Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Freedom

Last night, sort of to commemorate the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and sort of just for the hell of it, .83 Fattypants Subcommittee member (and noted nutsack-puncher) Derrick Ito organized the 9/11 Never Forget (How Fat You Really Are) Freedom Fries Eat-Off. About 40 people showed up at Red Square on the UW campus, rode bikes to the Northgate Red Robin restaurant, and proceeded to engage in a fierce competition to see who could consume the most fried potatoes. Longshot newcomer Mike Snyder outlasted everyone, eating eight plastic baskets of the deep-fried delicacies, and paying 40-1 for the win.

A pretty hilarious time overall, capped off with a good deal of projectile vomiting from the upper parking lot of the mall two stories high to the level below. And, fairly amazingly, not a single competitor suffered a myocardial infarction on the ride back, although reports of restless nights and dyspeptic mornings are still coming in.

Pedaling home, I reflected on the event and wondered if someone—a 9/11 victim’s family member, for instance—might take umbrage to it. Could our silly hijinks be construed as disrespectful to the memory of those who lost their lives on that fateful day six years ago?

Sure, I guess, but fuck that.

If there’s any lesson to be taken from 9/11, it’s that fundamentalist dogma in any form is to be rejected. And it seems to me that claiming there is a “right” way to commemorate the tragedy represents just the sort of intransigent view that true patriots should push back at.

One could even argue that the Eat-Off embodied an array of characteristically American values: community, self-reliance, and certainly when the food and drink bills came due, free-market capitalism. So in this collective spudfest, participants were not only paying homage to the victims of 9/11, they were also standing up for very way of life the terrorists tried—unsuccessfully—to defeat.

Until, of course, they fell down puking in the parking lot.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Fondue

Certain things just naturally go together: rice and beans, sex and drugs, Republican congressmen and sleazy behavior in public restrooms; but now we add to that august group of ideal collaborations, bike-riding and melted cheese.

Last night, during what I hope promises to be at least an annual event, I savored the dual pleasures of cycling and coagulated milk, on the .83 Fondue Ride, organized by young Remington, fresh from his summer spent, I think at least in part, in the land of fondue, Switzerland, and his co-conspirator in that apogee of 1970s haute cuisine, dear Lucia, who not only slaved over fondue pots all evening, but also came equipped with dozens of those ever-so-tasteful long forks specially made for dipping hard things in runny things.

We rode from Westlake Center over Beacon Hill the long way with a charming descent down to Rainier Beach and then north a bit along the lake to Seward Park where, in a flurry of activity that reminded me of a scene in a Keystone Cops movie, fondue pots, woks, and cheese graters appeared like magic from panniers and shoulder bags. Moments later, thanks in part to DerekIto's industrial size can of nacho “cheese” sauce, people were dipping, eating, and drinking, but only as an appetizer to the subsequent main event: at least three different flavors of cheese fondue, two of which—a stout beer/Swiss combination and an authentic Helvetian-style with port—absolutely rocked my world, and a seemingly bottomless vat of melted chocolate which at first sort of grossed me out but after a post-prandial safety meeting was pure ambrosia.

I particularly enjoyed standing just outside the park shelter looking in at the flying forks and beaming faces of loudmouthed cheese eaters; it resembled a mechanical diorama from the Disneyland ride, “It’s a Small World,” albeit minus that terrible song.

The subsequent ride back along Lake Washington Boulevard was unusually fast; again, testament to the natural affinity between biking and fonduing.