a definite improvement!

After eyebrows, Earleen numbed the area of my upper and lower eyelashes. Once the numbness seeped in, my eyelids felt uber-funky, sort of like windowshades pulled all the way down and tied to a brick. They were closed for business and my efforts to open them or blink them or command them in any way were not impressive. This is probably a good thing; no one needs to see a tattoo needle that up-close-and-personal!

Earleen worked her magic in a combination of three different shades of green designed to complement my eyes (hazel) and skin tone (fair). When she was done, I felt better than the first time I received permanent makeup; the process was easier and I knew what to expect. She took “after” photos for comparison and gave me a refresher course on caring for my new color.

I went home with the skin around my eyes beginning to sing “Ave Maria,” as they say in the gritty detective stories of 1930’s pulp fiction. Ouchy, but not unexpected. (I don’t know how it feels to other people, but it feels like a super-sunburn to me.) I took two Advil, applied a cold (damp, not wet!) compress to the area around my eyes and rested for a while. When I got up, the sunburn feeling had eased off considerably. 

The next morning, the skin around my eyes looked puffy and the inked areas (eyeliner and eyebrows) looked nearly black. This is absolutely normal–the “real” color is safe under a protective crust that forms over the tattoo. I had taken off two days from work, but I had an early appointment and some errands to run, so I camouflaged as much as possible with a ball cap and glasses. I still thought I looked a little weird–like I woke up with a bad hangover and had tried to hide the evidence with an overabundance of black eyeliner–but nobody seemed to pay any attention. (Either I didn’t really look bad at all, or else the nice people at Panera Bread have seen lots of hangovers!) 

By Sunday (I had the work done on Wednesday), the dark “crust” was flaking off (you can’t pick at it because of the risk of disturbing the new color) and I could see the real color. It looked fabulous, of course, and I was ready to go back to work and flaunt my face.

I keep thinking of Maori warriors and their elaborate facial tattoos; I wonder if they’d accept me into their brotherhood* now that I, too, have ritualistic designs inked on my face? Forget it–I already belong to a sisterhood of women warriors who choose to fight the battles of daily life with confidence-inspiring warpaint that doesn’t wash off…

*Maybe I should get in on that brotherhood, after all, since honorary members include Harvey Keitel in The Piano and Johnny Depp in Crybaby (okay, that’s a stretch, but a good one!). I just hope it excludes ear-chompin’ Mike Tyson–his face now looks like a beat-up ‘51 Mercury coupe whose owner could only afford flames on one side of the dented hood…

My last post ended with a thought about “sinister simian henchmen,” a.k.a. any creepy monkey that works in cahoots with an organ grinder, or a one-eyed spy for the Nazis in Cairo (Raiders of the Lost Ark), or most recently, Captain Barbosa’s chittering little undead sidekick in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (and the second and third films in the series, as well).

I don’t know why I find monkeys disturbing rather than charming; some people find them delightful and even keep them as pets. (Eek!) The last time I went to the circus, there was an act featuring baby baboons on bicycles, and it was all I could do to stay seated and not run out of the arena. Even the clowns were preferable to watching those sharp, wild, little faces (complete with funky bone ridges like the Klingons) furrowed in concentration on their task. 

So…scary monkeys and late summer have combined to put me in mind of one of the scariest short stories I ever read: “Where The Summer Ends” by Karl Edward Wagner. I found it years ago in a compilation of scary short stories, and read it mostly because, as a friend once said, “if something has text on it, I’ll run my eyes over it.” After a moment or two, of course, I was completely hooked and couldn’t put it down.

The story is set in Knoxville, Tennessee, which is about two hours west of Asheville on Interstate 40. Wagner catches the tone and the texture of the town with ease as he begins to spin a tale of late summer days swollen with humid heat and dank, overgrown kudzu on a dead-end street. You can practically smell something dark and sinister beginning to bulge out of the pages. I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, but I will say there’s *something* in the kudzu, so beware!

After reading that story, I pay more attention to kudzu than I used to. The road from my house to anywhere else passes between banks of the stuff for some distance. This time of year, it’s thick and lush and green…and it grows so fast you can almost see it lengthening into new stems and leaves (the better to clutch you with!) as you pass. My great-grandmother called it “that old seven-mile-a-minute” because it grows so fast and claims its territory in such a hurry.

Believe it or not, kudzu produces flowers in the summer–very pretty purple blooms that tend to shy away from sight under a layer of vines. They smell sort of purple, too, but you only know this if you drive around in smellovision (see the post from June 4) and sniff it out. Some locavores harvest kudzu; it turns up as jelly and pickles and a very fine “flour” that beats cornstarch for its thickening properties.* It’s a popular ingredient in handmade paper (whirl it up in a blender and smooth the fiberous pulp over a flat surface to dry in sheets) and it’s used as livestock fodder in Japan (from whence I believe it originated). Did the Boy Scouts really introduce kudzu into this country, using it as roadside ground cover to stabilize banks and hills along the new interstate system, which was one of their national projects in the 1950s? Could be true; could be an urban myth. Regardless, it’s here–especially in the south–and probably here to stay. And if you read Karl Edward Wagner’s take on kudzu, you’ll stay out of it!

*If you are planning to harvest kudzu for any sort of gustatory project, look for a patch  well away from the road. Public right-of-way kudzu tends to have been heavily sprayed with herbicides for years upon years, and that’s not an ideal situation for ingestion.

As I drove down a back road in western Buncombe County today, I heard a strange sound, sort of like a giant music box, being slowly…wound…down…one…note…at…a…time. It was sad, wheezy, mechanical music, and totally out of place in such a rural setting.

I immediately spotted the source: a pale green panel van with multicolored dots painted on the sides. Of course! An ice cream truck, blaring its siren song to bring children out of the woodwork, dollars clutched in sweaty summertime fists, craning their necks for a glimpse of the frozen treats in store for them.

Did I mention that ice cream trucks give me the creeps? Like clowns, they exist for the amusement of children–supposedly–but I find them more jarring than joyful. A truck with no windows that lumbers around town, promising sweets to children? More like a mobile version of “Hansel and Gretel, ” if you ask me. Remember the Kid-Catcher from Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang? He’s the sort of character you expect to see driving an ice cream truck–and he’d probably be wearing a clown suit. Horrors!

I think I have this Steven-King-induced-terror of ice cream trucks because such trucks are exactly what the monsters (human or otherwise) that people his stories would drive. He probably didn’t write a story about a haunted ice cream truck simply because it would have been too obvious–a King-cliche, so to speak. (King, of course, did indulge in a bloodthirsty clown in It , which is a much scarier book than it is a movie.)

Maybe ice cream trucks have this effect on me because I didn’t grow up with them. My house was way up a secondary road (probably a tertiary road, truth be known) and I can remember the Bookmobile passing by on occasion, but no ice cream trucks. I knew about them, had even seen one in West Asheville once, but it was not part of my childhood. And why is their music always wheezy and clangy? Why does it have a Pied Piper “come along children; follow me over this cliff” sort of feel to it? Like an organ grinder, grinning as he cranks the handle of some unspeakable hurdy-gurdy to ensnare unwary children and draw them closer to the clever hands of what appears, at first glance, to be nothing more than a tame monkey…

See what I mean? Creepy!

I spent a semester at UTEP (that’s the University of Texas at El Paso–Go, Miners!) many years ago, and loved to go to Gussie’s Tamales across town from the campus (2200 N. Piedras Street). Gussie’s is a locavore’s dream: hand-made tamales in a variety of flavors, and so good you could practically roll in them. You place your order at the counter, pay very little, and in return, receive steaming packets of corn husks wrapped around masa that’s been filled with a variety of fabulous ingredients (my favorite was the green chicken).

Four of us made a Gussie’s run one particular evening and took our tamales to a nearby park so we could sit outside and enjoy the warm weather. We were just digging in to our Gussie’s haul when I heard something odd: a few wheezy notes that sounded like a merry-go-round on the skids. There were no other people around, and we were down in the park, fairly far from the main road. I heard it again, a little closer: DUM…dee…DUM…dee…wheeze…dee…dee. Getting closer. The others heard it, too.

Then we saw it: a white panel van, no windows, lurching toward us, bleating its demented little ice cream song, one labored note at a time. We looked at each other, then back at the truck, watching it weave closer, coming toward us through the empty, twilit park, tweedling its increasingly terrifying tune.

That was it for me. ”I don’t know about y’all, but I want to get away from that thing,” I said, beginning to fold the corn husk back around my half-eaten tamal*. The others looked at me, looked at the truck–and began a wild scramble for the car. Doors slammed, I gunned the engine, and we were gone in a squeal of protesting tires. The park road formed a loop, thank goodness, so we bolted out the other direction instead of confronting what had suddenly become the “I-Scream Truck.”**

We roared around a couple of curves and I slowed down to look back. The truck was still there, just a pale blur in the growing dark, but the music was still audible: DUM…dee…DUM…dee…wheeze…dee…dee. My passengers shrieked “go!” and we tore out of the park and headed back to the comparatively well-lit security of our dorm. The tamales were still good when we ate them, but our enthusiasm for them–and certainly for ice cream–was diminished for quite some time.

* Yes, tamal is the singular form of tamales (plural). There is no such thing as a “tamale,” but everyone knows what you mean, so don’t worry about it. I’m officially a word-nerd…in two languages!

** Absolutely no offense is intended to what I’m sure are the very nice drivers of ice cream trucks and the very nice people who dress up as clowns or work as organ grinders. I’m sure there are children (and adults) who are not frightened by you–or your sinister simian henchmen–in any way!

Weird trivia: The UTEP mascot is a burly, bearded miner known as “Paydirt Pete.” 

So…I’m having my permanent makeup touched up on Wednesday. It’s been a couple of years and I’ve had a little fading (absolutely normal and to be expected–especially with facial tattoos since they’re exposed to sunlight so much of the time) and I *think* I’m ready to go a little darker now. I’ll either be under the topical numbing influence of LMX4 (a numbing cream with 4% lidocaine) from The Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy on Merrimon Avenue–they were nice enough to order it for me–or LMX5 (the new 5% lidocaine version of the cream) if it arrives in time from DERMAdoctor.com.

I’ll post my experience as soon as I’m done, and I may even twitter about it when I come up for air, so to speak. (If you’re not already twittering, visit www.twitter.com and start tweeting–it’s fun and it’s challenging to restrict yourself to a 140-character report at any given moment.) 

I’m looking forward to visiting Earleen’s new studio and seeing how the process may have changed in the past couple of years. I’m hoping my new motto will be “no pain with lidocaine!”

It’s a misty, moisty morning near Asheville, with a soft, low sky that looks ready to weep at any moment.  Reminds me of the following Mother Goose rhyme:

One misty moisty morning,
    When cloudy was the weather,
I chanced to meet an old man,
    Clothed all in leather.
He began to compliment
    And I began to grin.
How do you do? And how do you do?
    And how do you do again?

The rhyme, in turn, reminds me of the Charles Addams cartoon that I associate with it–a little kid on a foggy sidewalk next to a cemetery, and he’s stopped to chat with a skinny spooky* in an old-fashioned leather raincoat.  Both are smiling as if to say they’re pleased to have met at such a moment in such weather.

If you’re not familiar with Charles Addams, his cartoons appeared in The New Yorker and other stylish magazines from the 1930’s until his death in the 80’s. He is best known, perhaps, for creating “The Addams Family” characters (parents Gomez and Morticia and their children Pugsley and Wednesday; Grandma and Uncle Fester; Lurch the butler) in cartoon form. He was associated with the 1960’s era sitcom based on his characters, but the original cartoons–witty, elegant, macabre, and fiendishly clever–bore only a surface resemblance to the show (light comedy with an emphasis on screwy slapstick).

In any case, that’s the kind of morning it is, and Addams’ illustrations of classic Mother Goose nursery rhymes ought not be missed, unless you prefer the more traditional versions featuring apple-cheeked children and kindly old ladies in spectacles. If so, avoid Addams’ take on “Wee Willie Winkie” or you’ll have nightmares for a week.

*Credit where credit is due: referring to a skeleton as a “skinny spooky” came from the Scooby-Doo episode entitled “A Tiki Scare Is No Fair”. After encountering a freaky tiki and becoming separated from the rest of the gang, Shaggy and Scooby are poking around in the jungle and stumble across an old cargo plane with a mechanized skeleton rigged up to frighten people away. Zoicks! It works!