DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

When you buy a house, the day your offer is accepted is a high point. Soon after that, you hire a squad of experts to dissect the place as if it were a sack of dirty clothes, reporting back on every stain, odor, and sagging bit of elastic.

Armed with these reports, you as a buyer have the option of asking the seller to fix the problems, or asking for cash, or doing nothing. Or, technically, you can back out of the purchase altogether, although in my experience the problem would have to be huge for most people to cancel the transaction… because by the time the inspection reports come in, you’ve been in escrow for at least a week, after having come out on top of the bidding war that marks the sale of any nice property (in Northern California, anyway). You’ve toured the property two or three times, mentally put your family and furniture into the new home, imagined driving down the driveway with groceries, imagined entertaining friends on the deck, wondered how the heck you’re going to get broadband access there, given that it’s way the heck out in the sticks. In short, you’re committed, and only something devastating would break the commitment.

We endured about 10 days of pain. Buying and selling simultaneously, we had inspection reports from two properties to contend with. In both transactions, the buyers submitted “addendums” to the original purchase contract, requesting repairs, money, or both. In both cases, the sellers issued counter-addendums.

For my part, I had to scramble to get a heater repaired. The house inspector discovered that our heater was spewing carbon monoxide into the basement den. I heard his report from the buyers’ realtor, who enthused “We love the property, and the inspector said everything is in fabulous shape. There’s just the matter of the carbon monoxide from the heater; that’s the SILENT KILLER, you know. But the house is really great!”

Fortunately, a few hours’ worth of cleanup and TLC did the trick. The flue was obstructed with the grime collected over 25 years, causing insufficient draw, causing the combustion byproducts to vent into our basement. The heater expert opined that the CO levels were safe before the repair, but we’re all happier now that they’re 100% lower.

Meanwhile, three miles away, we discovered that most of our 2+ acre yard might be leachfield. Subsequent research indicated that this is probably not entirely true, but for a few days we believed that the only way we’d be able to build our new music and dance studio would be by redirecting the output line from the septic tank into the “seasonal creek,” which, by the way, is realtor-speak for “drainage ditch.”

Anyway, after way more difficulties than I expected, we pushed through terms everyone could live with. We and our buyers removed contingencies… and now it’s just a matter of time before loans fund and we move to the new house.

And, no, I really won’t have broadband way the heck out in the sticks. Fortunately there’s a local wireless co-op that’s running WiFi from peak to peak to share a big DSL pipe. But that’s a story for another time.

I often intend to assemble a summer reading list, for any of you who have travels planned and appreciate recommendations for worthy books. But then I spend my summer reading, and I never get around to writing up my reviews until too late in the year.

This is happening again. Watch for a whole mess of reviews in about six weeks’ time, just after you return from boring airplane rides and lonely ocean crossings. But don’t blame me if you end up reading some schlock grabbed in haste from the bestseller rack at the airport news concession — I have more than a year’s worth of older reviews archived on this site. (See the “Media Reviews” section of the navigation area.)

Also, I have managed to write up some recent thoughts on two excellent works of non-fiction. The stories are entertaining enough to be untrue, so don’t let the genre bother you; both these books are a lot of fun:

• In Search of Captain Zero (Allan C. Weisbecker)
• Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)

I’m a sucker for high-tech thrillers. This is a solid example of the genre. I recommend it.

The reviews at Amazon (links below) contain plot summaries, so rather than recap the story here, I’ll just mention two aspects of this book that make it memorable.

One, the characters are great: they’re believable, complex, and quirky.

Two, Deaver executes a couple of 180-degree plot twists that would have been inconceivable a few pages earlier. I won’t spoil any details… but if you like this sort of writing, Deaver delivers.

If you are technically literate, you may be bothered by some of the skills attributed to the two hacker characters, and by some of the technical explanations. I’m probably the worst sort of audience for these writers. Suspension of disbelief is a typical requirement for escapist fiction, though. The less believable moments did not hinder my enjoyment of the story; in fact, I found that Deaver’s work is among the more plausible I’ve read.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (paperback)

Billed as an exposé of the restaurant business, Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential indeed lifts the skirt to reveal the disturbing support hose of the food-service industry: the cast of unsavory line cooks preparing the food, the self-deluded owners, the chefs with ninja fantasies.

But it’s as much an autobiography as well, as Bourdain recalls a lifetime spent on the other side of the saute pan. It’s tough to say how many of the frightening things he describes really apply to your neighborhood bistro, and how many are only true in New York’s hypercompetitive restaurant scene, but it’s a heck of a read anyway.

In one entertaining and enlightening chapter, Bourdain dissects the various delusions suffered by would-be restauranteurs, handily explaining why 80% of new such enterprises fail. This is required reading for anyone who has ever heard, and begun to believe the exclamation, “You’re a great cook! You should open a restaurant.” Bourdain’s implicit advice: no, you shouldn’t.

He explains why he never orders steak well-done or “discount sushi.” Some of his anecdotes on the horrors of commercial food prep are repulsive, among them this visual gem: “Equally disturbing is the likelihood that the butter used in the hollandaise is melted table butter, heated, clarified and strained to get out all the bread crumbs and cigarette butts.”

The lifestyle of an executive chef requires an inhuman dedication — or, perhaps, it seems this way to me because I’d be poorly suited to the task. Bourdain recounts a representative “day in the life,” which seems fueled by stress, aspirin, cigarettes, caffeine, and threats. It is fascinating to learn how the chef juggles suppliers, personnel, reputation, and diners’ expectations to come up with a nightly menu of specials that not only meet all these disparate and contradictory needs, but also accomodate the limitations of the kitchen: who on the line will have enough hands and burners free to prepare these dishes?

I enjoyed this book so much that after I read it I kept it handy for another week, rereading favorite passages. A copy of this book belongs on every foodie’s bookshelf.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (paperback)
• Amazon (hardback)

I have to confess to an occasional weakness for convenience foods. Sometimes I feel like if I eat one more leaf, I’m going to sprout three more stomachs and a real long neck. You know how it goes.

So I picked up a pallet of BocaBurgers at Costco. A BocaBurger is a vegan faux meat patty. Writing that here, it just does not sound appetizing, I admit. But when served on a fresh homemade bagel with about 6 oz of ketchup (hey, it’s an antioxidant!), it makes a passable meal substitute, injecting variety and healthy soy protein into my diet. The soy really helps with my menstrual cramping too.

But I have to wonder, what the heck are those grill marks from?! Best guess: they’re using a faux grill on their faux meat. I bet they’re painting the stripes with miniature roller brushes.

My other problem with BocaBurgers is that they look and taste an awful lot like meat. You might think these are entirely right and good things for a fake burger to do, but for anyone familiar with GardenBurgers, expecting a variation on the wholegrain-food-disk theme, it’s an unpleasant surprise.

So, anyway, if you want to buy most of a pallet of BocaBurgers, let me know. Maybe they’ll see you through the latest tainted-beef recall.