Oh Irony!

I’ve been a Vegetarian for about 3-4 years now, I don’t keep much track.  It was just something I decided to do, with not much fanfare, to see how it affected my diet.  I was feeling sick & run down all the time and thought it was a good time to give change a try.  I stopped eating cold turkey, har har, and only slip up once.  On Thankgiving I will have Stove Top turkey stuffing.  It doesn’t sit in the bird, but it does have a little chicken stock in it, that’s my weakness.  But the rest of the year it’s no Red Meat, Chicken, Fish or any meat stocks.  I do, however, eat gelatin which some other vegetarians do not.  Everyone has their own lines I suppose.

Red Bamboo is New York City is one of the best Vegan restaurants I’ve been to.  It was always a treat to go eat there.  Situated on West 4th Street it was right near the IFC Center so I always go whenever I check out the Asian Film Festival.   I know some people are confounded why someone who is a Vegetarian would want to eat fake meat.  I do enjoy the taste of meat, and I like the way meat dishes are prepared.  The breading, the seasonings, all that rot.  But, getting the same nice package with cruelty free insides is a pretty good trade-off.  So I love fake meat dishes!  The Soul Chicken, BBQ Chicken Wings, Fish N’ Chips are all awesome!

So this Saturday I was in Brooklyn & decided to go to their sister location, and found myself at a place called “Poppa’s Place”.  Luckily they had retained a couple of the dishes from when they were Red Bamboo, but now the restaurant serves a fusion of what they refer to as “Neo-American” meat dishes as well as some of the old favorites that Red Bamboo served.  From looking on their website I was able to get some more information.  Apparently with the skyrocketing prices of Soy the owner of Red Bamboo was taking a hit economically, so he decided to change the focus.  This is really unfortunate news.  I was pretty sad I never got a chance to check it out before the change-over.  At least the one in NYC will still be going strong, for now.

This happened another time to me recently as well where I read all these amazing reviews of a great Vegetarian restaurant in New Brunswick and when I went to find it, it had been closed down.  I hope this is not a wide-spread side effect of this economy that making gourmet food for vegans will cost too much to keep it up.  Fortunately, living in the NYC area, it’s not impossible for me to find some nice vegetarian places to eat.  But since I do not like Indian food, it’s not that easy either.  When Gaz and I went to Las Vegas for a trip people looked at us like we had a million heads for wanting vegetarian options.  I was surprised seeing as how it was so close to California that it would be so difficult.  I don’t even necessarily need restaurants with an all Vegan/Vegetarian selection, though it is nice to be able to order ANYTHING from a menu.  But even if big name places offered a couple of meatless options that don’t involve Eggplants, that will be nice.

For anyone else in this area, or visiting that likes Vegetarian options, here’s some recommendations.

New York City:

Red Bamboo NYC 140 West 4th Street,  New York, NY 10012-1049|
Vegan/Vegetarian Soul food options.  Many of my meat-eater friends have loved this place.  There’s a lot of great options.  And for those who are lactose intolerant they have some pretty wicked Vegan desserts.

Lodge – 318 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211
This is my favorite place to go to Brunch in NYC with my friend!  They serve Biscuits and Gravy with Eggs & Veggie Sausage.  The gravy is amazing, and you can’t really find meat free country gravy at too many places.  They also serve Avacado Benedicts ( Same thing as Eggs Benedict but without the Spam and with Avacados instead).  Really great atmosphere and nice place to eat.

Crif Dogs – 113 St. Mark’s Place, New York, NY 10009
I totally forgot to put this on on the first draft of this entry, thanks Jeff.  Crif Dogs is awesome because they sub Veggie Hot Dogs for any of their combinations.  They have almost anything you could think of to put on the dogs so there are tons of Vegetarian friendly combinations!  Eggs and Avacados on Hot dogs, mmmmm.  I’m not really a huge fan of Veggie Dogs, but this place is the tops, they really do it right.  Great Hot Dog place for meat eaters as well

New Jersey:

Kaya’s Kitchen - 817 Belmar Plaza, Belmar, NJ 07719-2752
A lot of traditional american dishes are served here.   A good variety of food is available.  There’s a nice relaxed environment, and sometimes they will have musical events planned to enjoy while you’re dining.

The Crust & the Crumble – 658 Cookman Ave, Asbury Park, NJ 07712
This is a great little pizza house on Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park.  They are rebuilding the area, and there’s an awesome Pinball Hall of Fame that’s down there.  They have Vegan Sausage, Pepporoni and a lot of amazing sauce options for the pizza.  They also offer the choices of real meat for your toppings as well.

The Eurasian Eatery – 110 Monmouth Street, Red Bank, NJ 07701
Not a personal favorite of mine because I am very ethnocentric with my palate, but this has some great choices for people into more of a European & Asian menu selection.  Great vegetarian choices.

Surf Taco – 94 Brighton Avenue, Long Branch, NJ 07740
They serve all kinds of meat here, this is not a vegetarian restaurant.  HOWEVER they have a lot of great options and they are delicious.  Their refried beans are vegetarian which is more rare than you would think.  Their burritos give you a lot of bang for the buck.  They also have a delicious vegan chili This is one of my favorite places to eat lunch ( just about every day)

I am a pretty strange person. All my life I’ve kind of wanted to do nerdy things. And not just the cool nerdy things, but nerdy nerd nerd things. When I was younger I loved wearing glasses, and the fact that I wore them all the time is the only reason I need to wear them all the time now. I used to take paper clips and fashion makeshift retainers out of them because for some reason I wanted to wear a retainer. And just this week I got a prescription for an inhaler and I was kind of excited about it…

Yet somehow I managed to never play Dungeons & Dragons in my life. How is that? I’m not entirely sure how it escaped my grasp completely. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I did try some other RP systems out like White Wolf, but never D&D Proper. So, I got together with some of my friends, finally, and planned that we do a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. He agreed to run it & we started to discuss what kind of game we would play. He began to describe the different settings in which you can play. Forgotten Realms (Standard Fantasy), Ravenloft (Gothic Horror), etc. So I said “You know, there should be a campaign setting where you can travel through space from planet to planet. Then each of those planets could be their own genre. That way you’re not limited to just one setting”. Well, apparently someone agreed with me because that’s where Spelljammer comes in. So, we’re doing a Spelljammer setting modified for 3.5 rules. I am pretty excited.

My character is a Druid who is distrustful of humans and has a distaste for the motives of others. I’m true neutral though so it doesn’t affect my decisions so much as my moods. We’ll see how it goes. It’s a little hard to get used to talking “in character” or “out of character”. It’s also interesting to watch how other people handle the character bit. Gaz just looks sleepy when he is talking as his Ranger. I guess it’s his aloof look, but he just looks tired to me. Some people just stay the same as they are though. I’m glad to have finally started upon this journey to fill the gaps in my weird self-nerd infliction.

One fun part was making D&D Cuppy Case though for everyone coming over!  Now see if you can figure out what each one is supposed to be, LOL.  Clue: The Fruity Loops one on the top left are nothing, save for fruity loop covered

Designed by Gaz

Designed by Q

Women be shoppin!

People like to do stupid shit. Whether it’s watching Football, going shopping for shoes, watching marathons of bad reality television, or playing games I just don’t see the difference. Some people choose to be super constructive with their lives & volunteer for charities and run marathons. I admire those people, I really do. However, I spend a good portion of my time playing video games or reading comics. I just never really thought anything was wrong with that. And I kind of resent it when people try to make me, or anyone else, feel bad for that.

Often enough I’ll be in a gender-mixed group where the subject of video games, or something comes up. Typically the guys would start going off on tangents about whatever the subject was and the girlfriends would start to lose interest. More than once I’ve had one of these girls turn to me looking for sympathy saying “God, seriously guys are so stupid with their video games, right?”. I suppose it’s a reasonable assumption that when 95% of the girls in the room are in agreement that perhaps I would be involved. But instead of my disagreeing with that lending credence to the fact that perhaps video games aren’t so bad, it just alienates me from my gender-mates. It’s just such a weird thing.

I guess I’ve dealt with some sort of gender or identify quandaries internally my whole life.  It’s not a huge deal, but every so often things come out that highlight to me how annoying stereotypes can be.  I do enjoy a good romantic comedy every so often.  I’ve watched all of Sex and the City.  There are times in my life where I enjoy the pleasures of my weird feminine emotional responses to stimuli.  The mysterious ways of the female are not completely lost on me, but sometimes I just feel isolated against them.

Currently in life though I am really lucky to have some pretty great female friends in my life who might look at me funny when I start talking about World of Warcraft or something but still embrace my weirdness.  Being a geek, in general, has become a lot more socially acceptable now than it was when I was in high school and I am really glad for that.  I’m an old dog, and I’m not about to learn new tricks

The star date is accurate, I looked it up. I am slightly astounded at myself for not having looked that up earlier in life. What kind of Trekker am I…. I should demote myself to something… What do Trekkers call Trekker posers? If the term is not coined, we must work on that. Perhaps Terran.. but used derisively for earthbound beings who know nothing of the stars. I’ll keep working on this one.

Well, Christmas is finally over, but it was a pretty great one. Having three families to celebrate Christmas with makes things both hectic, but also more fun! More people to exchange with, our Christmas has become a 3-day event. Christmas number one is on Christmas Eve between my husband and I. Christmas number two is on Christmas morning at my Father-In-Law’s side of the family. Christmas number three is back at my parents house. And Christmas number four is on the morning the day after Christmas at my Mother-In-Law’s house.

When people hear about this they often give me the advice of alternating years on the holiday. I think that sounds awful! Sure, the driving around is a bit of a pain, but I wouldn’t want to not see a part of my family, or my new family, for a whole year cycle. People tend to have a lot of advice or notions on marriage that baffle me as things move along.

Gaz and I have been married for almost four months now. When we meet someone new & tell them that we’re married… we get some weird hybrid “Oh that’s cute, boy are you in for some misery” look. This comes from both other married people and single people as well. Then we get advice about how the first five years are the hardest, but if you stick it out you just might make it. It’s pretty jaded out there. Then when I say, “Well you know, it’s easy for us. We’re best friends, and this isn’t hard at all it is a fun adventure!” I get that look… the look you give a Cat when it chases some toy mouse. Oh isn’t that cute… they’re chasing the mouse like it’s real. Stupid cat, thinks the mouse is real.

It just kind of makes me sad really. Not for myself, of course. But that there’s someone who really thinks it’s naive for me to say that Marriage isn’t hard, and that I truly don’t think it will get any harder. I guess I just figure when you’ve found the right person… why would it be hard? I don’t really say too much when people throw this negativity at me. I honestly do not know sometimes if it’s just social obligation to talk about & treat marriage like a responsibility rather than a fun time. Or perhaps this person is, in fact, miserable and projecting their lack of success on to me. But it’s just awkward.

I’ve lived with Gaz for more than 2 years now, and the only real thing that’s changed after the marriage was my last name. They’ve been some pretty great times and I just don’t see marriage or anything else making them worse. I know what a “hard work” relationship is, and I’m definitely not in one. Isn’t it weird that it sounds naive to say that your Marriage will be perfect and last forever? That should really just be the reality, right?

Wednesday is a great day for some of us as it is New Comic Day! In an effort to expose myself to more comic books, support the industry, and have something to write about I am going to be trying something new. Every Wednesday I am going to go the local Comic Store and pick one of the “New This Week” comments to read and review. This week I chose to review the Batman 80-page-Giant Gotham Freezes Over.

Gotham Freezes Over!
Cover Price: $5.99
Release Date: December 16, 2009
Publisher: DC Comics

There are reasons that I chose this comics over all the others:
1. It’s Christmas time and this comic had a snowy cover, so despite the bleak indicators of the title I figured it was “Christmassy”
2. I’ve not read anything with Dick Grayson as Batman yet and I was curious.
3. The “80-page-GIANT”ness of it suckered me in.

Overall the anthology format is one that I don’t go out of my way to visit. I did, however, really like the mini-story format of the Gotham Knight DVD set, so I figured perhaps a Batman anthology by different contributors might be interesting for me as well. Within the anthology are eight independent stories taking place in Gotham city as different characters deal with the fact that Gotham has frozen over. As I think of how I am going to handle reviewing this mini-anthology of Batman universe stories I begin to realize that this wasn’t really the best format to begin my Comic Book reviewing days with. Reading a book like this is a bit like watching Superbowl Commercials. Some are awesome, innovative and fun, while others are generic everyday commercials you could see all the time.

This story was interesting as it touched on the dynamic between Dick Grayson & Damian as they deal with the citizens of Gotham’s reaction to the natural conditions of this Freeze over. I liked the layouts & designs for this story a lot, and the art style was interesting. It was a simple story & lesson that just touched upon the morality of Batman and how Dick Grayson is holding up that morality. Personally, I thought this was the best part of the whole anthology and I’m a little confused as to why they started off the book with this instead of putting it towards the end. I suppose, seeing as how it’s one of the only stories that’s actually Batman-centric, they thought they would bring the reader in with a Batman Story so they would stay for the rest of the book.

Alfred, as always, is badass. I suppose one of the upsides of anthologies like this is that you will almost always get to see some stories from the perspectives of characters that usually do not take the spotlight in the main series, so this was a neat side-story to read. The style is bright and colorful and more on the cartoony side, just how I like it This might have been my second favorite story in the whole thing, which leads me to believe the quality is top heavy in this book. Interesting.

An interesting story about non Batman Canon characters and a side mission on Gotham. Overall the story on this was pretty engaging and interesting. The concept seemed appropriate to the Batman universe specifically, and it was an interesting read.

Some story about a character named Veil. I’ve never heard of this character so I’m assuming this was some sort of origin/introduction story. I wonder how often that’s snuck in, an origin for some small pitch hero that either will never get to mass production or that serves as some sort of pilot to see if they should get into mass production?

The art style on this story stuck out from the rest of the Anthology. Most of the other submissions were done in a pretty standard comic book style, but this was more of a painted photo-realistic style that was different completely from the rest of the book. It broke things up and made it interesting to see something different. I do, however, prefer a more illustrative style than realistic for my tastes. I felt like they were trying to touch into the character of Catwoman and perhaps how she’s handling the death of Bruce Wayne, but I felt it was a bit of a hollow attempt. It seemed the story was put in there to force the theme home and it didn’t seem too natural. Catwoman can be pretty damn awesome, if you know what you’re doing…

Poison Ivy was dead, then alive, then mean, then sad, then happy, then sad, then mad. The end. Bleh.

A cool story with Commissioner Gordon. What I especially liked about this section was the paneling, it was interesting and different but not hard to follow. The art style was gritty but not too loose. Overall a good piece. Getting inside of the investigative mind and thinking of Commissioner Gordon is always a treat, and it wouldn’t be a Batman Anthology without the inclusion of Commish.

This is a cute little one-page stylized Batman page, pretty neat & fun but not much to say!!

The anthology tied everything together as far as being in the same event, it’s snowing. But it didn’t go much further than that. The stories were all independent from one another and they all focused on different main characters. It was an enjoyable read, I suppose, but I still am not in love with the Anthology format.

Until next week!! Same Batblog, same Batblogger! *facepalm*