Further Seattle Adventures

My brother Jerry, who knows of these things, says the name for my space-time dislocation is "Jet Lag." Sheesh. Who knew? And I thought I was unique in my disorientation. Never mind.

Avatar was awesome. The sheer beauty of the film (and in 3-D IMAX, as a bonus) made me overlook the fact that Cameron stole from EVERYONE, including himself! If you've ever seen Dances With Wolves, you've got the basic plot--evil capitalists/military try to destroy a gentle, beautiful race of indigenous peoples, an ordinary soldier becomes assimilated into the tribe, falls in love and goes native, fights his own race to save his new friends, yada, yada. There were Transformer/Terminator weapon machines, fantasy forest creatures a la Star Wars, Phenomenon plant communication, even a little bit of To Hell and Back Audie Murphy battle shenanigans. All surrounded by James Horner's ponderous, derivative musical score, plagiarized from Samuel Barber (Horner is such a musical slut) and overlaid with a lot of chanting tribal drums.

But oh my goodness, the visuals were breathtaking. And it passed the storytelling test, despite the trite plot--I couldn't wait to see what would happen next.

After the movie, Alex, Christy, Juli and I bussed downtown to the edge of Capitol Hill, and embarked on a tapas meal--what Christy called Spanish dim sum. Little plates of goodies to share--dates wrapped in bacon with vinaigrette greens and picked onions; carnitas pork with flour tortillas and tomatillo sauce; tiny baked blue cheese souffles with port wine reduction; fundido cheese fondue with dippers like Granny Smith apples, garlic crostini, and spicy linguisa sausage; Puerco Asado with pico de gallo; clams, prawns and calamari with fideo noodles in a spicy tomato sauce; potato croquettes with tomato jam and sharp Cotija cheese; all topped off with a bottle of Spanish champagne. At the end of the meal, we all shared a Chocolate Diablo, a giant slab of dark chocolate mousse spiked with cayenne, sitting on a bed of burnt meringue, drizzled with caramel sauce and sprinkled with cocoa nibs and bitter almonds. Wow. It was a stunning meal, and we got a 50% discount (even on the liquor), because Christy is the night auditor at the Alexis Hotel and had a coupon.

We then took a hike to the bus stop (a welcome relief--all those little bites add up to a gargantuan meal!) and accompanied Juli to her hotel, The Monaco, so she could begin her work shift at 9. Nice place, very classy.

Then we all walked some more and took our respective buses to West Seattle. Alex got me settled in the back room (what a cute house he has--more on this later), and in the words of Samuel Pepys, "And so, to bed."