Sunday, December 28, 2008

Item Three about Geary Street: The Driving out of Righteousness

Sure there are a lot of cute and meaningful things I could write about what’s been happening around here over the past few weeks.  But I’m just not ready for that yet, can you dig it?  Things have not yet hit a stride; there’s no natural structure to things yet.  Plus, I’m continuing to have niggling network problems that have kept me from doing much photo editing, and I have yet to send off my SD card for data recovery.  Short story shorter, if you are here for current events and updates in the life of Chuck el Hutt, you may feel free to return at a later date. 

However, I do have an old story to share with you and as I work my way up toward actually talking about actual stuff, and in the meantime, writing up some of the many buckets of drivel I have festooning my holiday yurt, I figure I might as well dump this one on you and complete my triad of essays on The Questionable Influence of Geary Boulevard:

This one is a downtown story, and its’ not even about people - but it is a tale of the boulevard and as such it can stand with the others I posted before my trip to Seoul.  To me, the rationalization is significant - it creates a coherence to my writing I find somehow gratifying.  I’ve said too much about this already, I fear.

Downtown, it’s true, Geary is a St, not a Blvd - but it still carries more than its share of vital civic essence.  It’s crammed with goodies of all types and qualities, from the highest of brows to the lowest of nether bodily thatching.  Way in near where Geary hits Market is an upscale patch from way back.  Many of the buildings are stone, beaux-arts, opulent and confident even when what they house is a Rite-Aid or a tired old travel agency.  Some of the stuff right off the square even has been redone lately to enhance the opulence even further.  As a wise man once told me, it’s not a lily if it isn’t gilded. 

One of the old school shops of lower Geary was Pauline Books.  Their plainfaced streetfront spoke honestly of the plainfaced interior within - several long shelves of books with a special focus on Catholic matters.  I personally didn’t shop there, but some people did.  Pauline Books was cranking right along until rather recently.  What happened?  Maybe it had to do with sales and profit margins and the move away from reading and religion, but I think it had more to do with an Agent Provocateur.  By which I mean, a new neighbor might have left ol’ Pauline Books feeling a bit out of place. 

As I said, that area - always, superb - has been undergoing an additional renaissance.  Pauline Books was cheek and jowl with Prada and Borelli and high-end shops like that; folks down there were setting the fashion.  In that crowd, Pauline Books and some of its neighbors - the old shoe shop, the travel agent, the HoHo Smoke Shop - seemed distinctly out of step.  Finally, after years stretching back to before my time, a small clothing store next to Pauline Books closed its doors for good.  The sign came down and the storefront went into pupal mode, wrapping itself in plywood and scaffolding for months.  I recall particularly the dusty translucency of the big front window going dark behind sheets of blank butcher paper, and thinking at the time that the paper actually looked good in comparison with the tired lonely storefront that had been there before. 

It took several months, but by Union Square measures that’s not really so long considering where they started.  In the end, the transformation was pretty much complete.  From my seat on the bus there’s no mistaking what moved in next door to reliable, staid old Pauline Books: Agent Provocateur lingerie emporium is now the hippest panties and push-ups boutique in town, and its front windows are imaginative and detailed, with regular seasonal updates for valentine’s day, mother’s day, arbor day.... it’s a hot piece of commercial crumpet, if you want to get right down to it.  It’s very downtown Geary.  And it sure as hell ain’t Pauline Books. 

It didn’t take long for AP to work its disruptive influence.  Within a few months of its opening, Pauline Books took a powder and closed up shop, boxing away all those crucifixes and gospels and carting them way down to Redwood City, far, far away from the split-crotches and peek-a-boo bra-cups of Agent Provocateur.  The storefront has been shuttered for some time now, repainted an unobtrusive tan color and undergoing some kind of metamorphosis.  I have to admit, considering what we got when the clothing store next door closed, I am waiting for the outcome with bated breath.  The possibilities are endless.  Geary Boulevard, don’t let me down.  Then again, it usually doesn’t. 

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Clay is for Dice, not Dreydls

I’m still conflicted about talking about Korea until I can deal with the photos - either knowing they’re gone or showing you the wonders of the Mr Wow shop or the Abe Lincoln graffiti or the nicest urinal view I dare imagine.  I’m hesitant even to tell you about the multifunctional personal cleansing unit that has replaced the lowly terlet.  I just can’t bring myself to do it.  Not yet.  Soon, but not yet. 

However, I can say without equivocation that it IS chanukah and as part of the associated festivities we’ve had a few rousing rounds of dreydl at the ol’ homestead.  We pulled out the Jewish Catalog to check the official rules (unchanged, I’m glad to say, from my youth amidst the sages of yavneh) and broke out a handful of dreidlot or dreidlim or however you yiddishize multiples of a dreydl, and anyway we put on Julie Silver’s version of The Dreydl Song and rocked on out to it.  I don’t love The Dreydl Song so much, with all the repetitiveness and redundancy and also the saying things over and over again (and again), but Julie does a great version with some wicked slide guitar - sort of like what Stevie Ray did with Mary Had a Little Lamb, but, you know, with dreydls.  And that got me thinking.

I am not going to maroon myself on the literary shoals of trying to write Mary Had a Little Dreydl; that’s been the bete noir of too many great writers, from Chaucer right through William of Nassington.  Rather, I wondered, as I inexplicably have never wondered before: clay?  Who makes dreydls out of clay?  And it was with this dawning awareness that I was inspired to expound:

THE DREYDL SONG, FOR THE HOME CRAFTSMAN

Dreydl, dreydl, dreydl
don’t make it out of clay
that crumbles into pieces
and you’ll just throw it away

Dreydl, dreydl, dreydl
try making it of wood
if you’re a careful carver
then the spinning should be good

Dreydl, dreydl, dreydl
consider one of plastic
it’s nigh indestructable
so your savings will be drastic

Dreydl, dreydl, dreydl
all made out of meringue
although kosher for pesach
it does not spin worth a dang

Dreydl, dreydl, dreydl
you might try one of glass
but be careful not to drop it
lest it shatter on your ass

Dreydl, dreydl, dreydl
don’t use depleted uranium
it penetrates an Abrams
but it melts right through your cranium

Dreydl, dreydl, dreydl
have you tried vitreous china?
It’s smooth and takes the pressure
(I’m not sure how to complete this one)

Dreydl, dreydl, dreydl
don’t make it out of cheddar
I’d recommend a harder cheese
asiago would be better

Dreydl, dreydl, dreydl
I once made one of platinum
I had to weld the tops down
to discourage those who shatinum

Dreydl, dreydl, dreydl
(repeat until insensate)

You all did very well.  Rehearsals begin at 8:15.  Bring a teething biscuit for the conductor.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Listy, but you get used to it

Here are two lists, because my life right now seems to consist mainly of identifying things that need to be done and then doing them.  SO:

LIST 1: baked goods that are now in residence with me to ease the transition to multi-childedness:

* Six kinds of gourmet english muffins
* Schnecken (courtesy of cousins who picked up our slack this year)
* Pumpkin Pie (extra-smooth and custardy)
* Tapioca pudding (it isn’t officially baked but it does have eggs and is thickened over heat so sue me)
* Plum pudding (from the Irish Bakery and not the sort of pudding one typically encounters)
* Korean rice candy (also technically not baked but made of grains and honey, though frozen and spun into 16,000 individual strands)
* Gingerbread house (or what’s left of it)

The “Atkins Seal of Stay-The-Hell-Away has been permanently affixed to the range hood.

List 2: now that I’ve come back from a transcontinental journey I think I can speak with some authority on international conventions.  Really, there’s only one worth worrying about, so here it is: CONTINENTAL BREAKFASTS, BY CONTINENT:

* Europe: croissant and cappuccino
* North America: waffles and a cup of gravy
* South America: hush puppies and pisco
* Africa: Johnnycakes and crude oil
* Asia: pappadums and juuk
* Australia: pizza and beer
* Antarctica: snowcones (unflavored)

Okay that is enough for right now.  If I’m lucky I’ll get a chance to upload some photos or share some stories soon but for now I think I have a baby to deal with. 

Monday, December 15, 2008

Back and better than ever

SO: funny thing.  No, the trip to Seoul was great - coming and going, especially the return flight with the two best and sweetest kids on the plane.  In Korea we ate some great food, stayed in a great neighborhood, and everybody was - what’s the word for “nice” on steroids?  Mega-nice?  They were that.  We got around the city a little, Zach was (mostly) a delight (and it was totally understandable when he wasn’t), and we came home with a totally wonderful little mandu and I swear he’s JUST AS CUTE AS ZACH WAS which needless to say is officially ultra-Sanriotastic cuteness. 

No, the trip was pretty much perfect, and even though I got a little head cold after we returned home I am mostly over it already.  Friends and family have been so supportive it makes me tear up (like in my eyes, not like shredding papers, which I also find myself doing but not for any friend-and-family-support-related reason).  I’m taking off work, mostly, till ‘09, and we’re all of us slowly settling in to a new worldshape and learning each others’ quirks and weaknesses.  It is already a good bit more work managing a family of four than of three, but I’m sure that’ll all work itself out soon enough.  In the wild, kids are naturally helpful and constructive, according to my Dr Spock’s “Raising Your Little Vulcan” manual.  I should check for updates, though, maybe. 

SO, as I said before, there was just one onion in the everlovin’ ointment: the new camera - oh, we got a new camera, just a little shirt-pocket sort of thing for snapshots but of course with seven megapizzles of resolution I expect decent photos from it too.  SO.  I’m merrily shuttering off and I’m up to like three hundred photos (and a few videos) of our first three days in Seoul plus the lead-up to the trip.  I go to snap another shot of the weird illuminated ceiling in the LotteRia Burger Shoppe where we’re dining (honestly, can I recommend that you stick with the squid rings?) but instead of giving me a viewscreen the camera flashes the message, “Card Not Formatted.” I get a replacement the next morning but there wasn’t much time left to take many more photos.  Once I got it home, it turns out that the card is unreadable even by the inestimable “Sirge” from Best Buy’s Geek Squad, and we all know that Sirge goeth before a fall, or something to that effect.  Anyway he’s clearly the stuff of legends, and even he is helpless to assist me.  SO now I’m pricing third-party data recovery but it looks expensive.  There may be almost no photos from this amazing trip.  Good thing I’m a compulsive diarist, eh?

Meantime, as I mentioned on the other side of midnight, I did take some other cool photos recently at Cornerstone Gardens so I’ll unleash those while I see about getting my time zone, appetite, and flash memory card into proper gear for a Korean recapitulation (or, more succinctly, a “Koreapitulation").  So, Enjoy, my ravenous public!

At the “Garden Party” garden: Zach gets things rolling:

They actually look like this:

A little bronze hubba-hubba at the garden furnishings shoppe:

tiny metals chains - last time they were festooned with messages on mylar disks, but I think it looks better like this

this was Z’s favorite hole at the mini-golf garden.  as in life, this one is harder than it looks - despite the golfer’s insouciant salute from atop mt nipplepar:

the rocketship outside the Rochambo tasting room was more interesting to Zach, but their barreltastings and old-vine Dry Creek Valley zins were my first priority:

apparently there was a convention.  who knew?

at this garden, deep words get deeper:

at this garden, Z reverted to a more lemur-like stage, which suited him rather well in the short term:

aww, you stuck around.  It’s like looking for the extra bit of movie after the closing credits, eh?  Well let me not disappoint you - say hello to Jesse!

More, much more, to follow.  I’m still a little shaky with scheduling things, but with three weeks at home I ought to be able to work up something for you people.  I mean, I may be lame, but I don’t think it’s gotten quite that bad.  You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? 

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Visual Dessert, Factual Amuse-Bouche

So here’s the deal: I’ve got two sets of photos. They’re both cool, but it’s too much for me to post all at once.  However, one of those photosets is about to go stale, if you catch my stuffing-spattered drift. I’m therefore going to share these Thanksgiving images just an ignorable smidgen beyond the acceptable one-week posting horizon: 

Tacked to the arbor on the patio:

our future - it is bright and smiles on cue

fixins - and then some

our turkey - we honored it

once, in this case, actually was enough

As mandated by tradition, after supper we (had 10-yr Taylor Fladgate port, wine spectator 91 points and then) took an invigorating jaunt after supper, just to shake free a little room for the panoply of desserts awaiting us.  Our path took us through the dark winding streets of the Berkeley hills and out to an intersection that had broad bay views.  We stood there under the streetlight and luxuriated in all for which we were giving thanks - health, sustenance, good friends, a good view… there may have been a dozen of us there, some related by blood and some married and some total strangers to each other, all of us rollicking through multiple overlapping conversations with tipsy conviviality.  I snapped a few photos but they didn’t really capture the vibrational energy of the moment for me, till I messed one up with photoshoot, which I am pleased to expostulate upon you now:

That’s all I’ve got of that, and all I’ll have for a little while.  We Just got the call so we’re heading to Korea on Sunday, and coming back with Jesse on Friday.  Time to make the donuts, people.  I’ll be back when things settle down.  Earlier, perhaps.  I’m sure I’ll need to tell you all something, eventually.  I’m so predictable. 

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Grabbing and Thanking: Getting the List of Awesome Down before it becomes irrelevant

Some writings can stand a bit of aging - they don’t need to be thrust down your eyeballs right away.  The Geary Blvd Stories turn out to be in that category; I’ll finish that series soon enough.  However, things like “why my thanksgiving weekend rocked” are really best enjoyed before the leftovers have been consigned to the dustbin of my enormously expanded gut.  Given this reality, I’m going to lay things out - not for your sake, in case you feel like being AS COOL AS ME and need a game plan to follow; but for my own sake, in case I ever forget what a great time life can be.  So without further ado, here are THE TEN FESTIVE FEATHERS OF MY DOUBLE DOSE OF HAND TURKEYS:

ITEM: awesome new thanksgiving music mix, combining stuff I’ve been listening to a lot lately, things I listened to a lot about a year ago, and some stuff I never really uncorked properly for no good reason - plus a few items bought specially for this very occasion.  I’ll update with a song list soon enough but for now it’s worth it to say, Feast of the Elastic Waistband is one of my favorite mixes in a long time.  And I have a long memory for these things.

ITEM: awesome new kugel recipe.  Kel volunteered us to make sweet potato kugel and I will fill you in soon enough on the details of our particular offering soon, recipe-wise.  For now, suffice it to say that this was the one recipe I found that contained no other primary starch or root besides sweet potatoes, plus it was creamy, puffed up like a souffle, and was particularly delicious even in the context of many other very delicious dishes.  The only thing about it was, it turned out a little barfi.  (Barfi is an indian dessert that really does not stand out visually when we visit the dessert bar of our favorite indian-food warehouse refectory.  When we first went there we ordered a bunch of colorful little doodads and amusing sweetmeats, but when we opened our box of desserts we discovered a few squares of the most boringest beige cubes ever to call themselves dessert.  Hilariously, they were named “barfi.” In disdain I tried one and it turned out to be my favorite.  Sort of like our sweet potato kugel - delicious but kind of visually underimpressive.  You know - barfi.)

ITEM: Thanksgiving in pajamas.  Many of us arrived in sleepwear, and several others changed during the course of the evening.  I now question why this is not actually required.

ITEM: during thanksgiving, we were fortunate enough to imbibe most of a case of Golden Star sparkling jasmine tea, which our dear friend Charles is now in charge of researching and developing.  It is more like a champagne than anything else, light and bright and refreshing, and equally complex on the tongue.  A really great product.  If you’re in California, get some.  If you see it on a menu, order it.  THE POWER OF BLOG COMPELS YOU.  So shall it be done. 

ITEM: SUPERBRUISE!  At some critical juncture of the TG evening I made a mad dash out of the dining room for some probably-not-very-compelling reason.  My aim was off, though, and I wound up charging, not through the dining room, but into the dining table, driving the corner of the sleek Scandinavian dining table deeply - oh yes, very deeply indeed - into the tenderest flesh of my left thigh.  I bounced off and wound up not even blacking out from the pain, but I knew that over time that one would leave a mark.  And now I’m proud to report that every day the bruise on my thigh is getting darker and deeper.  It’s not slowing me down but I keep on whacking it on things as a reminder of what a great time I had eating myself into such a stupor that I could injure myself so intimately. 

ITEM: great trip to Cornerstone Gardens, the funky outdoor playspaces up in Sonoma where landscape architects built a whole series of eclectic little gardens to freak you out.  I know I’m not doing it justice but I’ll post photos soon.  I’m just having trouble cutting down the stack - there are like 80 from that day that are great.  So you seen, Cornerstone Gardens was a good thing about the TG weekend and for now my word will have to be good enough.

ITEM: Significant work was done pulling Jesse’s room together a little more.  Large items were re-placed and, in some cases, disposed of; the basic crib-dresser-changing area-play area configuration was confirmed; and overall the place was turned significantly further away from being a clinical hoarder’s private shame, and more toward being a young child’s sundrenched bedroom.  It’s fun now just to peek in and see the future on my doorjamb. 

ITEM: Kung Fu Panda!  We got the disk in the mail and watched it on Saturday.  It was lots of fun, even for our sensitive boychik, up to the last ten minutes - the climactic confrontation.  That turned out to be a little intense and Z made us turn it off.  So, my review of the movie is, very entertaining up to the last ten minutes and then it really slows down.  It hasn’t yet finished, actually.  However, I think it’s worth noting that “Fu” is the new black.  Any new kind of thing is a Fu.  Kelly is now working (at work) with shepherd’s crooks, which the trainers can use for additional control over the dogs.  I asked her if she got any Crook Fu training and she gave me NINJA GRIN.  I am clearly in Crook Fu trouble.  And loving it!

ITEM: excellent run in the park on sunday, trotting around my bloated turkeygorge amid the quiet wooded paths.  By the end of the run, with the new TG mix in my ears, I was going full bore and feeling stronger than circumstances justified.  It was the kind of run that gives me momentum up into the new week.  If I’m going to be picking highlights of the weekend, I’m afraid that exercise-induced serotonin rush has got to qualify. 

ITEM: Sunday night, after four days with my family and my unleashed appetites for good food, beautiful places, and sitting on my ass, I crawled into a freshly made bed.  That’s right, one of the best things in the world, as objectively established by “World’s Best Things, Ranked, ‘n’ Stuff,” is a freshly made bed.  And that’s what I had greeting me when I slithered under the covers like the coldblooded reptile I sometimes am.  It was comforting and comfortable.  It was a great way to end a really great weekend. 

There you go, ten ITEMS.  The weekend was much fuller than that, and once again, photos are forthcoming to prove some of that to ya.  In the meantime, I’ll put the TG mix song list and the new kugel recipe in the extended text.  I just like extensions.  So sue me.  And if you need legal help in doing so, I’m reasonable. 

Monday, December 01, 2008

Notes, from a Noted Notator

technical notes:

* I’ve changed my email setting so it might (*MIGHT*) be easier to send me an email via the “about” page.  The preceding was stated because I like the word “via.” Also I think some people have been visiting and trying to send emails but not succeeding.  Since that SUCKS I endeavor to service you.  As it were.

* Somebody’s been visiting from Arizona.  Welcome!  Do I know you?  Send me an email and help me test the new system!

* Because I prefer lists with odd numbers of items: I don’t have much to do with social networking per se (I also like “per se") but lately have had several invitations to “friend” folks up on facebook and plaxo and classmates.com.  I did find some old friends on classmates and while we’re not exactly burning the airwaves catching up with each other it is still fun to know they’re out there.  My question is on the etiquette of these sites.  I received a suggestion that I facebook “friend” someone from high school whom I am pretty sure I knew once but no longer recall with any specificity.  Should I just dive in and say “we’re friends, right?” or wait till I can dig out a yearbook and re-assure myself?  Similarly, I visited my page on Classmates and found a feature that shows who’s visited me lately.  One of my visitors was someone I vaguely recall from high school as being way too cool for me, from two years ahead of me.  Should I reach out and say “hi,” or just let the visit go unrecognized as apparently the visitor intended by not leaving any message for me? 

And does it change any of the above if either (or both) the individuals in question were, to the best of my recollection, among the best-looking girls in my high school? 

Anyway, that’s all for now.  I am writing something dull.  Later on I’ll write something more entertaining and I will share it with you, right here.  No membership is required.  Some memberships are actually disfavored!  See boxtop for details.