sweasel.com

I don’t generally like to link to the Telegraph no mo’. Not only have they gone all squish-lefty, but they hardly ever allow comments these days.

If I’m going to be lectured, I need a chaser in the comments.

San Francisco, you say?

Oh, and Happy New Year, everyone.

Guess wot the mustelids are having for dinner tonight?

Uncle B,

Cringingly agree about San Francisco. I’ve attended a couple of Chinese New Years parades in San Francisco, but that was decades ago, and San Francisco has become even LESS family friendly. The last of my family has moved out of SF [I know it hacks them off, that’s why I used SF.] and I now have no reason to set foot there again. I promise that the invitations to our family Chinese New Years party have better graphics.

And as far as the mustelid dinner, I hope it is not . . . La Choy chop suey. Y’all do realize that the common version of Chinese restaurant food cooked in this country and in Britain is not really Chinese cooking. And the store-bought stuff is at best the equivalent of Chinese C-rats. It is heavily influenced by available local ingredients and what they think that the local palates will bear.

New Years is a two week long festival, so party for at least that long. The first weekend our extended clan [50-60 or so] gathers in Denver for Lion Dancers and a Dim Sum feast. The second weekend we have the clan feast where everybody cooks something. I am known for my Peking Duck.

Naw, it’s just chicken fried rice. Uncle B woks real gud.

Dangerous talk, Subotai Bahadur… I am addicted to Peking Duck 🙂

Not buying that he didn’t know…

San Francisco seems to bleed into your very being.

The answer is no doubt in the Telegraph link, but they send too many subroutines and applets and clog up my tablet… so. What exactly is a “fire monkey”?

Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DqvweTYTI0

I’m guessing a “fire monkey” might be what is depicted in the poster.

SF’s Chinese New Year used to kick serious behind – Dragon dancers from all the “benevolent associations” (otherwise known as tongs), firecrackers, fire fountains, a real par-TAY till 3 am, y’all.

Stopped around DiFi’s term as mayor, downhill ever since. Not worth the trouble these days.

Selah.

Forget it, gang, it’s…oh, skip it.

(And the flair in my nic is unusually fitting this go ’round…)

Uncle B, so is my family. One year, someone else indicated that they wanted to try making the ducks, so I did several red snappers steamed with black bean, scallions and ginger. The person who said he wanted to do the duck failed to do so. It caused more than a bit of uproar. I am apparently now on duck duty until I pass off this mortal coil.

Comment from mojo,

Actually, Tongs are benevolent associations. They are fraternal organizations based on Clan, trade, or area of origin [until the 1980’s almost all Chinese in this country came from only 5 counties in Kwantung (Guangdong, now) Province.]. They frequently get mixed up with Triads in English. Triads are criminal organizations that originated hundreds or thousands of years ago as resistance to foreign barbarian dynasties and went into the crime business after the foreigners were thrown out. They make the Mafia or the Union Corse look like Montessori play groups.

Tongs, it should be pointed out, are not Triads.

So my first thought was, give it the benefit of a doubt, Bob, there must be a firemonkey in the image. There must be something wrong with me if all I can see here is cartoon gay porn.
Well, I’ve looked at the thing long and hard, and from different positions, and there may be monkey business, but it ain’t no fire monkey. I therefore conclude there is nothing wrong with me.
Peculiar that there is an accurate depiction of a certain artifact of a manhood-ritual practiced by a tribe of Australian aborigines.

In some ways, this penis thing is appropriate if you consider the slang expression Spanking The Monkey

If you are not familiar with the expression, it means, well, I’ll let someone else explain it to you.

I was born in the year of the monkey, and this is my fifth one.

Dang, I’m getting old!

But I’ve got a little grandson about to arrive in Hong Kong in the next week or so, and I’m pretty stoked that we will both be Monkeys.

And we did Chinese tonight, the sanitised California version, anyway, which is good enough for me. I did go to a christening party in Chinatown San Francisco once many years ago, with the best “Chinese” food I’ve ever enjoyed (including a roasted pig that was cut up into little cubes. Delicious.).

My paternal grandfather, as a boy in the first decade of the 20th Century, hung out with the boys in Sacramento’s Chinatown and grew up with a great appreciation for the food. He was an adept chopstick wielder, and he taught his son, who taught me, and I taught my children. We don’t use forks in Chinese restaurants (I do at home, out of laziness), and we don’t use plates.

Free advice: go to a Chinese restaurant with someone who speaks Chinese. You’ll get better food, and lots of it.

Dagnabit, that’s me with the family stories. Sheesh.