Arisia Saturday: Dinner in Chinatown

[jim_p]

I didn't get to Arisia until late afternoon Saturday.  There was enough to do in the shop that instead of taking the 11:59 train like I'd originally planned I ended up taking the 3:22.  I was juggling three items along the way: my laptop bag, my overnight bag, and a painting for koshmom .

Got to the con, got registered, then decided to start shedding load.  Up to Dealer's Row to find Pandemonium and deliver the painting.  Nice chat with koshmom .  Quick check of the con suite, then down to the coat check.  Turns out that coat check is NOT checking bags this year... damn.  The NEXT thing I'd wanted to do was to head to the art show and make some notes for the next day's picture framer's tour.  Get back up there, turns out that Art Show *is* checking bags, so I check the one bag and decide to let them inspect the other on the way out.

I make a pass of the art show... not as exciting in the framing department as I'd hoped.  I actually got my idea at last year's Boskone art show, where I saw some things that really excited me.  Not so much this time around.  I'd say well over 75% of the art was hung with no frame at all.  Some of it was nicely matted and bagged in acetate, some of it was just tacked to a mat and hung with clips.  Still, I managed to find at least one example of most of the things that I wanted to point out, so I figured I could run a decent tour.

Finally caught up with Tam.  She had a table display for her little sculptures, so we retrieved my overnight bag and tucked it under her table -- bag check problem solved.  She was going to work bag check until 7, at which point we could think about dinner options.  I went for another circuit of the art show, making notes of the things I'd noticed.

Ran into bikergeek  as we were figuring out dinner plans.  Hotel options limited and overpriced, nothing much else in the area, so we decide to take the Silver Line to South Station and walk to Chinatown.  We decide to dine at China Pearl, having had a very nice Christmas dim sum there.

Big mistake.

As we're waiting for our soups and dumplings, we notice platters and platters coming out of the kitchen for a large party in the back.  In retrospect, my guess is that it was a wedding party or somesuch.  We're talking a dozen HUGE platters each of some really choice stuff... shrimp and veggies, tureens of soup, whole duck, lobsters, sea bass... meanwhile our own food is taking a while to arrive and they keep forgetting stuff.  bikergeek  and I get our hot-and-sour soups, but Tam's egg drop is nowhere to be seen.  Then they deliver his moo shi.  We have to remind the waitstaff that we have dumplings and an egg-drop soup coming.  Finally everything else arrives... and Tam's squid is just a little bit chewy, like the cook was distracted.  Gee, I wonder why?  On top of all this, they seem short-staffed.  At this point I have to wonder why if they had such a kitchen-busting private party AND short staff, why they bothered to seat any regular patrons?  It wasn't a BAD meal, but I would have liked better.

Got back way too late to see the masquerade, so we chilled in the con suite for a while.  At one point the famous crock pot of meatballs was put out, at which point I got to tell the tale of Meatball Man from a few years back... as we were discussing varying levels of cluelessness and asshole behavior, I coined the term "asshole event horizon".  That's when the degree of assholishness reaches such intensity that normal socialized behavior can no longer escape... meanwhile any attemps to impart Clue are sucked in, never to be seen again.

We had made plans to crash at sarahwriter 's place.  She had an 11PM panel.  We weren't particularly interested in that, but we went to the "Igor, Throw The SWITCH!" panel which was fun.  Caught up with her afterwards, drove to her place and crashed.

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

i need Meatball Man story please!

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

This is how I heard it, which was probably secondhand at the time. Anyone is free to jump in and correct:

One popular form of consuite protein is sweet-and-sour meatballs (the sweet part being made from grape jelly... it actually works very well!). When they put out the meatballs, the consuite staff is very careful to remove all the bowls and large plates so people don't load up on them.

So they put out the meatballs, turn around, and when they turn back there's a guy standing there with a bowl loaded with meatballs. Before they could even ask where he got that bowl, he said "You might want to do something about those jelly beans". Basically, he'd dumped a bowl of jelly beans so he could load up on meatballs. The staff just stared dumbfounded.

This is where the idea of "asshole event horizon" came up: he was SUCH an asshole that he shocked everyone into NOT providing any attitude adjustment. So the asshole behavior just increases, much like a black hole gaining mass...

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

Ah, I did some digging around and found the official version (http://community.livejournal.com/arisia/294390.html) courtesy of tamidon.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

interestingly, this year I went in at 4:30 am and there was a big bowl of meatballs put out just after I got there that were being ignored. So I sat down near it, and ate individual meatballs (I was also eating bananas. I had woken at 4 am with this *insane* craving for bananas, and actually gone to the con suite to find them. I think I ate 3 (they were cut in 3rds and I didn't count, but bananas are one of those foods that when you've been drinking, and body says 'you want bananas', listen to body)).

Con suite staff came over and told me to pour out a bowl of the meatballs, instead, though my thoughts had been to avoid looking like That Sort Of Person.

But that was also 4:30 in the morning. I was quite surprised that the meatballs were just sitting there, but it was a bonus protein addition to the bananas that I craved.