Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Signage of the Timeage

1.  Seen on two sides of a big three-sided street poster display: 3x4 matrixes of twelve 8x11 sheets of paper, each with a different color-printed photo of a slim blonde woman looking thoughtful or wistful or creative, with a small area of text at the bottom, which read:

“Would you like to take a social sculptor (conceptual, performative artist) to dinner?

“Media: Conversation, Laughter, Hope, Boredom, Chemistry, Flirtation, Desire, Anticipation, Obligation, Relationship, Discomfort, Hormones, Vulnerability, Romance, Personal History, Status (economic, cultural, etc).

“Date: In Progress.

“To be considered for a date with the artist, please contact...” And there she left her email address.  These little handbills were up for several weeks, but after just a few days I noticed that several had been indelicately ripped down from the kiosk where they’d been individually glued in place.  By whom, I wondered?  An eager suitor?  A jealous boyfriend?  An outraged woman who hadn’t agreed to the publicity?  I sort of wish I’d kept the email address, just to see how things went.  Judging from the condition of the posters, though, I rather doubt that anybody got what he or she wanted.

2.  Seen written in thick black letters on a cheerful orange posterboard tacked to a utility pole at 4th and California:

“Garage Sale!  4th and Calif, 10 to 3!”

Written atop that text, with a sputtering ballpoint pen:

“Dead; turnin into ghost; Im comin back from Dead; in a lot of pain a lot pain; am hurting a lot; Earth Ghost forever; people gang up on me torment me”

And so I wonder: How much were they asking for the Earth Ghost?  And can you really get rid of one of those at a garage sale, anyway?

And furthermore: any good signs on your ride to work these days? 

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Crispy Ham Sandwiches: The PowerSnak

The sandwich, like the salad, does not get the credit it deserves.  Everybody thinks they can make a decent sandwich, just like everybody thinks they’re inherently smarter and more interesting than average.  Salad?  Piece of cake, as it were – who can’t make a salad?  Much more challenging it might be to find someone who can make one well, but that’s an issue that is usually left unexplored…

And similarly, sandwiches are everybody’s stock in trade; every shmo, shmendrik and shiksa with a cutting board thinks they can sandwich it up with the best of the best, even if they never think to pre-toast or to press-n-twist or any of the basic manipulations that can make a sandwich really stand out.  There’s a lot more to it than just getting the mustard to the edge of the bread.  It’s something between skill and art – a skart, if you will.  You will, won’t you?  Won’t you?  You won’t?  Really?

Let me help you out, because you’re clearly foundering in a confused morass of self-doubt and disbelief.  Next time it’s your turn to sandwich up the hungry hungry hippos in your neck of the wallow, why don’t you just freaking BLOW THEM AWAY with a sandwich like they’ve NEVER HAD BEFORE!  Yeah!  Come on, any sandwich that calls for two ALL-CAPS!!! phrases in a single sentence has got to be pretty good!  You’ll love it.  I know you’ll love it.  C’mon, just try it.  We’ll have unimaginable kinds of good clean sandwichy fun here in my cargo van of culinary exploration that is the Recipe Corner.  And our first stop: Ham and Cheese Sandwiches!

Yup, I invented these.  And now you’re thinking, hey, didn’t I have a sandwich once that had, like, ham on it?  And then, next to that ham, that cheesy stuff, that was cheese, right?  With that, that, the bread on the top and the bottom of the whole thing, wasn’t that a ham and cheese sandwich?  So, what exactly is Chuckles claiming to have invented, now?  The CHUTZPAH sandwich, was it? 

No, my friends, no, no, I superciliously murmur, calming your rages with imperturbable calmness as a mountain lake calms the eagle’s questing soul, assuming that it does so, which totally seems reasonable to me really.  Anyway, I invented these ham-and-cheese sandwiches, and I think you’ll find them unlike any other you’ve had afore. 

These turned out to be kind of light, so I’d do up two or three per person.  They go like this: take a whole wheat pita and brush/smear one side with olive oil. If you can tell which side was on the outside when it was baked, use that side.  Lay the pita oiled side down. 

Imagine a line cutting the circle of the pita in two; on one side of that line, spread mustard if you wish (I didn’t) and then layer on some thin-sliced ham – we used a stack of two round slices folded in half, covering one-half of the pita nicely. 

On the other side, put down some thin slices of white cheese (we used jack because we had jack, but I bet havarti or gouda would be great) and then a thin slice of cantaloupe on top of that.  Yes!  Cantaloupe!  Didn’t see that coming, did ya?  This here’s a fruit and meat sandwich, and that’s where you really score the big sandwich points!  It’s like a triple word score with zs and qs in scrabble or something! YOU ROCK!

So, you’ve got this interesting bifurcated sandwich on openfaced oiled pita, and then you put it on a grill or griddle at medium heat.  You want to toast the bottom of the pita while the heat warms up the ham and melts the cheese a little.  But nothing should burn.  For gods sake, nothing should burn. 

Once the cheese has gone runny and the melon is stuck in it nicely, and the ham is warmed up from beneath, use a spatula to transfer the whole flat pita to a cutting board.  Then use a pizza slicer or a large knife to score through the midline of the pita between the two halves of your sandwich.  Lay some fresh baby spinach leaves (remove long stems) atop the ham – 8 or 10 leaves per sandwich – and then flip the melon-and-cheese half over onto the ham and spinach half.  Serve immediately, with napkins (the bread stays somewhat oily, but that’s all part of the fun, of course.) Once you give someone a sandwich like this, they’ll be in your debt for the rest of their lives.  Crispy ham turnover sandwiches: the powersnack.  And by the way, you owe me. 

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Sheeting the Bed

I seem to have gone over, though now it seems all too obvious that it was going to happen. 

I really didn’t want to think of myself as the sort of person who’d go out of his way to buy a cheaply made product that’s basically an advertisement.  I don’t like wearing t-shirts with brand names on them, or to have them on my shoes, or jackets; why should I display someone else’s commercial identity in my own home? 

The thing is, Z has been having sleeping issues.  We’ve had rather a hodgepodge approach to it for some time – first, hoping that it would just resolve itself on its own, then sort of groping blindly for a reasonable strategy, and then finally finding some good resource materials but having to wait before taking any action until after houseguest season.  Now we’re ready to take on the “sleeping toddler” challenge and we’ve got the game plan to make it work.  We’ve got so many ideas now that we have to implement in stages.  It’s a fairly sophisticated tactical package, really.  Can’t say too much here.  Walls have ears, you know.  (You don’t even want to know what crown molding’s got.)

One of our action items, available for implementation immediately if not sooner, is getting Z some bedsheets that he can be excited about.  I’m really surprised how hard it’s been to find decent yet inexpensive toddler sheets for his new big boy bed, but of course there’s a vast conspiracy dire warnings bla bla bla.  Anyway last night the opportunity finally presented itself to go on line and order up some new sheets, and really we had a winner quite quickly out of the gate – a subdued retro pattern featuring characters from Pixar’s Cars, which is a movie Z loves far out of proportion to any other movie, television program, or food product.  Cars is basically the best thing in the world to him, and there’s really no point arguing with him about it.  It’s high quality stuff - beautifully drawn, well-voiced, with a story that’s mostly unobjectionable.  Anyway, Z saw the “Race Car Sheets” at the first page of the first site we hit last night, and he consistently favored them over every other design he saw for as long as we could keep him in front of the computer. 

So there we were, last night, with the boy totally jacked up about his new sheets, and we know it’s going to be another touch-and-go night with him in terms of getting him to sleep and getting him to stay in his own bed… of course, it’s been several weeks now that he’s been keeping us from a decent night’s our own selves…. so we placate the beast by ordering the Race Car Sheets, featuring numerous licensed characterizations courtesy of Pixar, Animators and World Copyright Belongering-to Corporation.  What’s more, we bought the sheets from Walmart, a store I’m really pleased almost never to patronize for shrill political reasons we can discuss at another time if you really want to.  But anyway, WalMart.  We bought’em there.  My pride taketh a hard fall onto its ass. 

And furthermore, we demanded overnight shipping – beloved plaything of the impatient and overindulged.  No, I can’t wait three to five goddamn days for my goddamn Cars TeeEmm Toddlersheets, I need them now, now I say and I’ll back it up with shipping charges so far in excess of the actual costs of manufacture that I can only hang my head in shame. 

So there I go.  I’ve ordered product-placement bedclothes for my child, from a store the existence of which deeply troubles me, to be delivered as rapidly as commercially possible.  What I’ve learned from this is that sleep deprivation works.  I’ve become the devil’s minion, and so far I think I’m okay with it.