No Abby this year??

For the last 4 years, Abigail Washburn, a rather lovely American folk singer (plays a bit of banjo too) who'd spent some time working and travelling in China in the early Noughties and become rather smitten with the place (I know the feeling), had brought a small acoustic band over here in November for a mini-tour of China, always playing 3 or 4 dates in Beijing. I immediately became a fan. In fact, I think I've been to all but 2 or 3 of the dozen or so gigs she's played in the city now.

This year, alas, the sequence is broken. However, we can still enjoy our memories..... here, in this interview and jam session (with Beijing-based Mongolian folk rockers Hanggai) shot for Danwei TV a year or two ago on a rooftop in the hutongs near my home. (Is this in fact the roof of the Jiangjinjiu music bar next to the Drum Tower? I suspect it is, but can't quite tell. Does anyone know?) Enjoy.

Well, Abby may not have brought a band over this year, but I spotted her in the audience at a gig last week; apparently, she's in town for a holiday. And there's a rumour that she may sit in for a song or two with her friends Black Cat Bone at their CD launch party at Yugong Yishan this Saturday. Hard to resist....

What is random?

A friend tried to lure me out last week for some "random" drinking.

I chided him: "Drinking is never 'random'. Not unless you're using dice to make all your decisions!"

(Since I'm having a 'picture blog' week over on Froogville, I thought I'd enter into the spirit just a little here on The Barstool too. I wonder if any of my readers will get the reference here?)

King of Snacks

A week or so ago, a new little snack shop opened up at the very top end of Nanluoguxiang, just off Gulou Dongdajie. It appears to be entirely a Chinese-run operation, and I haven't yet been able to work out where their 'concept' came from. They appear to speak only Chinese, and most of the notices are in Chinese, but their main menu board does at least have some English translations on. It was the prominence of the word "pie" that caught my eye. A really good meat pie is something I often pine for here in Beijing (particularly since the demise a couple of years ago of the old John Bull Pub, which used to do a rather nice steak & kidney). This is a complaint I hear particularly often from Australian acquaintances. Australian meat pies are indeed a thing of wonder, as I fondly recall from my trip to Sydney back in the mid-90s (it is rumoured that a decent version of these is available in the pub inside the Oz Embassy, but I've never been able to get in to find out).

Well, the 'pies' at the new NLG shop are a wondrous hybrid of the Chinese baozi and an Aussie meat pie. The shape is more-or-less that of these traditional Chinese steamed buns, a flat-bottomed dome - somewhat flattened, but compensatingly broader than usual. The pastry is quite thick but very light, again a little like the spongy casing of the baozi, but with a rich pie-crust glaze on the outside. And they are very generously filled with MEAT.

At 5 kuai each, they are quite a bargain. 1 is a decent snack, 2 is practically a meal, and 3 is a veritable pig-out. It is an invaluable addition to the late-night food options in the area. (Yes, one can grow tired of rou chuanr, the mini-kebabs which are the ubiquitous street snack here. The only other option, really, is a jian bing, a strange, sweet & spicy pancake roll filled with scrambled egg and bulked up with a crispy waffle; however, these always sit rather heavily on my stomach at night, and I regard them as more of daytime snack. And you've got to go all the way over to Houhai to find a vendor for these, anyway.) These little round dumpling-pies are already in danger of becoming a daily indulgence for me - at least on those days when I go out (not so many recently, because of the sudden onset of some viciously cold weather), and when I have neglected to eat a proper meal in the evening.

One reservation, though; one word of warning - they are bit heavy-handed on the spices. The pepper in the 'ground beef and black pepper' option - my favourite - is sometimes a bit overdone, and the 'hot chicken' variety appears to have been doused in Chongqing hotpot (which is a couple of steps up from sulphuric acid!). Yes, it can provide some comforting 'central heating' to protect against this brutal north wind we've been suffering this last week, but..... it will strip the lining from your intestines if you indulge too often.

My investigations into this place are still in an early stage. I imagine they might well have some less spicy fare, and perhaps even some vegetarian offerings. I did happen to notice the last time I was in there that one of the items on the board was translated simply as 'pineapple' - do they have a dessert pie?? Or do they simply sell that pineapple-on-a-stick thing? I'll let you know when I find out.

Cold feet

A week or so ago, I discovered by chance (Fate giving me another playful dig in the ribs?) that there was a speed-dating event happening this weekend, in a nice little restaurant just a few minutes down the road from my apartment.

I had thought I might give it a go. However, it kept slipping my mind (I've scarcely had a day off - weekends included! - in the last 3 weeks; and I'm still sleeping terribly because of the plague of builders hammering away all night in the park outside my window), and I didn't get around to trying to pre-register for it until Sunday morning. Since I hadn't heard back from the organisers, either by phone or e-mail, by about 4.30pm, I decided to give up on the idea and find some alternate means of entertainment. About an hour later I received a text message that they had enrolled me and were very eager for me to come in order to balance up the numbers (did they really have more girls than boys on their hands? It usually works out the other way around, I think!). My new plan for the evening was neither very fixed nor very sociable - going to a film on my own - but I found myself feeling strangely committed to it. I suppose I had just "talked myself out of" the speed-dating idea.

Why the decisive waning of enthusiasm? Well, my image-confidence was not high: I'd spent most of the day in bed, having had a truly awful night's sleep; I have a filthy cold; I am about a month overdue for a haircut; and I really don't have any decent smart casual clothes to wear at the moment (I am long overdue for a major shopping expedition, but I just never seem to find the time). No, I looked like shit yesterday. Moreover, I have another very heavy week ahead of me in the recording studio, and I really can't afford to risk losing my voice - something which, in present conditions, trying to maintain an hour or two of sustained conversation would be very likely to cause. (My drinking buddy The Weeble has taken to mocking my perpetual drama-queenie anxieties about the state of my voice, my reluctance to spend time in any bars that are too noisy or too smoky. "Is your 'instrument' bothering you again?" he'll tease.)

But I think I had also suffered a resurgence of doubt about - not to say scorn for - the very idea of 'speed-dating'. It just doesn't feel like 'me' at all. Rather too much of an air of desperation about it. And perhaps also rather too much of a sense of ruthless cynicism, of impatient time-management ( "I want to find a new boyfriend/girlfriend this week, but I'm only prepared to devote a couple of hours out of my busy schedule to accomplishing this...." ). As I think I've observed somewhere on my blogs before, I don't really like the word 'date' in the first place. It's an American concept rather than a British one; and it seems to me to be both more pressureful (you can't just hang out with a member of the opposite sex to try to get to know them a bit better; any encounter, at least any one-to-one encounter, has to be a 'date' - with a fraught romantic/sexual subtext) and at the same time strangely more provisional, less committed (it is apparently possible to 'date' people casually, or to 'date' several different people at once - I just don't get how that's supposed to work). Moreover, I recall that my favourite soused magazine columnist, Jeffrey Bernard, once wrote that he abhorred the notion of speed-reading; he relished being an uncommonly slow, meticulous, thoughtful reader; and he facetiously added that he might possibly pay someone to teach him how to read even more slowly, so that he could enhance his enjoyment of reading still further. I'm much the same with women: I like to take my time in getting to know them. I'm deeply sceptical as to whether you can reliably make up your mind you'd like to go out with someone (the favoured British term for 'dating') - or even if you'd like to see them again, on however cautious and provisional a basis - in just 5 minutes (5 minutes of probably rather forced and phoney chat, at that).

And then, of course, there's the strain of finding new things to talk about. This event was threatening to provide 15 micro-introductions for each participant. I doubt if they hit that target, but..... even 8 or 10 would be maxing out my tired little brain, overtaxing both my memory and my creativity. I don't think anybody has that many upbeat, amusing, stimulating short conversations in them. But I'd hate to be repeating myself too often; I fear you're bound to seem a bore to others if you're starting to bore yourself.

A lot of people evidently find these events amusing, and a good way of making new friends, if not necessarily of finding suitable life partners. And I was really trying to lay aside my scepticism, to be more open-minded about the possible positive aspects of such a social get-together. Alas, participation would have required a greater level of energy and creativity than I can currently muster. Maybe next time.....

I would rather like to find myself a new girlfriend, now that the cold and gloomy Beijing winter is practically upon us; though I'm afraid I rather doubt if a speed-dating evening is going to produce very many suitable candidates.

But it's not as if I have any difficulty meeting fairly large numbers of interesting and attractive women in this town - it's just that most of them are not single, stark raving bonkers, or don't fancy me. Sigh.

I've just got to keep plugging away. One day, the right woman will come along. One day.

Bon mot for the week

"Excess, on occasion, is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."

Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

I guessed Norwegian!

Last night, I was standing around outside my new favourite hangout, the 12 Square Metres bar at the bottom of Nanluoguxiang, with a couple of friends who were having a smoke break (one of the big attractions of the place for me is its strict no-smoking policy; my throat doesn't get along well with high volumes of cigarette smoke in confined spaces).

All of a sudden, 4 drop-dead gorgeous - Scandinavian-looking - young women approached us to ask for directions to Ned's, the little Australian bar a few hundred yards further up the road.

My companions seemed to think that I had established a good rapport with their ringleader, and taunted me that I really should have offered to escort them to their destination.... or should have given chase, to renew the conversation as soon as possible after their departure. My defence for my asexual torpor was: "They are too young. They are too beautiful. And they outnumber us. In fact, since you two guys are 'married', they outnumber me - rather badly!"

An hour and a half or so later, when we were finally quitting 12 Square, we ran into them again: we happened to step outside just as they were again walking past, this time in the other direction, returning from their visit to Ned's. Another minute or so of flirty conversation ensued: tourists, climbing The Wall tomorrow, dawn start, needed an early night. Damn!

They were indeed Norwegian, which had been my first guess. I don't know how I come to have this uncanny ability. Well, two uncanny abilities, really. The ability to divine someone's nationality - very quickly, at a distance. And the ability to make a favourable impression on women I am never going to see again.

Cursed by the gods.....

HBH 106

Nature's alarm clock
Waking up before daybreak
Overfull bladder


Rats!

Yet more wisdom of the txts

A friend was quizzing me just a little while ago as to what my plans were that evening.

"Nothing set," I responded mournfully. "I'm trying to entice a gorgeous blonde out on a date. But she's spurning me."

"Ah. Confidence is all in these matters," he observed (un)helpfully.

I saw his point: "Quite so. She is completely confident she can do better."

Sigh......

More 'cocktails'

To round off last week's posts on the Lobotomy and the Aegrotat, I thought I'd share with you a few more of the bizarre drinks recipes we came up with for cocktail parties during my wild student days.

The Terminator - this was an adaptation of an existing recipe I found in a book somewhere, though I can't for the life of me recall what its proper name was. Nor indeed am I very precise any more as to what was in it. I think it was just vodka with a dash of grenadine, diluted with lemonade or tonic water - probably lemonade (sweet'n'fizzy usually did the trick for party drinks). We made it in quantity, in a punch bowl. And the gimmick of it was that we didn't mix in the grenadine; we just let the thick red pomegranate syrup swirl streakily through the otherwise clear liquid. It called to mind the scene in the first Terminator film where Arnie's cyborg, after the latest bout of ultra-violence, conducts some self-repairs in a seedy motel bathroom, slicing open his damaged eyeball with a scalpel to reveal the laser within - and tossing the excised tissue into a bloody washbasin. We'd put a glass eye or a coloured contact lens in the bottom of the punch bowl to underline the reference. It was a big hit.

The Iconoclast - another sweet'n'fizzy classic, and another for which, like last week's Aegrotat, I must give the credit to the egregious "Mr A". This was was a mixture of port and Blue Curaçao - again diluted with lemonade, to make it a little more readily palatable, and to make it go further. I used to add a little real lemon juice as well, to take just a bit of the edge off the heavy sweetness of the drink. The intriguing thing about this concoction was that, by some freakish trick of optics, although the ingredients blended together, they appeared not to - from certain angles, at least, the drink would look layered: blue at the top, grading down to a purplish red at the bottom. Also, of course, it would turn your tongue BLUE. What larks! I have several party photos of smashed friends proudly displaying their discoloured tongues - like so many Maori warriors in the middle of their haka.

The Empire Builder - the signature cocktail of the small 'dining society' I founded (more of an anti-'dining society', really - we had more drinks parties and wine tastings than dinners; no-one [except me] knew who all the other members were, because most of them were very bad about actually showing up for events; and it was intended as a send-up of the pretensions - and the objectionable right-wing politics - of most of the similar clubs of that era). It was a variation on the classic Planter's Punch, using both light and dark rums (something of the same philosophy behind my orignal - sacrilegious! - blend of gin and vodka in the Lobotomy: I was seeking to offend and/or confuse!). It worked pretty damn well. Also, of course, the dark rum had to be Wood's Old Navy Rum - 100°proof! We'd try to use some fresh lime juice in the mix, although, of course, we couldn't possibly obtain enough for the quantities of the drink we were producing. However, I did find a lime concentrate (I forget the name of it now, alas) that was less excessively sweet than the standard British brand, Rose's Lime Cordial. And I think I would usually indulge my frequent strategy of boosting the sugar content further with a dash of gomme syrup, but then trying to disguise the fact with some lemon juice. As I said, it worked pretty damn well.

Rocket Fuel - yet another of "Mr A's" great contributions to drinking history: the greatest summer garden party drink. Delightfully simple, too: sparkling wine with a good slug of Pimm's No. 1 in it. Yes, you can use champagne if you want to be fancy, but there's really no need. Any old fizzy crap will do. A Prosecco is a good middle path between the cheap and the extravagant. It was a particular hit with the ladies. Sweet'n'fizzy again - it's such a simple formula! I think, back in the late '80s at Oxford, rather a lot of sex - probably rather unmemorable but, crucially, deniable sex - was had with the assistance of this drink.

Ah, we were young then.........

Best comment yet on the American Election

(Courtesy, once again, of the indispensable FrostFireZoo.)

The weekly bon mot

"Drinking is an art, not a sport."

Michael Moriarty (1941- )

Perversity

"You've had enough", she said.
And immediately I knew
I wanted more.
Nothing drives us on
Like another's disapproval,
Especially when
We know they're right.

This, by the way, is Post No. 900 here on The Barstool. At this rate, we'll be passing the 1,000 mark early in the New Year. Another party excuse, methinks....

Great Love Songs (11)

Crikey, it's been a month since I posted anything in my 'Great Songs' series - very remiss of me. Perhaps I might blame the distraction of having had a love affair - of sorts - in that time.

Now that I am once more in the familiar territory of brooding and regrets, I shall feed my melancholy with some of the lovely Tracy Chapman - Baby, Can I Hold You?

Last night at the Pool Bar....

"I just lost (twice!) to a girl who can barely play. I think I made the classic Chairman mistake of allowing myself to be distracted by the sexy boots."

Ah, well - so long as we can learn from our mistakes!

A brief plug...

The remodelling of the former Room 101 on Andingmennei took a little longer than planned, but it is now pretty much done - well, all apart from the odd loose wire and a tiny lick of touch-up paint here and there. Oh, and finalising the menu!

The new place (same ownership, fresh 'concept') is going to be more of a restaurant than a bar, but will retain the bar - and the weekend live music - downstairs. They've settled on the name Gingko. (I think I rather preferred their original idea of Terracotta - although I find both a bit twee, and definitely suggestive of a fancy-schmancy Mediterranean bistro type of place rather than a bar.)

It will be another week or two before they're ready for a formal launch, but the soft opening phase begins tonight.

I wish them well. And I'll probably look in at some point.....

HBH 105

Gin & Tonic

Tartness of lemon,
Cool, clinking ice - and bubbles!
Perfect refreshment.

This was the best of 20 or so haiku I dashed off this week as a 'birthday' tribute to Moonrat, whose fine blog reached its second anniversary on Obama Day. Moonie has a bit of a weakness for gin. And nothing wrong with that!

Tonight's txt msg highlights

A friend was ribbing me about being out again, after last night's excesses. Choosing between staying at home feeling tired and cranky and heading out to the charming 12 Square Metres bar for a restorative malt whisky had seemed a no-brainer to me. I replied:

"There's hair-of-the-dog, and then there's Laphroaig. I am a very classy drunk."

The Laphroaig was slipping down particularly well, and I thought I'd rise to the challenge of killing off the bottle (only two more measures left). Also, I was waiting for a friend who was taking forever to get there, which was making me late for a musical rendezvous elsewhere. I apologised:

"Sorry - got sidetracked by unreliable friends and reliable whisky. Will be there for the 2nd set."

Later, one of the Pool Bar regulars asked me if I'd like a game. My rueful response:

"Yes. I want MY GAME back. Have you any idea where I left it?"

(I have not been playing well of late.)

Another great night; but considerably more moderate than the one before.

OBAMA!!!

Well, that was a hell of an evening.

Things were a little quiet at the Saddle Cantina early on (at least, outside on the terrace: people seemed to think there was just a little too much of a nip in the air to sit outside, but I think I'll be happy in my shirtsleeves for a while yet), but by 8.30 or so the place was heaving.

I suspect it was the same in many other bars around town, and all over the country, in every country - a spontaneous worldwide party! There probably hasn't been such a universal outpouring of pride, relief, and optimism since the end of World War II (well, maybe the fall of the Berlin Wall or the release of Mandela might have been close....).

I discovered - rather to my surprise and horror - that one of my friends is a closet Republican. He was the only one in the place, and was suitably subdued. I was very good: I didn't gloat, I didn't tease, I didn't mention Sarah Palin once. I didn't even use the "How can you tell if you're a redneck?" line on him (although I was tempted).

I then went on to have an excellent night in Salud. And then, of course, I looked in at the Pool Bar "on the way home", and didn't get to bed until around 4am.

Today began with a goading "You're not going to be LATE this morning, are you?" message from my recording partner DD.

My rueful reply: "Given that it's 9.22 and I'm still in bed, I'm afraid I probably am. SORRY." Oh dear.

Cinco de Drinko - Politico!

Yes, the Saddle Cantina's once-a-month drinks promotion is once again upon us. And since we all have something special to celebrate today (for many of us, the first time in our lifetimes that the Americans have elected a President who isn't an Embarrassment To The Free World), I think I will head on over there and get bladdered with ecstatically happy American Democrats.

(There are rumoured to be 2 or 3 Republicans in town, but I don't think I've ever met them. And I suspect that even they would not have wanted a religious nut-job like Mrs Palin to get anywhere near the White House.)

Join me, if you will.

This is a momentous day, and I will probably write more on it at some point - but right now, I am wasting valuable drinking time.

Not entirely true

A friend was trying to entice me out drinking shortly after lunchtime yesterday.

I was sorely tempted to join him, but I had to work. And I was just a tad anxious for him too, concerned that this sudden impulse to daytime drunkenness might be a sign that his current unemployment is dragging his spirits down (lord knows, it was getting the better of me when I was in the same state a couple of weeks ago).

I responded:

"I don't think I've gone out drinking midday, mid-week since I was an undergraduate!"

That is, of course, something of an overstatement. But I think it's probably true to say that daytime drinking (other than, occasionally, at the weekends) hasn't been an habitual lifestyle choice for me since those far-off days.

I was relieved (though also, in a strange way, slightly disappointed - thwarted vicarious hedonism!) that my friend decided not to go out drinking until the evening, when he would have some companionship.

New Picks of the Month

It's time once again to update my sidebar recommendations for favourite posts from my early days.

On Froogville, I choose The Simile Game, some frivolous wordplay and jokey poetry from nearly two years ago (although the 'poem' has renewed relevance for me now!).

And on the Barstool, I like Another great 'Hagar' moment. Hagar the Horrible, that is, the cartoon Viking marauder. This is one of my favourite jokes from that strip - and it somehow segues into an explanation (one of many possible ones, but certainly a major factor in the mix) of why I so seldom have a girlfriend. (There's more on Hagar here.)

Bon mot for the week

"I pity the man with no addictions. He hasn't found something he loves yet."

Froog

This is one of my favourite lines from a series of abandoned sketches for a 'drinking novel' I was toying with some years ago. Elsewhere, I expressed a similar thought slightly differently:

"Addiction is simply knowing what you like. People with no addictions are joyless sons-of-bitches."

Traffic Report - blog stats for October

The 'slowdown' overtaking the world's economies has yet to be emulated in my blogging, despite my oft-stated resolve to stop overdoing it so much.

Last month, there were (the usual) 50 posts and nearly 15,000 words on Froogville.

On the Barstool, there were 39 posts and around 11,000 words.

Visitor numbers still seem to be fairly static at around the 150 per week mark, despite the generous puff (and occasional syndication!) I have received from the much more widely read Other Men's Flowers blog.

However, according to Statcounter, I have recently received first-time visitors to Froogville from places as diverse as Vietnam and Hawaii - as well as an 'unknown' who appears to be based exactly on the Equator, just off the coast of West Africa (an oil rig worker, perhaps? or a round-the-world yachtsman??). Meanwhile, the Barstool has drawn fleeting attention from Fiji and Malta. What is it about island nations and drinking?

I am also rather excited to discover that I am now the No. 1 Google return for "worst Irish joke". Alas, I fear it is an indication of the decline in popularity of the genre in recent years that the eminence of this post on the search engines does not yet seem to have drawn in a host of new readers.

Commenting has been rather thin of late. Tulsa continues in her monastic retreat from blogging. The Mothman has poor Internet access in Bulgaria. And the British Cowboy is developing a 'love life' again, always a fatal blow to online friendships. Of Snopes, The Bookseller, Little Anthony and the rest, nothing can be said. We haven't heard from Gary or The Lunch for a while, either. Mighty quiet around here.....

Thank you, anyway, to my few loyal and appreciative (if largely silent) readers. I suppose I will keep churning out this whimsy as long as anyone wants to read it.

A change of luck?

Imagine a suspense-building drumroll, if you will.

Yes, THIS is Post No. 888 here on the Barstool.

As I have already explained over on brother-blog Froogville (being the more prolific of my two online forums, it passed this milestone several months ago), '888' is the luckiest number there is for the Chinese.

I can only wish that this auspiciously numbered post will usher in a period of brighter prospects and greater happiness for me. The past few weeks have seen a huge building site springing up right outside my window, a complete stagnation of my income, and a stalled, ill-starred (wonderful, delightful, but doomed) love affair. Poverty, insomnia, and sexual frustration - it's really not a good mix. It's about time Life dealt me a rather better hand. Here's hoping.

It's not that I've suddenly become an optimist, you understand. It's just that I believe things can't really get any worse.

The Aegrotat

To round off the impromptu 'Cocktail Week' here on the Barstool, I give you another of the strange experiments from my student days.

This one was an invention of my friend - and very occasional commenter on these pages - "Mr A".

The recipe was very simple (and had a rather musical quality to it, making it easy to remember - or difficult to forget!): vodka, Pernod, pineapple juice. In roughly equal quantities, I think; and - daringly! - served in a martini glass.

On paper, it really didn't seem like it should work at all. Yet, strangely enough, the flavours complimented each other rather well and the mixture proved to be dangerously palatable.

Of course, it didn't really matter what was in it or what it tasted like - it was an absolutely brilliant name, one that could hardly be bettered for a drink to fuel irresponsible student hedonism. 'Aegrotat', you see, is the Latin for "he/she is ill", and is used at Oxford University (and Cambridge?) for a medical certificate vouching for a student's inability to sit Final Exams for health reasons. If the student's tutors are supportive, the University can award a degree on the basis of this sick-note alone - although I think it only has the status of a bare 'Pass' degree, so isn't really of any value; it is one of the University's more antique traditions, and I imagine it is seldom if ever invoked these days; most students would surely choose to re-sit their Finals at a later date.

A great name, then, for a student cocktail. Overindulgence in The Aegrotat might well have jeopardised our ability to show up for Finals.

In fact, on one occasion "Mr A" threw an end-of-term party in his rooms on the Quad...... on lunchtime of the last Friday of term. I had my final tutorial of the term at the end of that afternoon, and I still had to do some preparation for it. I really shouldn't have accepted "Mr A's" invitation - but I never could resist a party. I really should have tried to be more moderate in my consumption - but I never did have much self-restraint when it came to alcohol. And, of course, daytime drinking hits you much harder. And The Aegrotat - making its debut that day, I think - was rather stronger than I had realised (although I suppose the name should have served as warning enough). I only stayed for an hour or so, restricted myself to 3 or 4 drinks - still more than enough to get me decidedly squiffy. I then whizzed off to the Wellington Square Classics Library to return a few books and put the finishing touches to my essay. Alas, I put my head down on the desk and lapsed into a stotious slumber for 3 hours....... completely missing the tutorial.

That was not by any means the only tutorial I missed in my time at Oxford (I was very far from being a model student); but it was, to my mind, the best excuse I ever had for missing one.