from Joe Marchione:
It's June 4 and faster than you can say geminijune4, it should dawn on anybody who interacted with Allan on a regular basis that this is his birthday. And if you remembered that, you can only be thinking one thing .... That's right, Live Lobster.
Allan called it a tradition but "ritual" is probably a better word. Come to think of it, Allan's relationship with dining was almost entirely governed by rules that bordered on ritual. Don't know when "The Birthday Lobster" routine began for him but for the last decade or so of his life, 06/04 meant a trip to the Chinese seafood shop on the corner of Mission and 18th and a trip home on the 33 with a live lobster companion. The year the fish shop closed, his fretting about where to find his lobster bordered dangerously close to panic as his birthday approached. I recall somewhat bemusedly talking him down, explaining that there were plenty of places in the Mission, Richmond, Chinatown where he could find his prey -- although having witnessed his preference for going to the exact same places, every time, when I did book fairs with him, I had a sneaking suspicion my alternatives did nothing to assuage his concerns/nascent terror.
I've never been a big birthday guy. Don't get me wrong, I don't avoid or dread them (just another day older and deeper in debt .... and I owe my soul to Capital One). It's more the idea that I refuse to wait for a specific day to do something special. I suppose there are (at least) two ways to look at this. For some (most?) folks, waiting for a specific important date makes the whole experience more pleasurable/special. For me, a big birthday event a) cheapened the other 364 days of the year and b) always seemed doomed to be less than what was planned. Better to celebrate a day "for no reason" in my world. But that is my world. And most definitely NOT Allan's.
I have a vague memory that the tradition began as a restaurant meal and evolved into the DIY affair of the last few years. Again, working from shards of memory here, the transition may have been forced when his "usual" birthday restaurant closed. See, Allan HATED going to a place for the first time. Solution? Always go to the same places, over and over again and regardless of any change in quality. All right, I'll give him the south- and north-bound stops on I-5 ... after all, there *aren't* a lot of options (though I recall one trip where he was almost paralyzed by confusion when we reached the first target stop [A Denny's in Gustine?] too early ... unable to link place with time, he wasn't sure whether this was *the* stop or not). Once in LA, it was the Burbank IHOP for breakfast (Rooty Tooty, eggs scrambled easy) .... Versailles Cuban Restaurant in West LA (a great chunk o pork that I have been unable to duplicate at home, perhaps less great on the second night in a row. I think one year we did it three times but better that than the existential indecision that my desire for a new place would bring on)... Allan raved about Golden Coral in Orange County and on and on, but not too much because we keep repeating the same places. And cheap hotels. CHEAP hotels. Please deliver me from this cheap hotel. I drew the line after the stop at the one that didn't have phone lines.
Ah, Allan, I miss you in all your "mad bookseller" glory. If I didn't think Live Lobster was grossly over-rated in relationship to its price, I might prep a couple in Allan's memory. A toast will have to do ... toast? Toast points! Lobster Newburg. A Bisque, perhaps. Now we're getting closer to my style. A bit more flavor than the plain ol' Lobster (which I always viewed as an excuse to eat drawn butter ... If you're going to do that, I'll take King Crab, thank you very much). Sorry 'bout that. Carried away again. Can't resist playing with two of my favorite things: food and words. Anyway, Happy Birthday, Allan.
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