FULL CIRCLE

Mickey, the Mistress, Acidman, and Elisson.

An exceedingly Bloggy Week came to a close Saturday night as Rob Smith, the Acidic One his ownself, joined me, She Who Must Be Obeyed, the Mistress of Sarcasm, and the Mistress’s main squeeze Mickey, for a superb Cuban dinner at Rancho Alegre in Savannah.

The previous weekend, I had been in Austin with Rob and the rest of what have come to be called the Blown-Star Blodgers, a loose confederation of Online Journalists from Georgia, Texas, and numerous other points on the map, including Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, and New Jersey.

Monday evening, as my travels took me to Houston, I had a chance to visit with Laurence Simon and enjoy an evening of Panem et Circenses, AKA Pizza and Baseball. And not just any old Pizza. This was Keneally’s Razor-Crust Pizza, with a crust so thin you can slit your wrists with it, decked out with corned beef, anchovies, and onions. The aftereffects of eating such a Pungent ’Za are not to be believed: imagine standing in front of 75 people and delivering a business presentation with a sphincter clamped down as tight as a steel drum...

Thursday night in Savannah - technically, Friday morning - I swung by La Quinta Inn on Abercorn to say a brief hello to that Ace of the Airwaves, the Grand Panjandrum of OTR, Ivan Shreve of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear. For those of you who don’t know him, Ivan is a fellow charter member of the Sydney Greenstreet Appreciation Society, and he writes an exceptionally well-researched blog. If you appreciate the Ephemeral Pop Culture of the twentieth century, you should by all means pay him a visit.

And that brings us to Saturday at Rancho Alegre, coincidentally the site where we celebrated the Mistress’s graduation from SCAD - and the eightieth birthday of Eli, His Ownself, the Daddy d’Elisson - not quite a year ago. Rob was good enough to make the 25-mile drive down from Rincon, which is either a small town in Effingham County or a Japanese town car, to join us at a restaurant that, surprisingly, he had never been to.

It was not a lack of originality that impelled all five of us to order the Churrasco (pronounced “Chew Roscoe.” Heh), but rather the desire of all of us to enjoy Beefy Sustenance. And that Churrasco delivered. A skirt steak, pounded flat and marinated in a chimichurri sauce with plenty of parsley and garlic, then grilled over charcoal, it was tender, tasty, and toothsome.

As we all headed in our separate directions after dinner, I was certain of one thing. None of us needed fear vampire attacks...