Sushi at Mashiko

Wednesday, 1 March 2000

Mimi was sick today. I knocked on her door several times in the morning, at intervals of an hour or so, and heard no answer, so I figured I'd gotten her schedule wrong and she was at work. I headed off to Zanadu comics for my weekly fix -- Tom Strong #7, Invisibles vol. 3 #2, Preacher #61, JLA #40, and something new: the first issue of Blue Monday, a well-done manga-style teen comedy by Chynna Clugston-Major from Oni Press. There was an amusing letter in Tom Strong from someone praising the book for being "fun, rather than oh-so-hip and post-modern," who clearly has no idea of what postmodernism is. I'd have a hard time thinking of comics more postmodern than Moore's America's Best Comics line, Tom Strong most certainly included. Which certainly isn't to say that it's not also fun.

I enjoyed my comics with a Mexican dinner at Pepe's on the Ave, and then with a hot almond chai at Ginkgo Tea. Lise had told me to meet the rest of the dinner group (her, Moshe Feder, Tom Whitmore, and Marci Malinowycz) at the Seattle Community College at 8 PM, so I headed downtown to the Seattle Art Museum, arriving around 3:30, just a minute or two before Moshe got there. No, we hadn't planned to meet, it had just happened. We spent most of our time in the pottery exhibit (I took visual notes of some design elements), and then looked over the Lichtenstein collection, which had some wonderful sculptures. When the museum closed at 5, we went off to Pike Place Market, where we promptly ran into Hope Leibowitz. We did some window shopping, and Moshe provoked some fish vendors into atavistic primate defensive troop behavior by criticizing their salmon taxonomy. At some point I called Mimi to tell her I'd be out late and found out she was sick. Moshe and I searched for, and found, miniature totem pole souvenirs, and then caught the #10 bus to the community college, and from there, sushi.

The restaurant is Mashiko, in West Seattle (sort of to Seattle what Staten Island is to NYC), and the food has ruined me for sushi in New York. Huge slabs of absolutely delicious fish.

Lise said she could tell I'd fallen in love with this city. Moshe says I can't move here till I convince a Seattle-area SF fan to swap with me.