Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Memorial Day....

There is so little privacy anymore......and so much invasion of said privacy.

Thank you, Dianne Feinstein...you miserable bitch.

We are planning an action on Memorial Day....to remember all those kids who have, for one reason or another lost their lives in Iraq.

No violence. No media. No pissing and moaning. Quiet, tasteful memorial. Very early.

Send us a message if you want to participate.

If it isn't enough.....

On Saturday......we loved the bride and groom. Fun, happy, loving hippy-like kids who got engaged twelve hours after they met. That was the good news. The bad news was that all their friends worked on some random reality show on Bravo......and everyone had been fired at once. Thank God for deposits.

The people were so dumb that one guy came to me on the line and said, "What is that?" It was tri-tip. "Lobster, sir....." "Wow, that must have been a big one!"

Jesus, save me.

I am attaching the entirety of my communication with a new bride. The venue is controlled by the mom of a friend of my boys.....incredibly hot, smart and fun. We named a salad after her.....

Hey! Don't laugh! Peach Melba was named for Nelly Melba.....as was the toast. She was the Paris Hilton of the turn of the century. She turned Escoffier's head....the Thomas Keller of then. (Later, Escoffier had a famous Vietnamese salad guy who was working while he studied at the Sorbonnne......good salad guy, bad politician, according to Escoffier.

Ho Chi Minh. What are we to think of Nellie Melba? Bomb the Dikes!

Anyway....Las Fuentes.......Beautiful spot........ gorgeous, smart, evolved Mom of Brendan's Girlfriend #8675309.....don't even talk about the daughter.

Her salad is jicama, royale mandarin, cilantro and toasted cumin.

Anyway....this is what we deal with:

HI Michael,

It was nice to chat with you today in regards to my possible wedding reception at Las Fuentes in Carmel on October 6, 2007.

Please note my parents, fiancé and myself will be viewing Las Fuentes this Sunday May 28th at 1030am I was hoping we could do a food tasting at 1145am as we have another appointment around 1:30pm. Please let me know if you will be able to accommodate this.

As I told you it is very important to me to work with a caterer that is willing to do the same. With that said here is what I want please generate a quote for me as I will need this for before we meet you (father of the bride requirements)

Bride to supply:

Table Chair possible linens, china rentals
Beer, wine and hard alcohol (this is a must)

Caterer to provider: sit down dinner for about 100 guests

Sangria upon arrival for guests (I can get you a home recipe)
Three passed app.’s: ceviche spoon, fruit kabobs (pineapple strawberries and grapes) and something beef (no more then this as this is what I want J )
Guests choice of one main entrée: filet mignon, halibut (maybe chicken) and a cheese ravioli with marinara (vegetarian)
Plated desserts (one scoop of vanilla ice cream in a martini glass with two chocolate covered strawberries)
Servers,
Chefs
Bartenders ECT.
China and glass wear
Bar set up (with ice)

Please include all other costs i.e. tax gratuity etc. Thank you


Katrina

PS. One more thing I forgot to add a salad in there sorry I would like to do a hearts of romaine with cumbers, tomatoes, carrots and ranch dressing.

and of course bread and butter at the tables

Thanks,

Katrina

Dear Katrina

That will be tight timing. Depending on your 1:30.....we are 40 minutes from town. You are welcome to come out...directions attached.

Also attached is our list of appetizers. The reason we do more than three appetizers is: not everyone eats each kind; people bore really quickly. Rarely can we get people to eat two of the same......and we do this twice a week, every week. This means that your cocktail time should be twenty minutes....or we, and you, will start looking bad. There is no cost savings between preparing many different appetizers that people will enjoy and eat.....and the same number of individual servings that people will quickly get tired of.

Ranch dressing? We make all our own stuff.....even the bread and pasta. We have ranch-like dressings.....that you could try on Sunday. We maybe know too much about ranches, and their dressings....so the bloom is off the rose. Ditto the vanilla ice cream. We make our own.....we have a really nice bay ice cream....(and we argue about mountain laurel vs. bay laurel....), and Brendan just made a fabulous, subtle fresh peach on Monday.

We are all about the food.....and the service. If you just want someone to repackage commercial food and serve it up, you have the wrong caterer. Unfortunately, the good service goes with the good food. Companies that do commercial food repackaging tend to use temps or workers that can no longer work for good companies.....no experience and no subtleties. Why rent a beautiful venue and have mindless, non-English speaking drones doing the serving?

It is way too early to give you a bid......There is no chronology attached: when do we arrive, how long are the various stages of the day?.....what are the breakdown requirements of the venue and the rental company......and who is the rental company, and what kind of stuff do you have? Folding chairs? Chivari chairs? What kind of china and silver? Does it have to be cleaned on site, or taken away, cleaned and returned? How many wines? Water glasses? Champagne.....at the table or later at the cake cutting, or both? Coffee service....on demand, or served at the table?

Food: what kind of flexibility are you going to build in for order changes? (people change their minds or forget what they ordered, and ask for whatever looks best to them on the day. How many extra meals of each type should we prepare?)

We do not mark up rentals, booze or wine. We sell the wine and booze to you at cost. There is no corkage. We also do not charge a service or gratuity. There is no advantage to you supplying your own beverages....in fact a serious penalty, since you must provide for any contingency or be prepared to run out.

It sounds like your food cost should be in the $45 range. Staff should be roughly 15 or so, with five captains. I have no idea of the chronology, or the rental situation and cleanup, so I can't pretend to predict these costs. Seven hours? Eight hours? Some people can be sent home early. The rate is approximately $25 per person per hour. Possibly $25 per guest for the event.

Our rentals are competitive with others.......figure 40 cents an item.

Let me know your thoughts....

Warmest regards,

Michael
A Moveable Feast

Hear me, see me, feel me......

While plunging willy-nilly into the depths of weirdness caused by too little sleep and too many crime novels and too much cooking.....

Cachagua is always there.....a bass beat in the background.

Last Sunday, after the Big Sur wedding where we literally almost killed a band member.....and the van blew a radiator hose on Hurricane Point......and we had a walk in 12 top for all Eggs Benedict....and a surprise bride for a tasting.....

I sat out back with the Grumpy Old Men's Club: Dave, Grant, John, John, Bobby, Fred.....like that. Talk was that Rex's.....a venerable old bar in Cachagua at Prince's Camp....was going to be turned into a Church.

There used to be a church next to my Store....in fact we inherited their septic tank when the church washed away in the floods in '97. The howlingly (first English use of that adverb) stupid previous owners of The Store hooked up the dishwash machine to said septic tank. Only because normally the geographics of septic tanks go: tank, tank, drainfield....and the church was upstream from The Store....they hooked us up to the drainfield only, saving the septic tank all that work.

Anyway, the New Church of Cachagua is supposed to show up at Rex's. Everyone had a solemn moment of thought about that....being it was Sunday and all.

Then Grant piped up: Well, I guess if they are going to have a denomination in Cachagua, I guess we all know what they will be......"

Everyone turned to look at him.....

"It's obvious........"

"Crystal Meth-odists"

Rim shot, ka-ching.

Maybe I need a nap....

We just worked twelve days straight. No computer. No emails. God forbid I should go to the actual mail box.

This kind of dissociation is what the Chinese were looking for in the concentration camps during the Korean War.....the Manchurian Candidate. The subject becomes malleable, directable, programmable.....Like I am now. Call me, I will cook for you. I can't say no.

No, duh. This is the New Millenium! I don't need to go back to the Korean War for fuck's sake. How about Guantanamo? Or the White House Press Room. Talk about mind control.

Or the United States Senate. My former Senator, Diane Fuckstein, just voted today to approve General Reinhard Heydrich as the new head of the CIA. I already knew she was a miserable whore (c.f. ''Foreign Torts Act'') for Chevron and other corporate pimps, but this is really too much. The guy in charge of trashing the first and fourth amendments is now in charge of trashing the first and fourth amendments....with a bullet and an oak leaf cluster.

I am no longer a Democrat. I quit. Fuck those gutless groveling useless cunts. I will devote all of my minimal time to return to my roots....the Grand Old Party. I was Richard Nixon in the sixth grade in Orange County.....and I WON!!!

Then, I discover that Diane Cuntstein not only voted for Heydrich....but she and Arlen ''Addam's Family'' Specter are introducing a bill to rewind history and RETROACTIVELY LEGALIZE WIRETAPPING AMERICAN CITIZENS WITHOUT WARRANTS!!

The FISA act already allows free reign for wiretapping and other wildass surveillance for 72 hours without a warrant. Bush's violation of even this loose privilege is such a blatant stomping of the law that he should not just be impeached, he should be stuffed in a goddam bottle and floated out on the Japanese current to some friendlier shore.....like China, or Indonesia. Somewhere where the people in power don't give a shit about their subjects and seek only to enrich themselves and their friends. Like San Diego.

Fuck Dianne Feinstein. I am so glad my friend Michael Monckton puked on her shoes......Even though it was a waste of perfectly good puke.

Then, on the last day of the run.......We were doing a lunch for Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital. The nurses in the basement. The legal route was: wait for valet parking, drag all my shit through the front door, up the hall, wait for the elevator, down to the basement, back down the long hallway to the office.

Or......bump the curb, park next to the bus stop and go in the emergency exit and walk 20 feet with the half ton of shit. A no brainer.

All good. Did the drop. Drove across town to El Charrito, parked in the lot behind the store with the homeless dudes and maued burritos washed down with Gruet Rosé and read the new Lee Child novel. Heaven. Saint Peter had a plastic bag full of recycle.

Came time for the pick up. Bumped the curb. Hauled out the plates, platters and trash. Just as I was finishing, the gardener dude came rolling up in his cart.

"You no be here!! You bad man! You park on lawn." I was dumbfounded. He started pounding on my Jaguar. ''You no be here!"

I snapped. "No! You're not fucking supposed to be here, Juan! Wrong fucking country! YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE, YOU FUCK!"

"And while you are at it: SUBJECT, VERB, OBJECT! SUBJECT, VERB, OBJECT! SUBJECT, VERB, OBJECT!"

"YOU.... ARE not supposed to be HERE, you fuck!"

The guy ran like a guy running for the border......

Maybe I need a nap......

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Fish Story

So.....after going off at my Representative to Congress' staff about illegal salmon sales.....I finally got through to a human on Tuesday: an intern who specializes in ''fish issues'' (say that three times quickly....): Letise Houser in Sam Farr's Washington office. She seemed sympathetic, and promised action.

Eventually, the local staffer called me back. He apologized for not getting back to me for five months, and then proceeded to defend his office manager: "No, she wasn't defending the crook; no she used to do business with him.....not now; no, she didn't hang up on me. No, she didn't call the crook the second she hung up on me.

Bullshit.

Turns out, according to this guy.....selling farm salmon as wild salmon isn't even against federal law. Selling non-organic tomatoes as organic is illegal, misrepresenting meat is illegal....but not fish. Hmmmm. He had never heard of any law requiring the notification that there is dye present in food.

When I suggested this was a bad thing, he actually said: ''Well, that would require a bill, and that is really hard and takes a long time."

What?!! What the fuck??!! What the fuck else is Sam supposed to be doing back there? Don't legislators write laws? Or didn't they used to? Maybe that was an eighties thing, like Oingo Boingo.

And, supposedly.... the local District Attorney is still investigating this thing. Right, this is the guy that didn't even know salmon was farmed....and couldn't really figure out why I was upset. So, taking a leaf from Scott McClellan....I should shut up while there is an ongoing investigation.

Here is a fish story for you. Well, I wish it was a fish story, because fish stories are usually wonderful lies. This is unfortunately true.

Sunday night we did a quick party for my friend Margarite. Quick as in.... she kind of forgot to tell me about it until 11 a.m. that morning. No worries. We had stuff....even a wild salmon I paid $86.50 for wholesale (eleven pounds). Red Gold...but she is worth it. Margarite that is. Well, the fish, too.

After the party I for some reason thought I needed champagne, so I rolled down to the convenience store in the Village, and got some gas for $3.65 a gallon. There was a pickup truck parked by the pumps with a huge commercial ice chest in back, and a young woman sobbing next to it.

She was a commercial fisherman (fisherwoman? fisher? fisherperson?). Fisherlady. She had gone out that day, starting off by putting $300 worth of diesel into her tank on her boat.... on credit. She caught two fish all day....worth a hundred bucks at $4.50 per pound. She had to sneak past the diesel pier on her way in.

She has three kids, and was trying to get home. She only had rolls of pennies left and needed gas for her truck. She stopped at Mid-Valley Valero, and the illegal alien behind the register refused to take the penny rolls. He said that teenagers put slugs in the pennies, and sometimes only put in 49 pennies instead of 50. Let's see: gas is $3.65 a gallon, and he is worried about being a couple of cents short to an exhausted single mom? And he is not supposed to be here to begin with!

The fisherlady dug around in the truck and came up with $1.10 in silver change. This bought a couple of quarts of gas, just enough to get to Kasey's, where I found her sobbing next to the pump.

I gave her the bottle of champagne.....and all the cash in my pockets and wallet.

For dramatic effect, I should end the story here....but I am too mad.

O.K. kids.....why are there no fish? Well, nobody wants to risk $300 worth of diesel for two fish. She has to catch more than seventy pounds of salmon...at least six...to break even on just the diesel. Forget the maintenance, the license, the depreciation on the boat, the lost interest on the money it took to buy the boat to begin with....and god forbid she should lose a rig. So, fewer fishermen and fisherladies even go out after the fish that might be there.

And, of course, there are fewer fish. The season didn't even open until May 1, and it will be a short one. Why? The Klamath River salmon run has been destroyed.

What happened to the Klamath salmon? Can you believe it....I am not shitting you: Ask Karl Rove!!!

The Klamath River drains Tule Lake and all those wetlands along the California/Washington border. (Well, there used to be wetlands). There is something called the Klamath Irrigation Project that set up a series of canals and dams to drain all that and create 225,000 acres of farmland. The farmers grow hay, wheat, oats and potatoes where the swamp used to be. And, in a really weird quirk, because the government had to build dams to get water to the farmers and because dams generate electricity, the farmers get super cheap power, subsidized by eveyone else in Oregon with a power meter. Weird. Caterers need a union like this. Pay me not to make lavash.

In 2001 there was a drought, and the farmers screamed bloody murder when, by federal law and common decency, the flow in the Klamath riverbed was maintained to sustain the salmon run and other quaint downstream activities. Like Native American food and culture, red neck recreation, the entire West Coast fishery.....Dumb stuff like that.

It will come as no surprise to you that the farmers are Republicans. Their screams were heard in Washington, and the USGS, Fish and Wildlife, etc were dispatched to the scene. The verdict from USGS: the fish are worth eight times more than the hay and oats in terms of jobs, commodities, food, etc. Fish and Wildlife: endangered species are protected up, down and backwards. Oh, and the fish were here first. The first farms came in about 1930. Oh, and the farms were probably illegally destroying crucial wetlands for migratory birds, etc, etc etc. Turn on the water.

The response from our beloved President? Gail Norton flew out for a photo-op with the farmers. She actually said that when the wetlands were there the water used to just evaporate uselessly!!
So, Karl Rove personally intervened with the Department of the Interior, quashed the scientific reports from the two agencies, and diverted the flow of water from the river to the hay, oats and wheat. Oh, and by the way, many of the farmers were diverted water to maintain farmland that they were being paid NOT to farm because of an overabundance of crops elsewhere in America.

Here is the way the economics shake out:

An acre of farmland in Oregon in 2002 generated between $150 for wheat (not farmed), $195 for hay, and $210 for oats. Call it 200 bucks an acre.... times 225,000 acres which equals 45 million dollars. At the Rusty Cunningham corruption rate of 1%, I would predict the farmers donated about $45,000 to the Bush campaign. Their organization (Klamath Water Users Association) claims 1400 members, which I would expect includes wives, children, migrant workers and in-laws in other states. There are maybe 300 farms.

Did I mention PacifiCorps...the company that runs the dams with healthy tax breaks from the fed? No matter.

On the back side of this deal..... 50,000 fish were killed in 2002. As you would expect, like at Auschwitz, you kill the parents and you get no babies for a while. According to Fish and Wildlife, the effect lasts at least six years.

Ooops....one other problem. Continued reduced river flows lead to raised water temperatures in the riverbed......shallower water, slower water is warmer water. This has led to the proliferation of two salmon-related parasites which now have bloomed in the Klamath and kill 60% of the few small salmon that manage to be born.

So, Karl Rove personally intervened and countermanded two scientific studies by his own government agencies, and personally destroyed an entire fishery, and affected the everyday lives of everyone on the West Coast who has anything to do with salmon: fishermen, Native Americans, white man wholesalers, cannery workers, fish stores, retail stores, restaurants, consumers, sport fishermen......in exchange for $45,000 and a few hundred votes.

And.......have you read anything about this? No, because an aggressive media was a 70's thing....like Fleetwood Mac.

There is an Interior Department internal investigation into Rove's inappropriate action.

Be still my heart. I am so sure Justice will out.

Friday, May 05, 2006

I am Sam, Sam I am....

This will be quick, and I will fill in later. Bullet points only, as my new friend the investigative reporter at KCBS says.

Last December I bought some ''wild'' salmon from a guy. I expected it would be frozen filets from Port Moller, as usual. They arrived fresh, which means farm salmon....the horrible devil fucked thing I would not give my cat.......and I don't like my cat.

I pursued the deal....tracked down the fucker (Gino Parisi at Royal Seafoods in Monterey) and got documentary evidence of his and Sierra Meat's complicity in selling farm fish ($2 per pound) as wild fish ($7 per pound). I wrote the NOAA, the Fish and Game, State Department of Agriculture, Federal Trade Commission, asswipe Diane Feinstein (corporate whore extraordinaire), Barbara Boxer, Sam Farr, John Laird (state assembly) and even Republican cocksucker Abel Maldonado, my State Senator. I even gave Abel's chief of staff an internet lesson in the evils of farm fish.......Republican evils, not tree-hugger evils. I also emailed my county supervisor, Dave Potter.

Guess who got back to me and did something. Right. Potter. And only Potter. He actually got a County DA Investigator to check things out. This guy, of course, locked on to the only website in our known Universe supporting farm fishing (the carotenoid dyes used to turn the captive fish from corpse gray to pale pink might help your vision, you see. Carrots. Bugs Bunny. Like that) ......Oh, well.

Whatever. I got over it. The Sierra Meat people didn't, though. I get treated like Nelson Mandela at a Jesse Helms birthday bash. COD, only. Premium prices. Every order fucked up in some way. I gotta work and pay the bills, here.

So, today I puruse my newspaper. Surprise! On the business page, Sierra Meat has been busted for selling endangered bear meat, kangaroo meat, and endangered Burmese eel meat as rattlesnake.

They do a $90 million dollar business locally.......and paid a $50,000 fine. ( We do about $30,000 per year business with them.)

When I saw the article, I wondered what had happened to my deal......so I called Sam Farr's office, for the fifth time. I wondered why no one had called me back.....or even sent a form letter. Bonnie answered the phone in Monterey.

She was puzzled what I thought Sam could do for me. "What do you want the Congressman to do?''

Let's see: A felon cocksucker is engaging in interstate fraud, running into millions of dollars....that is stealing money from consumers, retailers and restaurateurs.....and simultaneously helping destroy a key industry in Monterey. Fishing is economically, culturally, historically, and socially a hugely important industry in our town. Should I buy a vastly expensive boat and maintain it, pay large fees and buy expensive licenses, risk my life and that of my family and workers (and pay huge Workman Comp expenses), pay more than three bucks a gallon for diesel to fuel my expensive boat..........and lose my shirt to a weenie fuck like Gino Parisi who is selling awful fucked fraudulent farm fish as the wild fish I have to fight for?

And it has gotten worse since December. In December a wild fish was worth $4.50 a pound. Now it is worth double. And the farm fish price remains the same. So the impetus to cheat has doubled.

No, Bonnie.....I can't imagine what my elected Congressman could do about flagrant violation of the law and common decency. But then, I am just a dumb chef.

Bonnie asked me for specifics. I mentioned Gino's name. She informed me that she owns a fish store, and has known Gino's family for years.....and they would never do this kind of thing. I told her that I have the phony paperwork, that I have testimony of a little old lady we sent in to buy wild fish from Gino in December....and came out with fresh farm fish. Again and again.

She hung up on me.

So....if you think the Republicans have a lock on official corruption.....think again. Sam Farr's Monterey office manager is a business partner of a proved fraud and cheat. I wonder why I have had no response about this continuing fraud from Sam's office.

It just goes to show that small amounts of money are hugely important in politics. What is some slimy prick like Gino Parisi worth to Sam Farr, or his office manager? Peanuts compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars the fraud brings in. Duke Cunningham only took in two million bucks in exchange for $250 million dollars of corrupt contracts. Dianne Feinstein went to the wall for Chevron on her Foreign Torts scam, only to be caught at the last minute. What were Chevron's donations to DiFi, compared to their potential savings from immunity from litigation for negligence from the entire world?

And look around. The President of the United States has admittedly violated American law repeatedly.....and all but two Democrats are standing on the sidelines with their hands in their pockets......Well, I thought their hands were in their pockets.....Maybe their hands are out?

Fucking disgusting.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Stephen Colbert Has Huge Brass Balls

It occurred to me that maybe not everyone has seen Stephen Colbert's roast of The President last weekend at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.

Links to the tape of the roast were just yanked from YouTube, and not by Colbert's people since various ''The Word'' segments are still up. Therefore, the White House Press Association pulled the clips. Fair and balanced.

The Colbert Report is sometime too painful to watch......and watching the roast is excruciating. Colbert stood ten feet from The President and cut loose on him. It was like the scene in Hamlet: Hamlet does a mini play for the court of his uncle murdering his father the King and marrying his mom, and King Claudius and Gertrude are forced to watch and clap politely. (Actually, Laura Bush refused to shake Colbert's hand after the performance). I am surprised Colbert made it home alive, and stunned that there is still video out there to watch.

You have to see it: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/04/29.html or search at DailyKos. Colbert's own website ( www.colbertnation.com ) also has it.

The MainStream Media's take on Colbert's performance was that he bombed. Mothertucker Carlson said that is was the biggest and most embarrassing flop in TV history.....right up there with Roseanne's butchering of the National Anthem.

No.....he was grinding those gutless fucks and the Teflon Chimp mercilessly, and they were stunned and embarrassed into silence. And, next day they were deafening in their silence.

If you want to say ''Thank You!'' there is another website: www.thankyoustephencolbert.org This morning it had 43,000 recorded thank-you's. I just checked tonight, and the site had crashed from too much traffic.

Colbert rated a slot as one of Time Magazine's Top 100 most influential people in this week's issue. The blurb was written by NBC anchor Brian Williams, who points out that Colbert's show gets only a million viewers a day....tiny compared to the 25-30 million who watch him. Still, virtually all of Colbert's viewers are in the advertising world's most sought after age group, the 18-35 crew. You guys don't have much money.....but you spend every nickel you can lay your hands on.

Where is the disconnect between being courted and stalked by advertisers and manufacturers and completely ignored by politicians? You have no health insurance, a medieval minimum wage structure, Medicare and Social Security will be bankrupt before you get there, and they are borrowing from your retirement to give fat tax breaks to the tycoons who own the companies where you work making lattés for seven bucks an hour.

Oh, yeah. I remember. You don't vote, and you don't give any money to the few politicians with balls enough go to bat for you.

At least you have the two smartest comedians on the planet on your team in Colbert and Jon Stewart. My generation had Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy as inspirational leaders. How ironic is it that the ballsiest political voice in your court right now is a comedian?

Come to think of it, except for Jack Murtha and Russ Feingold, Stephen Colbert is the ballsiest voice I can see ANYWHERE.