Do I Even Know Myself?

When I'm in New York, I like to stop by Le Pain Quotidien and get their parfait of fruit, yogurt and granola for breakfast. Making myself ill on a fruit parfait is sort of a New York tradition for me, like strolling in Central Park or buying dusty things at establishments that put the "front" in storefront.

Le Pain Quotidien's parfait is either $5.71 or nearly $8.00. The cashier decides for you. The likelihood that it will be $8.00 increases when they have run out of pre-made ones and need to order from the kitchen. It's been explained to me that there are two sizes, but I'm never able to verify a difference between the two.

If I still lived in New York, I would be very aggressive about making sure I get the right size and price. Now that I'm a visitor, my attitude is, what the hell, I'm in New York, and it's a given that I'm going to hemorrhage money. Why not make it $9.00?

Last week the counter staff was so busy getting every other person's order wrong that they forgot to pick up my parfait (did you know that's French for perfect?) from the kitchen. I politely asked after my order and it was apologetically brought to the front. This I liked: The cashier asked if I would like a free pastry for my trouble.

It was an unexpected gesture, because I was not mad about the delay. I was in Le Pain Quotidien and had been conditioned to fully expect the delay.

Yes, I said, I would love a free pastry. We were too far from the pastry area for me to peruse the options. "How about a pumpkin muffin?" she said.

"Ehhhmmm... I'm not really a muffin person." I felt kind of douchey saying this, because she was offering me something free that I hadn't expected, but I may as well be honest, right? Historically, I have not found muffins to be remotely compelling. You might as well give me a free rock.

"How about a chocolate croissant?" I didn't really want that either, but even I know when to move on, so I took it. It was pretty unremarkable, and I threw half of it away, but it was free, and so that made it pretty enjoyable.

Well here's the kicker: Ever since that day last week, I've wanted a damn muffin. Not a pumpkin one, to be sure, but some kind of muffin experience. It's just sort of lingering there in the back of my mind. Like, perhaps I've been unfair to the muffin. Maybe it deserves another shot, you know?

I'll probably get one tomorrow. But it will be at the work cafeteria, not some bougie place, and I will be paying for it. It's likely to be unsatisfying. But there's nothing to be done about that. The muffin is now my destiny.

Music: "Constant Craving"

Three Books That Are Simultaneously Sexy and Depressing.

1. A Sport and a Pastime, James Salter. A Yale dropout has a a love affair with a French girl, played out in French towns you've never heard of and imagined by a somewhat strange and definitely dirty narrator. The occasionally excessive prose is balanced by devastatingly real moments, sure dialogue and a saturating atmosphere. Sample passage: "There are terrible moments in which one sees love with cold eyes. Her face is a shopgirl's, Dean can see it plainly, pretty but cheap. He is overwhelmed with impatience. He wants only to be gone from here."

2. Damage, Josephine Hart. The book is the basis for the awesomely melodramatic movie starring Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche. A man has an affair with his son's fiancee, with a spectacularly tragic outcome. Sample passage: "Guilt, guilt, its pious expression alone is in fact today's greatest absolution. Just say the guilt prayer, 'I feel guilty,' and hey presto, that's the punishment. So punished, and therefore cleansed, one can continue with the crime."

3. Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Vladimir Nabokov. You know Lolita is sexy in a very wrong way, but it's nothing compared to this incestuous epic. I don't have this tome with me, so I'll rely on this page for a sample passage: "What (Ada asks) are eyes anyway? Two holes in the mask of life. What (she asks) would they mean to a creature from another corpuscle or milk bubble whose organ of sight was (say) an internal parasite resembling the written word ‘deified’? What, indeed, would a pair of beautiful (human, lemurian, owlish) eyes mean to anybody if found lying on the seat of a taxi?"

What else?

A Lift.

Every once in awhile, a cabbie will shock me by actually getting out of the car immediately at the outset and ferrying my bag to the trunk, instead of a) popping the trunk so that I can hoist in my own luggage, but only after being asked a minimum of two times to open said trunk or b) watching me struggle to lug my bag into the backseat because it has taken too long for him to figure out that he's supposed to pop the trunk, even though we are at a train station.

Sadly, it's so rare for a cabbie to do anything serviceable (in D.C. and N.Y.C., at least) that even the most minimal of gestures seems like first-class service. Wow, you conferred with me on our route AND your cab does not smell like a dead person? You, sir, deserve a 30% tip today!

Today's cabbie stowed my bag promptly and had a largely odor-free cab, so I submitted to the blaring Arab talk radio quite happily, and tried not to get too bothered by the fact that the cabbie's ID was nowhere to be seen (I always assumed the ID is mandatory, though it is not on the NYC cab passengers' bill of rights, which I am just seeing for the first time and finding hilarious).

He muttered something about traffic. I told him I'd been informed that many Jets fans were in the area.

"So thees means a lot of drunken eediots?" he said. Ha, yes, I suppose so, I answered. So there was a game tonight? I figured so, but I don't watch football. Is it a finals game, I was asked? I repeated that I'm not a football fan, that I had been advised about the situation by someone else.

"Is strange thing about being human, that people get so excited about something that has no importance for their lives," the cabbie said. I nodded in agreement, because I have never gotten particularly involved in a sports game, and so I could share his lack of connection to all those people in Jets jerseys, if not his antipathy.

He talked about how people become blind to the things that need attention in their lives and how they become attached to a -- what was the phrase? A crowd... a crowd mentality. Yes.

"It's like with celebrities, people following celebrities ... Why do you want to die for somebody who is not interested in knowing who you are?" This hit slightly more close to home for me. I have taken a not-insignificant interest in celebrities, as a rule. And, viewed from the cabbie's seat, this seems quite pathetic. Since when did Prince or Angelina or George or Jude ever take an interest in what's going on with ME?

"It's a distraction," I say, stating the obvious from the backseat. "It's a distraction from people's problems." The cabbie understands, but doesn't necessarily approve. I momentarily reflect on all the things I'm probably not reflecting on because of my silly preoccupation which such things as the end of Ben Harper and Laura Dern's marriage, or what the hell happened to Josh Hartnett.

I almost wanted to scurry away in frivolous American shame by the end of the cab ride. But the cabbie wasn't trying to be adversarial. He was commiserating with a non-sports fan. Surely I, like him, was focused on What's Important. But I'm not, really.

He pulled into a bank of curb space near Madison Square Garden. "I'll let you off here, but it's no standing. How can we let off our passengers if they won't let us stop?" He smiled and shrugged as he put my bag down. I thanked him and wondered what it would be like to be so relentlessly sensible all the time.

Music: "Pop Life"

No B.S.

"When I wrote Kitchen Confidential my business model was, 'I Don’t Give a Shit,' and I'm trying very hard to keep that as my operating business model. I never, ever think, what will they like, what do they expect, what should I do next. The business model is to not be full of shit. That's about as much as I can hope for from myself, and to write something that’s entertaining to me and presumably to others like me -- that is, other cooks." -- Anthony Bourdain

How many people want to live this way, but do not? How many people can only afford to say they live this way after they've made it, but not when they're actually at a low point, an underdog, struggling to make it -- or just simply struggling not to disappear?

How many people have ever gotten so far by being frank as Anthony Bourdain has?

Some rare souls appear on the 2010 MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient page. The videos are worth watching, if you're looking for life inspiration. Conversely, they're freaking depressing -- I have no hope, for example, of being this accomplished or looking this amazing at age 48 (an act of genius in and of itself). But I can choose to be heartened by these no-bullshit people who are being honored, in many cases, beautifully late in life.

Music: "Are You Experienced"

He Said, She Said.

I can't walk into a copy shop without thinking about this classic sketch from the Chappelle Show. Not fair, perhaps, but copy shops are like the DMV, the post office, economy flights and HMOs: You go in braced for the absolute worst.

It was very quiet at the FedEx Print & Ship tonight -- like the calm before a storm. One placid-looking guy was waiting behind a confused old lady at the register. All of us waited patiently while the lady talked her issues out with the cashier. No worries! Our short line advanced, and then... something happened.

I don't have any experience with retail registers, so I don't have much insight here, but it seems that the cashier rung placid guy's purchase on his coworker's number after she had already closed her register. A lot of discussion ensued. "Wait. How did it end up on my register? You entered the wrong number," said the coworker. Cashier guy seemed very confused and kept asking how to void the transaction.

There would be no voiding.

"Just give him his change. My register will be short, and yours will have a surplus. You'll have to ask Julia what to do." Cashier man did not like this answer. He immediately raised his eyebrows in a look that said "Oh no you didn't just refer me to JULIA" and gave a small, persecuted sigh.

"I don't know how this all becomes MY fault, Juan! You're the one who made a mistake," the woman said. It was escalating to open conflict, a state that always makes me retreat, despite the many years I lived in New York City. I immediately occupied myself with my phone while Placid Guy continued to wait impeccably for his change.

"Do you want to talk outside?" Juan asked his coworker in a conversational tone. "No I don't want to talk outside," she said. "This is ridiculous."

It was quiet again as Juan managed to deliver Placid Guy's change. My turn. "Hello, may I help you?" Juan said, as if nothing at all had happened. Oh but something had happened. I warily stated my business.

While Juan attended to my request, his coworker (let's just call her Juanita) was mouthing words to herself with a neutral expression on her face. I saw "not my fault" pass through her lips. At first, it was hard to tell who had the upper hand in this fight. Juan was bespectacled and obviously had a better sense of how to behave in front of customers; Juanita was on the defensive and attitudinal, but seemed more knowledgable.

Juan, meanwhile, screwed up my request, and then got slightly defensive about it. That was the last piece of evidence needed for this Judge Judy: The court finds Juan guilty of screwing up Juanita's register, and of being an ineffectual d.b. about it.

I guess my relationship with open conflict is love-hate, because now I was waiting and hoping for the brewing dispute to erupt in my presence. And it did.

"I'm not signing anything! YOU'RE the one who made the mistake." Now really free to let loose, Juanita was going OFF. Juan's murmured, calm replies only brought more heated denials from his adversary. "No. No. Juan. No. I DID close my register. I DID close my register." Juan, in turn, was getting quietly sassier. "Next time, you need to make sure you fully close your drawer when you end your shift."

I had to hand it to Juanita, even though she was being totally unprofessional. Juan's doltish obstinacy would have had me in tears by now, but she was unbowed. Meanwhile, this dispute wasn't worth more than $5, if I remember Placid Guy's purchase correctly.

"No, YOU'RE unacceptable," she was saying, as I left unnoticed. Another poor sap stood bewildered at the register, not knowing what he'd walked into.

Failed Candidacy.

Here's a draft of my speech from my run for treasurer in elementary school. I did not win. Pretty clear signs here that I was no Obama.

Hello. As you know, I am Christina Nunez and running for treasurer. Though I have had no previous experience in this job, I think I could do it, because I am an honest, good student who can take the responsibility of handling money. I am scarcely late or absent, and, if absent, I am responsible enough to make sure I have a replacement. So, when you mark your ballot, remember Christina Nunez for treasurer.

Windows on the World.

Normally Saturday mornings are reserved for catching up with magazines and my couch, so it's not as if I would have turned on the TV anyway, but I really wasn't going to turn it on this weekend.

Still, Sept. 11 found me. I picked up my New Yorker and there was the profile of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, conveying all his vainglorious, devastating awfulness. Outside, there was the blue, newly cool sky, almost (but not quite) as clear as it was on the day that acrid, dark smoke blew across it in such a way that I could never look at a vivid September day the same way again (is it possible to gain a sense memory of a very particular set of weather conditions?). There was my mom noting what I know but never manage to fully absorb: that Sept. 11 was always a marked day for her, because it is her beloved, departed father's birthday. And there was a matchbox I found while rummaging through stuff at my parents'.

The first time I went to New York, at age 13, was a surprise. We had gone on a cruise for a family vacation, and my dad notified us that we were staying an extra day in the city where we'd docked. For us Potomac kids, it was EXCITING. We ate dinner at Maxwell's Plum (I saved the psychedelic balloon that was tied to the back of my chair) and watched the rollerskaters and break-dancers in Central Park. That's about all I remember from the visit, and it was enough: I definitely wanted to live in New York City when I grew up.

For my 16th birthday, my parents generously offered to take me on a short trip somewhere. I chose, of course, New York. We stayed in a tiny, stuffy room, but I didn't care, because the room was at the Plaza. We rode in a hansom cab, visited Trump Tower and Tiffany (it was the '80s, OK?), had dinner at Tavern on the Green, saw a revival of 42nd Street on Broadway, and had drinks (non-alc for me, natch) at Windows on the World at the World Trade Center.

It was the best 16th birthday I could ask for. I saved the matchbox from Windows on the World, where it sat in a tin for years and didn't resurface until I happened to pull out a box of stuff yesterday.

In a different box, I found a journal from second grade, stapled together with a construction-paper cover. The third entry, on that paper with alternating dotted lines used to teach handwriting, was carefully lettered:

Monday, Sept. 11 1978
Today we
switched for
reading and math.
Some of us go
to Mrs.
Stalfort.

In future entries, I'd noted the first day of fall, Yom Kippur, Friday the 13th, Election Day, Mickey Mouse's 50th birthday, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas. Made me wonder what schoolchildren today will write in their journals about Sept. 11.

J. Choclatier.

I've been pretty sour about the whole cupcake trend in D.C., because a) I'm inclined to disdain anything that's been relentlessly hyped and b) I honestly just don't really care that much about cupcakes.

But everywhere you go, and everywhere you click, it's cupcakes. Cupcake sales! Cupcake signs! Cupcake stories! Cupcake tweets! Cupcake shops! Hello Cupcake! Red Velvet Cupcake! And the mother of them all, Georgetown Cupcake!

The owners of Georgetown Cupcake have achieved something far more genius than any feat of baking: They have managed to get TLC to make a show about their shop. In the olden days, bakeries hoping to ignite a frenzy of publicity would strive for a mention on, say, Sex and the City. But now that absolutely every service industry can qualify as entertainment, making cupcakes now merits a whole show unto itself.

My annoyance at the cupcake trend is admittedly irrational. Had I ever even tried one of the famous cupcakes? No. Had I watched the show? No. And don't I love sweets? Yes. It seemed only fair to at least try the darn things, if only to cement my surly viewpoint on it all. So we set off for a walk from my Dupont Circle apartment, through the holiday weekend throngs in Georgetown, and up to the door of 3301 M St. to taste the hype firsthand. And we encountered this.



The line stretched up the block. We peered inside. Was it really cupcakes they were serving? Could it be crack, or $100 bills, instead? No, it looked like cupcakes. A woman sat dazed in front of the shop. She affirmed that she had made it through the line and procured her treat. Was it worth it? "It was OK, but nothing ... that ... great," she shrugged. Of course not. How could any cupcake be worth that long, sweaty line?

We turned away and crossed M St. I wasn't exactly crestfallen, having been partly afraid that I would try a cupcake and actually like one, thereby becoming just another who had succumbed. As we turned the corner, a chalkboard sign caught my eye, and I stopped. "Can we walk down here?" I requested. We made our way down a seemingly empty section of 33rd St., across from the crowds at Georgetown Cupcake.



I'm not necessarily a big gourmet chocolate person, either. A Heath bar or a Rolo will do me just fine, thank you very much. Yes, dark chocolate is very healthy. Flavonoids, percentage dark cacao... What were you saying, again?

But J. Chocolatier drew me in. Here's how:

1. Put up a sign right across from an overcrowded Georgetown Cupcake.
2. Write "fleur de sel and caramel" somewhere on the sign
3. Make the shop a little haven of delights

A little note in the window promised that this was a happy place. And so it was, but more in a luxe, museum-of-chocolate way than in an aggressively cheery, Willy Wonka way. Behind the counter, a modest selection of confections and baked goods waited under small domes at varying heights, little spaceships of pleasure hovering so close, yet so far behind all that glass.



The price of admission to these spaceships is not insignificant: Truffles are $2 each. But they deliver you the journey promised. As I mentioned, it was the mention of fleur-del-sel-spiked caramel -- not chocolate -- that brought me here. And the fleur del sel chocolates (center, below) were the perfect mixture of smooth chocolate, sweet caramel and crunchy salt.



A green tea variety (far left, above) was nice too, but without seeing the name and the matcha dusted on top, I'm not sure I would have known which flavor it was supposed to be. But one last selection made a serendipitous stop all the more so: one sign called out a basil flavor (far right, above), made with herbs from the chocolate maker's garden. Basil, you say? Come on now.

But yes. The sweet, bright basil creme leapt onto my tongue from its silky chocolate exterior. It was probably the most original and tasty chocolate I've ever had. Maybe that's because it challenged my expectations and then exceeded them, much like J. Chocolatier itself did with that sign across from the madness.

So much better than a cupcake.

Details:

J. Chocolatier
1039 33 St. NW (off M St.)
Truffles $2 each

Photography by sirmichael

UncMo Hall of Fame: Jan Brewer.

I usually confine posts to my own uncomfortable moments, but this one from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is so transcendent that it has become the first inductee into my just-founded UncMo Hall of Fame.



As a Democrat, I should be happy to see a Republican eat it this badly on camera, but the moment is so painful to watch that I feel sorry for her. I couldn't even watch it again for the sake of writing this post.

I hesitate to bring up the big A, but that did come to mind. Whether it was a function of something neurological or simply a spectacularly bad slip-up, it's a moment that we call can look at on our worst days and say, "Hey, at least my mind didn't go completely, irrevocably blank for several seconds on camera during a key debate in my political career."

Meltdown.

The Whole Foods on P Street has a nice little outdoor cafe area, where you can take your very valuable healthy salad and sit for a spell. It was sunny today and a bit warm, but the tables were in shade and almost full with people relaxing and eating.

The vibe was pierced by a voice near the store's exit. "EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME!" A woman was calling after someone leaving the store at the same time as she, but I couldn't make out what came after that and no one really responded to her, so I turned back to my kale salad and magazine.

The woman continued to talk, lower now. I glanced back at her. She had a neat blond bob and looked to be in her 30s. She was dressed in a white tank top and black pants. I figured she was a high-strung yuppie who had a run-in with a rude person. I figured she was now relating this to a friend on her cell phone. Except I couldn't see a cell phone. Intent on not staring and also enjoying my meal, I turned away.

But it was so hard not to look. She wasn't talking on a cell phone. She was talking to herself. Then she burst out again.

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" She mentioned something about trash and seemed very upset by something that had happened. People just stared at her. She continued to stand by the exit, talking, and she was getting harder to ignore.

A woman who was studying at the table 2 o'clock from me mouthed, "She's crazy" with an amused look on her face to the woman sitting at my 9 o'clock. "I know," the 9 o'clock whispered, as the newly identified crazy woman continued to mutter to the left of us all.

She brought her cardboard carton of salad to a table at 10 o'clock. Some snippets I managed to make out:

"Someone in my life is disturbing me and I don't know who it is"

"Get your crotch out of my face"

"I don't mind being laughed at"

It was relatively quiet for a bit, but now there was no concentrating on my magazine. There was a tension in the air attached to the fact that there was a "crazy" person in our midst.

The anticipated outburst came after a couple of minutes, and it was directed at a man and woman standing about 10 feet away, just talking. "Excuse me. Excuse me! May I eat without you engaging in sexual activity in front of my face?" The couple gave no sign that they heard her, but she continued on about how she was being thwarted in her attempt to eat lunch because of people having sex in her face, even though there was nothing so much as PDA in her vicinity.

The situation had gone from being confusing to amusing to downright disturbing. In a city, you're bound to run into a certain amount of "crazy." It's par for the course, but it usually comes from expected sources: people who look like they are homeless, drug addicts, alcoholics, old or some combination of the above. This source was relatively young, decently dressed, very sober and so crisp in her insanity. It was voiced in such a plaintive, articulate, righteous, prissy tone that it was hard to discount right off the bat.

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" Her attention was now directed at a young man standing with a woman, at least 25 feet away. "Could you please stop pointing your erection at me? I'm trying to eat. You're really sick, you should see a psychologist. I'm trying to eat and I don't need to see your erection." The man just stared at her, half-smiling in disbelief. What was her disorder? Schizophrenia? How did she manage to make it day-to-day -- to earn enough to get her lunch at Whole Foods and buy decent clothes? How does someone not get destroyed by such an illness? Had she been abused, was that the reason for the fixation on sexuality? What meds was she supposed to be on? Wasn't there anyone looking after her?

I was torn between being so disturbed that I had to leave and being so enthralled that I had to stay. But before I could decide, she was gone in a flash, surprisingly quietly, off to reveal her torment to another segment of the city.