How To Combine Mismatched Passions Into Something Awesome

Some of the mood captured in the Pecos Hank song/video
"Drive Under The Moon."

The other day, in my sister blog, "Matt's Weather Rapport," I featured a guy named Pecos Hank.

Pecos Hank is a storm chaser, the kind of guy weather geeks like me love. He spends days, weeks, maybe months out in the Great Plains, chasing after tornadoes and other severe weather.

Unlike many storm chasers, Pecos Hank emphasizes creativity and art over the usual yelling and screaming and shaky images of tornadoes that most storm chasers embrace.  Pecos Hank's storm videos, which he narrates, are moody, beautiful, beguiling.

I think his creativity with the storm videos comes from his other job, his other passion. Pecos Hank is a musician.

Pecos Hank last year was wise enough to combine one passion, storm chasing, with the other, music, to create a haunting music video that I just can't resist.

OK, I'm a fanboy of this guy. So sue me.

The song is called "Drive Under The Moon." It liberally uses outtakes of his storm footage to create a dark, mysterious, almost morbid music video. I like songs that have a darkness, so this appeals to me wonderfully. Pecos Hank's deep voice, combined with his sort of Tex-Mex sound, is just perfect. And the 1950s styles in the video add to the retro, brooding mood.

Is the creepy guy driving the car the Grim Reaper? Is the glamorous woman adventurous and oblivious to her fate, or is she a willing participant in this tornadic, deadly story? You decide.

You have to see this. Watch:

How My Parents' Terrible Carpet Contributed To Vermont Stage Company's Brilliant "The Mountaintop"

My husband, Jeff Modereger, on the set of
"The Mountaintop" at Vermont Stage Company.  

My parents' decrepit, scary, awful, 40 year old living room carpet became part of an awesome piece of art.

My husband, Jeff Modereger, is a set and scene designer for plays, and he's the scenic designer for the Vermont Stage Company's production of "The Mountaintop" 

If you're anywhere near Burlington, Vermont between now and May 10, when "The Mountaintop" closes, you MUST go see it.

It's the best play I've seen Vermont Stage Company produce, and that's saying something. They've done some awesome work over the years.

More on this in a moment.

The wall to wall carpet in my parents' home had become a risk to them. It was frayed, and split. Tripping hazards for my mother, who is in her 80s, and my father, who turns 95 on Friday (!!)

We were visiting my parents, and Jeff looked down at the carpet and said, "This is perfect."

Um, what?

"The Mountaintop" takes place in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. In the play, Martin Luther King Jr. has just checked in. It's the night before he is to be assassinated.

The play is exclusively about the imagined interaction between MLK Jr. and a chambermaid who comes in to deliver the coffee and newspaper he'd ordered. I won't describe what happens in "The Mountaintop" beyond this, because I don't want to be a spoiler.

African Americans in the late 1960s didn't get to stay in nice hotels, and the Lorraine Motel was pretty threadbare.

My parents' carpet was certainly threadbare, and was the just right color for late 1960s cheap furnishings, the kind in the Lorraine Motel. Jeff had struggled to find a carpet for the set, and my parents' mess of a carpet was exactly perfect for "The Mountaintop."

So we struck a deal. Jeff bought the carpet from my parents, and Jeff, me, and my two sisters and their partners chipped in additional funds to buy them a new, safe carpet. Everybody wins!

Except for people with allergies. Though my mother faithfully vacuumed the carpet over the years, the carpet has 40 years worth of cat and dog dander, plus whatever the cat literally dragged in.

People on the crew for "The Mountaintop" with allergies have not been happy. Because of this issue, and the fact that a feather pillow bursts open during one scene in the play, there's a sign on door to Vermont Stage Company alerting people with allergies.

Still, I love how my parents managed to contribute in a strange but effective way to the Vermont arts scene.

Even if you do have allergies, go see "The Mountaintop" at Vermont Stage in downtown Burlington.

The playwright is Katori Hall, who certainly has a way with language. From a literary standpoint, it is one of the most well written plays I've seen, full of provocative, beautifully constructed dialogue that never gets flowery, but does get intense.

Cristina Alicea, the artistic director at Vermont Stage Company, directs the play, and paces it just perfectly so that the plot moves briskly, but not so fast that you can't catch the powerful dialogue and the expressiveness of Jolie Garrett, who plays Martin Luther King Jr and Myxolydia Tyler, who plays Camae, the chambermaid who comes into MLK's room.

Interesting fact: Garrett was born on the day MLK Jr. was laid to rest.

Tyler is especially awesome. Many of her best moments are not when she's speaking, but when she's reacting to what Martin Luther King Jr is saying. This is especially true as "The Mountaintop" builds toward its riveting climax.

Yeah, I'm gushing about "The Mountaintop." Deal with it. Better yet, go see it for yourself.  As I noted above, this production is the Vermont Stage Company at its finest.

We Sent 2012 Away in Finest Way: Dinner at Pistou

I'm not the type to splurge. I need to economize, save money. I've vowed to try to redouble those efforts in 2013.

But, as a last hurrah, I decided to treat husband Jeff to a four course dinner at a restaurant called Pistou in Burlington, Vermont. The place had been recommended to me, but I still had little idea what I was getting into.

Logo for the great Pistou restaurant,
Burlington, Vermont

The place is expensive, by my standards, anyway. But I took the chance. The food had better be good. Jeff deserves the best. Don't blow it for me, Pistou, I thought.

Thank goodness everything went way beyond expectations, and gave us a nice sendoff to 2012.

I'm so used to and disappointed and overwhelmed by American restaurants, no matter what ethnic cuisine they offer. There seems to be some law that U.S. restaurants must offer diners an enormous pile of food that's about the size of a leaf pile under a 100 year old maple tree after foliage season ends.

This is apparently called "value." The food might be mediocre, but there sure is a lot of it, so quit your bitchin' you fat diner you!

Pistou's portions weren't big at all. Satisfying, yes, but they didn't need five gallon pails for each serving. Normal sized plated did fine. The restaurant went for flavor over filling us up at the pig trough.

The New Years menu at Pistou was a four course affair that opened with oyster in a cream sauce, then scallop in another sauce, then ribeye in yet another sauce, and for dessert, goat cheese of all things, in guess what? A sauce!

Well, OK some of the sauces were actually purees, but why get technical?

You didn't know what Pistou would serve you until you actually entered the restaurant and they informed you with a small list that accompanied the huge wine list they put in front of you.

Wine lists are daunting, so it was with great relief that they gave us the option of letting them choose what wine they would serve with each course.

You could see into the kitchen from where Jeff and I were sitting and I was stunned at who was cooking. Children, really. They were young men, a bit scruffy, probably in their early 20s. They looked like a trio I'd meet at some college frat party.

But there were no fraternity hijinks in the kitchen, no sir!  These guys were serious. And knew what they were doing. While many 20 year guys can't boil water, they deftly mixed ingredients in a way that beautiful aromas wafted into the dining room. 

This was promising.

Then the first course came out. Oysters.  I hate oysters.

Somehow with the puree they were in, I actually liked them. I don't like the slimy texture of Oyster. But with the other ingredients,  I found myself not gagging over oysters. A first!

And since Pistou is such a nice restaurant, with such nice staff and nice fellow customers, it was a relief not to cause a scene like that.

Next, the scallop dish came out. Just a single, large Maine scallop, sitting atop another complex, delicious puree. 

The puree was delicious, the scallop was prepared perfectly. But when you combined the puree with the scallop, it became the best bit of seafood I've ever had.

Next came the ribeye, again served with a puree. Same delicious experience.

They told the ingredients they used in these dishes,   but I can't remember them all. And I thought it would be gauche to whip out my reporter's notebook a pen and tape recorder and conduct wide ranging, noisy and demanding interviews in the middle of the dining room.

The wine they chose for us was, to my palette, so-so when sipped as independent units.  But when you had some with the course it was paired with, it was perfect.

 The takeaway: Pistou put Jeff and me in exactly the right mood to say goodbye to 2012 and hello to 2013.

The downside to this whole experience: There's no way I can make anything a tenth as good in my kitchen as I had at Pistou.