Problems with buying from Gail Bazylko

Gail Bazylko runs the websites www.vintagestudio.com and www.galinastudio.com and www.countessgalina.com. Her email is GMStudio1118@aol.com or vintagestudio@aol.com. I ordered a hat and wig from her vintage studio website on June 25th, 2006. On November 27th, 2006, I received the hat. I repeatedly emailed her about the order and she told me she was working on the hat, but had been ill, so the hat would take even longer. She warns on her website that delivery is a minimum of three to eight weeks on most items. My hat took five months and I still have not received the wig at a price of $180 by today, March 3rd, 2007. She has refused to respond to my emails requesting a refund of the money I paid for the item that was never sent to me. Would you consider this fraud? If my money is returned, I will delete this post.

Quick. It's a turtle.

Shit. Scheisse. Shite. Let's not forget Merda and Merde. This is what turtles do...their raison d'etre. Eat, shit, bask in the sun. Eat, shit, bask in the sun. The only thing they are missing are margaritas and a convenient blackout in Tijuana. Did Joseph Campbell ever write about Zen masters torturing...ahem, I mean teaching, their wide-eyed young souls with eternal excrement exercises? I think not. Those disciples of oneness had it easy.

There's a story I found at http://www.some-guy.com/quotes/buddha.html that says, "There is an old story of a turtle and a fish. The turtle lived on land as well as in the water while the fish only lived in the water. One day, when the turtle had returned from a visit to the land, he told the fish of his experiences. He explained that creatures walked rather than swam. The fish refused to believe that dry land really existed because that was something beyond his own experience. In the same way, people may not have experienced the end of suffering, but it does not mean that the end of suffering is not possible."
They didn't own aquatic turtles and a filtration system built for minnow waste.

Eccolo Restaurant and the Truffle

Ahhhh...my favorite thing to critique, criticize, whine and moan about...restaurants.

Tonight I had the spit-roasted chicken with black truffle stuffed under the skin $24. Whenever I see the word truffle AND it refers to the mushroom, my husband braces himself for my reenactment of a hog on the first day of truffle-hunting season. My husband starts looking like an oak tree to me..."surely, he must be hiding some truffles from me," I think. It is no wonder the ancient Greeks and Romans considered it an aphrodisiac. To get a more explicit version of why the pigs get so randy, check out Johnny Acton & Nick Sandler's book aptly titled Mushroom. The recipes are good and the quirkiness of the mushroom-minded subculture is irresistable.

With all of this in mind, I entered Eccolo in Berkeley, CA with high expectations and a salivating proboscis...if it could, it would. Here's how it went...
-two servers asked for my drink order twice
-waitress seemed stoned and couldn't remember my order less than one minute later
-appetizer, saffron arancini filled with fontina $8, reminded me of mozarella sticks, but shaped like testicles, with regular old pizza sauce, although it was fried to perfection, tasty but not worth $8
-and for the main course, the chicken was not moist enough and the sauce with the au gratin potatoes was worth $18 at the most. Rivoli has a similarly priced dish that I'm going to try instead - Grilled Hoffman Farm quail with hazelnut stuffing served with crispy prosciutto, jerusalem artichoke gnocchi with cream and braised tuscan kale $23. I'm rarely disappointed at Rivoli and for some reason any recipe where chicken is enhanced with a pork product calls to me. Hmmm...

To be fair, my husband liked the chicken and the appetizer. He thinks I have some childhood trauma from too much outdated chicken microwaved beyond recognition as a child. It's possible, maybe even likely.

As for chicken, I do prefer my husband's version of Donna Hay's Parmesan Crusted Chicken substituted with heirloom tomatoes from her book New Food Fast. Delicious.