› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS It's hard to talk to yourself. You don't have anything to say, and you're afraid you might be boring. But the trans man in the bar said if I wanted my voice to change, I was going to have to practice into a tape recorder. Read more »

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS I mean, they were already practically married, but my friends Little Him and Little Her officially said they did in the Presidio last weekend, and there was a decidedly islandish theme to the event.
Hawaii, I mean — so technically I should have been playing the uke instead of steel pan. But I'm not a very technical person.
And this isn't the society pages.
It's the food section. You want to know about my week in Idaho, right, being a semiprofessional cook for the first and probably last time ever? Among other whimsical dishes, I invented angeled eggs. Read more »

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CHEAP EATS This Cheap Eats restaurant review is a thank-you note to a guy named John. He bought all the tokens for a Thai temple brunch for me, Bernie, and Laura last Sunday. And technically it should have been the other way around, me tokening him, because he'd just breema'd me.
If you don't know what breema is, I don't know what to tell you. They bend, push, and dance on you, kind of like a massage, only you're lying on the floor and it's all very musical. Then you're hungry and all relaxed and shit. Read more »

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CHEAP EATS This week's madcap adventure begins with a cute little kitten toddling into the chicken farmer's life and saying, in effect, "Help!" Must of been abandoned by its mama. People sometimes abandon cute little kittens too, in the wild, but usually not out back behind the water tank. They leave them in a box by the road.
So OK, what to do with a cute little kitten, so small it can barely stand and doesn't quite know how to eat yet? I took it inside my shack and showed it to a platter of milk and Weirdo the Cat. Read more »

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CHEAP EATS A long-lost beloved cousin asks if I can still "write my name in the snow," and it takes me two days to figure out what this means. I wasn't sitting on my ass, either. I started out with slide rules, compass, protractor ... 26 ounces of iodized salt poured into a Pyrex baking dish, by way of a working model (necessary nutrients supplied). I was able to write my name, kind of, with the eraser end of a pencil. Read more »

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS Let's see, last week I ate at TJ's Gingerbread House in West Oakland, and it wasn't cheap eats because it was dinnertime on Georgie Bundle's birthday. He'd always wanted to go there. As have I, and as has anyone else who rides BART and looks out the window.
Unless you have a very, very special occasion — which, if you don't know Georgie Bundle I can't even imagine what such a thing might be — satisfy your curiosity over breakfast. Get this: a salmon croquette, two scrambled eggs, grits, fruit salad, and orange juice for $6.95.
That's good. Lunch is ... Read more »

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS After three or four days of sleeping under stars, swimming in rivers, and staring into the fire, I have nothing in me but poetry — so don't bother looking for any restaurants in this restaurant review.
Here's one I caught while my brother and friends were fishing for fish. Let's call it "Water Bug Poem."
On the American River, in it, up to my gut, watching water bugs. Who said that corn and cows were beautiful to the extent that they were what they were? Read more »

› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com
CHEAP EATS Another weekend away, playing unlikely gigs in unheard of places, like Oregon and Idaho. This time: a punch-and-cookie country dance party down at the elementary school, a train depot, and a barbecue joint.
My new favorite rural Idaho restaurant: Sagebrush BBQ in New Meadows. It's two days later and I'm still picking still-tasty morsels of pork from between my teeth. They must have fed us a hundred dollars worth of meat, on top of everything else. Read more »

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CHEAP EATS The chicken farmer has a high tolerance for surreality ...
Woke up on a strange couch with a strange cat on my arm that was not Weirdo the Cat. It was a strange time of morning. I could tell it was morning by how badly I had to go, but it wasn't the slightest bit light out. Went, came back and made love to the cat, but could not fall asleep.
I thought about things.
Things were pretty fucked up, almost everyone would have to agree — with the possible exception of me. Read more »

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CHEAP EATS It was Pride month so I was proud. In my own small chicken farmerly way, I celebrated the T and the B — mostly by lying in my hammock, looking at trees and birdies, and going, "Woohoo!" But also a little bit in this column, no?
Well, in any case, it's all over now. Read more »