Monday, February 28, 2005

(vamps till ready)

Okay this is going to be sort of a punt this morning.  I had way too much weekend for me to be able to do it justice here and now, so instead I’ll just mention that we finished oiling our new ranma.  I personally think it looks great and it relaxes me, so I’m going to keep it around today in blog form.  Tonight I go to GAMH to see a fun concert with good friends; it will be a party the likes of which I haven’t seen on a Monday night in a dog’s age, assuming a reasonably well-aged dog.  So I’m psyched and I’ve had a good time, but god knows when I’ll have a chance to fill you in on the details.  I’ll try to write it up on the bus today while it’s still as fresh as the durian currently stanking up my fridge.  But as a photo-teaser, try to guess what’s happening: here!

See you tomorrow, maybe with another phone-it-in post that isn’t worth your paltry subscription fee.  I mean....

... hey…

Friday, February 25, 2005

Caltrops: An Introduction

Big day today - committee meeting on eligibility.  I was working till nearly midnight reading up for it: you know, dockets, applications, summary project descriptions - good stuff.  I then slept deeply and almost without interruption till 5, and now I have only one more day of this week left to endure.  Then, this weekend, I get to join a friend from work and someone else cool from the office whom I barely know but whom I intend to know better soon, for a Chinatown History and Cuisine Walking Tour.  YES THAT’S RIGHT - the funky-fun stroll I had not long ago among Clement’s weirdest gustatory offerings will now be repeated in Chinatown’s Edwardian alleys and kitchy kitchens.  I’ve been doing research, working out, focusing my chi, and now I’m almost ready to go.  I just have to wait till it’s actually time to do it.  In the meantime, here’s a little essay about how my tourguide friend introduced me to a food I thought I’d known for years:

We met at 11:30 in the lunch room - a space where, before the remodel a few years ago, my desk used to be located.  I rarely get up there anymore, for no good reason.  Even on that lowering grey day the view was inspiring - the towers of the big grey bridge thrusting up out of the cold grey water into etherial grey clouds, Treasure Island hunkered down on Yerba Buena’s flank, the bay spreading out before me, disappearing into distant mists…

She was already at the brightly-lit sinks, paring a bag of water chestnuts. She showed me what a bad one looked like, how to trim them and peel off the tough skin; she taught me to wash them off and to soak them in water once they were hulled.  The caltrops (isn’t that an evocative name for them?) were clumsy, as was I, but the task was sped along by good conversation and her own nimble efforts that made up for my hesitant slow ones, and before long we’d shucked the bunch of them.  Then she pulled out the container of catfish stew she’d set aside for me from her mother’s kitchen, sliced up a lime, offered me that vietnamese hotsauce with a rooster on the bottle… I sat down to a bowl of broth thick with tomatoes and squid and onions and nameless vegetables that I recognized from stores where I couldn’t read the signs.  It was delicious - tangy and spicy, rich and textured, and I ate it gleefully.

But, though that was one hell of a bowl of soup, it really was nothing more than that.  The water chestnuts, on the other hand - they were something altogether else. 

She presented them on a small plate, a dozen or so pale orbs that glistened in the halogen glare of the lunchroom lights.  Over them she poured a few teaspoonsful of golden cold-pressed flaxseed oil, and with no more ado, urged me to have at them. I thought I knew what water chestnuts were, from countless cans of them I’d opened, drained and munched.  I’ve cooked with them in casseroles, stir frys, and rumakoid appetizers.  But when that first fresh nugget hit my mouth, I realized I’d been duped. 

Those things I’d een eating before - they may once have been water chestnuts, but by the time I ever got to them they’d had their souls sucked out.It’s not that they’d been bad - in fact, I’d always enjoyed them; it’s just that they had, apparently, been dead by the time they reached my table.  And this thing I was now eating, it was alive.  It shattered and crushed satisfyingly between my jaws, a tactile delight that was heightened by the unction of the flaxseed.  Together they formed a smooth creamy confection in my mouth.  The flavor was less bland than delicate - a light nutty taste like a sunchoke or jicama, but somehow deeper, richer, more satisfying. 

Once I’d swallowed it my mouth immediately craved another, and then another, until the little plate was almost empty.  In a gesture of reluctant generosity, I told her the two remaining prizes were hers to enjoy (as, in fact, she’d brought them and I was just a tag-along invitee).  She popped one easily in her mouth with chopsticks, and then delicately placed the last one on her spoon and poured all the sunny oil that remained on the little plate over it, letting the final drops creep down with thick slickness, splashing over the single snowy globe that rested in the cup of the spoon.  I heard it crunch as she bit down on it.  I have desired more for myself from that moment to this one. 

Have a great weekend.  I’ll take pictures on my tour and if they’re any good I’ll share a few.  Till then, eat hearty.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Wednesday Night

Yesterday I posted a vignette about a woman on my morning ride last week.  This one is about my ride home that evening.  I tell ya, some days the 38L is pretty boring, and some days it isn’t.  As the busdriver himself told me not long ago, “This line is always a heavy ride.”

It’s Wednesday evening and I’m on the evening bus, riding home again.  It feels like my jaws have been clenched for hours; I’m finally asserting control over my world by having chosen, again, my favorite seat, where I sit with my tablet in my lap.  I’m writing about that morning’s bus ride and the woman who realized she’d forgot something and was sad, and I wonder idly who’ll sit in the open seat next to me.  It’s usually some gruff businessman or an ambiguous younger guy with overly-attended-to facial hair; sometimes it’s an elderly Chinese lady laden with odiferous plastic shopping bags.  The cuties never sit next to me, I grouse, and my jaw locks a few degrees more grimly down. 

By the time the bus pulls out I’m writing writing writing away my tension by parasitically exploiting the anguish of another.  And I don’t care, it’s refreshing to wallow in someone else’s anguish for a change.  The bus drives on, begins to fill, and the seat next to me remains, as if often the case, one of the very few available seats on the bus.  People are starting to stand in the aisles rather than sit next to me.  But near Union Square a mass of riders climbs on board.  As is typical in these precincts, many among them are young pretty women.  One of these inexplicably opts to take my neighbor seat.

With practiced subtlety I try to get a read on her as she moves in.  Short, slim, nice denim jacket, nice denim pants, black knit turtleneck; straight brown hair cut to a line at her shoulderblades, parted neatly over her forehead and framing a well-proportioned round face; pale base makeup and dark red lipstick.  She clearly projects intelligence, confidence, and an intense desire for privacy.  She takes her seat with crisp efficiency - not shifting around, managing her large purse with authority, keeping her legs out of contact with mine.  Once she’s properly seated and arranged, her eyes drop immediately to her purse (leather, black with a pink accent) from which she pulls a small office-issue pad of legal yellow notepaper, flips rapidly to a fresh sheet, and starts to write with a furious burst of rapidity. She’s a rightie and she’s to my left so her hand is in my way and I can’t really make out much of what she’s writing, but some words I can discern: “angry,” “punish,” “disappointed,” “bitter.” Her penmanship is florid; she crosses out at least a third of what she’s written as she pursues le mot juste and evident literary exorcism.

Within several minutes she’s filled several pages, and her face, so composed and paraprofessional before, is now like a road from which the blacktop has been ground off, removing all evidence of the journeys made on it, leaving only the rough bedrock of possibility.  She pauses, then flips the notepad closed, holds it tightly in a fist that, it seems to me, wishes it could punch something.  Something, perhaps, in particular.  Her eyes close and her lips form a brick wall over her mouth.  She does not move again until her stop is announced, and then she stands up quickly and strides out and away as if she were quitting her job.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Wednesday Morning Ride

Oy.  Wednesday.  Since I got Monday off, this week is only one day long for me so far, and already it feels like a kidneystone with waterwings bumping its clumsy way down the urethra that is my life.  It’s not like anything has gone wrong, but everything is happening all at once and it all involves me, my work is piling up and my deadlines are impending, and people are requiring my presence at multiple meetings where I’m expected to make presentations, often simultaneously.  No, really.  With all this under my belt from Tuesday, the only thing I can think to post on this fine Wednesday morning is the story of last Wednesday morning, which provided me with an object lesson in how not to start my Wednesday. 

It’s the morning bus, and people are wearing their morning faces - not drained and deflated like they are at 6 or 6:30 in the evening, but (if in the company of a friend or coworker) emphatically cheerful and aggressively co-engaged, or (if, like most of us, alone) stonefaced and stoic, marshalling the strength to face another Wednesday, steeling ourselves for the demands of the desk.  I’ve been standing, shuffling back and forth with the crowd as seats empty and re-fill from stop to stop, until, as we approach the heart of downtown, a spot opens near me where I can sit, so I sit and let the music in my ears carry me a little further forward, let the funky bassline amplify my energy....

I glance around periodically but don’t notice her through the crowd till we’re all the way past Union Square and the mob has substantially thinned out.  She’s striking, that’s why I notice her in the first place - tall and slender, with controlled chaotic curls of auburn hair, like Kate Hepburn in Mary of Scotland.  High cheekbones, too, and large cold eyes; her clear pale skin sets off full lips that express no emotion at all.  Her overcoat is off the rack, but suits her well; her earrings are discrete and tasteful.  She looks very serious, smart, almost severe.  She wears stylish boots, well-shined.  It is easy to keep her in view, so I watch her discreetly.

As I idly wonder about her age and destination, a thought visibly enters her mind.  Her brow furrows just a little and she pulls a capacious knapsack out from beneath her seat.  She efficiently arranges it in her lap and unzips a front pocket, shuffles through it briefly - then, more thoroughly.  She pulls out from it a thick wallet, looks through it, puts it in her lap under the bag, unzips another pocket of the bag and methodically investigates its contents as well.

She stops for a moment and slows herself down, smoothes her brow, lets her head drop back on her neck, and then looks back into the bag again, re-searching the two zip pockets quickly but with increasing intensity.  Her shoulders rise and fall with a deep sigh.  She zips opens the main compartment of the knapsack and as she peers inside her jaws clench and the muscles in her neck seize up.  She’s pawing now among the books and papers; agitation is building in her fingers but no emotion shows on her face apart from sheer muscular tension.  From the depths of the large bag, she pulls out a slim binder, rifles through it, stows it on her lap and returns to her explorations.  Her lips part to form a word that her mind stops her from articulating.  She removes a notebook, then a sheaf of mismatched papers - some dogeared, some torn from spiral binders.  Her eyes have lost their coolness; she’s openly searching now as the almost-empty bus rolls toward the terminal.  Her upper lip has curled with frustration. 

She’s looked everywhere.  A flush creeps up her neck, putting the lie to cosmetic pretensions of cool.  She glances out the window, sees that the penultimate stop is upon us: with a deep sigh, she stuffs everything unceremoniously back into the big black bag.  Her eyes roll up to the ceiling of the bus and I see her choke back emotion, commanding her eyes not to tear.  She permits herself to whisper the word “damn” into her lap as she composes herself, gathers her things and leaves the bus for some destination for which she appears to be inadvertently ill-prepared.  As she enters the flow of workdawn sidewalk traffic, her long cloak rustles a masquerade of invulnerability around her ankles. 

Tomorrow: The ride home.  Till then, I hope you have what you need today.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

The Big Weekend with the Little Bopper

Written at 1:40 pm and thereafter at the Phoenix Airport:

It’s 1:40 at Phoenix SkyHarbor and our flight home has been delayed - the first onion in our ointment all weekend long.  We got up on time on Friday and broke our fast with some tasty tofu scramble I’d set up the night before.  As rain poured from the sky we made our way swiftly to the airport, encountering almost no traffic; we parked and had a shuttle waiting to whisk us to the terminal before we’d pulled out our bags, and within moments we were all checked in and wading through a gargantuan but fastmoving security checkline, which, you will be proud to read, I PASSED, and then we waited as dawn broke, for our ride to be readied for us.  We boarded, rode to Phoenix (oh, the conversations I had to ignore!  the boring, boring, loud, boring people who fly to Phoenix!), and found our bag without incident, then grabbed a very decent and fairly-priced airport burrito for lunch before hopping a convenient shuttle to Enterprise - a car rental agency I’ll actually plug even though they rented us more car than we’d planned to get: we’d reserved a compact car but our Enterprise buddy Travis thought we’d want more power for mountainclimbing and more clearance for weather and rough conditions; I was persuaded to spend $50 more to uprade from compact to fullsize, and then Travis checked the weather for us and saw that we faced the possibility of flash floods so he bumped us up to the biggest passenger vehicle I’ve ever piloted: a F150 XLT 5.4 Triton silver megalith-on-wheels.  It was gleaming, brand-new (1500 miles); there were eight cupholders within the driver’s easy reach, and from its lofty cockpit I could survey all of creation and crush any bits of it I found irritating.  It had great views, loads of power, enough room to play foosball with real fooses, and it shrugged off potholes and weather as if they were pockmarks and humidity.  I’ve also never sat in auto seats that felt so solid and supportive to my back - an absolute pleasure for all 2-1/2 hours we drove to Flagstaff.

Fun geography fact: though Arizona is a desert state, the upper bits of it are mountaneous and Flagstaff is up at about 7,000 feet above sea level - higher than Denver or or even Tahoe.  It’s the ancient west and it’s up in the high country.  The drive in was gorgeous - wet weather had turned the sere hillsides bright green, speckled with wildflowers and saguros like frozen sentinels clad in spines and shiva-armed, just waiting for you to look away before solemnly flipping you the bird.  The air kept getting cleaner and colder (it was already pretty damn dry); as we powered our way north through elk country I celebrated with a slab of gen-u-wine elk jerky and then before I could get sleepy or achy we had arrived at Evi and Scott’s place, where we finally got to meet Delia. 

I’m biased, I admit it freely - but this is one fabulous baby
.  She’s congenial, well-mannered, garulous, smiley, loves to be held, is okay not being held, eats and sleeps appropriately, and says “hi!” with fetching enthusiasm.  She laughs a lot more than she cries.  It will be a delight to be her uncle. 

That night Scott made us homemade pizzas with delicious scratch crusts, giving rise to two important scientific principles: the Doctrine of Comparable Peppers, and the Doctrine of Conservation of Pizza (that no two pizzas can occupy the same space at the same time, and that any pizza can only be eaten once).  We gorged and giggled and caught up with each other and ate delicious desserts, which themselves raised two noteworthy points: 1) the Marlborough Toffee recipe posted here a few weeks ago has been updated and is significantly improved by Randa, bless her snowbound soul: double the toffee portion.  No, really - it’s good.  2) The SHOTMALLOW: tired of boring old jelloshots?  Here’s a great new way to combine glucose and booze: get big marshmallows (we used special gormet ones but I bet they’d all work pretty well) and put one in a shot glass or little teacup.  Then pour a shot of brandy, bourbon or rum over it; it’ll soak up like a sponge.  Then eat the marshmallow.  Then roar with laughter and repeat.  Damn good stuff.  Several of these, a few hands of Fluxx, and I crashed out on Friday night pretty hard. 

We awoke Saturday morning a little late, to find that a cozy snowfall had hit during the night.  The frontier vistas looked totally new, different, cleansed and clarified.  It was warm, too, relatively, though, so it all melted within several hours… no matter to us, we just lounged around, had a relaxing soak in their outdoor hottub on the deck (high point: comfortably enjoying the waters as it rained and snowed, and the sun shone brightly on us), finally taking a short tour of town for a mellow lunch and an introduction to a local graphic artist and a glassblower in their respective studios.  By the time we’d all finished this brief low-impact foray I was as good as comatose and collapsed on the airmattress for a two-hour nap, but was naturally revived by the availability of a delicous stirfry supper, a jack-daniels pecan pie, and lots of lovely spamMonty Python DVDs.  Deelie fell asleep in my arms and after I forced myself to put her down we all wandered off to bed at a suitable time.

Sunday we woke up to a little more snow on the ground and lots of soccer on television (favorite aspect: the name of the international soccer sensation P. Dikov - what a biocatastrophe for him); then Scott and I went off to rent the last available pair of showshoes and we all of us went for a tramp in the woods.  On the good side, the F150 just ate up the crude logging road we travelled to the trailhead - probably the worst road I’ve ever druv other than the road to Green Sand Beach on Hawaii.  Also, the snowshoes were very easy to attach and use.  On the downside, I got my cotton gloves wet very early on and started feeling altitude sickness shortly thereafter, and wound up not getting very far before turning back to groan and shudder with nausea and chillblanes for a while with Evi and Deelie (who decided to sit out the outdoors adventures because it was blustery).  I found it quite therapeutic to hold a three-month-old who warmed my hands and calmed my nerves by her very presence.  By the time Kel and Scott eventually got back I was feeling much better and we all went out for another big lunch at the local blewpub, where I enjoyed some very servicable fish-n-chips.  We then had to get back home again for the Delia G Show, her weekly webcam broadcast to grandparents, for which Evi had made Kel and me both matching “guest star” t-shirts which I wore and will wear with pride.  This was followed by another blissful nap (starring myself), and then some succulent chicken parm with noodles and red sauce, a hearty dinner that went went very well with some Ravenswood zin and a terrific 2000 Quivera Dry Creek blend, and of course a few more shotmallows and a couple hands of Fluxx… by this point we were all all in and sleep came swiftly and mercifully to us all. 

Monday morning we got up at 7 and Scott made us high-quality scratch waffles for our breakfast, which I ate till I was nigh-on personally Belgian myself.  We packed our bag, gave the baby a few more tender moments (they’ll have to last, now), loaded out to the F150 and drove out.  We visited one rest stop for some urgently-needed rest on the way to Phoenix, which also afforded us an inspirational but entertaining photo op - and then straight through to Rebirth City. 

Two observations about that drive: 1) It’s strange to come into town and see yet another of those ubiquitous “University of Phoenix” signs, but to realize that it’s actually in the right place for once.  2) Some of the placenames and roadways on the way between Flagstaff and Phoenix: Happy Valley, Carefree Highway (near Phoenix, before the harshness of the frontier asserts itself), Deadman Wash, Horsethief Basin, Bloody Basin, Big Bug Creek, and Dry Beaver Creek (yes really, and it’s adjacent to Cornville and Rim Rock ((two placenames that would do better less closely connected)) and the SR69 underpass). 

Now the airplane we will take back to California has just landed in Phoenix from Toronto, an hour late, so we should be able to board shortly and won’t be home too late.  Then, a trip to Trader Joe’s (note: blew it off for Albertson’s due to gridlock in the TJ’s parking lot and roads thereto), and a peaceful night of sleep in the big new bed before startign a new week’s worth of elation.  Tuesday will be another very dense and busy day, in a very dense and busy week.  Luckily, I had one hell of a great weekend to keep me going through it all.  Evi, Scott and especially Delia - it was a pleasure to see you all.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Red

Today promises to be full and busy.  I’ve got a meeting which I actually somewhat resent, for an organization-wide committee I’m not a member of but whose work I was somehow appointed to do; I’ve got elaborate memos and evaluations to write and much desk cleanup and file preparation to do before I leave work early to get the cat to the vet before they close, as we’re boarding her there for the long weekend.  Yes, a long, even an extra-long weekend, because not only is monday a day off for us for President’s Day, but I’m also taking friday off, because we’re taking off friday - on a flight to Arizona and then a drive up into the Coconino Ponderosas and the ironically-named San Francisco peaks where my dear lilsis lives with her stalwart cybergeologist hubby and their adorable tiny deadhead daughter, whom we’re visiting for the weekend and we won’t be home till monday.  So my mind is full of thoughts of departure, reunion, exoticism and domesticity, all bound together. 

At the same time I have just learned that a member of my extended immediate family is gravely ill.  My cousin tells me that the situation is very serious, but there’s nothing any of us can do but wait - for recovery, or otherwise.  This situation was not unanticipated, but that hardly softens the blow.  My prayers and wishes are with these gracious and beloved people, the ill and the well, and my thoughts turn to the cycles of life, the departures and returns of our natural condition as well as of my own perigrinations. 

With this welter of petty details and serious themes bouncing off each other every time I turn inward, I thought this was a good time to share a few words about my favorite fruit - one that’s been a mythic symbol for millenia and that’s been important to me personally for most of my life.  I’ll be back on Tuesday.  Till then, don’t eat the rinds.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Shopping Bags

I suspect it’s not a trend; it’s probably something that’s been happening all along and I’m just finally noticing it: but I’m seeing more and more women of style and fashion, and otherwise, carrying around little paper shopping bags instead of a purse.  They’ve got a book, some lunch, letters and cards, a broad selection of small items in a crisp laminated sack with a rope handle and some company’s name on the side as they ride my bus or walk the downtown streets.

And when I see someone with one of these little sacks I can’t help but think that she’s got the sack because she lives the lifestyle, she’s bought something there and re-uses the sack as a enduring reminder to herself of the pleasure that commercial relationship has brought her.  If it’s a bag from Kiehl’s or Lush, I think of her enjoying her cosmetics.  If it’s from the Apple store, I look for the white wires for her earbuds.  Stacey’s?  Books.  Flax?  Art.  The bag is a window on the woman - one I know to offer a warped, if not actually misleading, perspective, but I attend to it anyway.  Those cool civets strolling up Kearney with a tuna sandwich and an Evanovitch mystery in their little blue bag from Tiffany just look more refined, more sophisticated.  The Prada bag says, “I paid too much for my purse;” the Ferragamo bag says, “I paid too much for my shoes and I don’t care about my purse.” And that’s cool.  The aura of narcissistic consumerism carries through.  I see the shopper; I imagine the product. 

The downside is, I’m also seeing a lot of women walking around like this using their Victoria’s Secret bags as their personal totes.  And here’s the thing: as often as I’m titilated by the notion of some of these women in their unmentionables, it seems that just as often, if not moreso, it’s an image I would be happier never to have been brought to my mind.  A few days ago I was unfortunate enough to see a remarkably ugly woman of advanced maturity with her equally hideous overgrown enfant terrible of a daughter together on the bus, standing in front of the exit door, talking loudly and stupidly, wearing too much makeup and perfume but still possessed of an essential vileness that transcended cosmetic amelioration, sneering and complaining and obstructing the free flow of public karma, both carrying large bags from VS overstuffed with the cheap paraphenalia of their tawdry lives - and it made a painful and unwelcome impression upon my overimpressionable self.  Ladies, I am glad - yes, glad! - that you’ve found a way to feel good about yourselves all under or whereever it is you feel the way Victoria secretly wants you to feel, but that is no excuse for evoking this kind of imagery in my already overwrought head.  I’d been minding my own business and suddenly I can’t rid myself of the picture of your two unpleasant selves criminally overexposed in camisoles and bustiers, still whining about each other’s friends and getting in people’s way and picking biomass from your respective ears and nostrils.  The thought was so distasteful to me that I had to go and find a woman with a big shopping bag from BevMo so I could take a nice deep mental draught of the clean bite of alcoholic amnesia.  I’m not about to suggest that some people wear their shopping bags on their heads; that would be vindictive and just plain meanspirited of me.  But if you have to carry a bag that creates such vivid and disturbing imagery for those around you, please have the decency to offer us a stiff drink while you’re at it.  I’d consider it a public service.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Raindrops, Haight Street, and EUROCHOC CHAUD

It’s raining, and in honor of the random descent of these droplets of purity, here are some random droplets for y’all:

I enjoy listening to the news with Kelly because she is not only a critical and cynical consumer of news “products,” she also likes to incorporate more familiar names and terms into stories that otherwise would not be of great interest to her or to myself.  That’s why yesterday started off so well: According to her reporting, Verizon is about to buy M.C. Hammer.  Finally my parachute pants are going to split 2-for-1, and I don’t even expect to tear a groin muscle when it happens.  By the same token, Kel was giggling every time the putative leader of the HomelandSecuritybund was identified in the news today, sure that she was hearing either the name “Michael Jerkoff” or “Michael Turdoff.” This is the stuff that makes national paranoia entertaining.

Speaking of the torn groin muscles and Mr. Turdoff, Kel also mentioned an extremely disturding incident to me over the breakfast table this morning: at the gym (you see where this is going) she was working out on one of the cybex machines for ab and lower back strengthening in the core training room.  I like the gym, even though I don’t like gyms in general, since they tend to be full of people of whose personal habits and metabolic intimacies I prefer to remain ignorant.  But this is a mellow gym; they don’t play music and they tell people not to wear cologne or perfume, or to talk on cell phones.... I generally find it to be a humane place to work up a sweat and they have had some great yoga classes I’ve really enjoyed.  However, all this may be obviated by Kel’s discovery of a “baby ruth bar” on the floor of the abs room near her cybex machine.  I can easily imagine how such a thing could have happened.  I just don’t want to.  Dude, I lie down on that floor.  Michael Turdoff: secure this! 

Of course, our life is not an endless stream of media parodies and execretory discoveries.  Sometimes we eat, too.  Last night we tried to go to our new favorite Korean restaurant for a low-key V-D meal, but found it inexplicably closed on one of the year’s most popular eating-out nights (heh), so we trudged through the drizzle up to Geary and dined at Gaspare’s instead.  It’s a real throwback, with authentic “3-for-a-quarter” jukeboxs at every booth playing italian favorites and nothing more current than Santana (almost italian-sounding and a local boy so he counts, though the Creedence selections were still inexplicable); netted chianti bottles and plastic grapes hang from a latticed ceiling and the walls are painted with idealized vistas of old SF and older IT.  We got a nice linguica and sausage pizza, which was a far cry from the kim chee and bul go ki I’d been craving all day, but it satisfied us and after we finished it they brought us some lovely giant chocolate-dipped strawberries for dessert.  The best part was that the place was packed with families and couples streaming in and out; there were at least a few people waiting for tables the whole time we were there and the ambient noise and festivation levels were high.  It’s a pleasure, in this snooty foodie town, to come back to a place that serves up authenticity, with a side of olive oil.

And continuing on the theme of gustatory authenticity, earlier in the day yesterday I threw myself on a chocolate grenade - I went to *$s and tried a chantico, their new molten chocolate confection.  It’s served in a 6 ounce cup, which wound up being about 3 ounces too much of this goop.  The name “chantico” appears to be taken from Aztec mythology, but then again, what isn’t?  The thing is, as I drank it, I could actually feel it staining my interior.  It was too thick, too rich and syrupy.  Think of a cup of hot Fox’s U-Bet.  Some people know no limits or restraint when it comes to chocolate - I reserve such heights of depravity for other indulgences, but with chocolate, I think there are realms beyond which wise men do not stray.  I like chocolate just fine, please don’t get me wrong… but increasing its density this way just didn’t work for me.  After half the cup I started feeling woozy.  So, naturally, I pounded the rest, and felt like simultaneously taking a nap, running laps, and throwing up.  I recommend passing on the Chantico.

What would I recommend instead?  Good damn question, internet!  I recommend the product that Chantico obviously tries to emulate with typically heavyhanded american overzealousness: the EUROCHOK CUPPA, as prepared for us earlier this year by the lovely and exotic Helena from a recipe dragged back from darkest Euro:

3 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream (o yea)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (scharffenberger is a good choice)

In a large heavy saucepan, combine milk, cream, sugar, cocoa, cardamom and the cinnamon stick.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; then reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 30 minutes, until slightly thickened.  Stir in the chocolate and cook a few more minutes, until it’s all melted and incorporated and irresistable.  Stir in the vanilla and serve hot; if it congeals and gets too thick, stir in warm milk.  This is the real deal, people.  This is the chocolate that makes time stand still.  Enjoy it in good health, so long as the good health lasts.  I make no representations about how long a person can live drinking this all the time, but I can guarantee that you’ll enjoy the time you have.

As to which, I’m out of time.  But to round out this miscellany, here are a few photos I recently enjoyed taking on Haight Street.  That’ll wrap it up for today. 

Hit the photoblog for the big versions.  And with that, I bid you good day.

Monday, February 14, 2005

Table Manners

I’ve had a lovely weekend, much to the credit of our new bed.  I can’t say I slept well every night, because I didn’t, but that’s as much a function of my own misfiring circadian metabolism as anything else.  Even while I lay awake in the bed, or on those occasions I awoke from amazingly disturbing dreams that continue to creep me out, I was comfortable.  Super-comfortable.  In part this may have been due to our having bought some amazing linens made entirely out of bamboo fibers, silky and soft and filmy and warm and fun to have cradling me, but a big part was due to the wonderful advances of mattress technology.  We don’t even have a new space-age mattress, it’s just a normal continuous-spring version - but damn, that is one comfy spot to crash out.  Thanks for asking.

The introduction of the new bed into our little household reminds me of when we got the new dining table.  It, too, represented a significant advance for us.  But over time it has also taught me a lesson or two.  Pedagogic furniture story, therefore, coming right up. 

When we got the dining table it represented a significant step for us, as it replaced a clumsy makeshift table I’d bought off the sidewalk from a young woman who’d been, at the time, visibly elated finally to have something sturdy with which to replace her own prandial furniture.  Even so, her $25 cast-off was bigger than the little pressboard dealie we had been using as a dining table up till then; its thick turned legs, though clumsy and grafted from some other long-defunct table, lent gravity and solidity to its dark shining bulk. 

But over the years the basic inadequacy of my sidewalk-bought table became more and more obvious - impossible, eventually, to ignore.  It was still too small, much too dark, not actually flat, and manifestly unsteady - it shuddered and shook on those edemic legs till we were nervous to have a sit-down supper at all for fear that an errant knee would knock glass over teakettles.  So I knew that long-lost stranger’s joy when we, in our turn, got rid of the clunky old table.  We got something better and it felt good. 

The new table was no work of art, but it sure worked as a table.  Blonde wood with graceful tapering legs and a spacious apron, six could sit aroud it comfortably to dine in something approximating elegance.  It looked good with our other furniture, and in the summer sunset light that streamed seasonally through the adjacent window.  It was cool, smooth to the hand and easy on the eye, and it stood firmly without the shimmying palsy that afflicted our prior hand-me-down.  If I set a glass on it, it was with confidence that it would not accidentally be sent smashing down by a stray knee tapping a tableleg.  This table stood steady, and to me that felt the best of all. 

It was not terribly long ago that Kel’s family visited for a rollicking family vacation.  These folk, as I may have mentioned here before, know how to enjoy themselves - and they take all the practice they can get.  It was an absolute pleasure to cook for them, to serve them my favorite wines and sweets, and to float around on the sea of their laughter.  But after a time I started to feel as if things were getting out of control. 

It was evening and the six of us were in the dining room.  Kel’s dad, Big Frank, was at the head of the table, and he was having the time of his life.  Wine flowed freely and he’d had his share; he’s an effusive man of sigificant girth and he had a lot to tell us, a lot to share and expound and exclaim upon.  He kept leaning forward into the edge of the table to make a point or to punctuate a story, or just to ground himself as his eyes teared with laughter and joy.  And as he did this, as he leaned his broad solid belly up into the edge of the table, time and again, the table began in complain a little - then, a little more.  A modest creak began to emanate from its joints as he jostled it with the vigor of a big man in a full-blown gigglefit.  I tred to ask him to scoot back but my request went unheeded, if not totally unheard.  Rather, he just leaned even further forward, pounding the inoffending surface of the pretty little table with a meaty fist as he insisted on something or other.  Glasses began to sway.  Each time he pressed in, the table shuddered a little more poignantly. 

The evening barreled forward with much voguing and poker and cheerleading formations and additional wine, until we were all tired and sore from laughing.  The next morning I gently tested the table, the table that had been my icon of mature solidity, to find that it had gone wobbly on me.  Not dangerously so, certainly not as much as the old one had been, but it was clearly more responsive to small contacts and gentle pressures.  It still looked good, was well-proportioned and a comfortable place to set my plate.  It was just a little less sturdy, a little less stiff.

Part of me was disappointed, almost irritated.  But I couldn’t let myself feel like that for real.  The damage was minimal, meaningless, and had been perpetrated out of nothing more than an excess of enthusiasm, jollity and love.  Maybe it was okay that the table wasn’t so rigid anymore.  Maybe it gave me permission to loosen up a little bit myself.

Friday, February 11, 2005

Sweet 16

Today is much more than “new-bed-delivery day.” That’s a holiday for Kel and me, but the rest of you losers who still sleep on dufflebags full of rocks and sticks shouldn’t feel obliged to celebrate along with us.  In fact, since the celebration starts after the bed is delivered, I’m going to ask you not to.  But instead, you can celebrate, along with the entire rest of this freedom-enforcin’ nation, the birthday of our two greatest presidents: Abrahams Linclone.  These men, born of a single fertilized egg in the 19th century’s most advanced genetic engineering labORatory, were esteemed for over 100 years as the epitome of sagacity and rectitude. 

And for that, we still honor them, but we’re putting more emPHAsis on the “sag” in sagacity, on the “rect” of rectitude.  New studies suggest that President “Railsplitter” might truly have been the first Log Cabin Republican, the “Great Pranceipator,” the most Kinsey-six-riffic president ever to sleep or otherwise spend the night in the White House (and that even includes the outrageously euphemistic Millard Fillmore with his fuscia seatcushion).  Yes, modern evaluation of historical documents suggests to C.A. Tripp, as reported in The Intimate Life of Abraham Lincoln, that the 16th president of this bastion of democracy and the pursuit of happiness was himself a bit of a bufu.  Technically speaking, I mean. 

In light whereof, I propose the following ode honoring the man, the myth, and the legend that is Abraham Lincoln, born February 12, 1809 in Kentucky, and a spritely 196 years old as of tomorrow (but he doesn’t look a day over 150):

Honest Abe Lincoln
was more than a president
He brought us to victory
over ourselves;
But now dubious thinkin’
of all that he might have meant,
revisionist trickery,
sinister delves.

Renowned for his wisdom
in leading the nation,
slain by an actor
in regicide guise:
New history gives him
a new reputation
for busting the backdoor
and heavenly thighs.

With jaundiced regard
for the moralist patriot,
now we know why
Mary suffered from fits;
He slept with his bodyguard,
acted as gay men ought:
way into guys
and allergic to tits.

Happy birthday Abe.  It’s morning in America and I still respect you - maybe even more than before.  It’ll take a lot more than the Super Best Friends and a giant stone John Wilkes Booth to bring you down now.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Hermano Sandwich - Part II

Yesterday I started a story; today I’m finishing it.  If you missed yesterday’s installment I recommend you read it first; this will make a little more sense that way, if it ever makes any sense at all.  It’s one of those tales that has been creeping around the fringes of my thinking for a long time, which in itself give you an idea what kind of mental morass I contend with on a daily basis.  I changed the name of the story once I’d finished it (and it turned out longer than I’d expected!), that’s the only change I made to yesterday’s installment.  It feels a bit strange to post an actual “story” so quickly after writing it; I usually hold it for a while and edit it but that doesn’t seem natural here.  I don’t think I have much more to say about it.  As the man says, “enjoy.”

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Hermano Sandwich - part 1

I’m going out on a limb here, people.  There’s a story I’ve wanted to start for months and months.  I know I’m not going to finish it, but I have a good start in mind, and since yesterday was Mardi Gras - the Carne Vale - and because I saw a particular Venture Brothers episode just the day before that, I actually started writing this story yesterday.  I haven’t even re-read it, and I will have to finish this “start” today on the busride home, but it just feels like time to share what I’ve got.  Story-wise, I mean.  So here’s part 1 of part 1 of (working title) “Hot Meal.”

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Pull My Weekend

This was one weekend I really kept my nose open.  Sometimes it misled me and sometimes I misled it, but me and my nares had a good time together for a couple of days there.  Here are some of my favorite adventures we shared with each other:

Sunday, February 06, 2005

A Game of Wenches

Hey it’s Super Bowl Sunday!  I wish you all a warm and satisfying experience of vicarious violence, even if you don’t watch the game.  It’s cathartic, and as the Greeks knew, that’s good for you.  Of course, they thought a lot of stuff was good for you that we know better about now, but let’s not quibble.  Rather, let’s cast ourselves back in my memory, to a time when men were men and women kicked ass.  It’s time we remembered the day the girls played football.

Friday, February 04, 2005

Don’t

Today I am officially illin’, and not in a cool Beastie Boys way.  My symptoms don’t make for good reading, but I’m definitely under the weather and listless.  But it’s a beautiful day, so the weather under which I am is not so bad, and as for being listless, I actually have a list I’d like to share with you.  Here’s the background: I’m not in marketing.  Not because I have some harebrained notion that marketing is to commerce what prostitution is to sweet sweet love; I understand that there’s a lot involved in making sure the products and/or services that I can’t live without get from the supplier to me, the consumer, and even in making sure that I, the consumer, realize that, without these products and/or services, I am likely to expire in a dessicated husk of unsatisfied need.  I respect the marketers among us.  Huzzah for the marketers, as was so often said in days of old, probably by people just as geeky then as I am now.  Which brings me back, naturally, to me. 

Despite my almost total lack of training in marketing (one wharton intro course and approximately 15 cumulative years of watching commercials and reading billboards and print ads), I see big marketing “don’ts” almost every day.  Bad slogans, bad product names, bad choices straight down the line.  Because I’m sort of dizzy this morning and thereby imbued with an inappropriately inflated sense of my own wisdom and importance, I’ve provided hereinbelow a short list of some of my favorite marketing Don’t’s that I’ve noticed over the past few weeks. 

* Black and Mild cigars: forget that one reviewer said that these don’t even deserve to be called cigars, that “you might as well smoke a cigarette.” I don’t smoke cigars or cigarettes and I don’t intend to start. But if I did intend to start, I would not be starting with a nicotine-delivery device named after Sesame Street’s Gordon, the blackest and mildest dude on the drag.  These are what I call “inimical references” (trademark pending), in which the item referenced is so different from the referent itself that consumer dissonance can only lead to marketplace rejection.  In layman’s terms, you shouldn’t market something to inject toxic yet euphoric drugs into your body under a name that sounds like someone who teaches your kid how to cross the street.  No, you shouldn’t.  It’s just wrong.  I’ve spoken.  Stop arguing with me.

* Blast and Wipe: I couldn’t find a link for this product, but incredibly, it was recently for sale at Walgreen’s.  It’s a handheld steam cleaner, with which one can “blast” a spot of offensive filth and then “wipe” it clean.  Here’s the thing though, esteemed marketers of steam de-markers: this product name just sound rude.  If I didn’t know what you were selling, I would have to ask myself: What is being blasted?  And why does it need to be wiped?  From snotrockets to nocturnal emissions, this product name evokes solely distasteful imagery, giving no hint of it’s actual purpose.  It’s a name that belongs on a video game, perhaps, but not on a household cleaning item.  Case closed.

* Also at Walgreen’s, I found recently a little newsletter-magazine at the pharmacy counter that comes out periodically to discuss strategies for living with diabetes. This is a laudable project, I have no quibble there.  The mistake they made was to use the wrong cover model, whose picture grins ghoulishly over the caption, “Dick Clark: Still Rockin’ with Diabetes.” Well, it might have been a good idea to feature Mr. Clark when it first came up in staff meetings late in 2004, but now it’s “Dick Clark, still working his way back to release from hospitalization but not because of diabetes.” I am no big fan of Dick’s (that sounds wrong.  No big Dick fan?) but I respect his important contribution to modern society and culture, such as it is.  But when your “health and wellness” spokesmodel is lying in a hospital with a well-publicized stroke, well, that is not a stroke of marketing genius.

* In the fast-paced ever-changing world of technology, product and company names should strive for one of two qualities: currency or timelessness.  If it doesn’t sound like tomorrow’s newest phenomenon, it should sound like something enduring and unchanging, trustworthy and reliable.  What you don’t want is a name that evokes a failed experiment or an era of outmoded ideas and applications.  “Twentieth Century Fox” still sounds good because it covers a large time frame and, as a name for a purveyor of culture, partakes of the glamor, creativity and energy of an amazing period of history.  But the little computer shop on the ground floor of my building, “Beta Nineties Technology,” fails that test.  A “beta” model is, in tech speak, an advanced experimental version, not ready for public distribution.  As the second letter of the greek alphabet (alpha, beta, etc), it pretty much stands for “second best.” And as for using the last decade of the last millenium as the subject which “beta” modifies, well that’s just dumb.  The nineties were a time when computers were steam-driven behemoths, hand-held caluclators regularly exploded from overuse, and just does not give rise to images of cutting-edge anything.  The nineties are now a has-been decade, too recent to justify nostalgia (especially in the tech field), and too long ago to savor of modernity.  Buying a computer at Beta Nineties is like buying food at Trial-run McSpoilage’s.  How they stay in business is their business, but making fun of their name is mine. 

* Finally, my favorite marketing don’t: Just don’t. 

This concludes my condescending rant.  Fill out a student survey on your way out of this blog entry, and don’t forget to sign up for my upcoming lecture on Stuff I Think I Know but Really Do Not.  C’mon folks - I’ll have complimentary don’ts!

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Refresher

What the hell.  I had a tough night last night and I’m having a tough morning this morning.  I don’t feel well, in a way that’s difficult to describe or even put my finger on.  I have more work waiting for me downtown than I’ll be able to finish in a month, and anomie has taken up residence between my temples.  That means it’s time for me to go back in my mind to a place that felt pretty much the opposite, to see if I can revive some vestage of how I felt when I was there....

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

The $3 Package

The LED laser pen is just about the best $3 I ever spent.  It’s a reasonably personable black ballpoint pen, one that draws a slim formal line that doesn’t smear, an easy-to-use writing instrument that rests solidly in the hand.  The point extends and retracts with a smooth twist of the burnished barrel. It’s nothing special, but it’s a decent $3 pen.

Except that this $3 pen has two buttons on the side.  The bottom button illuminates an eerie purple LED beam, sufficient to let me pick out the location of an unfamiliar keyhole, or to determine, on a dark path, what shadow-shrouded evilness my dog has found to eat.  It’s got a blacklight’s psychedelic hue but it doesn’t make your white socks blaze with violet violence.  It’s a handy light for any number of unanticipatible situations.  Just recently Kel was looking for her LED laser pen (we each have our own), which was stuck in her dayplanner; she leaned down on the planner as she searched, thus illuminating the purple beam and pointing her toward what she sought.  Now that’s an accomodating pen. 

And then there’s the top button, the one that fires a laser (or “laser"), a tiny red beam that can mark off your quarry even from hundreds of feet away, if you have amazing aim or the optional desk-mounted laserpen stand.  This laser is not strong enough to peg an airbus in flight, but it’s a powerful little pointer nonetheless.  I can use it at work to get someone’s attention without making a sound - I just shine a spot on their desk in front of them and they jump right up to find out who’s taken out a contract on them.  I can also use it to keep myself entertained during boring meetings, by signing my name on the ceiling when no one appears to be paying attention.  The pen actually comes with a warning sticker about dangerous toys or retinal cauterization or permanent blindness or something, I don’t recall what exactly - I pulled the silly thing off.  It disrupted the aesthetics.

In the little plastic case in which the LED laser pen came packaged, the thoughtful manufacturer even included a spare set of batteries.  I thank you for those, o gentle Chinese mercantile conglomerate - I’m sure going to need them.  This puppy is going to get a lot of use.  A pen that can elucidate, illuminate, target and blind, and then recharge itself, all in one tidy package: $3 has never bought me more.  And I’m a man who is attuned to the value of a tidy package.

Lexical Entry

CHUCKLEHUT LEXICON: A Public Service

Tantamount: To have sex with your aunt.

Wise Cracks

"We just took down all the pictures,” she said, putting down her wineglass.  “The room had always looked fine - a little cluttered, busy, maybe - but not bad.  But with the walls naked, we could see that it hadn’t been painted very well - one coat, none too thorough.  There were spots and smears all over the place.  And cracks, too.  Big fissures and spidercracks behind most of the bigger frames we’d taken down.  Suddenly all those haphazard pictures and mirrors everywhere made sene - they had been hiding the worst smears in the paint and the biggest cracks in the walls.  Things look a lot worse,” she said, “exposed to the naked eye.  And the arrangement that seemed so random really made a lot of sense once we saw the blemishes it was hiding.”

“Yes,” I replied, “plaster can be very unforgiving.” Then we both had another sip of wine.