montereyed

[calimac]

Most of the day in Monterey on an errand of transportative mercy, repeated annually. (Translation: I pick up my friends at the airport and take them to their ...) This includes lunch and dinner and whatever comes in between, including a brief and unproductive walk along Cannery Row, which just gets more kitschy every time I visit it. Hanging banners with Steinbeck quotes from the lampposts only emphasizes the loss. On a time, long post-cannery* but in my memory, there were some reasonable seafood restaurants there, but I can't find them now. Have to go to the city wharf for that, where we had decent enough food, including a quite tender calamari appetizer, served by a glutinously friendly hostess/waitress, who started dancing in place to the oldies on the radio station that was being pumped through the sound system (early 80s songs I actually know, like "And She Was" and "Africa" and "Shout" [the Tears for Fears one]), and when she asked me what kind of music I like to dance to, I had to spell the man's name out for her: P-L-A-Y-F-O-R-D. Look it up.

Our water view looked out on a sort of large wooden crate floating in the bay, that was packed with seals or sea lions, whichever it is they have there, lounging away.

Yes, and my friend told me that his sister is soon to become a grandmother. "Oh good. She gets all of the naches and none of the tsurris," I replied, and as he's gentile I had to translate: "all of the pleasure and none of the nuisance" is the weak English version.

*When the sardine catch collapsed through over-fishing in the late 40s, someone asked Ed Ricketts, the model for Steinbeck's Doc, where all the sardines were. "They're in cans," he reasonably replied.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I've known about tsuris for years, but I've never encountered naches before.