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Nick & Choose 9: Salsa

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Published March 4, 2009

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Lord of the Dance
Is it getting sexy in here, or is it just me?

My mother fancies me as a dancer. She’s exceedingly proud of all her handsome, genius son has accomplished, but were I to win a Pulitzer, I know that at the reception, she’d be disappointed if I didn’t ask Joyce Carol Oates for a waltz.

I don’t know what created the illusion. Perhaps it’s because my sister has the coordination of a newborn mare with Jell-O hooves, and simply walking without stumbling makes me Gene Kelly in comparison. To her, I have a talent that must be shared. Once, in college, I made the mistake of mentioning that my friend Geoff had signed up for a dance class. It didn’t matter that Geoff was a lazy goof and just scrambling for a phys-ed credit. She chose to see Geoff as debonair, and that I was just squandering my gifts, and over the course of the next month, she constantly reminded me of all the girls she was sure Geoff was scoring. (It was very uncomfortable.)

Now, at weddings, I’m prodded to hit the floor with the older ladies. She’s like my pimp, and I’m some impressionable youth in tap shoes she found at the bus station. I know that somewhere in her mind, there plays a bizarre version of Dirty Dancing where I embrace my love for twirling and no one puts her baby in a corner.

Thing is, I like dancing. I can usually find the rhythm, I don’t dance with my thumbs up and I hardly ever bite my lower lip. But I wouldn’t say I actually know how. So after a recommendation from a friend, I went to An Tua Nua, where on Wednesday nights, $20 gets you all the salsa you could want and a little bit more than I could handle.

A trio of lessons began at 7, as did the quick destruction of my confidence. It’s uncomfortable arriving solo to an activity that requires a partner, and that feeling only grew when the beginners gathered. There were five of us. Being a loner creep does have advantages though, as it forces the instructor to dance with you and thus accelerate your education.

My first lesson was perhaps salsa’s most important: Men lead and women just have to look pretty. It sounds sexist, but it’s a tough job, as no matter the number of missteps, ladies have to act like they’re dancing with virility incarnate. Since I danced predominately with the instructor, I was amazing.

My second lesson was more biomechanical. Salsa is about tight, small steps, and I tend to walk like I’m constantly stepping over things. Years ago, a track coach taught me that speed equals stride length plus stride frequency, and I apply that knowledge in my everyday life. It’s another example of the failings of my mind, as I’ve met a lot of wise people, and the tossed-off instructions from a sport I didn’t even particularly like are what stick. But through sheer willpower—and pretending my feet were chained together—I managed to shorten my steps, and the directions I actually wanted to learn began to sink in.

Sports actually began to help in the second hour, as we moved onto casino rueda, which is like salsa square dancing. “But like sexy square dancing, not that square dancing isn’t sexy,” corrected one of the organizers. There’s a lot of pivoting, and my muscle memories from basketball began to surface. There’s also a lot of stomping, and the timing and footwork reminded me of my high-jumping days. Of course, the wear and tear of both those activities have left my right ankle with what my orthopedist charitably labeled “incompetent ligaments,” and as the third hour rolled around, my foot was flopping like a dying fish. But like a sexy dying fish.

Hour three was a return to basic steps, but these lessons were led by Johnny and Kelly, two mariposas del sexy who opened class by shaking, strutting and gyrating on stage, their hips swinging like wrecking balls aimed at the foundation of my ego. By 9 pm, the room was full and the experience level had risen, but thankfully, every veteran in a fly collar was counterbalanced with an unrhythmic rookie.

The wheat once again separated from the chaff, my fellow beginners and I regrouped into a larger circle. Now, with the basics down cold, I could pull my focus away from my feet and observe the group at large. Salsa night is an amazing sociological study and an event where desperately trying to be graceful becomes an allegory for the clumsiness of romance. Some fight to lead, others are happy to follow. Women are either looking for their men to dance or men to dance with, and men are just seeking affirmation. At the end of the hour, my last partner looked up and declared me the best of the circle. With three hours of salsa left, but grateful for the chance to leave on a high note, I grabbed my coat and floated home.

I had fun with salsa and even went to Masa to try it again the following night—with a partner no less. But to be honest, the lessons really weren’t about me. I had a different woman I was looking to impress.

That Saturday I met my mother for lunch, and after discussing one of my recent social faux pas, I strategically played my dance card. “Well that cheers my right up,” she said, rising slightly in her seat. “You know, if you liked salsa, I’m sure there’s lots of other dance classes around town you could take.”

Nick & Choose 8: Cornhole

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Published February 4, 2009

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Kernel Knowledge
Drinking where the sun don’t shine.

As someone approximating an adult, I’ve learned that drinking isn’t for games. Drinking is for dulling the miserable ache of a monotonous, workaday reality. Alcohol is a depressant, and it takes a learned man to embrace that.

In college, our game was Beirut. For the uninitiated, Beirut involves caking dirt and germs onto a ping-pong ball, then throwing it in a cup of beer to create a fetid bacteria culture your opponent must drink. It’s fun, but something I gladly left behind at graduation.

I first saw Cornhole a few years ago when I was living in Missouri. You play by throwing beanbags at two small ramps, with one point for landing on the ramp and three for sinking a bag in the cornhole. The difference is tallied and awarded to whichever team scores more. Game to 21. House rules vary, but getting cornholed is usually an occasion to drink. It’s Beirut for hicks, and I used it to validate my Yankee arrogance. Our game is a subtle allegory for Middle Eastern conflict; theirs is a blatant sodomy reference.

But Cornhole is spreading. In fact, the American Cornhole Association (really) claims its membership grew to over 25,000 last year, so the goal of its “founding memeber” to “make Cornhole, America’s game” now seems less ridiculous, if no less grammatically hilarious. Maybe you shouldn’t play before writing your mission statement, man.

Cornhole is huge wherever they love college football. It’s a great tailgating activity. But this is Boston. I know more Republicans than I do college football fans. How successful could a league here be? Well, the Social Boston Sports league filled up within days, with over 70 teams and an extensive waiting list. I only snuck in by agreeing to split one team between four people. Apparently, if there’s beer, Bostonians will come. So with Cornhole officially on our turf, my friend John and I set out to defend our regional honor in a best two-out-of-three match.

“This is my first game. Have you played a lot?” I asked, introducing myself to our opponents.

“We’re from Tennessee,” one twanged. “We played every weekend.”

There’s nothing like getting your ass kicked to build enthusiasm for a new sport. On his first turn, the guy on my side sank three bags and turned to me with a look I read as,” Hey, what can ya do? I’m a dick.” They built a commanding lead, and my frustration mounted as keeping score required both math and paying attention, two things I suck at even while sober. So I was never quite sure if they were cheating.

Then, as the beer kicked in, I caught fire. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’m undoubtedly the best Cornhole rookie who has ever lived, ever. I put on a clinic, and soon enough it was 21-19, good over evil.

Leading 19-10 in Game 2, I watched all the color drain from the Tennesseans’ faces. I could feel their anger, and I thought to myself, nothing beats pissing off a Southerner. I may have even written it down. I knew it was a curse, but I was drunk with power, and also beer. Besides, we only needed two points.

Of course we lost. My fire sputtered out and John started throwing like a rusty tin man. Despite a valiant comeback in Game 3, we went down 19-21, and the Confederacy won.

Convening at the bar, a friend observed, “You know Johnny was throwing with his right hand.”

“Yeah, so?”

“He’s a lefty.”

“Johnny, what the hell is this, The Princess Bride?”

Seems that my partner chipped his elbow after a drunken spill and was forced to use his off-hand and the elbow he broke last year while drunk. I was bitter, but at least I had someone to blame, which, as consolation prizes go, ain’t so bad.

With my return to drinking games, I’m a little surprised at how badly I want to win. I know now is a time to put away childish things, but for the next two months, I’m as focused as six pints will allow me to be. After that, I can go back to drinking like a man—alone, in the dark, softly crying myself to sleep.

Nick & Choose 6: Giving Blood

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Published December 3, 2008

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First Blood
Nick gives until it hurts.

There was a blood drive next to my apartment, and, as always, I passed by with no small sense of guilt and regret. I know the statistic: Area hospitals need thousands of pints just to meet daily needs. And I know the slogan, “Have you saved a life today?” Both appeal to my desire to feel heroic. I’m just hamstrung by something far more basic.

I have a problem with blood. On a first-grade field trip to the hospital, a towering fridge of the stuff knocked me on my OshKosh B’Goshes. Later, athletics was my excuse, but after hanging up my cleats (and apparently forgetting my past), I was first in line to donate. Didn’t even make it past the finger prick. With my head between my legs and a wet towel on my neck, I thought, “I’m the son, grandson and great-grandson of doctors,” “This shouldn’t be happening,” and “Can I still get the free pizza?”

Fear is the wrong word, because it’s inaccurate, and it makes me look bad. Giant spiders are scary, and every part of me believes as much. But with blood, my systems shut down involuntarily, even as my inner voice shouts like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: “What is your major malfunction, numbnuts?”

Resolved to find out, I turned to renowned Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker. In an email carefully worded to blend obsequiousness with the fact that I’m a big, brave boy, I explained my predicament. “Your reaction is common,” Pinker responded. “My understanding is that this is a reflex that probably evolved to help stanch one’s own bleeding: If you see blood on or close to your body, your body suddenly reduces your blood pressure, which means less blood gushes out of one’s wound.” Meaning my body has a highly-tuned defense system, which is extremely badass. Could a mantra help keep me focused? “I don’t know about mantras,” Pinker wrote. “I look away and try to think about something else, which seems to work passably.” Not what I hoped for, but at least I wasn’t alone.

On donation day, I walked to BU and felt my hands cool as my blood shifted to cower in my torso. Before the screening test, I suggested that I might do better lying down. “Oh, no,” the nurse replied, “This is just where I prick your finger.” Exactly. As she rolled my finger pad like a dough ball, I felt unplugged. Before the lights went out, I employed the Pinker Plan and threw the blinders on. It worked passably, which was all I needed.

At the donation table, I was joined by a Red Cross rep who knew my troubles and wanted to ensure I didn’t puke on the staff. Accompanied by a coworker, she introduced a blood drainage dream team consisting of a jovial nurse named Rose and her trainee. Then, after Rose snuck the needle in, the oddest thing happened—everyone stayed and watched. It felt like a preview of my wake, which was disconcerting, but wonderfully distracting. Plus, while fear is powerful, so is shame. Fainting with an all-female audience would have created entirely new issues.

I bled like a stubborn maple in sap season, but after 10 minutes, eight of which were spent telling me to relax, a sack of my blood appeared by my feet. I was so proud, I felt like I’d birthed the thing. Staring the bag down, I used the line I’d been saving all week. “Rose, are you a Steven Seagal fan? Because you can take that to the bank—the blood bank.”

Down a pint but adrenalized, I slurped rugged sips of juice and mauled a package of Lorna Doones. Stroking my beard, I turned to an adjacent couch, where a young woman lay faint and clammy with a damp towel on her forehead. “That used to be me,” I boasted with a cock of my chin. “It gets better.”

“This is my third time,” she wheezed. Showoff.

Nick & Choose 4: Kinoki Pads

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Published Oct. 8, 2008

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Kinoki Dokey
Detoxifying foot pads cleanse you of 20 excess dollars.

I first saw the infomercial for Kinoki pads on a red-eye back from Vegas. After three days of treating my body like a military test subject, I was a quivering vessel of pollutants and pain. I would have clubbed a baby seal with a sack of newborn kittens to feel clean again, and here was the devil in the voice of a cheery spokeswoman extolling the wonders of pads “based on ancient Japanese reflexology” that would ride me of wastes, chemicals and cellulite. Wasn’t really worried about the last one, but I felt the first two in spades. Strapped for cash, the pads went unordered and—with my sputtering hippocampus—were soon forgotten.

The memory resurfaced a few weeks ago when my ex-roomate visited and a friend from Manhattan came to join the ruckus. That Friday we downed IPAs at the Four Winds until close, and Saturday saw a liver blitzkrieg of drinks at Kingston Station, the Hub Pub, Max & Dylans, Silvertone and Lobby. It was a perfect storm of pollution—and the ideal time to see if Kinoki could right our ships.

The Kinoki box ($19.99 at CVS) recommends a two-week cycle with pads on both feet “or other body part” on alternate nights, or on alternate feet every evening. Application is recommended an hour before bedtime, followed by eight to 10 hours of rest, to which my night-owl friend Al remarked, “No crap, if I slept 10 hours a night, I’d feel significantly better regardless.” Undeterred by his cynicism, I stuck a pad to my right hoof and dreamt of being free of thulium, thallium and other elements no doubt responsible for all my life’s failures up to this point.

I’ve got two alarms, and I normally hit the snooze twice on both of them. But that Monday, I was up immediately feeling fairly bushy-tailed. My dupable side attributed this to the once-white pad, now brown and smelling of jerky. My more rational side remained skeptical but began to sway the next day, when my friend Adam e-mailed from his office to say he felt energized as well. This seemed like proof. Time-stamped no less. There are many places one could expect to find Adam at 9 am. His desk isn’t one of them.

Intrigued, I began applying adhesives with reckless abandon—the preferred approach to alternative medicine. I wore two every night. I stuck another on before going to the gym. One evening I even placed pads on my foot and right above my liver. But in the morning, all I had to show was a glowing rectangle of stomach rash. I was expecting my liver to create an inescapable black hole of filth, but the pad remained unsoiled. Something was amiss, so I consulted the Internet. On YouTube, I found a fellow pseudo-scientist with a similar yet converse problem. “I put the pads on my testicles, and the next morning the pads turned black,” wrote scubajenjen. “This would suggest my balls are impure, and they are not!!!” Obviously further testing was needed.

So I spat on ’em. Sure enough, they darkened. Around this time, a friend also directed me to an NPR report that began, “What kind of moron would believe that a toxin-sucking foot pad would really work?” Hey, screw you Sarah Varney of member station KQED. But as she and UC Berkeley scientists discovered, Kinoki is useless; it only takes steam to discolor the pads.

“It’s a scam, man, “Adam concurred later. “One would think after consuming copious adult bevs they would look darker or smell different, but it was the same regardless if you were imbibing or not.” I must agree with my friend and his idiosyncratic diction. Twenty bucks is a lot for a small psychophysical benefit. The smart buy is a case of beer. Even if it’s bad, you’re sure to feel something.

Nick & Choose 3: Box Wine

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Published Sept. 10, 2008

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Boxed In
How merlot can you go?

A friend was having a wine party on her roof deck. An excellent hostess, she waded through the crowd to greet me and offer a drink, perhaps not seeing that I came bearing gifts. Well-mannered, I had a 2006 California cabernet in hand, four bottles worth to be exact, in a box. It’s not the proverbial turd in the punchbowl, but showing up with box wine is like taking your cousin to the prom. In a Firebird.

Trying everything but rubbing my belly and saying, “Mmm, yummy,” I did my best to sell it, but there were few takers. (Although I did get an “It’s f***ing fabulous!” from the drunkest person at the party, shortly before she left.) As one woman explained, the prevailing feeling is, “I just wouldn’t trust it.” Even late into the night, the two best responses were, “It’s not bad,” and a charitable, “Totally decent.”

Around for decades, box wine suffers a reputation for being low market, mostly because, for years, it sucked. Hooch sullying swill’s good name. But now, new, better brands are adopting the packaging. One reason: Boxes are lighter than glass, leading to buzzwords like “carbon footprint.” One bottle of wine shipped from Napa to New York generates twice the emissions of a three-liter box. Then for non-hippies, there are important drinking benefits. Box wine stays fresh for weeks, eliminating the “problem” of having to immediately finish every bottle you open. Plus, boxes don’t break when dropped, which is key after quaffing a few liters of shiraz.

At the moment, the problem really isn’t what’s in the box, but the box itself. Oenophiles are traditionalists, and if you’re going to make changes, you have to hide them. Like sneaking your dog’s medicine in a treat, you’ve got to wrap a plastic cork under the foil. With that in mind, I spread out some cheese and crackers and held a wine tasting, keeping the packaging safely out of view.

The guests were my buddy Adam, an aspiring connoisseur fresh off a trip through southern Italy, and my friend John, who will drink anything. First up was the leftover cabernet from Bota Box ($18.99). When asked for a grade, Adam hemmed and hawed about tannins, while John stepped it up and asked, “With A being Opus One and F being Boone’s Farm?” After the cab was given a chance to breathe, it moved into the low B range, although Adam didn’t try to hide his grimace when saying, “I guess I could order this with dinner.”

Next was a merlot from Black Box ($26.99). “It has a cleaner finish, much smoother,” Adam said, before declaring, “B+, but I’m biased because I don’t like merlot.” (Easy there, Giamatti.) Both Adam and John gave the merlot a restaurant price point of $30-$35, an amount more than triple the three-liter box’s value. As a qualifier, John added, “I’ve paid a lot more for worse wine.”

Buzzing now, the tasting became more of a slugging, which worked out as the last wine was the loser of the night. A chardonnay from Bandit ($12) came in tetra packs—basically adult juice boxes. With our professionalism eroded, I labeled the flat and fruity juice “chick wine,” a term quickly met with concurring nods. Somehow finding a less classy way to summarize, John concluded, “If I was trying to get someone drunk, and I was drinking beer, I’d give them this.”

After the reveal, John took one look at the tetra packs and shouted, “That shit is raunchy”—a heady thought to consider when choosing a wine for your next picnic. Adam defined the spectrum with a bit more grace, saying, “I’m not surprised by the chard and very impressed with the merlot.” Highlighting the Black Box victory, John added, “I just poured two more,” and handed Adam a glass.

Nick & Choose 2: Secret Dinner Club

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Published Aug. 13, 2008

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Sneaky Supper
Dinner done “Underground”

“We have had our eye on you,” the letter said. “Due to your history of good taste and bold nature, you have been selected by the conspirators as a potential guest.” Sure, the note wasn’t addressed to me, but my editor could read between the lines. Valued as the guy who tries the offal or polishes off last week’s sushi from the office fridge, I was dispatched to a clandestine dinner presented by “The Underground.”

Secret supper clubs are sprouting up nationwide. The reason for the cloak-and-dagger routine is it’s illegal to charge for food from an uninsured, uninspected kitchen. As we’ve established, I’m not a real germaphobe, and I assumed someone at the party knew the Heimlich, so that just left me to RSVP and agree to the $100 admission fee. Soon after, I received a call informing me of the rendezvous point and dress code—”somewhere between James Bond and rock ‘n’ roll.”

On the assigned day, I walked to the BPL wearing a stylish suit and a concealed Beretta. Using her keen eye for detail, my dining companion, photo editor Katie Noble, spotted our fellow guests: a small huddle dressed for hipster prom. The first person I met introduced himself as “Blade.” I was sure I’d misheard. Clearly this fellow with the pocket-square hadn’t named himself after a deadly weapon. I checked by introducing him to Katie. To my delight, I’d heard right, and as they conversed, I smiled at the auspicious start to the night’s entertainment.

Shuttled out to Newton, we gathered in the backyard of some well-to-dos and mingled over oysters. There were chefs, financiers, bar owners and a couple of young students agonizing over the gravity of their love lives. Thankfully, there was also a bar stocked with enough booze to intoxicate a T-Rex, and it was somewhere between Katie’s second caipirinha and me daring her to climb into the tree house that word got round that our hosts were of the unwitting variety. Seems they’d run off to Asia, and their housesitter had fallen for the chef’s powers of persuasion.

He’s a young guy, and even after 25 straight hours of prep, he exhibited the kind of boundless energy that makes you want to nap. The former sous chef, now a full-time musician, cofounded the Washburn Underground in 2005, because, as he says, “I come up with these ideas, and I can make it happen, so I feel a duty.” It’s an endearing idealism, which miraculously doesn’t make you want to throttle him.

In the dining room, I sat next to an amicable cattle farmer who went to culinary school in Bilbao. Katie sat next to Blade. (Yea!) The six-course meal began with a spring-roll salad and then presented a choice of “Rosas del Diablo” (a roulade of chicken, rasher and capicola) and “Les Ailes de Cieux” (deboned chicken wings stuffed with Dijon-Marsala mascarpone). I went for the wings: Tasty but topped with flakes of flavorless gold, they demonstrated how the chefs had exceeded the budget. Understaffed, the dishes came sporadically, but the beverages flowed with regularity. After the Southwest ravioli, the waitress whispered to me, “People are really getting toasted.”

“I know,” I responded, before ordering another glass of Rioja.

I won’t say things devolved, but after we played a round of word games and a mute teenager banged out the Zelda theme on the piano, it became apparent that we’d gone down the rabbit hole. I’d been expecting a grown-up dinner party. What I got was adults playing dress up. The dishes were good, not gourmet, but playful—which was really the point. More than an ego stroke of ingredients and technique, the supper club offers a dining experience. This is Boston. Our restaurant meals don’t end stumbling home at 4 am. For that you’ve got to go underground—off the puritanical radar for something both indulgent and genuine. It’s a choice worth making.

Nick & Choose 1: Durian

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Published July 9, 2008 in The Improper Bostonian.

The Magic Fruit
Adventures in durian tasting

Because I either have adventurous tastes or watch too much Travel Channel, durian has always intrigued me. It’s known as the “King of Fruits,” probably for its resemblance to a spiked bowling ball. (Had Isaac Newton been sitting under a durian tree, we’d still be living in a world without the concept of gravity.)

There’s also the stench, which has gotten durian banned from hotels and public transport all over Southeast Asia. On an episode of Bizarre Foods, Andrew Zimmern ate a still-beating heart and a stir-fried bat, but he couldn’t choke down some fetid durian. The novelist Anthony Burgess wrote that durian consumption is “like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory.” Dessert and scatological humor? Sounds delicious.

With that in mind, I decided to find the best durian shake in Boston—one that encapsulates the horrors durian wages upon the wimpy Western palate, but in a cutesier form. Needing to discover what durian actually tastes like, I bought frozen segments at a Super 88. Back at the office, even through the plastic casing and shrink-wrap, the thawing flesh emitted a distinct funk. Said one office mate, “I’m going to start farting in here to take away the smell.” After being cursed for merely pretending to open the packaging, I stayed late with the only coworker brave enough to eat it with me.

She described the flavor as “a cross between a lychee and a sweet onion.” That’s fairly accurate, and actually sounds somewhat tasty, but it doesn’t begin to describe the impact of that flesh first hitting my virgin taste buds. My synapses fired in alternating bouts—my tongue telling my brain and nose, “It’s not so bad,” and my esophagus shouting back, “Screw you guys, I’m not swallowing.” Then there was the smell, a bouquet we broke down as cheese, fecal matter and natural gas. The reek of Nstar was so strong, it prompted a colleague to leap from her office 30 feet down the hall and shout, “Do you guys smell gas? I’ve gotta get out of here!”

Enlightened and armed with a list of seven durian-dishing venues, I set off for Chinatown. My first stop was Penang, where $4 got what amounted to a durian icy. “You can put the sugar, but it’s sweet already,” the waiter advised. Walking out, I realized that the best thing about durian shakes is the lid, which caps the funk like a manhole cover. The blend had a milky, rotten banana flavor, and when it came through the straw icy, it wasn’t half bad. The occasional warmed patches, however, were like pulls from a colostomy bag.

At Saigon Sandwich, a durian shake ($3) included tapioca bubbles, condensed milk “and sugar, don’t forget the sugar,” the counterwoman said. Words to live by, should you take this journey yourself. Thanks to the bubbles, there was a wider straw that fired durian slush like a waste pipe, but the sweetener took the edge off. It was like spoiled milk after a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

Fear struck my heart when I ordered a second bubble shake from Xinh Xinh ($3.70) and smelled the fruit 20 feet from the blender. Ignoring the muffled weeping of my stomach, I forged ahead to find the best durian iteration yet. Fresh and pungent, all the shock value was there, but given the Dunkin Donuts treatment, there was enough sugar and half-and-half to ease the finish. This one’s a great rookie introduction to durian, and a friend may even take a second sip before wondering why the hang out with you.

For the actual durian enthusiast, there’s Pho Soa. Their shake ($2.75) was strong and, being extra thick, allowed for strict portion control, so I took four delicate sips before chucking it. I was done, palate-fatigued, milkshake-sick and about to barf all over Chinatown. I had three places left, but I’d tackled the stink head-on and ingested enough durian to choke a flock of fruit bats. Eat it, Zimmern.