Jeff Versus the Sea Cucumber, aka Alex's B'day

Last Sunday Jeff and I dragged ourselves out of the house to celebrate our friend Alex's birthday! Alex is a fellow film nerd whose short horror movie, Alice Jacobs is Dead, won top honors at this year's ComiCon.

Alex chose Congee Village, a lower Manhattan Chinese restaurant, for the proceedings. It serves Chinese Chinese food—not to be confused with American Chinese food—and the birthday boy decided to go whole hog and order a 10-dish banquet.

I've told you about Jeff's picky stomach. So you can imagine his reaction when the first dishes arrived bearing jellyfish, squid, and some kind of jellied pork and beef cut to resemble Haribo gummy watermelon slices.

Alex loooves jellyfish. Tastes like chicken... spaghetti.

Jeff refused to touch any of it, opting to get his calories in the form of Tsing Tao beer. Little did he know the best worst was yet to come...

This is a sea cucumber, alive:


This is a sea cucumber cooked to oozy perfection:


Jeff comes from a scatalogical family, so he had kind of a love-hate relationship with the sea cucumber. On the one hand, it was an affront to his delicate taste buds; on the other, it looked like a giant turd, which he would normally find delightful.

Of course he didn't eat it. If he had, I might have had to stand up and storm out, screaming "It's like I don't even know you anymore!"

Anyway. Here's a somewhat nausea-inducing video Jeff took of all of us sitting around the table. Happy birthday, A!

Jeff Versus the Sea Cucumber, aka Alex's B'day