Category Archives: Photos
Strange Behavior
I was spreading peanut butter on my bagel the other morning in the Korean deli where I sometimes pick up breakfast when all of a sudden this large woman began hollering. Her hands were waving all around and I thought for a moment she was having a seizure until I realized she was merely experiencing a fervent reaction to the way I was dressing my bagel.
Is it that out of the ordinary to mix peanut butter and cream cheese? I ask because everyone in the deli was staring at me, not her.
With such a rapt audience, I calmly picked up the stainless steel spreader and slathered even more peanut butter onto my sesame seed bagel. I piled it so damn high it looked like a double decker hamburger. The white Styrofoam container could barely close around the bulging bagel. People averted their eyes.
Americans are passionate about their peanut butter. We eat about 700 million pounds per year, enough to make ten billion peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, according to the National Peanut Board in Atlanta, Georgia.
We’re also particular about our peanut butter. More than sixty percent of Americans prefer creamy style. Most men, though, opt for chunky. That’s how former President Jimmy Carter likes his nut butter. And while there are devotees of the big three – Skippy, Jif, and Peter Pan – more and more are opting for natural and artisanal peanut butters, which, ironically, is how the stuff was originally produced until the advent of hydrogenation in the 1920s.
Hydrogenation is the technical term for the process that prevents the separation of oils and solids. This means peanut butter doesn’t need to be refrigerated and can have a longer, more commercially viable shelf life. That invention plus the use of peanut butter as a meat alternative for American troops during World War II led to a post-war peanut butter boom and the birth of a pop culture culinary phenom.
Southerners seem to have a special predilection for peanut butter, perhaps because that’s where peanuts are grown. Southerners use it on anything from fried chicken to coleslaw to popcorn and cornbread. Bill Clinton proclaimed his love for the peanut butter and banana sandwich, a delight made famous by Elvis Presley. George W. Bush liked a peanut butter and honey sandwich.
Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey was said to like peanut butter, baloney, cheddar cheese, lettuce, and mayonnaise on toasted bread, with ketchup on the side. No wonder he was never elected president…
Today, bacon, figs, and peaches are popular accompaniments to peanut butter sandwiches in some nouveau Southern restaurants. Peanuts and peanut butter are even showing up in cocktails.
In fact, I read recently in Garden & Gun Magazine about a gastropub called Ollie Irene in Birmingham, Alabama, that’s tarting up that Southern classic bourbon and coke by adding a peanut orgeaut. A gastropub in Alabama? Peanut orgeat? This I had to try.
Peanut orgeat is a highfalutin name for simple syrup made with peanuts and orange flower water. To make it you start by shelling two cups of roasted unsalted peanuts and then pulverizing them in a food processor. On the stove, combine 1.5 cups of sugar and 1.25 cups of water and simmer until the sugar dissolves. Then boil for three minutes. Add the peanuts, reduce the heat and slowly bring back up to a boil. Remove from heat, cover and let sit for at least six hours.
The next step with the orgeat is to strain the mixture through cheesecloth to remove the peanut solids. To the thick muddy liquid add one ounce of vodka or brandy and a teaspoon of orange flower water. My advice here would be to just add a shot of Cointreau instead and a little dab of peanut butter to amp up the flavor. Stir. Presto, orgeat. It will keep up to two weeks in the refrigerator.
To prepare the cocktail, simply add two shots of Jack Daniels, one shot of the peanut orgeat, ice, and fill with Coca-Cola. Garnish with a roasted peanut.
The folks at Ollie Irene call their concoction a “Tallulah.” My drinking companions and I called it “Type Two” because we swear we could feel our pancreases working overtime to process all the sugar. It was surprisingly tasty, though a tad pretentious for my taste and probably best suited for a brunch with mixed company.
About that six-hour prep time…well, no cocktail should take that long to prepare. And that my friends is strange behavior worth hollering about.
Confessions of a Cocktail Boy
When Big Rob approaches to take our drink order, I’m immediately smitten. The last time I saw anyone sporting a kilt and a pair of topsiders with such panache was at a sorority party back in Charlottesville, Virginia, circa 1983. Of course, the coeds weren’t shirtless or model handsome like Big Rob. And I wasn’t the least bit tempted to sneak a peek beneath their tartans.
One of Rehoboth’s great summer pleasures is sipping a cocktail outside on the deck at Aqua Bar and Grill on Baltimore Avenue. I don’t know why, but a gin and tonic just tastes better when served by an attractive, half-dressed waiter. Tonight, the cocktail boys are in kilts. Last Sunday they wore wrestling singlets. Before that it was dog tags, aviator sunglasses, and towels – a Top Gun fantasy.
This is Big Rob’s first season serving drinks. During the day the tall Loyola University finance major is a lifeguard with the Rehoboth Beach Patrol. In fact, that’s how he found out about this gig. It’s no secret that lifeguards have often worked at Aqua throughout the years. The tips are good.
I ask if he gets a lot of propositions. Just once this entire summer, he says, laughing it off. Most of the patrons are very respectful when they find out he’s straight. He admits it took him awhile to get used to all the attention, but now he’s having a good time. He’s even comfortable rocking the deck clad only in a Speedo – his words, not mine.
The competition among the waiters on the deck is fierce, the free market in action. So, with a wink and a grin our perfect gentleman is off to attend to some other thirsty customers, moving through the crowd with the smooth efficiency of a freestyle swimmer. Did I mention he’s co-captain of his university swim team?
I’m admittedly a bit disappointed by the lack of shenanigans Big Rob has revealed tonight. But, I suppose that’s to be expected, given that all the Aqua cocktail boys are straight as an arrow this season. Bar owner Bill Shields also tends to run a tight ship.
‘Tis a far cry from the 70s in Atlantic City, laments one of my drinking companions, who just happened to work as a cocktail boy at the Hotel DeVille bar when he was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. Of course, that was back when Atlantic City was a major gay hotspot – more so than Rehoboth – before the gambling casinos came in and displaced all the gay bars and hotels.
Now we’re getting’ somewhere…
Unlike at Aqua, the cocktail boys in Atlantic City were full-fledged homos. Instead of lifeguarding, they frolicked on the beach in white speedos, slathering themselves with baby oil and iodine to get that perfect tan and to also hustle up tips at the bars where they worked at night in denim cut-offs and tank tops. Everyone had a moustache.
And they were most definitely propositioned. A lot. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon to receive roses or even a giant bottle of Paco Rabanne cologne in addition to hefty tips from a smitten admirer. The French Canadian men were particularly romantic.
Our Ivy Leaguer tells of being talked into posing for nude photos, one of which later ended up in After Dark magazine. The proposition he remembers most fondly, though, came from the bawdy talking puppet known as Madame, a creation and alter ego of entertainer Wayland Flowers who used to haul her around with him to gay clubs. Wayland and Madame appeared on a variety of television shows back in the 60s and 70s before hitting it big with a Las Vegas gig and then a late night television program of their own.
I’m about to learn how wide Madame’s jaw could unhinge when Big Rob returns with another round of drinks. Inspired by the stories of Atlantic City and emboldened by the gin, I ask if he’d mind answering a personal question, one I know is on the mind of every red-blooded man in the bar tonight.
“Go for it,” he says.
“How’d you get the white spot on your chest?”
“From a burn,” he explains. “A buddy laid a quarter on me while I was sleeping on the beach.”
Imperfection is beauty and I tell him so.
When Big Rob departs, one of my drinking companions punches me in the arm. It’s not the question he wanted answered, but, hey, I’ve got some integrity. And besides, I tell him, if you want to know the answer, simply shake his hand. And don’t forget to tip.
Author’s note. Last night was Rob’s last night at Aqua. He really liked the story and said the tips definitely improved after it ran in LETTERS. He’s definitely returning next year to lifeguard and to serve drinks.
Morning Muse: Shaving
As one who tries to keep up with consumer technology, I couldn’t wait to try the new Gillette Fusion ProGlide razor with FlexBall technology and five blades.
I began shaving with a classic double-edged safety razor, one not too different I imagine from the product invented in 1904 by King C. Gillette. That was the norm. Oh sure, razors, or something like them, existed for centuries before. The Oxford English Dictionary notes the year 1290 for the first use of a word specifically identified as a razor.
Anyone remember when the disposable razor entered the market? The first one I bought in the mid-70s was made of orange and white plastic by the French Company Bic – the disposable pen people. It was followed quickly by the blue colored Gillette disposable, which had two blades. These disposables tore me up; I was always going around with little pieces of toilet paper stuck to the nicks and cuts on my neck. Then sometime in the 80s the cartridge razor was invented and the floodgate opened for products featuring 3 blades, then 4 blades and marketing concepts like “Mach” and “Turbo.” I’ve tried them all in my search for a better shave.
The new FlexBall ProGlide, I must say, is a beautiful product with a high tech silver and black look and some orange and blue highlights – a color combo I have a particular affinity for. The tech breakthrough isn’t the blade, but the handle. It swivels, supposedly mimicking how your wrist works and therefore make shaving more effective. Some call the swivel a marketing gimmick. Okay, but so is the “virtual assistant” on my iPhone. And I’m certain I’ll be using the razor more than I do Miss Siri. Oh yes: I had a damn good inaugural shave.
A Little Slice of Baltimore
Harbor view at sunset
Rowhouse with formstone siding is classic Baltimore…
Bacon and chocolate donut tastes vaguely like a Berger cookie…
Confessional in Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, an old German church founded in 1870s.
Mardi Gras Jesus? Highlandtown is no longer just a German neighborhood.
A classic “shots and beer joint,” Baltimore’s oldest gay bar dates back to the 1930s, at least.
Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, New Orleans
A short collection of things that caught my eye during the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans.
Colorful cottages in the Irish Channel neighborhood
Ron Suresha, editor of Hibernation and other Poems by Bear Bards.
Upstairs at Cafe Lafitte in Exile, with chandelier.
Blurry photo of yours truly reading my story “Angel the Snake Girl,” which was one of two columns that helped me win the 2014 Humour Columnist of the year in the DE Press Association Communications Contest.
Anthology of winning short stories in the 6th annual Saints and Sinners Short Story contest. Yours truly has a piece in the publication entitled “Stinkbug.” The anthology is available on Amazon.com
Rich Barnett with party guest at book launch for local author Sergei Boissier’s novel “Damage Control.” Yep, that’s a sledgehammer. No, she is not my number one fan, but I wish she was…
Renowned author Edmund White and Michael Craig at the Saints and Sinner’s Literary Festival opening party at the historic Hermann-Grima House
The hirsuite muse. Virginia mountain man, author, and poet Jeff Mann reading at Bear Bards, a Bear poetry event at The Phoenix Bar. Friends from Wytheville and VA Tech might be interested to know Mann lives in Pulaski, VA, and is a professor at Tech. A very nice guy and a damn good poet, a “bear poet.”
I bought this painting: Greek Revival Dandy #2 by Andrew Hopkins, part of an ongoing series of stylishly dressed Southern gentleman. Hopkins is a native of Mobile, AL, who has lived in New Orleans and Baltimore. His primitive style and attention to interior design and historical furniture and architecture is quite unique.
Faubourg Marigny Books, one of the oldest remaining gay bookstores, owned and run by Otis Fennel. Can’t decide if this is a cut out of a young David Hasellhoff or not?
Nothing unusual in Parasol’s Bar, known for its Po Boy sandwiches, fully dressed.
Bourbon Street Saturday Night
Angel the Snake Girl (as read at Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, New Orleans)
I’ve always been attracted to the odd and unusual, Perhaps it has something to do with growing up in the South or maybe a youthful obsession with The Brady Bunch, Maude, and Soul Train?
Whatever it is lured me into a tent one sultry summer evening at the Delaware State Fair to see “Angel the Snake Girl,” advertised as having the head of a beautiful woman and the body of an ugly 200-pound snake.
Irresistible.
I paid the dollar admission fee and approached a makeshift wooden cage covered by chicken wire, expecting to see some sort of sad old medical oddity. What I saw instead was a woman’s head sticking up from a hole in the bottom of the cage and “attached” to the body of a large taxidermy snake.
“Hello there darlin,’ my name is Angel and I’m half woman half Burmese python. Her eyes are blinking a mile a minute and her tongue is flicking in and out.
She has an unconventional beauty, that’s for sure. And with her short hair and sly grin she looks a little crazy.
I introduce myself as a writer looking for some stories about the state fair and ask if she might have some time to talk.
“I got nothing but time cuz I’m in this cage ten hours a day, seven days a week,” she replies.
“But please, no pictures,” she implores. “They don’t like it, she says and gestures her head towards the skinny, mean-looking redneck taking tickets.
“And besides, I aint’ feeling pretty today.”
She asks what’s in the cup I’m holding. “Sweet tea and vodka,” I reply.
“I sure wish I could have me some,” she says, licking her lips. “It gets awful hot in this cage.”
She declines my offer of a beverage. All the sugar and caffeine and liquor will just make her jumpy and then she’ll have to go to the bathroom.
Angel only gets one break during her stint. “I peed myself once in Raleigh,” she tells me.
When a mother and two little boys approach the cage, Angel snaps back into character. With a rapt audience, she tells her story.
Seems her parents had been missionaries in Borneo in the 1950s and that her pregnant mother was unknowingly exposed to some experimental drugs left over from World War II.
Her mother died giving birth and her father ran off after seeing the half baby half snake slither out of the womb.
The good nuns in Borneo named her Angel because she was a beautiful gift from God. They taught her to speak and to read. Of course, she can’t write because she has no arms. But she can do some math in her head. When she was nine, she came to America and has been traveling with the carnival ever since.
The kids were spellbound, the mother horrified.
The little boys shrieked and ran off when Angel started her tongue flicking and telling them how she eats white mice and small children for dinner.
Once they’re gone, Angel admits to me that she actually prefers fried chicken and cold beer for her supper. I’m sure she likes cigarettes and whiskey too. She has that voice.
Angel the snake woman is what you call a classic carnival illusion show, in contrast to shows featuring human oddities like the world’s shortest man or performers with special skills like fire eating and sword swallowing.
She sits, I learn, in a chair with her head through a hole in the cage. The decapitated shellacked body of a real snake is arranged to look as though it is attached to the back of her head.
All around the front, sides, and back of the wooden cage are mirrors and wood chips. The mirrors hide Angel’s chair and give the illusion that the wood chips go all the way under the cage.
These kinds of sideshows have been around since the great English fairs of the early Renaissance. They became fixtures in America thanks to an enterprising showman named P.T. Barnum who began exhibiting albinos, contortionists, and magicians in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 had an area called the Midway that included rides, games of chance, burlesque shows, and freak shows. Its popularity catalyzed what became known as the traveling carnival.
You don’t see many freak show exhibits anymore in today’s more culturally sensitive society. Angel tells me there are only four here at the Delaware State Fair: a 29” woman, the world’s tiniest horse, the gorilla woman, and the museum of oddities (two-headed chickens, shrunken heads, space alien babies, etc.)
Her friend the human spider woman isn’t traveling with them this year because she hurt her back and they weren’t able to find a replacement in time. They haven’t had a headless woman in several years.
Angel and all the sideshow performers travel together in buses and campers around the country from carnival to carnival, eleven months out of the year. They return to Florida for a short vacation before the circuit starts up again.
Angel has been performing as the snake lady for only two years. Before that she operated kiddie rides.
I ask her why she wanted to become the snake lady and without hesitation she tells me how since she was a little girl the sideshows were always her favorite part of the fair. She likes being a performer. She’s proud to be part of a long carnival tradition.
Traffic picks up in the tent and Angel returns to character, flicking her tongue, and spinning her tale. Before I leave, though, she blows me a kiss.
Angel the snake girl isn’t a freak or an oddity. Angel the snake girl is a romantic.
The Go Cup 