The unhappiest five days of my week are Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. This is because I have taken a vow of temperance on these five miserable days... (so miserable they feel like five days).
There's a great Joseph Mitchell story about the miseries of sobriety. Joseph Mitchell...
All these hip young "foodies" with blogs and TV shows and production teams and publishing contracts...
Joseph Mitchell makes them (shouyld I say us?) look like a confederacy of dunces (actually not very hard to do). Why? Because he's a writer first and a gourmand second. Anyone who has not read Bottom Of The Harbor has no business talking about seafood. Plain and simple.
Here's the link:
If you do not at least look at it, fie on you! Joseph Mitchell. Oh man, what a writer!
Boney M. And The End Of Western Civilization
I can't quite believe the music I'm listening to right now. Neptune, what's wrong with me? I can't shake this Boney M. fixation. Like a half step removed from Milli Vanilli. Brown Girl In The Ring (?) What the fuck is this song about?

Boney M. In all their glory. Actually, I don't think any of these people were musicians. The band was the brainchild of this man:
... Frank Farian. Following the same phony game plan, Farian brought us these guys:
Winds At 35
And that may have been the strangest diversion yet, on this strange blog of mine.
What other fishing blog is so willing to test the boundaries of taste and sensibility? To bring you Joseph Mitchell, Boney M., and Milli Vanilli in one paragraph?
Winds blowing at 35 knots. Not going anywhere. Sat on the beach watching the birds diving 75 feet too far to the West. How fierce was the wind today? The wind was so fierce, when I threw my net, it came back and landed on me. In other words: I caught myself. The ultimate
squack.
Uh oh. I just took a Youtube diversion. Watched Tyson's last fight. Against the Irish version of Primo Carnera.
Mike Tyson who burst onto the scene with such vehemence... and went out with so little of it. Would never have happened if he had been eating oysters all these years (ask
Old Mr. Flood).
When Tyson sits down and fails to get up against the unexemplary McBride, in the sixth round of his final fight, it's possibly the greatest moment that ennui has ever inspired. Not with a bang but a whimper. I mean... is that a guy who no longer likes his job or what?
One thing in defense of McBride. He can sure take a head butt! I mean damn!
"Not with a bang but a whimper."
NPR
Got interviewed by NPR two days ago. It was weird. Sitting in the KQED studio being asked questions by a dude whose voice I recognized. I think I heard him interview Mit Romney. The longjaw mudsucker of politicians. Woops. Sorry if I insulted the 14 Mit Romney fans out there. Where was I?
That was totally awful. That I would ever in any way injure or degrade so noble a creature as the miraculous G. mirabilis.
Will the real mudsucker please stand up?
Speaking of politics... went to the Fish And Game Commission Meeting in Monterey two days ago in an attempt to put forth my casting-net-herring idea... and was well received. Even if one of the higher ups took 96.3 percent of the wind out of my sails. Hey, I still got 3.7 percent. Exactly what Tyson had against the long-boned McBride.
The dude who shot the mountain lion was there. I forget his name. He's the commission prez. Someone from an animal rights group in Oakland got up and complained. But other than that the hoopla surrounding the killing of mountain lions in Idaho--and whether a F&G Commission prez should be involved in such activities--has died down.
Though it does seem both ecologically problematic
(trophic cascade anyone?) and unethical to shoot tree-bound apex predators, I'm not sure how you can justify firing the dude for engaging in a
legally sanctioned hunt. On the other hand... I think he said he ate the thing... but
come on. Nobody hunts mountain lions for food. You shoot a mountain lion you're doing it for ego... and that's what makes pictures of a dude holding a mountain lion a tad disturbing.
{At the same time there's probably someone out there who has the same feelings about me posing with herring or MF Eels or clams...}
Also the American lion on a historical level has been persecuted, trapped, poisoned, had a bounty on its head for most of the 20th century, and in much of its former range was actually exterminated. Can't we find something else, something more common, something lower on the food chain, something less problematic, to hunt? I guess Commission Prez Richards can't.
Q: Quien es mas Macho? Senor Richards o Sasha Siemel? A: Senor Siemel
You know how they always say trophy hunters are suffering from Napoleon complex? It really is weird how tall that dude looks while holding the mountain lion. I was expecting a
Sasha Siemel type, but when I saw him in person... well, frankly... it was more of a Paul Williams association.
Fish and Game Commission president Dan Richards and songwriter Paul Williams... Evidently separated at birth... or maybe just the same hair stylist?
That's funny. I just googled Sasha. He actually looks about the same height as the F&G Commission president (wirier though--remember he was the middleweight bare-knuckle champ of the Brazillian mining camps). Which may in fact go a long way towards confirming the whole Napoleon complex thing. Nevertheless and despite the horrifying impact Sasha no doubt had on the apex predators of the
Mato Grasso, there's one detail that can not be overlooked...
Sasha Siemel killed his jaguars with a spear!
Let's do this: Let's change the Idaho regs on mountain lion:
241.23a Mountain Lion
Mountain lions may be taken only by use of an implement known as a "Guato Indian stabbing spear," measuring no more than 7.5 feet in length. In addition, only one dog is allowed in the pursuit of mountain lions.
Now, if a guy wants to go kill his 200 pound mountain lion in hand to hand combat using the same implements Sasha Siemel used... then by all means, go crazy with the happy, self satisfied photos.
Speaking of which...
Lombard of the Intertidal, happy and self satisfied, poses with record shattering basket cockle. He evidently killed this puppy with a Guato indian stabbing rake. "I think anyone who wants to kill apex clams like this one should have to wrestle them from in the mudflats with hands and rake, anyway, it's legal in California." Lombard said.
One other thing... To that handful of people out there who have actually read
Tigrero... how bad-ass was that little dog? One tough terrier. Like a mini version of "Lion" in
Faulkner's, The Bear. (FYI: As great a story as has ever been penned on the problematic destruction of apex predators--and what the ultimate costs are when we kill them).
Where the hell was I?
The Great One. Much more inspiring, I think, to kill the beast with a pen.
Staring at the waves across Tomales Bay today. Man. Had to be blowing 40 there. Seriously. Looked like the
Potato Patch on a bad day. Got to the beach 3 hours after a -0.6 minus tide. Hoping against hope that I might score a few littlenecks before the tide got too high. Was supposed to go with semi famous hunter gatherer chef blogger. He bailed. I bailed too. Then suddenly got a wild hair and drove 2 hours north, way after bottom of tide.
AND STILL GOT MY FIFTY LITTLENECKS!
HA! My littleneck gathering skills are extreme, yo.
Just sayin. 50 clams and I didn't start raking till 3.2 hrs after the bottom of the tide. Chowder will happen two nights from now. That's how long I likes to soak 'em. Maybe add the horseneck I will doubtless catch on tomorrow's tour...
Garibaldi
Hmmmm. I need to get back to Oregon for those cockles. I'm still dreaming about 'em. Big fat juicy cockles. Lovely cockles. Everywhere you looked. Oh man... Tilamook bay.
WAAAAAAAAAAAH!
I'm gonna admit something. I was ruined forever by Tillamook Bay. Here I am scratching the gravel for two hours at Tomales for a few skimpy ass barely 1.5 inch littlenecks and manillas, while in Tillamook bay it takes 12 minutes to gather 50 baseball-sized basket cockles.
Such is the price of sharing the resources with 38 million some-odd Californians. Oh well. Honestly I don't think there's been any kind of cockles to speak of in Tomales since the 70s. Though I do occasionally (very occasionally) find them in Princeton Harbor.
The Smelt Diaries
Eulachon, from Lewis and Clark journals.
The wind right now is something to be reckoned with. Strangely, the smelt ran again right in the middle

of it. Got another 14 pounds blind tossing. Very strange that everyone thinks smelt don't like rough
water. If you were a smelt would you spawn only when pelicans, seals, cormorants and guys with nets could see you? Or would you spawn under cover of turbid water? Kind of a no brainer. But then maybe there's things I don't know. Like maybe turbidity effects egg survival.
All the fish I saw today were oozing milt and eggs so the spawn was definitely happening. But the fish were moving fast up and down the beach and I made a total fool of myself chasing them. Or I should say, chasing the birds that were chasing them. All sea gulls No terns today. Terns don't like windiness, it interferes with their higher aesthetics of flight. No self respecting tern is going to hit the coast on a day when the gusts are reaching 40. Seagulls sure. Terns have too much dignity for that business.
Happy 75
Okay... I've been working on this durned blog post all day and it is time to go to the 75th anniversary of the GG Bridge celebration. The fishwife calls. More on the Fish and Game Commission Meeting, my forth coming salmon trip (tomorrow), and other wide ranging subjects from Milli Vanilli, to mountain lion hunting, to herring regulations, to paul Williams, to smelt, to Faulkner, to Primo Carnera and Joseph Mitchell.
Just in case you needed to be reminded: You have definitely been reading The Monkeyface News...
Kirk-out