December 24, 2012

           Down Biscayne Blvd. to Miami for the Xmas dinner. These are the deserts over at JP’s sister’s place afterward. This is the first get-together without Dad, and it was probably exactly what he would have wanted. Everybody knows each other even if most we meet is often this once a year. There were a few new faces. JP and I had an eye out for single women but there weren’t any. We are just hopeful because there is so much talk about these being the places to meet up. Sigh.
           My new Nikon is still unfamiliar and I missed around half the shots. JP informs me that Nikon is the brand famous for underwater photography, I did not know that. I also missed entire segments of the festivities because the camera was not working when I thought it was. It will, for that reason, get a mixed review at best.
           I won’t report much on the evening since these are private affairs. But the party took over the Marhaba restaurant in Sunset, I think I mentioned that here already. The meal was excellently prepared, though make sure you like Middle East dishes. Eggplant and chick peas aren’t for everyone. I got used to Egyptian cuisine in university and even I did not recognize some of the items. Which didn’t stop me from sampling. And that eatery sure knows how to cook a chicken right. Some say marinating doesn’t really work but I don’t know what they thought they were tasting.
           There was also plenty of wine and it looked and smelled fantastic. I’m not a wine drinker so I don’t know how it tasted. That’s okay, for me it is like an expensive cigar. I don’t smoke those either but I enjoy the aroma. The speeches were a minimum and the after party was poolside. With JP as Santa. The guy tried to wing it, making me wonder how little what I’ve taught him about performing has sunk in. You don't do things like that without rehearsal!
           So there’s JP at the party without even having tried the costume on. We got it figured out without any time to spare. Shown here was getting the boot straps to fit over his shoes but he wanted them inside his shoes. We were in the south wing of the house but we could hear the rising chorus of kidlets.
           You can’t see them but there was a Swiss couple in the room giving us all kinds of wrong advice. So I cropped them out of this photo. Because I think they really wanted in. JP’s strong accent and distinctive voice didn’t fool the grandkids. Next year, they want me to do it. If I keep gaining weight I might just do that.
           To the wild rumor that I always keep my guitar in the motorcycle, no way. Guitars are fragile meaning they don’t like rain, rattling around, and getting stolen. Did I say I drove the scooter this trip since the Xmas traffic was not that bad. On the return leg, I went through South Beach to look at the festivities. But I’ve never been drawn by the nightlife in that part of town. It isn’t right in ways I can’t quite point at, but I’ll try.
           The crowd is young but not youthful, if you can imagine that. In my day, single people looked and acted single and that is not the message projected by couples or groups in restaurants downtown. Far from being a singles meet-up locale, South Beach is more a string of Italian-sounding restaurants with their furniture obstructing the footpaths. The clientele is older and harsher looking. The surrounding rents are so high that nobody with a “traditional” source of income can afford to live there. And it shows.
           The atmosphere is one of “army camp nearby” and prices are way out of line. It’s expensive but the kind of expensive that those with a sense of value are driven away. The décor is out of date but one can see it had its moments back when. Even the apartment names like “Carillon” and “Fontainbleu” remind me of that National Lampoon satire called “Living at The Edge”.
           Despite having been designed from the ground up in the automobile age, there isn’t enough parking. And the live music is Latino not because of influence but because they work so cheap all other forms of entertainment have been long since driven away. It’s an all-too-familiar pattern. Traffic was the usual mess, so I had time to look in the door of each place. The average was probably less than 10% of capacity. But you’ve concluded by now I could care less if they all folded.
           What? You never heard of “Living at The Edge”? That isn’t surprising because the magazine National Lampoon is barely represented on the Internet. They seem to have missed that boat. The “Edge” was a somewhat comical yet revealing cartoon about the varieties of weirdos that city apartment dwellings bring together. The suicide case, the crackhead, the drug dealer, the bicycle thief. National Lampoon was the premiere humor magazine of the 70s and 80s, but died out after a hostile takeover.
           The material, especially the magazine covers, were so provocative they barely escaped being censored. Classics include the Mona Gorilla, What, Mai Lai, and the famous We’ll Kill This Dog. The magazine name, itself a take-off on the Harvard Lampoon, has resurfaced in other forms, such as Chevy Chase movies. By comparison, the magazine was downright intellectual. Meaning it was enjoyed most by readers with half a brain but the rest probably found it, shall we say, totally annoying.