round one

slice from saggio's with mushrooms & broccoli

I'm on a team, probably a high-school soccer team, but we're doing some sort of project. We are all supposed to meet for a wierd role-playing competitive game. We're supposed to bring old pizza to eat/share, but of course my parents only allow me to take one large slice ("only take what you'll eat"). Virginia Yen owns the house where we're meeting, and she takes my slice and adds it to the still very meagre pile. She also has a bowl of large roaches and several small mice. She slices up my pizza into odd pieces, tosses them onto a grill-top griddle-pan along with some mice (living), and tells me to cook them how I like. I try to keep the mice on the griddle-pan. At the end I realize how disgusting it all is and I shake the mice and roaches into the grass, eat my pizza. Virginia and I discuss that there sure aren't many people here yet, and almost no one has brought old pizza like they're supposed to.

Flash to a park where we gathering. Me, the shaggy guy from Alphaville, some guy who reminds me of Andre from my old team, others. The cocky Andre-like guy is lounging in a lawnchair. He wears a wierd little vest that only covers his flanks, only a string ties across his stomach. Showing off his big pecs. Big deal.

Back at a house, we're in a TV room. The guy from Alphaville is being chastised by the coach for being rude, and he begins to apoloigize to my mom. She accepts. Then come the instructions. We're each handed a paper with a persona/job, and then a video plays. "Begin round one." My sheet says I'm a handyman. I'll keep up with the support stucture and people will come to me from the field to get food, supplies. It is a war game of sorts. Round one will be this day, round two and three the following days. The words "chethie drina" are repeated over and over. Is it a place? We didn't realize that this game would take so long. Definite horny undertone shit on my part.

heavy roemary

double shift, pint of irish about 9:30

At Il Vicino. Looking through large portfolios of LAME art, large sheets of craft paper with glitter glued on and so forth. The restaurant is busy. At some point, Mike the manager is wanting us all to get back to work. The stumbling blonde from Next Top Model is an employee, but she's kind of drunk and sitting at the banco, eating with friends. He's asking her to get to work and she's giving him a Fuck You response. He threatens to bust her down to floor service (?) and after that she will be fired. She seems unimpressed and unconcerned. There is a pizza that seems abandoned. It has sliced tomato, pineapple, and a huge amount of rosemary. I pick it up and begin to stir the rosemary around with my fingertips. I ask Mike if I can have it. It just then occurs to me that the owner of the pizza maybe is just in the bathroom, and here I am with my fingers in the food.

fragment

al funghi calzone, water, cornflakes

A fragment. At Ta Lin or some grocery store with great mushroom selection. They have oyster mushrooms, as well as the king oysters, some of which are the size of a melon. All very inexpensive. I pick one of these giants up, marvelling, thinking about what I could do with so much mushroom in a dish. Without meaning to, while I massage the fungal flesh, my head snaps forward and I take a big bite out of it, revealing the inside. It is hollow inside of thick walls which are made up of packed oyster mushroom filaments, dark brown. It is far too much mushroom to have in my mouth and is very chewy, almost gagging me as I try to break it up. Someone (a friend?) is angry at me for chowing produce without paying for it, but I cannot answer because my mouth is too full.