NYE in Providence

New Year's eve at JC's in Providence may not look very punk, what with all the finger foods and crudites, but it turned punk-as-fuck later on when some crazy-ass girl they know blacked out and decided to smash every piece of glass in the house, including all of their fancy beer mugs. After the coffee table had been overturned and all the counters cleared, she added her piece de resistance by reaching in the cabinet and grabbing a bottle of high-end balsamic vinegar and a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil, smashing those to create a dressing for the broken glass salad she had left on the kitchen floor. This last move, I thought, showed a certain panache and sense of the absurd that I find lacking in many other fits of drunken destruction.
Anyway, earlier on things were more of the "D.I.Y" variety of punk, with JC busting out his home-brined corned beef and cabbage and homemade Rye Egg-Nog.
Homemade Egg-Nog takes at least a few days to get good in the fridge (and will continue to improve for a year or more, a mind-blowing fact considering that it includes uncooked eggs), but is a good way to get many people very drunk for very little, using copious amounts of affordable Rye whiskey. Corning your own beef also takes some forethought, but saves money and helps you avoid the preservatives, saltpeter and/or red dye they put into the store-bought variety. It also makes for some truly banging Ruebens the next day.
Here's a recipe (via Recipezaar.com) that's probably close to what JC uses:

Ingredients

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• 1 (8-10 lb) beef brisket

• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and cut in thirds

The Brine

• 2 quarts water
• 1 cup kosher salt
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon peppercorn
• 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 1 pinch ground cloves

The Simmering Liquid

• water, to come up 3/4 to side of brisket
• 1 teaspoon peppercorn
• 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon whole allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon whole cloves
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced

Directions

1. Combine all of the brine ingredients and bring to a boil, then cool.

2. In a huge plastic roasting bag (do NOT use a garbage bag), place the beef brisket, the cooled brine, and the 4 garlic cloves.

3. Make sure that all of the meat is covered by the brine (cutting the brisket in pieces if you need to), tie off tightly, place in a pot large enough to hold it all, and refrigerate for 6 to 7 days, turning occasionally.

4. After the 6 to 7 days, remove brisket from the brine and discard the brine.

5. Rinse the meat thoroughly, then place in a Dutch oven or other large pot and add enough water to come up 2/3 to 3/4 of the way up the side of the meat.

6. Add the rest of the Simmering Liquid ingredients (peppercorns, mustard seeds, allspice, cloves and garlic), bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

7. Reduce heat to a low simmer and cook, covered, for at least 3 hours, but 4 hours doesn't hurt anything. Meat will be SO tender and delicious!

I would venture that JC also added some beer to his simmering liquid, as good beer seems to be the binding principle of most recipes and events at their house. One new beer label JC introduced me to on this visit was Pretty Things, who are a tiny company of "gypsy brewers" currently operating out of Buzzard's Bay Beer Co.'s brewery and making some awesome "real beer". This is a company you should definitely support- seek them out! Their beers are served at some Animal Blanco-approved bars in the Northeast such as Bukowski's and Redbones in Boston/Cambridge, The Foodery in Philly and Barcade in Brooklyn.














BTW, Yes, as far as we could tell the beer is named after the awesome British garage/psych band of the same name, which is kind of reason enough to drink it for me.

Salem @ Glasslands Gallery

I don't think the author of this New York Times review of the Salem show with Gatekeeper at the Glasslands Gallery last month understood what he was seeing. He does a decent job of describing Salem's sound, but concludes that "(their) performance was hollow at the core, aspirated, almost soothing in its inconsequence" and that Gatekeeper had offered "a far more productive, and convincing, approach to the dark".
Gatekeeper were somewhat "dark" but still squeaky-clean Art Institute of Chicago gayboys who sounded exactly like Italian horror film-score maestros Zombie with an 808 drum boost. The NYT reporter downplays this part of their sound and says that they sounded like "80s club music", which I read as "I luv Depeche Mode!". I would guess that the NY Times heard this was going to be a cutting edge gay cultural event (Micheal Stipe and Terrence Koh were also in attendance) and sent a music reporter who was enthralled by the "bright, erotic, alive" atmosphere during Gatekeeper's set ("OMG, goth twinks!"), but couldn't get his head around Salem's real witchery.
I have to admit, though, that I was completely under Salem's spell from the moment the video screens started flickering with candles and burning cars, soiled mattresses and grainy police footage. Through the heavy smoke-machine fog you could barely discern the three members of Salem file onstage looking like solemn, wolfish, preternaturally cool black-eyed backwoods Michigan teenagers. The attention to aesthetics was boldfaced from the start: this was River's Edge as directed by David Lynch and scored by Burzum. The leader was a gaunt pretty boy with Nordic blackmetal blond locks who immediately started slurring a chopped'n'screwed rap, "Trapdoor" without any wiggerish gesturing or self-consciousness. They rotated for the next song and another pale whiteboy stepped up and mumbled his way through a woozy, muffled dirge, looking as hopeless and drug-addled a Midwesterner as eminem ever tried to be. Next up was the girl, a roots-showing peroxide blonde wearing an oversized men's dress shirt as if fresh off some kind of long harrowing night, who smoked and sang an even slower, dreamier song that brought us all into Badalamenti territory, like one of those transcendent numbers from the floorshow at One Eyed Jacks.
Through it all dirty-south rap drum fills rattled and the low-end just warbled and peaked. I would be hard pressed to have to explain to music journalists in attendance what they weren't getting, I was too busy writhing around and intentionally falling over photo-taking hipsters, trying to stir up some chaos on the floor (I had snuck in and proceeded to blow what I'd avoided spending on PBR tallboys). If I had to try to explain it I'd say it was all cigarette burns, dark secrets, ghetto Chicago minstrelsy, heroin, speed, horrorcore rap, midwestern teenage hopelessness and arch darkwave posturing repackaged musically as a gay high-art project that still bangs. As the inevitable influx of Salem copycat bands emerge, I hope the reviewer from the Times will realize that the last word he should have brought anywhere near this futuristic performance is "inconsequence".

White Animal Radio # 669: "Fantasy Tropical"

Here's a brand new mix of Tropical House, U.K. Funky and Indie remixes. Caribbean vibes, wall to wall 4x4 beats and a little bit of wistful daydreaming.
"I wanna take u far away"
fantasy tropical by White Animal

Dr Bronner's sexy side

I think my favorite passage from a label of Dr. Bronner's Soap (A big 1 quart bottle, not those weak little ones) is when the Doctor takes a sudden unexpected turn from his usual Christian-Marxist-Eco-Utopian blathering into... the erotic.

"Passions that quicken your senses, fulfill, quench the thirst of lonesome years! Yet, the sun has shadows: learn to control your will, to enjoy life-long happiness, not tears! Wait, rise to the stars above and thrill! Arouse the very flames of life! Sweetheart, kiss me! Hold Still! Hold still! Listen to God's reward for strife! Rosebuds, slowly woken, break budding open, delicate, sweet, so on soft fingertips, shivering up your spine, red pulsing blood, in lightning speed through your pure body's lips! Caressing deep, searching way out of sight! Oh, beautiful spirit of God's Eternal Spring, heat of passion in a warm moonlit night, ecstasy to be buried in heaven, within! Relax, then, through long, dreamless sleep, body & soul join close in life's most brilliant bliss; revealing clarity-beauty-harmony-peace, sailing on far-away sun laden ships! Yet-what-cunning-feminine-touch, can draw new desire to pulsing lips?! When-soft-hands-wander-casually-such, deftly down near lingering tips?!"

Whoa... dirty! Mind you all this is written on a bottle of soap. I wish more of my toiletries featured such smut. Would it be too much for Colgate to slap a little bit of Anais Nin erotica on my toothpaste tube? I feel like some graphic yet poetic descriptions of lesbian sex would brighten up almost anyone's brushing time.

Future Reference

My long-lost pal Emily is back to posting up her deceptively boring/insightful photo compositions on her revamped Brog: Future Reference.

Dance Party @ Spiritus

Here's a rare moment of synergy between the twin preoccupations of this blog: food and music. Back in Provincetown for the holidays, I attended a dance party some friends threw inside of Spiritus Pizza, the local landmark with the legendary whole-wheat crust Pizza. Spiritus, like just about everything else in Ptown is shut down for the winter, so they blacked out the front windows, wheeled in a keg and set up turntables on the counter where they usually flatten the dough.
This was in the middle of darkest, deadest winter and the place was packed and going off! Gay dudes were walking in off the street at 1AM after the clubs closed and couldn't believe what was going on.

The Breslin @ Ace Hotel

My lovely friend Lilah invited me for yet another culinary foray, this time along with her friend the "well-known food blogger". How else could I have ended up at the chef's table at The Breslin sampling things like shelled boiled peanuts deep-fried in pork fat? (Seriously, look at their menu, it's kind of bananas). Too bad, though, that I didn't realize how déclassée it would be to whip out an iphone and start taking food photos.
Trife as it may have been of me, I had to document this Bone-Marrow Soup somehow.

Anyway it was all worth it to get within an arm's length of this: 50 US dollars worth of dreamlike Braised pork belly. Thank you Lilah.

Apple Crepes @ Yaffa cafe

Do you know how some pet owners can start to look like their dogs or whatever? Apparently it can happen with food, too. Apple crepe, Christina @ Yaffa cafe, St. Marks, 5:30 AM.


Notice the shiny contact paper on the tables? They are still as crazy for contact paper at Yaffa cafe as I was for like a week in seventh grade. The food there is kind of whatever, but if you go, order anything with their Carrot-Ginger dressing, it's drinkable.

Tacos @ The Woods, Wllbrg

Can we for a moment get back to what this blog is supposed to be all about?
And by that I mean girls and tacos.
I think that the taco truck behind The Woods in Williamsburg has some of the best late-night tacos in Brooklyn. The folks who run it are incredibly sweet and make it tolerable to stand in line in the cold with execrable drunk hipsters who will invariably try to engage you in some way. Seriously, The Woods has the ambiance and clientele of a terrible house party where people from the bus stop out front wander in. This proves how good the tacos are because you're more likely too see me there at 3:30 AM than the truck at Union Pool. I go there just for Carne Asada covered in Guacamole and Lime and Green Salsa and just notice afterwards that its Karaoke night and this guy is singing "Common People".

I mean, I don't usually go in for that Look At This Fucking Hipster!.com stuff, but really do look at this bastard. He has no idea whether he is joking or not. He only wonders whether a 500$ Gucci Sweatshirt he bought in L.A. will show up on his Dad's credit statement if the purchase was made "in jest".

Thanks to my luvley models Alix and Chloe BTW.

Toy Selectah on NPR

NPR's Morning Edition did a brief story about Cumbia in L.A. which featured Toy Selectah and Bomba Estereo.

Every day down here I'm hearing or remembering a tune that should have gotten on that Jamaica mix:

Warbling autotune and pitched-up strings make the chorus on this one sound like some epic Pakistani pop shit.