like i said, i've been at deviant art.
i've written either five or seven pieces in the last six weeks. i got a good job that's close to the house with people who aren't flaming assholes.
i have no drama. even my dreams are returning to normal -- trying to corral kittens into the car and making out with Johnny Knoxville.
Back at dA. Still not working through no fault of my own. Hopefully I will have a job by this weekend but I'm not holding my breath.
Here comes the part in my life where I contemplate deviantArt again. that stupid website. as if i need something else to
waste occupy my time. there was a link at another website i obsessively frequent that led me to reminisce a little bit. i gave up on DA a couple of years ago because the emotional maturity level at that site is generally around 7th grade and that gets old real fast. i wouldn't keep my original page, i'd rather start fresh with a new name and clog up their site even more. i have at least 70+ deviations on there now and just DON'T feel like deleting them all
/now that i've said it, i probably will
i did like that site, there's some good stuff there and the people who aren't complete and total asshats are fairly human. i just think i'd prefer a new start with it. i have about eight story ideas that i wouldn't mind having up there and "reissuing" some of my favorite photos. we'll see, it's not like i have anything better to do until i start flipping burgers somewhere.
I put out about 13 applications out into the atmosphere yesterday, all to some real ghetto-ass places. On my side of town, the Orleans is straight-up ghetto but they have hockey there so that's a good thing. I just needed to get myself out there in some sort of way. jobs are starting to dry up here. i don't want to go back to medical offices but i will if i have to. it's not like i'll forget how to cook or anything.
i started doing my pilates dvds again this morning. i actually slept through the night (aside from a break to watch the Levi episode of Project Runway -- lulz! what a great show. i love it) and woke up and finally decided to put the dvd in and get on the floor. i feel like i have to force myself to do this but i have to do it or i will balloon up to 300 lbs and not know how i got there like most dumbass fatbodies do. i have a great dvd that has four episodes (abs, legs, ass and arms) divided into 15 minutes each and i can do whatever i want so i did abs and 15 minutes went by in about five so i think that was a good thing. i'm so out of shape; i'm glad that I've used pilates in the past with excellent results. it's just a matter of doing it and i'm fighting it all the way.
my brain is turning into pudding. if it was a flavor, it would probably be pistachio. but rotten and with that skin on top. maybe a fly, too.
i don't want to cook in my house anymore. those fucking oranges i bought at the beginning of the month, that 36-count case... i have about 16 left. pathetic. i had so much hope for the beginning of the year and it is gone now. i wish i knew what was wrong with me because this shit's getting old. i shouldn't have to force myself to exist.
I saw something at a internet networking website today that totally made me feel better. I wasn't surprised when I saw what I saw and I don't feel bad that what I saw is happening. I'm not comfortable saying what I saw (to protect the guilty -- remember, my justice is long and hard) but alls i can say about it is
YOU MOTHERFUCKERS DESERVE WHAT YOU'RE GETTINGwhich is fucked in the ass. this is where i laugh out loud.
lol.
I'm still reading Marco Pierre White's
book (i need to get the others but it's taken me like three months to get through this one because i'm a lazy shit) and there was a part where he quotes Brillat-Savarin:
To know how to eat well, one must first know how to waitAnd he's not talking about waiting tables.
This is absolutely correct. I've mentioned twice in the last month my opinion on waiting for food when you're at a restaurant. If you want your food in two minutes, go to Wendy's. Otherwise, STFU and wait for your food and don't be a fucking prick about it.
I want that quote as my next tattoo. How hot would that be.
This ties in to the wonderful news i read at that website in the following way -- patience is truly a virtue. if you don't have it, you're fucked and your fuckedtedness will manifest itself in ways that will really ruin your day. What's worse is you have no one to blame but yourself but if you're so wrapped up in blaming others for your tantrums, you'll never learn and then what? Go off and die somewhere? Maybe, if the rest of us are lucky. That said, I think I have come to the definitive conclusion that I don't want to work in fine dining if I have to work with diva bitches for bosses. I would rather flip burgers at the K-burger joint (again, no names to protect the guilty -- i might work for them soon, you never know) by the house than get bitched at for not hurrying to serve some dumb shit to one of the two tables that have people sitting at them. I can understand turning the spurs on when we're nuts to butts on the floor but if it's a Tuesday and there's no one in the joint, chill the fuck out, bitch.
learn how to wait. enjoy your coffee or your cocktail or your wine, your food will be out soon. enjoy the down time at the stove while you can because there may come a day when you are weeded like fuck and will wish for those down times again.
At the first restaurant i worked in Austin, it was fine dining and the two chef-owners were the nicest people I could ever hope to meet, let alone work for. they cared about their staff, no one ever yelled at me (and i was a sorry n00b, too), they had terrific senses of humor and i learned a lot. well, the head waiter yelled at me once and it's actually one of my favorite stories (i might tell it someday). i will never forget any of them, ever. It was/is a place (it's still there) that, when you go in to eat, you just better plan on not leaving for a minimum of two hours. You also better plan on being spoiled by their crew. the chef-owners were not diva bitches, everyone did their job, no one complained about anything. they were doing something right. they were never hurting for staff. they were the premiere externship to get in school. when i got it, i'd been in school i think three weeks and had no idea what the restaurant was, what they served, or what to expect. when i told one of the girls who was in the course a semester ahead of me, she was jealous as hell but i didn't understand why. i didn't care, either; i thought it was funny. bitch didn't even know me.
i wouldn't turn down an offer to work at a fine dining joint if the chef wasn't a diva bitch. i am a firm believer in not being an asshole and leading by example and if you're a diva bitch, i'm not going to stay. you'll be damn lucky if you can keep a crew. i have had to manage a crew before and i know how to get them to work without treating them like they are stupid bastards. i have no problem with calling the guys "ladies" or telling them to "hurry up now, let's go, this is supposed to be fun, remember?" or stuff like that, but to cuss them out is not right. i know that when i was on the middle (we had a middle but technically, most would call it the passe), i praised my crew more than i had to motivate them to do ther jobs. i said please and thank you and that kicks ass and i would buy them all their staff beer at the end of the night and i'd let the dudes who didn't want to be there go and the dudes who needed to stay, stay. i actually got to know the people i worked with and didn't treat them the same. why?
because no two people are the same. some need different styles of management than others. i'm not going to let someone who is hungover as fuck stay and fuck up during the rush work and let someone who can't pay their electric bill this month go just to be an asshole -- who will i get the better work out of? someone who has to run outside to puke every ten minutes? i don't think so.
they may not have liked me at the second austin joint but those fuckers worked when i told them to and they never bitched once. that was because i never treated them like they were beneath me. i will never forget that we're all new at some point and need help from time to time. what you do is be empathetic and you help. you don't set someone up to fail or look like a shithead.
so eat it, you losers; you earned it.
This is the worse irony ever. Seriously, that's not even funny. I bet Fark could make fun of it all day and all night, though.
The reason the media isn't talking about
this is so GM food can be snuck into our food supply on the DL so we'll be eating it and not know it. I never thought about vegetarianism before and I actually have big-time disdain for vegetarians and vegans, mostly because their reasons are politically motivated (and they lie about it), but this would turn me on the principle that it goes against God. God made animals FUCK to reproduce and humans have no right to mess with that. it's so wrong, it's beyond words. I read a CNN article that said organic meat wouldn't be derived from a cloned animal, so there's that, but the whole idea that cloned meat would be on the market and no one either knows or gives a shit is just horrifying. Yes -- I'm talking about meat, not the GM feed the meat is eating because you know what... I've never heard of MAD SOYBEAN DISEASE that destroys your brain.
i basically spent this whole week in bed, barely eating, barely drinking, just watching tv and feeling dead. i do feel dead. i am not used to this. i recall a commercial they used to show in Austin all the fucking time that was all
do you have the following symptoms:
sleeping too much
crying
feelings of worthlessness
feelings of hopelessness
losing interest in things you like to doand back then i used to roll my eyes at that commercial but i'm not doing that now. all of the angst and irritation and helplessness i felt this week culminated in a 12-hour migraine yesterday.
for the record, this is not how i normally am and it's freaking me out because i don't know how to fix it. putting me on medication doesn't help (been there), therapy is too expensive. i've got my parents in the next rooms over but my god i've never felt so alone in my life. even when i was living on my own, i never felt so alone.
i have no interest in doing anything. right now, i don't give a shit if i cook again or not. all i want to do is go back to Texas but I need to double what's in my checking account before i can even think about doing that. i told my mom the other day i wanted to move back home and she didn't say anything. what is that about. i don't know if they're avoiding me or if they don't know how to help, either. what i need to do is tell my dad that i'm tired of his lack of communication and broken promises and exactly how disappointed i am in him for constantly getting my hopes up for the future with all these plans he's got but doing nothing about it. why doesn't he follow through with what he's promised?
he'd rather watch re-runs of the simpsons and futurama.
that is how much i mean to him. no wonder i want to bail.
since i can't count on him anymore, i have to light the fire under my own ass, somehow, to get the things done that he has no interest in doing (even though they were his idea). the thought of this makes me incredibly sick -- not lighting my own fire, but the other. and the thing he volunteered me for at his work, to do lunch catering that won't pay my bills and doesn't even start until probably April, isn't going to work because the man doesn't think: i will lose almost $2000 by agreeing to be the "corporate chef" at his work. i can not do that and work another job, not at the moment, anyway. he fucking volunteers me for that without even asking if i want to do it first and there's no guarantee it will actually work out. so annoying. there are things i can do to occupy my mind until i get work (i will probably start looking again in February). i just have to do it. but when doing nothing seems the most enjoyable, i feel doomed.
If you are going through hell, keep going.
-- Winston Churchill: Statesman, Nobel Prize Winner, SagittariusThis sucks and I swear I feel like John Cusack when he played a giant crybaby douche in High Fidelity and his "what does it all mean" trip... but my thing, man, i hope it's not like that. i don't think it is because i don't know if it's ME or if it's where I am. i am trying to analyze this on my own because no one else i know has been in my shoes. i know thousands of cooks have been in similar situations, obviously, but the only two cooks i know -- one just had a baby and isn't cooking anymore and the other is opening restaurants all over the country and i can't get in touch with her. i don't want sympathy and i don't even think i want advice. i just need to get through this. and i will talk about this as much as it takes until i find the answers. i'm not usually this neurotic. i wasn't back home.
I have said many times that i have a justice streak that is usually ten miles wide. that is why i can not and will not work for a diva chef. but when you're in that interview and they're telling you that they're team players and like creative minds and value communication only to see that less than a month later it was all lies... i'm gonna have a hell of a time burying these dumps on my resume and i don't want to waste the time. maybe it is too much for me to ask for someone who actually does care about what is important. i mean, when i read ads at CL of other people who've been to these Strip restaurants saying "This Celebrity Chef (one i particularly don't like) will only get you in to trail for the dinner rush and won't hire you anyway" -- i have to number one, wonder how anyone can have their name attached to that kind of behavior and two, how his restaurant can stay in business. i don't want to work for a celebrity chef down here, necessarily; it's not the reason i came down here. i came here for the opportunities and they really are anywhere. I like the fact that fucked over BOH workers are taking care of their own by placing these ads and I definitely know I could do the same but Karma's a bitch and if a place is going to fail because of shitty management, i'd rather them fail on their own than me be a cause of it -- i sure as shit wouldn't waste my time putting in a resume at any place that's getting bad notes like that.
i'm all for justice but i'm still so dumb and naive and optimistic that i do think there might be a place for me here. and then it'll get shut down. i said earlier that it's ironic that i have no luck, well -- i do. all bad.
anyway, i anticipate long and incredibly boring analysis of my future, at least my location. i don't think i've made a mistake by getting into this field and wish i'd never done it, not at all. i just don't think Las Vegas is the place for me. it goes against so much that i stand for and i think that is why, much like when i was in Salt Lake, felt like i was dying a little bit every day with no end in sight. but in Salt Lake, I did see the light at the end of the tunnel and it wasn't a train. it was school, it was my eventual move back to Texas. there was a plan. here, there is no plan and i think that is what bothers me the most. all i'm doing here, for the foreseeable future, is spinning my wheels and hopping from dump to dump until i find one that i fit with best.
being a diva chef is not the way to be. no one respects you only you're too full of your own ego and self-importance to notice. diva chefs are jokes. they're bullies. did anyone respect the school bully back a million years ago when you were in junior high or high school? fuck no. did you want to hang around them and be their friend? no. the diva chef can not last without a crew. they can not work every station on a 120-cover night (lulz -- they thought that was a lot! losers. i used to do 120 with like, me and two other dudes and we'd be bored as shit). Marco Pierre White had something really awesome to say about this but in a different way; no one can give the same quality of service on a 60-cover night vs a 120-cover night. if you have enough crew, you can. but if it's you and your two sous chefs because the rest of your crew bailed because you're a fucking asshole, you have no one to blame but yourself. only the diva chef never will. they are incapable. i can see him thinking about the crew who just bailed on him saying, "who needs them." You do, dumbshit!
i think that many steps need to be taken to destroy the idea that a chef has to be a diva bitch in order to get their crew to work. apparently, that image is still prevalent. if you think the way to get the best out of your crew is to be a royal fucking asshole to them because that's how it was for you when you were coming up KNOWING how much it sucked but do it anyway, then you are failing your crew.
i don't know when i will venture back to a kitchen here -- i have things on my plate that i want to work on but finances don't really allow, which is something else i'm working on... i don't know what it's going to take to motivate me. this is where i need my dad right now but i can't talk to him to get the lead out because well, he's a diva bitch, too. i'm less afraid to talk to a diva bitch chef that way than to the man who gave me life.
i am stuck between a rock and a hard place. in order to not be reminded of it i hide in bed all day and sleep, fuck up my Circadian Rhythms and let life pass me by. at the moment, it seems a lot more reasonable than banging my head against that fuckin' rock.
made another apple pie using 4-day old doughat least now i know why the crust slides down the pan. it's old. i used it anyway because i had to do something today other than spend it in bed under the covers.
i wrote something the other day and i don't have the energy to read it. i know what i wrote and that one thing is bothering me but i can't do anything about it. i can't say the things i want to because i don't want to put them into action by putting them out there, which is what would happen.
i hate it here. i am trapped, i am stuck and i want out. there are people who have no experience in this industry opening restaurants like they're opening a beer and make it seem so easy. their ignorance is their secret. but what they are doing, as i see it, is trivializing what i have been working for and wanting. it's like they woke up one day and thought it would be fun to open a restaurant and that it's no big deal, just like going to the dentist and getting a tooth pulled or getting their car washed. no big deal, it's just a restaurant, what's the problem? i'd give anything to not know anything and just do it like i don't care if i fail or not. that is freedom that i don't think i will ever experience.
i can not fully measure my frustration and annoyance at myself right now, let alone how ashamed i feel on a now daily basis. that, coupled with being in the most perfectly wrongest place on the planet to hope to have a dream or a whisper of luck (ironic, considering I'm a Sagittarius), makes breathing seem a little pointless right now.
i'd give anything to be in the Hill Country right now. there's no place like home. i've got to go back but i don't feel like i'm going to get there any time soon, not even by 2010 like i want. by that point, i know i will stop giving a damn and won't care if i have to live in my car as long as i'm back in Texas. Texas is very forgiving to their natives... that and the natives care about the right things, like people before money and fame.
i hate it here more than i thought i would and i don't know what will happen to shake it. i don't want to feel this way but i don't see a way for it to stop. how much more time am i going to waste before i absolutely give up. i'm reminded of the chorus "Sometimes" by Ours:
i'll give up on the world
i'll give up on the greed
i'll give up on the ones
who give up on mei can't even listen to that song anymore.
whatever. i'm a retard. i'm giving up shit i don't even have. what kind of asshole does that.
Yesterday: made crepes with cinnamon-apples
Friday: made another signature pie that I can't talk aboutYeah, less than two weeks in and i'm throwing in the towel. All I want to do is hide these days. Life blows in the desert right now. I'm in the tunnel again. Not a fun place to be. I just don't know what it will take for me to find the motivation to do anything but play Neopets and sleep. And make the occasional pie. I don't want to have to be hit by a damn car to be shown how short and "precious" life is. I know that already. I just don't care right now. It's hard to care when your environment seems so uncaring. I don't need a cheerleader for me to live my life but i don't know what i do need. it's very frustrating.
my dad doesn't listen to me anymore. at all. it makes me wonder if he's going senile or if he just doesn't give a fuck about me now. i never thought i'd pray for senility.
and those shit-eaters from that last restaurant i worked at called me again on Wednesday. the next time they do that, i swear to god i will totally regulate. i'll pick up the phone and go
stop fucking calling me, you jerk-offs and hang up on them. they have no reason to call, i got my last check. don't you think that if i didn't get my check, i'd be up their ass? and if they REALLY had something important to say, they'd call the house phone. i can not believe how stupid they are. it's agonizing. i don't owe them shit because they didn't give me anything so fuck them.
since the new year started, i've been thinking about my life as a cook and eventual life as chef/restaurateur. as a human being, i consider myself quite self-actualized. as a person in this widely varied field, i only have a vague idea. it's something i like thinking about because it will give me insight as to where i should end up. i think it had a lot to do with a conversation I had with Derrick when I was at that restaurant where he made it seem like if you weren't a cook in a fine-dining establishment, you were wasting your time as a cook. that bothered me immensely. i thought it was so pretentious and insulting, insulting to those who make breakfast at breakneck speed, those who knock out lunch and to those who provide good, honest dinners to those who want to have some food on their plate instead of a Picasso piece that they're going to pay $30 for. not everyone wants sweetbreads and foie gras all the time, sometimes they want a burger and fries. They want a nice rack of ribs with coleslaw and beans. they want pizza. Those cooks aren't wasting their time, they are providing the public with what they want. how is that a bad thing?
so i think about the food i like and what i'm comfortable doing. i can work at a medium pace and i can turn into an octopus. speed shouldn't necessarily be a primary issue when it comes to cooking but it does have to be considered. Making someone's food superfast because you have someone barking at you to be superfast can lead to something being made wrong which leads to waste. it's got to be right the first time and i'd rather someone take 10-15 minutes to make my food to order instead of sending it out in five minutes thinking I'm in some big-ass hurry and it be wrong and I have to either send it back because it looks inedible or it's not hot. then i have to wait longer. i'm not happy and now the cooks think there's a bitch in the dining room and i'm ruining their day. i don't want that and i know they don't either.
i am not a perfectionist. i never have been. i believe in doing your best and coming as damn near close to perfect as you can but it you don't hit it, it's no big deal. fine-dining joints are usually obsessed with perfection. i've come to the conclusion that perhaps i'm not cut out for a fine-dining restaurant. should that bother me? i can do the work, i can do anything with the proper training. but sometimes i feel importance is misplaced. yeah, it tastes good and looks awesome but is it satisfying? if it isn't, then something is wrong.
Worked on menu ideasI knew that writing down my daily productive activities would cause problems. I called it when I decided to do it. I don't think I did anything yesterday (but I've had a little voddy tonight) but tonight, I had every intention of making my world famous Chile Verde but the peppers, after roasting them in the oven, smelled like grape leaves so I couldn't use them. I was bummed. I'll find another use for the 2 pounds of pork I cooked off for it.
I'm excited like crazy about this catering I'm going to be doing for my dad's office. The OM trusts me enough with what I can do so I don't have to bring samples or run anything past her, all I have to do is bring a shit-ton of ideas and run them by. I'm not going to have set menus, as it were -- it'll be more like "pick an app (soup OR salad), pick an entree, pick a dessert" because I know that if I had set menus, all i'd hear is
well, we want this soup but we want it with this entree and instead of this dessert, can we have this one instead?and i'd rather just have them pick instead of nitpick. I will be coming up with theme menus, either based on a single ingredient or region. i'm going to be doing as much from scratch as i can, even bread and potato chips. i think my favorite theme meal so far is my high end "Whimsy" menu:
Fluffernutters (with homemade white bread, homemade peanut butter and homemade marshmallow)
Organic carrot-raisin salad with creme fraiche
Homemade potato chips
Organic root beer floats with homemade ice cream
I'm glad I'm being pimped out to do lunch -- it takes pressure off. I mean, I can still make a badass lunch but it doesn't have to be Strip Food and it doesn't have to be Subway or barbeque. When I was working in medical offices and our lunches would be catered (this would happen once or twice a week sometimes), it would always be either Subway or BBQ. It would be those two options so much that people would actually bitch about it. I'd be all
stfu, you're getting lunch for free, assholei'd like to do something a little different. so i'm making a lot of menu options (even some vegan and vegetarian options) so the OM over there has a lot to choose from. i've got to get special catering equipment, i've got a ton of questions to ask her... it will be fun. i'm looking forward to it and I wonder if this could happen sooner than the end of March/first part of April. I think if I get a meeting with her by next week, it might. I just don't know how many clients they get and how often. this will be good experience and a fun thing to do but can i pay bills with it? i guess that's really up to me, isn't it?
Boo to Project Runway for kicking Kevin off. I honestly can't believe Christian is still on the show but they're not ready for him to go yet. His tarty mouth is still required. So my top three are (I can't remember if they've changed from last week or not) Rami for the win with Jillian and Victorya lagging behind. Chris for fourth place and that little spitfire Christian fifth. I think those top three are the only ones who would have the vision for a full collection. Everyone else, not by a damn sight.
Time to have some Paul Bocuse and Julia Child time.
Made roasted red bell pepper soup
Made apple pieI pretty much wrote off yesterday -- some days you just gotta hide under the covers and have really dirty dreams about Nikki Sixx. I would hardly consider than an accomplishment, though highly enjoyable.
My dad has turned me out to his office. I apparently am now the Corporate Consulting Chef (or whatevs) for his company. What I will be doing is mostly supplying lunches when they have meeting with clients -- I can't see it ever being for more than 10 people, so this is no big deal. Plus they provide everything, I just have to cook it all and get it over there. It's actually kind of nice this kind of faith they have in me but I would have liked him to discuss it with me first. Great; it's not like I have a lot of shit on my mind already, now I have to devise menus (i'm thinking it will be a "pick an app/soup, entree and dessert from column A, B and C" instead of anything set so I don't have to deal with lots of whining). I have until March to think of stuff so it's really not that bad. Also gives me time to practice. I'm totally doing a sausage wrap at one point with beans and coleslaw.
/damn, that sounds really good right now. i love sausage
But today I made my roasted red bell pepper soup (10 peppers for $10 -- THIS is why so much of America is obese*, guys -- healthy food, whose healthfulness is doubtful, costs so fucking much. make the connection, already), deposited my last check from that joke of a restaurant (I'm so glad it didn't have to come to blows because I totally thought it would), went to the market and might do some more baking tonight (bread and apple pie -- still contemplating that). i still feel incredibly fatigued and just can't shake it. i could just take a Midol and drink a Monster and then be up for 36 hours straight but that doesn't sound like much fun right now. it strikes me as funny as how two legal substances can wire me up like i got wired and tweaked out so many years ago. i was having a talk with a new friend about this and yeah, i talked about it a little around my birthday but yeah -- i've been sober for eight years now. i never thought i'd say something like that, i never thought i'd be an addict. i still have a drink every once in a while but knowing what i did in the past and what it feels like, i know what addiction is and i know when enough is enough. i don't regret that time i was tweaked out and coked up, smoking grass like i was getting paid for it, eating any and all pills that came along and chasing it with red wine, i was pretty much the same person, just "enhanced". i mean, the early 20s are a time to test your body's limits. some people use drugs, others fuck everyone who crosses their path, others climb mountains, others jump out of planes. some let it all pass them by and think they're doing it right while the rest of us are doing it wrong, whatever that means. and while i might not be having the most fun of my life now, at least i'm not poisoning myself on a daily basis and paying for the privilege to do so. i'm a temple, maybe a little broke-down, but i'm a lot better than i once was. and knowing what i went through then, i'm old enough and smart enough to know that those days will never be repeated. even in this industry when whatever you want is just a quick talk with the cook standing next to you, the idea of getting dirty again does not appeal. those times were fun but they were also really dark. i'm over it.
okay, enough of the heavy -- i think i'll go watch Blazing Saddles.
*5'2", 115 lbs, for the record
Made some awesome chocolate cream pieThat's all I've done today but I've only been up for three hours. I hate sleeping the day away but when I try to manage my sleep cycle, I make it worse. I should just go with it but when I do get up at nine in the morning, I still fuck around until noon anyway so who cares. I'm going to study some more tonight and probably make a lot of bread tomorrow. Maybe go buy some Galas or Fujis or Granny Smiths, too.
Made more pie dough
Made chocolate* pastry cream
Brainstormed filling ideas
Studied basic concepts involving marketing * I am in love with Trader Joe's "Pound Plus" bars. 76%-cocoa content Belgian chocolate, 17.6 oz for four bucks. What up.
