Super Bowl - So Super!

I couldn't believe they'd pulled it off. After knocking on wood every time someone in the room said something that could tempt fate, after drowning my sorrows in beer and chicken wings, after holding my breath from the first seconds of the second quarter until three minutes from the end of the game, the Giants pulled it off and upset the favored Pats to win Super Bowl XLII, 17-14.

It was unbelievable. Especially after Eli Manning's throws kept going unreceived by any of his team mates. "Dude," I shouted at the other Giants, who were constantly about five feet away from where they needed to be, "Why can't you get there?!"

Okay, so I deleted some expletives.

And then, when it came time for that touchdown, oh man, they were close. They were so close. And yet it took them about three tries before they finally managed to score. And then that extra point, which, to the TV viewer, looked like it was only inches from not getting counted at all.

Eh, I could have lived with a 16-14 victory. But 17-14 is even better!

And not only that, but they managed to keep the Pats from getting anywhere near the goal line. Though New England attempted to pull off another touchdown before the end, the Giants just kept putting them down. Tackling the QB. Running them out of bounds. Bam, first down. Bam, second down. Bam, third down.

At about thirty seconds to go, I finally let myself believe that they were going to win it. I called up my dad enthusiastically.

Which was a mistake. No Southern California man can ever find it in himself to root for New York. Never.

(Luckily, I have no such compunction. In the last six years I've lived in Philadelphia, D.C., and New York state. In the words of Audrey Hepburn, "If I were a dog, I'd be a hell of a mess." As it is, it's probably better for my personal safety if I just root for wherever I happen to be at the time.)

When, with two seconds left to go, the Pats conceded, the only emotion was euphoria. Beautiful, beautiful euphoria. Go, Underdog! Go!

By the way, Eli Manning won MVP, which I think probably had more to do with the fact that his brother won it last year, and his father won it during his career. If Manning had really been that valuable, a few more of his throws might not have ended up on the ground or in the hands of the Pats.

I'm just saying.

You Never Forget Your First Time

I've discovered that the old adage of 'You never forget your first time' is true for many things. Most recently for me, it's true for Wagner.

I wasn't raised in a Wagner household. I'm not even sure my parents were overly enthusiastic opera lovers; they usually preferred theater and the symphony. But when I was eight, old enough for my first grown-up night out on the town, they made the mistake of taking me to see an English translation of Carmen. And I've been hooked on opera ever since. Mostly French and Italian operas, but occasionally there's the odd English opera or German Mozart opera mixed in the bunch. But I've managed to avoid, in sixteen years of attending the opera, going to any German operas. The fat ladies with fake armor and horned hats just couldn't compare with the sweet, slight women who, as Mimi, gave a voice to the meaning of melancholy, or to the Carmens who flirted and smiled their way in ecstasy to their eventual deaths, with devastation in their wakes.

Still, not being one to refuse opera tickets under any circumstances, I gleefully accepted a pair of seats at the Metropolitan Opera's performance of Die Walküre. For nearly five hours, I listened to an acclaimed cast of Deborah Voigt, Lisa Gasteen, Clifton Forbis, Michelle DeYoung and James Morris take the demanding score and wrangle it to the ground with a force and authority that Wagner would have admired.

People generally have one complaint about German opera, namely the language. German sounds choppy and harsh compared to the soft, flowing librettos in Italian and French. But this cast managed to smooth out the rough edges to the point where you hardly noticed the language at all.

The costume designer went to town with the armored suits, but held back with the horned helmets. The sets were the greatest deficiency in the production, so dark, and with such poor lighting, that any character not standing downstage couldn't be seen even with a key light.

It's a very beautiful opera, and pop culture's affinity for 'Flight of the Valkyries' certainly speaks to Wagner's credit (though not necessarily to pop culture's). But my biggest complaint, I don't think any production could answer to my satisfaction. I am still wondering days after seeing the opera what the point is. I want to say it's something about family - but what about family? Incest? Filial duty? Infidelity? And what about these things? Are they good? Are they bad? A little guidance, please!

All this aside, I'm stuck in the moral quandary of possibly becoming a Wagner fan.

It's a little scary to think that I have something in common with Adolf Hitler.

Delivery Disasters: A Cautionary Tale for All

On a dark and stormy night, in a far away land called New York, a young graduate student crashing on the couch of a friend desired some dinner.

Her hostess had plans for the evening, and so the young student was left to fare for herself. Since the land of New York was fabled for having absolutely everything available for delivery, the student did what anybody else at that time would have done. She did a Google search.

In her search she came across a Mexican restaurant called La Hacienda on East 116th Street, a mere twenty-five blocks from the apartment where she was resting her head. The single-paragraph blurbs by critics at nymag.com and timeout.com raved about La Hacienda's pumpkin seed quesadillas and authentic Mexican salsa. And, best of all, the minimum price for delivery was only $10. For our poor, struggling student, this sounded just right.

Hungry as she was, she obediently handed over her address, cross-streets and directions, her phone number, and placed an order for the Nachos Con Pollo and a Chicken Burrito. And then she waited.

And waited.

Twenty minutes later, her phone rang, but not with the food which our young student was so eagerly awaiting. The hostess from La Hacienda was calling to ask for the address and directions and cross-streets yet again. Surely this meant that her food was only moments from leaving the restaurant, and therefore mere minutes from her door. Toes curling with excitement, she recited the information yet again.

And then she waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

As the clock approached the time that would mark an hour since her order had been placed, the student began to get impatient. She called La Hacienda again and was told the driver had left. She asked when the driver had left; the hostess, in her limited English, could not answer. The student hung up and resolved to wait another ten minutes.

Ten minutes came and went, then fifteen, then twenty. It had now been over an hour since she had ordered her food from twenty-five blocks away, and the poor grad student was hungry. Clearly the restaurant had not been up to the hype floating around about it. She called again, and canceled the order. After all, delivery was a luxury that was probably best avoided anyhow.

Ten minutes after that, who should show up but the delivery man, demanding to be paid for his food. The student, suitably annoyed by this time, paid, but asked for change in order to gage the tip accordingly. The delivery man shook his head. "No change," he said, "no change." With anger, the grad student realized she'd been conned into handing over a 20% tip for the honor of waiting an hour. She wished the man a good night, only half meaning it, and closed the door.

Determined to enjoy what might at least be good food, the student settled down and pulled out the tin foil bowls from her La Hacienda parcel. The first, her nachos appetizer, tasted like whole grain bread, and something like that temperature. Nothing spicy and very little authentically Mexican about it, as our young student, who grew up less than three hours from Mexico, might be entitled to judge. The hair hiding in one chunk of chicken was the final straw for the nachos; she rapidly put them down and turned to the chicken burrito instead.

This also proved to be a mistake. The burrito was the taste and texture of cardboard, devoid of any warmth it might have had when leaving the La Hacienda kitchen. Not even sticking it in the microwave could revive this dead bit of gunk wrapped in a flour tortilla.

So now, here our grad student sits; a little poorer and sadder than she was two hours ago when the order was first placed. But at least one good thing has come from this delivery disaster. Her appetite has been abated. Quite possibly for good.

The moral of the story: sometimes, even if a person is a critic, they don't always know what they're talking about.

Oh, and never order from La Hacienda. Because, to put it succinctly (if arcanely), they suck.

Super Bowl Weekend? Not at Williams-Sonoma

There’s nothing quite like a Williams-Sonoma store to make a poor graduate student feel about as big as a cockroach, and just as welcome.

A mere tour around the store can cause spontaneous gasps of incredulity and amazement, usually caused by the store’s admirable attempt to aid inflation (they want $77 for a knife?) while simultaneously drawing the wistful sighs of, “Oh, I wish I could afford that $80 mortar and pestle. I’d use it every day.”

The nature of the chain store is that, no matter where you go in the country, the stores not only look exactly the same, but also feature the same clientele. For Williams-Sonoma, these are elderly grandmothers in Lord & Taylor suits, domestic matrons sporting the cleanest two-year-olds in town, brides-to-be registering everything in sight.

But I enjoy the occasional perusal. The place reminds me of my mother’s dream kitchen. She could spend hours looking at all the different varieties of olive oil alone. When she got a gift certificate to the store this year, she announced it to my dad with her how-great-is-that! smile, complete with perfect-teeth grin and sparkling eyes. I went on her “scoping out” visit where she looked around but didn’t buy anything. She said she needed to deliberate before committing to a purchase. My mother’s worked in courthouses for the last 30 years. Everything requires deliberation.

Personally, I go for the food. Samples are the best part, and in the week before the Super Bowl, the Williams-Sonoma store in the Carousel Center in Syracuse, NY is all about different sauces to go with your party food, all advertised as “just in time for the big game.” A man named Owen talks to some middle-aged wives, a silver-haired woman and her daughter, both toting shopping bags from Lord & Taylor, and me about making the chicken wing sauce that he’s just pulled out of the oven and is serving to us with Tostitos chips.

Owen is clean-cut with bright eyes at what my grandmother would call “a young forty,” which means that he’s about 35, smiles a lot, and doesn’t have a beer belly. He’s friendly, approachable, eager to help. He’s also very surprised to have a young college student with them. In a city as saturated with students as Syracuse, where the university commands all the resources (and parking spaces), I don’t blame him.

The air fills with the scent of chicken wing dip and reminds me of some of the East coast Mexican restaurants; heavy on the cheese, light on the spices. When I share this, Owen tells me the names and locations of the best Mexican restaurants in the area, including one to the north that’s owned by a Mexican woman and her husband. The silver-haired woman chimes in and tells us she hates spicy foods even as she picks up a copy of the wing dip recipe. The spiciness, she says, overpower the other flavors; Owen finishes the sentence with her in evident agreement. They diverge, talking about some of the other recipes in the store (mostly desserts) and their favorite local restaurants – predominately French and Italian ones. She doesn’t invite me to join in, though Owen shoots me a sweet smile as she talks. She leaves out my most common dinner destinations; Coleman’s, Dinosaur, any sushi restaurant in the city. When she collects her purchases (which include the $77 knife) and leaves with her daughter, the disdain with which she passes the guacamole display makes me shudder.

I mention the Super Bowl to Owen; he shrugs and tells me that the class that morning is all about chocolate. My eyes wander to the cake on display in the shape of a Giants helmet only a few feet from where we stand talking.

Apparently the “big game” weekend ends on Saturday at Williams-Sonoma. After all, with this crowd, football just can’t compete with chocolate.

Something That Makes You Go, Huh?

Every now and then, you see something that just makes you stop and go, Huh?

The History Channel's show 'History's Mysteries' is all about decoding myths and, well, mysteries from, well, history. They explore things like Stonehenge and the Knights Templar (very popular in the wake of 'The Da Vinci Code' - this is, after all, Dan Brown's world, and we're all just living in it), but every now and then they do something with a little more, pardon the pun, life in it. Like the mystery of Dracula.

The character of Dracula was based for the most part on Vlad Dracul III, prince of Wallachia (now a part of Romania). Modernly thought of as a patriot who fought against the invading Turks, Vlad earned his epithet "The Impaler" for his cruelty towards those who offended him. (Evidence states that when there was an ambassador at his court whom he disliked, he had their hats nailed to their heads.) The blood-sucking habit was the invention of Bram Stoker, or rather, Stroker collected information from around the world and gathered it all together into the single character of Dracula.

All this is pretty yada yada yada, but what really made me sit up was at the compulsory Where Are They in Pop-Culture moment at the end of the program. Wedged between the stuffed Dracula dolls and boxes of Count Chocula breakfast cereal was scenic footage of - I kid you not - the Hotel Castle Dracula.

Settled in the same mountain pass that serves as the opening landscape for the opening of Stoker's novel, the hotel comes complete with all the modern day conveniences you'd expect of a service edifice only 25 years old. Including a "Turkish Bath," according to turneo.ro. The hotel, from the literature I could find online, is quite an experience, including role-play dinners and titles like "Baroness" for the guests, who get their portraits hung in the lobby when they win. One Romanian tour company website described the hotel's location as "the ideal spot for lovers."

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for exploring the best and the worst of the local culture, no matter where you are. Still, something about the whole set-up of Hotel Castle Dracula just made me think, You poor suckers. You're just asking for it.