Yesterday was Chicken Dipper day. My fry daddy employment life requires at least one day every couple of weeks  I do nothing but fry double-breaded, peppered chicken parts (supposedly breast tenderloin). Well, there are still the noobes who ask for a burger or some kind of non-fried chicken sandwich and I’m obliged to serve them. For most of the day I’m just frying my 80 pounds of Dippers. We’ve gone through 120 pounds on busy days, but the cafe hasn’t been that in-the-weeds for some time. Yup, I’m the fried chicken merchant of death. Big plates of chicken, curly fries and heart disease. All cooked in something labelled “Mel-Fry” which doesn’t make me feel better about the process. The redeeming thing, I suppose, is that I serve Dipper meals primarily to stressed out nurses. Anything I can do to give the staff comfort food and calm them down a little bit is reassuring. Of course, they wash the whole mess down with gallons of Mountain Dew, starting the whole stress cycle again. Many reside in an over worked, 40/40 universe-40 pounds overweight and  40+ years old. I’m not judging, living in a 36/25 club myself. When the administration decides to throw out the four-barrel fryer, I’ll gladly help them plan some more nutritionally sound alternatives (even if it costs me the job).

There is hope. My employer may be slow in getting rid of the Dippers, but in the next couple of weeks we’ll start selling the old school, 8 oz. sized Coke bottles. Coca Cola, when it first appeared in the contoured container, came in a 6 1/2 oz. bottle. The 12 oz. steel can appeared in 1960. The company has announced that by next spring they’ll make available a commercial 9 oz. can for better portion control and my hope is that we carry that too. This may be too little, too late. In the 1950′s Pepsi Cola began its war to put larger amounts of soda on shelves at cheaper prices to the consumer. Coke followed during the sixties and by the mid ’70′s two (and three) liter bottles appeared. Coke’s 9 oz. can movement has nothing to do with health, no matter what statement they put forward. This is just branding another size of sugary drink for the crowded market place. No redemption for a company that has been offering soda in six packs since the dawn of the last century. Still, it’s a start. Especially when Pepsi recently started selling Tall Boys, the 16 oz. beer-sized cans. At a time when consumers are pushed toward more-lots more high fructose corn syrup, lots more food coloring-at least Coke had the sense to offer some alternatives. It’s not healthy to pour the stuff down one’s gullet, but, at the very least, we can do so in single servings.

The new administrator I work for is a proselytizer in the cause of fresh food. The frying of hundreds of pounds of Dippers each month will go away at his direction in the near future. We’ll see what happens to the sugary soda pop. Brave new world for fry cooks, either way.

After a few rampantly negative posts I started thinking about all of the good, positive things in life. There are many and myriad ways to enjoy life and I need to embrace them. I made some more desserts and had a good time. Yesterday, I got a job offer, thanks in part to desserts, and may be soon leaving hospital hamburger land. The positive elements in life definitely are on the upswing.

The Spatula hasn’t taken many field trips this year, but I do go to Walgreens quite a bit. This is not a plug for the pharmacy chain or the ravings of some old man in search of low-cost prune juice and Faygo cream soda. No, I honestly found a new kind of tranquility in taking a few hours out of one day each month and sauntering around the drug store. Clean isles, bright flourescent lighting. Snacks. Excedrin. I could live there. Formerly, I was an electronics guy. I had to have better hard drives, more elaborate desktop computer cases, the best mother boards. Had to have a fix every month. Like many people, I reevaluated my needs vs. wants, got rid of the easy credit lifestyle and embarked on the life of monkitude. I’ve never been happier. My one weakness has been proper hygiene. After having given up all the frivolity and waste in life, I still like to be…not metrosexual, that’s just played out. No, more cromagonsexual. The cleaned up, partially upright, prehistoric man. So, I make a hygienic foray to the calmest place in my universe on the first of every month and indulge in cleanliness.

The whole thing started with toothpaste. I am a walking migraine, my achy-breaky head ready to explode and kill everyone within shouting distance. There came a point when the act of brushing my teeth gave me a migraine bad enough to make me drive with my eyes shut. No discernable difference in driving that way, as it were. Not wanting to go all Walter Bishop and  make my own dental products from glycerin, I began searching for toothpaste with no artificial sweeteners, Red Dye #40, or caramel coloring. Mouthwash, too. The clerks began to recognize me on site and point out newer, more Luddite dental aids without headache causing ingredients. I ended up buying Tom’s toothpaste for children. This discovery really led me to becoming a hygiene junkie. Now, excitedly, I spend a late night each month in Walgreens, exploring all the different products for men. I always took care of myself, but this is a whole new ball game. I work in a profession where smelling good-really good-is frowned upon (the healthcare part, the cooking not so much). So, I’m working on the manly art of scent layering. Okay, weird, but I don’t confess a lot on this blog, anyway. After it’s all said and done, I’ll come home with a bag of feel-good. It won’t be stereo equipment, or the latest p.c. hardware, but a month of joy, nonetheless. Onward and, er, upward.

Every so often I trundle off to bed only to find that I can’t sleep. Not insomnia or some disordered circadian rhythm. No, usually its a snippet of viral media or a fragmented song stuck in my conscious unconscious. Tonight is one of those nights. The fragment in question wasn’t Marilyn Minter’s  video of Pamela Anderson spitting out pink caviar, or even Constanza’s fictional answering machine (“believe it, or not, George is not home…). Worse. It was Fat Guy In A Little Coat. I first read about Direct TV’s forthcoming campaign to resurrect Chris Farley late last week, and while I wasn’t appalled by the idea of using an old Tommy Boy gag for the purposes of selling satellite TV service, I wondered if any living actors could be put to better use. Apparently not, because both Farley and David Spade appear in the spot.

 I haven’t watched a lot of TV over the past 72 hours, but whenever I did, there it was: 1994 Chris Farley singing Fat Guy In A Little Coat to 2009 David Spade. The point I gathered from the ad was that there is no joy in watching Tommy mince around in a sport coat that wouldn’t fit Spade anymore and that I should switch satellite providers for more options. Poor young Chris Farley, trapped in the celluloid hereafter, singing to the older, hagged out  David Spade. Thats what I took from the spot. Well, several things, actually.

• Chris Farley is preserved forever as the Drinkin’ Buddy, The Hulk, Barney the Exotic Dancer. Time has erased the 33-year-old who was left to aspirate to death by a hooker just looking to get paid. He’s revived as the dancing bear once again for our amusement. Never mind that this was a man full of Prozac, coke and heroin. I can only guess that the soulless wonks at Direct TV/Newscorp/Hughes Electronics will reanimate other tragically dead stars and have them party in order to sell satellite subscriptions. Lets have Dale Earnhardt ride around in the #3 talking about what a difference HD makes and John Lennon saying peace would have a better chance with 200 more channels than the competition.
• David Spade, whatever his motivations were, is in a strange place career-wise for agreeing to this. Thats the nicest thing I can say. You couldn’t save Farley and admitted as much in the book The Chris Farley Show, but why give him up for a little cash? These days, I guess nobody needs to ask about giving any friend up for a little cash.

           This doesn’t end with the 1,001 blog posts about the advertisement. It’s just a shame that a guy who filled every need with carnal pleasure until it killed him is hawking TV service a dozen years after his death. Spade labels the ads an homage to Farley. A proper homage might have been showing up for his funeral, or leaving Farley’s  legacy in the world of today a shred of dignity. You couldn’t save him, but you can let him rest.

Despite the complete Sunday-ness of today, I took my unshaven self into work to make creme brulees for an administration dinner tomorrow night. They turned out okay (meaning they set up and didn’t jiggle like Jell-O, but didn’t look like rubber custards, either). The cremes even smelled pretty good, although somebody in the kitchen could have used an undie change, and I was forensically separating the aromas.

I’ve commented on various ESPN troubles over the past six months, many of which have been lurid and sexually charged. As I was watching what could be the clincher, game 5 of the Yankees/Angels American League Championship Series in New York, the story crossed the internet of Steve Phillips firing by the Connecticut based sports information giant. This goes beyond sad to just plain old disheartening. I really enjoyed the Baseball Tonight line up of three seasons ago that included Phillips, Harold Reynolds, Jon Kruk and Peter Gammons. There is something to be said for watching my team rack up a win and then turning over to ESPN to hear the game (and every game that day) broken down by the analysts. Kruky and Gammons are still with the network, but Reynolds and now Phillips have been let go over basically the same thing-inappropriate behavior with staffers. I am overloaded with ugly thoughts on the whole subject (and I keep checking the game in the other room-this might take forever).

First, what is it about Brooke Hundley that made Steve Phillips throw away a second career? He nearly lost the first as Mets GM in 1998 for doing the same thing-sex with an assistant. I am not being rude, or malicious when I say that neither Hundley or Rosa Rodriguez (Phillips target in ’98) are physically attractive. So? What was it that makes a man married to his wife for 19 years cheat with jr. staff members? My analogy would be that of having a sumptuous buffet awaiting at home, but one’s desk drawer is filled with salty peanuts and pork rinds. He may have been enjoying whomever and whatever he felt was available to him in the work place. Never mind that he was wrong and probably mentally damaged. Fulfilling desire was more important to him than his career with the Mets or ESPN. Who am I to pass judgement, though.

Secondly, this won’t be the straw that breaks ESPN”s back, but it should force them to look at their corporate culture. There has been a blogosphere rehashing tonight of the network’s recent sexual scandals, including the firing of Reynolds and the settlement of the  harassment suit brought against the hosts of the former mess of a show known as Cold Pizza. Somehow, this Summer’s problems for sideline reporter Erin Andrews fit right into this pattern, too. The boys club in Bristol has to look inward to its jock heart and change a structure that has enabled man-children to do whatever they want with female colleagues over the years. Firing Reynolds and Phillips was a start. Hopefully we don’t hear about the hosts of Mike and Mike in a three-way with a sandwich, or something worse.

My working life is in service of the “other half” of health care. Like many people, my impressions of health and healing were along the lines of the scene from Airplane! that went something like “Hospital? Yes, it’s a big building with doctors and patients, but thats not important right now.” I understood the industry to be doctors, nurses, and not many others. The “other half” that I work in is the non-clinical side. We have little contact with the heroic physicians and clinical staff that make up the face of the hospital. We clean rooms, transport patients, make sure there are accommodations for everyone, and in my case, prepare the properly prescribed meals for each individual. As the flu season kicks us into winter, I am gearing up for preparing a lot of meals. I hate the idea of anyone having to visit my employer, but am preparing to slug it out in the coming months.

The first Winter I worked for the hospital was startling to me. We’d been busy, but nothing prepared me for this. I’d come from a restaurant where we-the chef, the staff, and the front of the house dictated what we prepared. We told customers when they’d be seated and what would be served. The hospital was a shock to the system. Rather than the staff of professional pirates-salty, well trained lifers who lived for the rush of service on the line- the hospital cooking staff was 100 locals thrown together with the hope that they’d not kill anyone. It worked. For months we were over capacity, with patients vying for available beds, yet we kept on cooking. I never thought much about ambulances, other than to throw up a quick prayer for the occupants as they passed. That Winter I saw a steady stream of them everywhere I went in town. I kept praying, but my thought was always “work.” I’d wake in the middle of the night to hear the wail of the rig’s mushing through the center of town and sit up, thinking “work.” After a few months the staff was exhausted. By March, I remember the slump shouldered lot of us trudging into a conference room for our weekly mandatory staff meeting. We were as punchy as if we’d been treating patients ourselves. An administrator wheeled in a cart full of ice cream and toppings and I think that was the moment that the long winter finally seemed truly over. I celebrated by taking one of the five gallon tubs of vanilla ice cream to a table for my very own.

I’m getting ready for a bang up Winter and glad to have the work. We’re short staffed and in a hiring freeze, but thank God for the job. I may laud the professional cooks, the pirates, but this little army of hospital cooks often put the pros to shame and I’m glad to keep learning from them.

Every once in a while I’ll come across an interview with a celebrity chef in which the question “What’s in your kitchen?” comes up. You never hear the famous culinarians admitting to having bad lettuce, or turkey jerky. It’s always pheromone infused chocolate and bondage gear. Supposedly, I’m a professional cook and I wondered what ten things I always keep in the kitchen and can’t function without. Here’s what I came up with (in no particular order):

• Sriracha-can’t function without Excedrin and Sriracha’s bright, red chili goodness coursing through my veins. The rooster and I are inseperable.
• Sylvia’s Queen of Soulfood Pinto Beans-This is a shameless plug, but I don’t care. I put them in everything.
• Mel’s Taco Love Seasoning-A little something I came up with using a store bought pepper blend and chili powder.
• Capers and Dill-I know, two things, but they are versatile and use them in a lot of ways.
• Natural Peanut Butter-Not just for eating, but stir fry, smoothies, protein snacks. Good stuff.
• Whole, Unsalted Butter-Used in moderation, it’s still better than margarine.
• Dijon mustard
• Cheap Beef and Pork Stew “Chunks” The inexpensive, slightly tough little packages of meat scraps that supermarkets put out for quick sale. I use them for the long, slow cooker days.
• Bones for stock, tucked away in the freezer.
• Wine. Red, white, old, new. My beloved sister gave us crates of wine as a wedding gift when she was working at Clois Dubois and I still break it out for every cooking need. Some people just know how to give a great gift, I guess.

I was fortunate enough to come of age just in time for the 1986-’87 season of Saturday Night Live. The late 1980′s and early ’90′s were a deathly dull era to achieve teenagehood in, but there was just a little undercurrent of satire to ease even the most boring years. Those were the re-birth years of SNL, the last years of William Gaines helmed Mad Magazine and the time when Fox had their sickest lineup (Married With Children, In Living Color  and The Simpsons, originally broadcast on weekends, because Fox only aired two days of programming per week). There was fun to be had, despite the repressive times, and the rebirth of SNL was part of that. I became a fan and loyally have watched the show as much possible over the last 23 seasons. Loyalty only counts for so much, and (like I’ve said for most of this decade) I may quit watching the show.

SNL is now, and has been for a long time, an establishment show. There is nothing fresh or inventive about it. The Sarah Palin Thursday updates of a year ago were an anomalous, event oriented gift the show bestowed on N.B.C.  and the nation. The election season ended, Tina Fey packed it in and the show resumed its general un-funiness. This year viewers are treated to an almost entirely Kristen Wiig hour and a half each week and its about like watching toast dry. Kristen’s like a two pitch closer sent into every ballgame to throw strikes. She can’t quite seal the deal and it’s really starting to show. This week Wiig played the part of a woman with Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder. The sketch might have been funny if she hadn’t opted to make the character look more constipated than orgasmic. This is Kristen’s whole shtick-constipated characters in various states of hideous facial contortion.  The new constipated SNL. Welcome to it.

What might make SNL a viable comedy show in the next few years? A new cast would be great. Darrell Hammond is basically done, so why not replace Will Forte, Seth Myers and the rest of the early ’00′s cast? On the subject of Seth Myers, no more single chair Weekend Update. There have only been two comedians able to make the single anchor format work-Chevy Chase and Dennis Miller. SNL needs a youth movement. Lose the horn section and the rest of the band, for that matter. Rather than inviting Shakira on to lip-sync a club song, have bands on that set the place on fire (literally, or figuratively).

SNL is just lost in the times. 30 Rock, The Office, Community, Glee, are better shows. You don’t have to stay up until 11:30 anymore to see humor that is actually humorous. The times have changed and Lorne Michaels’ little misfit variety show hasn’t kept up with them. So, he’ll give us the dramatically unfunny (and un-black) President Barack Armisen  for a couple of seasons and Kristen Wiig’s face mugging until one day some bright young network executive admits that the sad old show is just too expensive to keep on the air. Onward and upward.

Now that little Falcon Heene and his brother have been shipped off to become wards of the University of Minnesota Spankological Protocol, I think the world is safe for feel-good stories again. The whole mylar balloon crash has turned out to be an enormous hoax and Dick Heene has agreed to swap his wife out to the local Sheriff’s department in return for not having to pay back the cost of abusing  public safety equipment and employees. Just for a second…didn’t you want the kid to come crawling out the mylar muffin, all safe and unharmed. His rescuers would be lauded around the country and the boy would wave to chuckleheads everywhere from his parade convertible. A magic moment. Well, except for the little jag-dork wasn’t in the balloon, but sniffing WD-40 in the garage attic back home. What would have been really cool is if the Heene brat was cowering in the attic and a three headed, plasma covered alien baby had crawled out of the bottom of the balloon. Yes, I’ve been watching too much Fringe lately, but I seriously would have loved for the Heene’s half human/half not-of this earth offspring flounce out of the balloon and incinerate the cornfield. As my co-workers would tell me, “Come back now. Come back.”

What can be learned from the aholian drama that was the Heene Family Balloon Tragedy? Lots of things that can take us into the upcoming week.

1. Kids really aren’t that cute. Barfing, truth telling, stream of nonsense six year old should be left to professional first grade teachers and kept out of the media. The disgusting balloon episode, child pageant shows, Windows 7 television ads–these have all shown the world that kids between the ages of talking and 18 aren’t so much cute as they are like jacked  up stream-of conciousness poets who trade witticisms for sugar.
2. If you are going to call up the local television news station before police, or the FAA, have a grasp on your hair style. I know, it’s easy to get caught up in the inspirational glamour of the Rod Blogojevitch comb over pompadour. Oh, that’s not fair. Blowjay actually knows how to work the Elvis do. Dick Heene is just a mulletized wannabe who can’t touch the reality TV greatness of the former Illinois governor.
3. I don’t spank my child, but grew up in the era of the timely butt whoopin’. Falcon needs correction, as do all children. Not his TV swap mommy, not Super Nanny. Good old parenting, which is a lost part of civilized life. I grew up to be an upstanding human citizen, despite being spanked, or maybe because of it. My bottom has always been svelte, which I attribute to the Spartacus lashings it took. I’m not saying kids need to be spanked, but they do need to be taught that everything they do has reprucussions that may be felt throughout their lifetime. The Heene parents are going to be spanked publically and finacially for a long time and I hope it’s a lesson they translate to the boys. Doubtful. Onward and Upward.

Today I got to actually cook for money, which may be the world’s second oldest profession (invented six or seven minutes after the first). Each quarter,  the hospital I work for takes on dietary interns (and their money-it costs the students a semester’s tuition) who are required to host a theme meal for the staff and (confused) visitors. Our current intern put on a fairly authentic Spanish banquet including a tapas bar. I made Serrano and Manchego cheese sandwiches on some kind of weird gordita rounds. There was no actual Serrano ham, but the chef got me some bastardized prosciutto. I flat-topped the suckers under the weight of a stack of two inch hotel pans. Most folks opted for cheeseburgers, but I got to at least improvise a little.

Yesterday, npr.org  published a feature by Richard Weissbourd on the renewed call for fathers responsibility (“Dads, This Is Your Challenge To Step Up.”). This is the drumbeat held steady some time ago by candidate Obama and one that he has hammered at time and again as President. Weissbourd talks not only about Barack Obama’s call for men to be real, honest to goodness fathers to their children, but his own failings as a parent. He also addresses the thorny side of every dad’s experience-the lack of involvement by teachers and professionals, the deference to mothers. In a sense we are made less responsible fathers by virtue of being “just dad.”

I remember seeing an ad for Johnson’s Baby Shampoo shortly after my daughter was born. You know the famous, treacley tag line, “Having a Baby Changes Everything.” All I could say was “Man! You’ve got that right!” Early on in my child’s life I really had a hard time stepping up to be a good dad. My idea of fatherhood, formed in adolescence, was much different from actually having my own child in the world. As a teenager I knew exactly how my adult life would play out. I’d first marry Geena Davis and Winona Ryder. The legalities of polygamy could be dealt with later. Now, this isn’t to say that I’d live with them. No, I’d be living in my car, travelling the Great Plains, writing about mournful,  disaffected cowboys. Lots of cigarettes, a typewriter on the front seat. Oh, sure, I’d roll into town and take care of the necessary nuptials with my wives, smelling of Brut for Men. Fatherhood was on my mind in the adolescent scenario that envisioned my adulthood. My children would be a well scrubbed, VonTrap passel of gifted  little clones. They’d hang from the trees and sing to me as I drove into town (with my soon-to-be third wife, Kathy Ireland. I was an imaginative boy, to say the least).

To my great relief, there are no Hollywood starlets or good mannered Austrian children in my adulthood of the here and now. My lovely wife has the best of Winona and Geena, which is, of course, why I married her. I am a father trying to step up to the plate. I long to be involved in her life, with the help of school officials and the adults who push responsibility toward me. I never gave up road dreams, but I am more fulfilled by being a parent at home than I ever would have been as a Lucky smoking hack on the prairie. I have taken the call-to-arms as a parent seriously. What once seemed like mother’s work I now realize is my own. This weekend we’ll look at spelling tests and math problems together and I’ll pay attention to the details. You only get so many years of details as it is. Soon, heaven forbid, I’ll watch my own daughter drive off into the Western Sunset, and I’ll have to console her two husbands (Joe and Zac). With all the experience of a parenthood well spent, I’ll put a hand on their shoulders and tell the boys “She’ll be back. It gets mighty lonely out on the plains.”

I am nearly 100% sure that the fine, talented staff producers at the Fox television series Hell’s Kitchen will not be calling me back any time soon, so I can write this little post without worrying that they’ll take it the wrong way. I spent Tuesday auditioning for the “reality” series and it was an instructive enough experience that I’ll share it with you.

This all started with a little invitation forward from my brother in law. He has the unique gift of making friends with everyone in existence and somehow got onto the list of Hell’s Kitchen casting call invitee’s. I wasn’t going to go to the audition. The idea seemed cheesy and not at all my style. I’ve got nothing to prove to Gordon Ramsey, Fox, or the viewers of the line-cook battle TV program. The show revolves around the concept of a restaurant run by Chef Ramsey, in which cooks open up for service each night with absolutely no lead time and very little preparation. The gimmick is that Chef Ramsey berates and curses the cheftestants when they flub the intense pressure of trying to serve several dozen covers after having just learned their station assignments. Not realistic, but brilliantly staged tele-drama. After a few minutes of contemplation, I began to just consider  that I could compete on the program.  So, I started success method #1: trying  to try to find someone to talk me out of auditioning. My boss was completely in favor of my going to do it. It’s not that she wants me to go after this interesting form of success. The boss is just tired of my whiny, burger flipping self asking for  new challenges for my whiny, burger flipping self to bitch about. Having not received the icy face slap of no from her, I asked my wife. Yes, I know, wrong order. My wife also encouraged the idea of trying out. Two down. From there I began to pray. Yes, I know, way wrong order. The heavens didn’t open up with a torrent of fire and no hand began scrolling on the wall a message warning me not to attend. Sigh. I perked up my attitude and went. Because I’m so perky.

The process of auditioning for Hell’s Kitchen starts out very simply. First, I filled out the 11,000 page application, giving answers only I would consider appropriate. The questions ranged from type of dining the applicant is involved in (when asked to list the average price of an entre in my establishment I wrote “$2.19-What can I say? It’s a really small town”) to family life. There was a “how do I feel about my parents” question, to which I paraphrased George Carlin (“I love my folks. I’ve got them in the trunk of my car now.”) Okay, I didn’t, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. I also included a Hell’s Kitchen specific resume in which I stated my objective was to cook the hell out whatever they gave me. They asked for a photo and I gave them the one that used to appear on this blog. And some racy photos of me smeared with pudding. Truth, or not, that one is all yours.

The auditions started at 10:00 at 180 North Wabash in sunny, 37 degree Chicago. I got up at the boo-te crack of dawn and took the cattle car commuter service in to the city. Riding with old ladies worried that eating will make them gain weight and other modern complaints. Arriving at 8:45 was just a blessing that turned out to be more fortuitous as the cold kicked in. I ended up being applicant #44 out of several thousand. Upon joining the queue outside the  Art Institute Culinary School I noticed something. The guy two spots ahead of me was my classmate at The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago.  Looking back and forth in line I spotted seven or eight guys I’d matriculated with. Whatever this economy has done, it’s got us all looking for the next thing. One took off his shirt and meandered around in a dirty wife beater like a hairier (if it’s possible) Tony Soprano. After just an hour we got to sit indoors. In chairs. So, yeah. I’m going to talk to casting people from a network TV show with blue lips and snot crusted face. I was summoned into a cubicle with four other guys. One had tried out before and knew the ropes. On my other side was a former chef for the Queen of all media, Chicago and otherwise. He wore a jacket emblazoned with the logo of her studios on the other side of town. I figured out early the deal. Talk. A lot. Be rude and don’t stand on manners. We had a very short ten minutes to get our point across. I interjected with anything I could think of, from “I like cheese!” to “I love being yelled at by a sawed off Scotsman!” The producer got me good. I was directly in front of him and he came back with “Really? So if I told you to FUCK OFF, you’d be okay with that?” Never saw it coming. Normally, with friends I’d laugh at that, but he caught me flat footed  and I stared….ending my Hell’s Kitchen career before it started.

I rode through the detritus of suburban life on the train in the afternoon, comforting myself with old Beastie Boys tunes. I did what I always do when I got home. I cooked, stuffing butter and herbs under the skin of a chicken and making scarily bad rice. Onward and upward.