Mountain Clams

Man Stick

Man stick? What is it? Could it be some new type of deodorant? "Whew! I need to put on some man-stick!" No, that's not it, but good guess. (As everyone knows, the alternate names for deodorant are "underodor disarmament" or simply "pit juice." Extra points if you call it "dead ferret.")

Is it a reference to a walking cane? "Fetch me mah teeth and my man-stick, sonny!" Nah. I'm not even sure I can say you're getting warmer.

Does it have something to do with a car's stick shift? "Take that wimpy stock factory shifter out, I'm putting in a Man Stick!" Well, not that I know of, anyway.

Well, then, is it dirty? "&^  @(^$ man stick !%  +*  $%&  ^!@!" No, get your mind out of the gutter. (For those of you who went here first, message me.)

No, no and no. But to explain what it IS, I need to tell you a story.

My girlfriend and I were downtown on the cold evening after a nice day. We found ourselves on Blake Street. I read in a local magazine about a Moroccan restaurant on Blake Street and we decided to try it out. Walking inside, we were first greeted by a happy warmth, and second by the host. The place is narrow but deep. Near the window were lower tables surrounded by pillows. Further back, there were proper tables with bench seats covered in pillows. There were essentially two rows of tables and an aisle down the middle. This is not a big place, folks. Between the tables stood large hookahs, but they weren't in use.

We took our seat towards the middle-back where the host placed us. Glancing over the menu, we found several things we wanted to try, and more that we couldn't pronounce. When the waiter finally came to take our order, we had settled on the seafood appetizer, some wine and two entrees. We told the waiter which appetizer we wanted, and he immediately corrected us to the non-seafood version. "You'll like it better, I promise," he told us. Alright, we'll go with that recommendation. Now to the wine. I took a stab at the pronunciation of it, and wasn't too far off, really. It was the one that was imported from Morocco. We told him which entrees we wanted, and he was off.

A little bit later, we had bread, herb butter and wine in front of us. Yum! Then came the appetizer. Much to Ray's chagrin, it was covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon. I was fine with that, but I like sweet much more than she does. We ate the whole thing, even though we probably should have only had half of it. We didn't think it would reheat well.

Yeah, yeah, man stick. I'm getting to that. Hang on.

Our food came out, and it looked great. It was delicious, too! While we were eating, a belly dancer came out and danced at the table diagonally across the way from us. She got some of the patrons to stand up and dance with her. Then she went past and danced further down (where we couldn't quite see). She returned to the back end of the restaurant, and made another round through. This time, she stopped at our table. At her encouragement, Ray got up and danced with her for a while. I was going to try to take a movie of it, but they were a little too quick for me. I would've totally been caught! After Ray sat down, she and the dancer both insisted that I get up and scare the other customers. "It'll be fun," the dancer said. So I did.

She had me try different moves, waving the arms, sliding my head back and forth, and then.... I turned into the Man Stick. Hands on hips, she wanted me to rotate my hips around in a circle. The best I could manage was a vague back-and-forth motion, totally revealing how little movement I was trying to get away with. Laughter from Ray, of course. She joined us to do the rock-your-hips-back-and-forth move. Then we sat down and Ray dubs me the man stick. Apparently, it's some sort of genetic cross between a man and a stick, and greatly limits ones mobility.

And there you have it.

Labels: food

posted by Brett @ 3:33 PM