UNSOLICITED ADVICE
I’m not sure if anyone has specifically asked, “Gilmore, Gilmore, please, what are your thoughts on what to do about this election horror movie we’ve been so unceremoniously dropped into?”—but I can only attribute that to shyness. It would feel peculiar if I barreled ahead without said horror movie acknowledged, as part of what has delayed the latest Live at the Gilmore was my attempt to gain equilibrium after (like you?) having my head/heart/spirit/being stoved in, cripes a-flippin’-mighty. Friends, I am not ashamed to say, I’ve been a mess. So please indulge my unquantifiable despair as it finds an outlet in the much-cherished tradition of UNSOLICITED ADVICE.
UNSOLICITED ADVICE: resist. Reflect. Listen. Know yourself. Know your world. Be a pal to the world. Be a pal to your pals. Be a pal to yourself. Think of the long game. Be practical as f*ck. Be careful of prescriptive and unsolicited advice. Show up. Recognize ways problematic beliefs pervade your thinking despite your best (or, let’s be honest, sometimes middling) efforts and deepest wishes for this not to be so. Get rest. If nothing else, try not to lie to yourself about how you feel. Take insight, wisdom, strategy, canniness, plotting, guidance, and truth wherever you can find it—your dog, General Patton, Mary Kay sales manuals, ancient Sumerian proverbs, Desus and Mero, Faust, soup recipes, Bell Hooks, self-help books you’d be embarrassed to be seen with, Madame Curie, your slot-machine addicted aunt, Marion Woodward, Amber Rose. TAKE NEWS BREAKS. That divine Andrew W.K. would add party to this list, I expect, but I’m not quite there yet.
BABY’S GOT SNACK
For those of you who fear I am normalizing our circumstances by moving onto something like a review of caffeinated almonds, specifically OVEN ROASTED CAFÉ MOCHA COFFEE ALMONDS, I suppose I am, although how normal can caffeinated almonds be really? So many snacks nowadays are just seeming like…some sort of dare, aren’t they? Almonds, like internet dating, are something I keep intending to bring more into my life. They meet you halfway, almonds do. They hold up their end of the bargain of being actual food and tasting as good as the humans that manhandle them into bags, cans and boxes will allow. As a 24-almond serving of OVEN ROASTED CAFÉ MOCHA COFFEE ALMONDS equals ¼ cup of coffee, you do need to eat 96 for the equivalent of an entire cup of coffee, which is kind of a lot at one sitting. I believe maybe a better approach is to knock back a couple of Red Bulls and employ the almonds as a sort of IV drip, nibbling here and there, enjoying the sustaining dribble of caffeine and protein.
Cappuccino/café mocha/mocha/coffee crème flavored anything (i.e. Coffee Nut MnM’s, Cappuccino-flavored potato chips) invariably have the taste of the parvenu coffee drinks in vending machines, which always taste powdery as they actual are being made up of instant coffee, instant hot chocolate and fake creamer. The effect here is very similar albeit with the addition of some saltiness. Are OVEN ROASTED CAFÉ MOCHA COFFEE ALMONDS necessary? Or more to the point, are they anyone’s favorites? Possibly. Maybe not vast swathes of the population, but someone out there loves ‘em. At the risk of sounding awfully cute or something, I’d like to find a way for squirrels and chipmunks to review this/any/all nut products (as long as the sugar/salt would not harm).
I feel like I should be remiss considering the transitory nature of the micro seasons in a DunkinDonut Year if I didn’t say a word or two about the BOSTON KREME CROISSANT DONUT, in case it turns out you want one and didn’t know it was harvest time.
I was, as always, of course, perfectly willing to take it on its own terms. Obviously, this is not Escoffier and to sneer at it is just stupid (and, anyway, like I know anything about pastry). But, on its own terms, I was upset by the paucity of frosting. A miserly—at best—squiggle. To the frosting-haters among you, this mightn’t be so dismaying. As someone who will buy a DD Boston Cream Donut to peel off the frosted top layer and (wastefully, firstworlded-ly) toss out the rest, it seems a lost opportunity and to strip the donut of some its dignity being in the fine Boston Cream cake and donut tradition.
Well, OK, I got over it. As I stood in my kitchen, idly chewing my way round, so to speak, I became aware I was paying less attention to the taste and texture than trying to isolate the circumstances when a BOSTON KREME CROISSANT DONUT would taste its very best. Clearly, standing in my kitchen was not it. Which is not to say it didn’t taste good. It had the charms of sugar, fat, and flour, even if the croissant aspirations were a little defeated by the 3:00 p.m. time I purchased it. Still, context is everything, right? I considered where BOSTON KREME CROISSANT DONUT would shine most. My conclusion: being rescued after stuck in a mineshaft, very hungry and frightened, for several days, and emerging into the bright day and rejoicing crowds. A drink of lovely cool water. Then someone hands you a BOSTON KREME CROISSANT DONUT and you taste the gush of bloppy vanilla pudding and look up at that bright and brilliant sun, and know this is what heaven is like. So perhaps you might try this out, should you go down the BOSTON KREME CROISSANT DONUT path. This all sounds rather damning but I don’t mean it to be. Oh, well. I wonder why it is ‘kreme’ not ‘cream’ which to point out now is definitely burying the lead.
LIMERICKS
It is time for some LIMERICKS. How do you know? I don’t know, you just know.
I once knew a young man who drank laudanum
That he hid under his Grandpapa’s ottoman
He was so circumspect
No one ever did suspect
Although his Gran finally caught on to him
There was a smart young lady from Spain
Whose blouses were beset with coffee stains
She invented a cleansing unguent
Which nuns could brew in the convent
And grew rich as a lumber baron from Maine
Herr Clark lived in an old city in Denmark
Considered his heart to be safely bulwarked
Then he met such a strange stranger
Who showed him such unusual dangers
That oh dear how fast crumbled his heart’s rampart
BIO (kind of) Here are some of my other projects I am in the thick of, should you be interested: Weather Weapon (band) , Weather Weapon
on-line novel (a potboiler!) My Days with Millicent
Drawings (drawings)
please note: I could not find attribution to the fine painting on the upper left hand side–I believe it is from a Mexican artist around the turn of the 20th century–please lemme know if you know.
