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This Month's Contents

Podcast Interview................................. "My Illness Was a Blessing"

News and Politics.........  Tony Hoffart
Current Issues..............  Lindsey Kay
Technology...................  Natasha Stillman
Humor...........................  Vicola England, Kirk Starr
Science.........................  Paxton Daryl Branson
World Events................  Ilias Kountoupis, Peter McCarthy
Sports...........................  Patricia Volonakis Davis
Religion.........................  Mr. Snowy
Women's Issues............  Charlotte Steggs
Leading a Good Life......  Tom Hames,  Miranda Krebbs
On Growing Older.......... Cyd Madsen, Michelle Solange
Motherhood...................  Grace Bon, Amy Flanigan

This Month's Guest Writer................  Amber Burke

About the Writers at Harlots' Sauce Radio
Kirk Starr
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email this writer at: kirkstarr@harlotssauce.com

                What, are Tentacles out of Season?
                    
                                    Kirk Starr

My boss, feeling that his devoted and talented Advertising staff had kicked quite a
substantial amount of ass last quarter, took us all out for lunch Friday and then to
the Seattle Art Museum to see the Roman Art from the Louvre exhibit. It was,
overall, a delightful time, though the experience did ironically force me to endure a
level of inelegance for which I was terribly unprepared.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., the city of
Seattle is located on a waterfront, which is to say that being downtown is much like
being in an open-air fish cannery only with less mackerel blood and more hobo
urine. Pretty much everything along the waterfront itself is, as you would imagine,
maritime themed. This is because it is impossible to think about anything else when
your every sense is being assaulted by the countless and odious essences that
waft in off the ocean. When all you see is water and wood pilings; when chum is
the only aroma; when you open your mouth to say something and immediately
taste brine; when the din of seagulls, ships and foghorns becomes a white noise;
when everything you touch is either slimy or gritty... well, let’s just say an
environment like that does not readily inspire visions of shiny technology, fine
woodworking, and glossy metropolitan chic. No, when you’re on the waterfront, you
feel like a fisherman – from the cracked lips and cold ears right on down to the
unending desire to drink yourself dead.

But if sea life and all its related rankness doesn’t perturb you too badly, there are
some really neat things to see, such as the peculiarities at Ye Olde Curiosity
Shoppe. There’s nothing like looking at a two-headed calf suspended in a jar of
formaldehyde to make you forget how disgusting the waterfront is.
Seattle’s fish district is an enormous tourist attraction. This is because most
tourists think anything so drastically different than home is worth spending far too
much money to experience. Hell, people will shell out thirty clams per person just
for the opportunity to eat actual clams the way I imagine actual hyenas might eat
actual clams.    

Which brings me to the irony I mentioned earlier of becoming completely repulsed
during an excursion to view some of the most beautiful artwork in human history. It
so happens that the Seattle Art Museum resides very close to the waterfront. It
shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn it was decided lunch would also be consumed
on this selfsame locale. It makes sense after all, doesn’t it? Consider: the museum
is in Seattle. Seattle is a port city. Therefore, logic dictates lunch absolutely must
consist of boiled crustaceans and mollusks. Anything else would unravel the very
fabric of reason that holds the universe together. And so it was that reservations
had been acquired at a lovely little wharf-front eatery known as The Crab Pot. I
had been informed prior to the event that The Crab Pot was one of those novelty
restaurants – you know, places that feel the need to adopt a gimmick in order to
peddle their (in this case smelly and offensive) wares. This, I was assured, meant
good times for all.

So we arrive at the so-called “restaurant” and sit down to a thirteen foot long table
covered with...

..   .wait for it...

...   butcher paper. As far as I can tell, someone’s going to slaughter a
hammerhead right there in front of us as we enjoy our complimentary bread and
water*.

And then I spy my first random disgusting item: a saltshaker covered in the
resultant goop of someone else’s seafood-crazed orgasm. Beginning at the
moment my cerebral cortex decoded the visual data, my desire to eat lasted about
as long as a virtual electron-positron pair. That’s a fancy way of saying I
immediately lost my appetite.

Nevertheless, I ordered the Colossal Burger, one of only three meat offerings not
of the cold-blooded variety. And for the record, a forty-two pound wad of ground
beef on a bun was the smallest portion I could order. There was no 'Moderation
Burger.' I guess in their zealous love of seafood, they figured whoever ordered a
cheeseburger at a fish joint deserved to force down half a cow – it would be their
own fault for hating fish and being in Seattle at the same time.

Pretty much everyone else ordered The Westport, or as I like to call it, 'The
Shellfish Orgy.' With the Shellfish Orgy, they just come along and dump bowls of
briny bits right onto the table. Clams, mussels, shrimp, two kinds of crab, Andouille
sausage, corn on the cob, and red potatoes all piled right there in front of you like
so much animal fodder.

Your silverware consists of a shrimp fork and a wooden mallet. You just bib up and
start in crushing exoskeletons with a hammer! That’s the elegance of the seaport.

"No point in concerning yourself with dishes or hygiene, laddie;  you might be
sucked overboard on the morrow! So roll up your sleeves and revel up to your
armpits in the salty, smelly moment!"

Real sailors and fishermen, I’m told, don’t bother to de-poop their shrimp, either.

* Have you ever noticed that bread and water are the staple complimentary items at both
American restaurants and Turkish prisons?


                                       -----May 2008