Sushi – from far east to Western

Hollan Holm

I couldn’t believe my eyes last week when I read the Herald. This is not out of the ordinary since my eyesight is classified 20/blind as a bat, and I must now squint to read the big “E” at the optometrist.

There amidst the jumble of Herald articles that I would never read and yet still commend their writers on a “good job,” was an advertisement for a new food service treat – sushi.

If you have no clue what this Japanese delicacy is, it’s raw fish or shrimp rolled with fresh vegetables and rice in black and green band-aids. A millennium of Japanese tradition reached its pinnacle in the Garrett Food Court Tuesday. Now seafood lovers can kiss their butter sauce goodbye and chomp into the seaweed-roll-ups they crave.

The Oriental Express collision of far-Eastern and Western Kentucky cultures will only leave me hungry.

Which you might suggest would be a good thing, but I like my eating.

It was difficult enough to adjust to the changes already made to on-campus dining. It was, in the words of Food Service adminis-traitors, an attempt to “restaurantize” consumption on campus. According to the old Holm family proverb, never trust university employees who repeatedly use nouns as verbs. Instead, ridicule them in newspapers.

Well, the saying goes something like that.

These stabs at facelift-izing cafeterias have done nothing but moron-ized me.

Look at my column mug shot. How cultured does a guy who wears a Bronx t-shirt shaped like a laundry detergent box seem? About as cultured as a film school student who watches “Ernest Goes to Camp” for a senior thesis.

How can such a continental columnist order-ize food on a campus like this?

I still haven’t figured that one out. When I ask for a sandwich at Montague’s Deli, I feel like a Capulet. I can never figure out how to pronounce the breads and cheeses I crave. There are two breads in the food court that I need a foreign language minor to order.

“Can I get turkey and pepperoni on that ‘F’ bread that looks like a flattened golf ball covered in dry grass?” I ask.

“You mean focaccia bread,” the sandwich specialist corrects me.

“Hey, I just wanted a sandwich, there’s no need to swear,” I reply.

Then I have to steer around a potential international cheese incident by choosing with simple descriptions like yellow, white, round, speckled and holy. I’m not going to discuss my attempt to shun watercress as a topping choice.

It used to be that the easy and speediest choice during my Garrett mealtime was how much ice to put in a waxy cup of water. That choice fell to somebody’s Priority Hatchet a month ago. Now I have to buy my water by the Aquafina bottle or get free samples from the urine sample-sized cups by the gourmet coffee machines.

I think it’s all part of Dining Services’ conspiracy to keep me from leaving my own white-chained dining purgatory with a bill under $7 and waist line under 52 inches.

Let me clear something up – I blame none of this on the actual servers. If my high school had Charita and Olivia fighting the outdated cash registers and cracking whips on the burger and fry lines, I’d have been on a 5 or 6-year plan there too.

But at least I have choices. My culinary world has expanded to include eel and carrot rolls, calamari salad and the meteor special. Preliminary government reports show that last meal will improve astronomy test grades.

Unfortunately, the Food and Drug Administration reports that side effects include urges to wear black Nike tennis shoes, perform ritual castration and commit mass cult-sponsored suicide in a California mansion when the Hale-Bopp comet returns.

I guess I’ll just stick to staples like tofu rolls and making tired beer commercial jokes about the correct pronunciation of “wasabi.”

SushiPicks ‘O the Week

Attention to any Western students who have been living in Lost River Cave all this semester. There won’t be anyone to hang out with tonight. Former Saturday Night Live star Jim Breuer will be performing in the DUC Theater at 8 p.m., and all those people you call friends went. The admission is free and the doors open at 7 p.m. If you get there any later you’ll have an engaging evening of cave baseball ahead of you. At least you won’t have trouble finding a bat.

Bone Pony will be performing songs from the album “Traveler’s Companion” at Ellis Place at the State Street Pub on Friday night. This bluegrass/rock band starts its set at 10 p.m. Expect a $7 cover.

Does Hollan Holm have any leadership experience? He had an ant farm once. Close enough. How’d [email protected] like to be a counselor?