DIMENSION X

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, time check 6:30 something, and I was having dinner in front of the tv watching Travel Channel's No Reservation and Tony Bourdain was enjoying his food and company in Sao Paolo, Brazil. They were drinking a vodka-based killer drink saying salud in this wise, Cheers! Life doesn't suck! Which, for the most hardened existentialist, it was easy for Tony to say. He travels, he writes, he eats, he sees Brazilian breasts - and get paid in the process - and so life doesn't suck for him because he is Tony and not some dude probably named, uh, Cody, who was having a salad of baby lettuce in a flood of yucky raspberry vinaigrette.

My salad was floating in raspberry vinaigrette and if life didn't suck, at least my salad did. I bought the bottle of vinaigrette in the neighborhood organic store for $6.75 thinking it was good because I didn't know if raspberry vinaigrette was good - and that was probably my own twisted standard of goodness: if I didn't know it, it must be good.

Turned out it wasn't. There was no hint of raspberry, just oil, and not even virgin olive oil, but more like facial oil in that bottle of squandered opportunity. I thought if I wasted my vinaigrette, I shouldn't be wasting my salad either, and so I drained all green and purple leaves of the last drop of facial oil and searched the ref for a worthier replacement, a worthier complement. I saw mint sauce, the one I use for lamb chops, and in my desperation to get my appetizer going I poured a good pouring on my hapless greens (and purples).

The first helping was kind of funny. I thought I had toothpaste on my salad. But when the sauce settled in, when the fusion of malt and vinegar and mint found their respective niches on my salad plate, I found salad heaven.

On tv, Tony was thinking of something while his host Claudia and her other guests were dancing and prancing about in samba music. But Claudia didn't mind if Tony couldn't dance. She said she likes it so much even if her guests, like Tony, only dream in her house.

Right now I'm dreaming in my apartment. With my great salad and forthcoming entree' of grilled mahi-mahi marinated in honey bourbon sauce, I dreamed that life didn't suck.

Salud!