And to give a man luck, he must fall in the sea

[sovay]

The first legal drink I ever ordered was a margarita, because I was in college and my friends took me out to the now-defunct Iguana Cantina on Moody Street. It was fun in the ritual sense, but as a mixological experience it was kind of a bust; I concluded I did not like tequila. Further research suggested I did not like tequila no matter its price point or its fellow-ingredients. It was a great and pleasant surprise when I discovered that I really do like mezcal, but I chalked that up to the smoke.

It should surprise no one that I have found a surefire method of making me like tequila, and that method is: put seaweed in it.

spatch and I celebrated our fourth anniversary last night at Waypoint. It is our first repeat anniversary restaurant and it did just as well by us this time: the aesthetic remains a drowned undersea shimmer, the dining room full of plankton-green neon and tiles like wet slate and the jellyfish shine of glass bells, and the food remains spectacular. The bread plate no longer contains the salt-black sourdough made with squid ink that I loved so last year, but there was ink swirled in the white bean dip and sugar kelp in the smoked butter and the breads made with kelp and colatura di alici tasted both sweetly and pungently of the sea. The salt cod fritters with smoked lemon and chestnut aioli reminded Rob of childhood summers on the Isles of Shoals, where the cod were called dunfish and he watched them sun-dry. The small, tender, plentiful snails were not wiped out by their crunchy garlic butter any more than the succulent (a much-misused word, but I don't in this case have a better one) lobster tail by its bed of Szechuan pepper-fried black rice. I ordered a cocktail called the Submarine because it was made with torched nori tequila and aquavit; it was breezy and briny but not parching. Rob got the Forest Gold with maple sap and whisky, appropriately woody and very smooth. Between the urchin, the bottarga, the pecorino, and the smoked egg yolk which split and glazed into the pasta when cut with a fork, we were expecting the uni bucatini to be an umamibomb, but if so it was a surprisingly delicate example of the species, chewy, sea-sweet, full of unexpectedly melting flavors. Rob's milk punch was as transparent as its ice cube and tasted like the best aspects of a piña colada and tom kha gai. I got the Professor because it's hard to ruin absinthe, cognac, and orgeat, and this drink didn't. For dessert, Rob had the cinnamon-sugar donuts with coffee ganache and I thought I was ordering an apple crostata with fried ice cream, but it turned out to be rye ice cream, which was even nicer. Our last drinks were absinthe, which I will never stop associating with the cloudy green of a breaking wave. We walked back into Harvard Square and browsed the basement of the Harvard Book Store, having spent the late afternoon and early evening on the harborwalk instead of a museum, watching a searchlight swivel through the blowing rain, right-of-way lights of planes lifting off out of Logan, the oarlock creak of moored boats and pilings in the rocking wash of the tide. LED streetlight is sharper on wet brick and cobbles than the mercury vapor of noir, but it lies on the moving surface of water in the right pleated bands. We followed the Fort Point Channel back to Cabot Yard and discovered the street art we had seen last month belongs to a public park called Underground Ink Block, which may be hipsterishly named but has wonderful murals of licensed but not tame graffiti. What could we do after that much smell and sound of the sea but want to eat it?

Today it angers me not just that the news is apocalyptically bad, but that the news is so deliberately apocalyptically bad. Decisions made knowingly from nothing but cruelty and greed. It is not new, it is not new from this administration, it is not new from the world, but the magnitude of the cruelty and the greed and the carelessness feels like it's growing. I don't feel disillusioned, just furious. I want to protect people I love and people I don't even know and I can barely pay the rent. I don't want to take up believing in hell, but I have to be careful about the ill I wish on the architects of these decisions in this life which is the only one I believe in. I do not wish it to be generalized. I want to be here to celebrate after they're gone. But I do want them gone.

I am not sure if my latest Patreon review got lost in its timestamp; I watched F. W. Murnau's Phantom (1922) the night before last and whatever I was expecting from its title and provenance, proto-noir was not it. I may be feeling more than ordinarily self-conscious about my film writing because I have just started reading James Agee and he is as good as his reputation. Seriously, he is a delight. I can trust him to see the same movies I do, even if we feel differently about them. He was appreciating Harold Lloyd in the years when I thought nobody was. And I am deeply sorry that his Studs Lonigan trilogy starring James Cagney and Mickey Rooney was never made.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I mean to read some James Agee one day. Your film-review entry went up! I got a notification. I'm waiting for a moment when I have the headspace to read properly.

I don't like the **delight** with which the strong are sitting down at table to feast upon the weak--that was what was stabbing me yesterday.

LED streetlight is sharper on wet brick and cobbles than the mercury vapor of noir, but it lies on the moving surface of water in the right pleated bands. --beautiful. I'm glad the evening was, too.

[sovay]

I mean to read some James Agee one day.

I think you would like him a lot. He has precise and colorful language and the kind of eye for detail as well as structure that I really enjoy. I opened the volume and the first thing I saw was his review of Phantom Lady (1944), which concludes:

Miss Harrison, with notable help from mood-wise Cameraman Elwood Bredell, invests this grade-B plot with a lot of style and scare. Some of the dialogue is ham, and toward the end the picture's edginess blunts considerably. But the bar and the bartender, the damp night streets, a late-night elevated platform, and a jam session that look like an expressionistic death dance, have a good deal of Hitchcock's sinister melo-realistic melancholy.

Which pretty much matches how I feel about the movie (I pay more attention to Robert Siodmak and less to Hitchcock). And that was ego-boosting in the sense that it made my opinion feel shared, but also what I mean about trusting that we were seeing the same movie. There are critics where I have no idea what they saw, but it wasn't the movie I did.

Your film-review entry went up! I got a notification. I'm waiting for a moment when I have the headspace to read properly.

Thank you for the data point! I do not expect everybody on the planet to rush to comment on my reviews, but it was a little weird that absolutely no one except Rob was interacting with this one, and it did in fact post with the wrong timestamp (backdated about four hours—I think it restored unnecessarily from a saved draft, but I wasn't sure how to fix it afterward without making the problem worse), which made me worry it was not showing up somehow on people's feeds.

I don't like the **delight** with which the strong are sitting down at table to feast upon the weak--that was what was stabbing me yesterday.

Yes. And that makes them exactly the kind of people who should not be permitted to become strong, because they have no ethical or even harmless use for their strength. I want them gone.

--beautiful. I'm glad the evening was, too.

Thank you. It was a really lovely time.

[edit] I'm sorry I took so long to respond to your review comment; I got distracted by Patreon blowing up.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, Patreon -_- It went and stated explicitly that it was out to do what I feared it was doing: namely, rid itself of all the bit players on the platform.

There's definitely room out there for someone to do the microfinance version of Patreon, someone to facilitate the exchange that Patreon facilitated, but not so greedily. The problem is that it would have to be some kind of nonprofit, which would bring with it all the headaches of funding a nonprofit. Although, frankly, people like me would pay a bit to support the concept of a platform that enables sponsorship of small-scale creators, so it's not impossible.

[sovay]

It went and stated explicitly that it was out to do what I feared it was doing: namely, rid itself of all the bit players on the platform.

Leaving everyone I know both high and dry and uncomfortably unsure if the ethics of the service changed, or if it was always intended to benefit only the lucky, shiny few, and the rest of us were something like bait or oversight.

Although, frankly, people like me would pay a bit to support the concept of a platform that enables sponsorship of small-scale creators, so it's not impossible.

I think you're not alone: I'm seeing a lot of complaint about the scarcity of other options. I just don't think I can make it happen myself.

[asakiyume]

I just don't think I can make it happen myself.

I hear you. I understand what's needed but I don't have the tech skills to make it happen either.

Essentially what's needed is a mechanism for repeat donation. People build this stuff for themselves, but what Patreon did was provide one place where lots of people could gather; not everyone had to set it up for themselves.

[cmcmck]

'I don't feel disillusioned, just furious.'

After forty odd years of campaigning for the most basic of human rights and still waiting for some, I hear you.

[sovay]

After forty odd years of campaigning for the most basic of human rights and still waiting for some, I hear you.

Like, I know people can be dreadful to one another. I just don't need it repeatedly proven on such a daily basis, you know?

[gwynnega]

Tequila with seaweed in it sounds wonderful, as does rye ice cream.

[sovay]

Tequila with seaweed in it sounds wonderful, as does rye ice cream.

So far Waypoint has served me nori gin, squid ink mezcal, and nori tequila, and all I can say is that they should keep it coming. I don't think it would ever have occurred to me to make rye ice cream, but it was delicious!

[brigdh]

I similarly have long disliked tequila, but just yesterday tried mezcal for the first time and was also surprised to like it! It was the smoke flavor for me too; I'm a big fan of smoke flavors. For the longest time a coffee shop in my neighborhood kept lapsang souchong on hand for me, even though I was literally the only customer who ever ordered it.

Your descriptions of the food at Waypoint are just as breathtaking as last year. I need to visit Boston just for this restaurant.