Monday, March 30, 2009

Why I’m Awesome: Double Down Monday

I AM AWESOME.  Here are two ways that this is true (No links, for reasons of personal convenience ((mine))):

Why I’m awesome, clever-dick version: When the stink went up about the AIG bonuses, lots of folk were demanding that the bonuses be rescinded or somehow recaptured.  It was an emotionally-attractive position but I sensed legal problems and even went out on a limb in the comments of a political blog, saying that I thought recapture of those bonuses was tantamount to an ex post facto law or a bill of attainder - and therefore, naturally, unconstitutional.  You can’t go passing laws to punish individuals for past behavior, neither by singling out the individuals nor their particular actions. Well, someone got a big-name law professor to opine on the question, one whose word I would personally take as dispositive on any question of constitutional law.  And Professor Tribe said it wasn’t a bill of attainder, so it wasn’t unconstitutional.  And, by extension, that I didn’t know my constitutional ass from my legislative elbow.  You can imagine how his rebuke stung, with a sting of furious stank.  Well, now Professor Tribe has taken a second look at the proposed legislation, and now he thinks it IS an unconstitutionally punitive personally-focused legislative agenda.  In other words, it IS a bill of attainder, and he’s eating his hat in public - the hat that says “DAN IS RIGHT AND TOTALLY RULES.” I can’t say how far he’ll go with this public annuciation of my brilliance, but I think a tenured chair is in my future.  That is to say, the crappy office chair I’ve been sitting on for six years is likely to be mine for another four.  What this has to do with Lawrence Tribe, I leave it to you to discern.  Constitutional genuises like me don’t have time to explain everything to regular folk like you.

Why I’m awesome, normal-person version: I’m not sure why I was looking up my high school last week, but a quick ‘net search revealed to me that there is actually an on-line repository of information about famous things, places, and uses associated with my HS.  Yes, it’s been on plenty of TV shows, and it’s adjacent to the longest mural in the US, and I know of a few mid-alphabet-level list celebs who even attended there, myself excluded.  But what I didn’t know is that Tom Selleck - yes, Tom Selleck from Magnum PI - went to my high school.  Yes, he of the manly mustache and towering hunkitude, famous for aloha shirts and driving a red Ferrari as well as various other magnumism as to which I am currently drawing a blank… yes, he went to the same HS as I did.  He probably didn’t do any acting on the stage on which I learned to do prat-faints and harmonic convergences, because apparently he didn’t do any acting till he was in college.  But I bet we used the same bathroom, a mere two decades apart.  And the star power lingered, I’m sure - I don’t think they’d been cleaned in the interim.

That reminds me of a story, but one which might tarnish my newly-established awesomeness.  So forget it.  Next up, probably something dumb about laundry or grammar.  You’ve been warned.  Awesomely. 

Friday, March 27, 2009

Recap: The Best Freaking Meal Anyone Has Ever Had Anywhere and Don’t Argue With Me

Some meals, I whip through as quick as I can, just jamming the sustenance where it fits best so that I can keep on keeping on with as little time lost as possible.

Some meals I don’t realize I’ve even eaten, since I was all wrapped up in (occasionally) conversation or (sadly, more frequently) some damn television show or other. 

Some meals I linger over because I’m not enjoying the food for some reason.  I just don’t want to keep eating, though I know I’ve got to.  It feels interminable, though I suppose it’s usually over within half an hour. 

Some meals I linger over because I spent a long time cooking them and I want to appreciate them.  But more often, I spend too long cooking and then shovel the grub with both hands till the plate is clean and it’s taken me just a few minutes to consume the labors of several hours. 

But I have never - NEVER - eaten as I did last night at Michael Mina/San Francisco.  My old friend Marc was in town for a conference and asked me to recommend an outrageously awesome restaurant.  I included MM in a short list of suggestions.  It’s in the hotel where he’s staying, so it seemed like a decent option.  And I’d heard that it was as good a restaurant as San Francisco is capable of producing, which is saying quite a bit. 

But I don’t think any of us (Dave joined us since we’d all been friends through college together) expected, nor have ever experienced, the kind of meal we wound up having in that serenely under-decorated dining chamber.  But let’s start at the beginning.

We started the evening with beers at the Tunnel Top - a Dashiel Hammet locale updated for TenderNob hipsters, adjacen to the provocative Green Door Relaxation Salon and just one staircase and four short blocks to our ultimate destination: the old St Francis on the square.  Marc checked in while I checked out the historical exhibits in the lobby, like photos from Fatty Arbuckle’s arrest for murder back in the ‘20s.  Marc wound up getting a double-upgrade on his room - a spacious suite nine stories above Union Square in the building’s original 1904 towers, right at the corner so the view stretched out 270 degrees across downtown and SoMa.  Then we rode back downstairs to the lobby and MM, where we each got the six-course meat-eater’s seasonal tasting menu, with wine pairings.  And since “it’s not a lily if it ain’t gilded,” we also ordered one six-course seasonal veggie tasting menu for the table just in case we were missing anything - a choice that seemed obvious once we’d made it, but apparently had no precedent in the restaurant’s history.  We were also also brought an extra appetizer with aperitif, and an extra dessert.  We ate for three hours.  It’s nearly a full day later and I’m still staggering under the sheer gastronomic intensity.  To wit:

Hog Island oysters with bloody mary granita; paired with Iron Horse Blanc de Blancs Sonoma sparkler.

English pea soup (black winter truffles, parmesan cheme fraiche, brioche croutons; paired with a Prager Riesling “Hollerin” Smaragd, Wachau, Austria 2001) (Dave got an amazing foie gras terrine with Medjool dates, marcona almonds and sherry gelee, served with an awesome Spanish Lustau Moscatel Las Cruces Sherry).  Veggie supplement: Winter citrus salad with shaved fennel, sylvetta, and citrus coulis.

Grilled Monterey Bay Calamari (cara cara orange, nicoise olive, fennel bulb; paired with Mount Nelson Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, NZ 2007).  Veggie supplement: really excellent seasonal squash trio of pumpkin soup, tempura squash salad, grilled “sandwich.” (We picked up a glass of the wine pairing on this one too, an exceptional dry Royal Tokaji Wine Company Furmint, Hungary 2005)

Steelhead Trout (bay leeks, morel mushrooms, lobster emulsion; paired with Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Saint-Aubin “en remily” 1er Cru (white) Burgundy, France 2007).  Veggie supplement: Roaster heirloom beets with braised endive, mache, black truffle vinaigrette.

Hobbs Shore Pork Belly (with pumpernickel panade, red wine braised cabbage, caraway jus; paired with Sainte Eugenie Corbieres la reserve, Languedoc, France 2005).  Veggie supplement: Carnaroli risotto with suncholes, castelmagno cheese, black winter truffles.  And can I tell you?  THAT PORK BELLY.  Damn.  Sure, the risotto was also fine, but I’ve never eaten anything like that pork belly.  I can’t even start to tell you what it was like; words are patently inadequate and actually make it sound kind of distasteful.  It wasn’t distasteful.  It was life-changing, is what it was.  When the server brought it, she said “all bets are off.” I only begin to understand what she meant, but I see she was on the right track.

Japanese Kobe Beef (with sacramento delta asparagus, potato fourchette, sauce bearnaise; paired with Volver (Tempranillo), La Mancha, Spain 2005).  Veggie supplement: “Scotch” hen egg with forest mushrooms and heirloom radishes in consomme.  Both majorly rocked. 

Poached Rhubarb (with tellicherry peppercorn ice cream, meyer lemon confit, and basil; paired with Kracher Cuvee BA, Illmitz, Austria 2006.  Supplemental dessert: Root beer float with root beer sorbet and sasparilla ice cream, garnished with chocolate straws.  As it turns out, these are actually two of my favorite desserts, and both were exceptional. 

Espresso smores with lychee jellies - off-menu and superb. 

After supper we rode the tower elevator up the outside of the hotel’s 1970’s addition, 32 stories up into the night sky, just for the view and the breathtaking rush when the carriage burst out over the original hotel roofline and the complimentary rush when it slammed back down into the interior again.  Then, finally, I staggered out to my bus stop - 9 stories directly beneath Marc’s room.  My ride came quickly but was crowded.  On the way home the bus stopped at Fillmore Street, where the Bob Weir show was just letting out; hordes of howling deadheads roamed the street, slapping out beats on the side of the bus and staring vacantly at their complimentary posters.  I bet they thought they’d had a nice evening.  I won’t argue with them, but I know mine was a fair piece better than “nice.” I got home at midnight and feel as if I have yet to wake up.  I don’t know if I’m ever going to taste food the same way again.  I might someday have a meal that rivals this one, but I will NEVER top it.  Hope you get to try one someday soon for yourself.  It does make a fellow look at things differently. 

This has been another presentation of “Bet You Wish You Were Me.” Have a good weekend.  IF YOU DARE.  I’ll be hosting a birthday party for 25 munchkins and their P.U.s.  Ergo, I dare not.  Enough! 

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Hardly Unwanted; plus photo update from North Beach

This one is in honor of the old crowd.  Two weekends ago Nool came to visit and nine of us - nine! - who’d gone to college together a very long time ago got together for drinks and hunan food.  I took over 70 photos but honestly they came out so badly they’re not worth sharing with anyone who isn’t in them.  Last weekend was a movie with two of that crowd, both local, both brilliant and fabulous company.  And now tomorrow night I’ll be dining somewhere outrageous with another old classmate who’s stopping by on his peripatetic path, whose company I’ve much missed.  In honor of the old college crowd, then, and of our sustenance those byegone days, I offer you thusly:

It was one of several college evenings of which my recollection is spotty - flashes of hilarity and poignancy interspersed among periods of quiet meditation and inward journeying.  I particularly recall this night, though, because I was on a field trip, far form the familiar comforts of my comprehensively-furnished bedroom.  I had left that cloister behind me to sit up all night with Nool down at the foot of Broad Street in South Philly, in the parking lot of the Spectrum. 

This was 1984 or ‘85, an era in which my computer literacy course at Big-Time University focused solely on programming in PASCAL, and even the most sophisticated home relied entirely on land-line telephones for all outside communication.  There was no internet, and no sense of deprivation without it.  What snailmail couldn’t handle, Ma Bell probably could.  When you wanted something, you went out and got it, just like frontier days.  And that’s why Nool and I were hunkered down in his mom’s Audi for an overnight stay in the parking lot of a sports complex which Nool described as the work of Frank Rizzo, our first capital’s poet laureate. 

Behind us loomed the grim bulk of JFK stadium, dark and forbidding, all poured concrete arcades and windowless walls.  Before us, the Spectrum was, by contrast, a jewel of glass and neon, set off by the infamous statue of Balboa triumphant, contrasting cheerfully to JFK as a garish paste bauble might contrast to a drawer full of rocks. 

This was the era - the mid-80s - in which the Dead began to rise again.  The Grateful Dead had already arced from obscurity to cultish popularity; then trends reversed on them and they grew more cultish and less popular for a decade or more.  But in those days of Reagan, their straightforward dancehall vibe and twisted counterculture found increasingly more receptive audiences as a new generation learned to appreciate the old favorites of their forebears.  By the time of the evening in question, the Grateful Dead had reestablished sufficient market traction to guarantee three sold-out shows at the Spectrum during their annual spring tour.  Nool and I wanted a piece of that action, so we camped out overnight to be in line when the box office opened on the first day of sales. 

Yes, childrens, that is how we used to roll in the olden days.  We’d park the car, wait all night, and then line up for tickets.  And thus it was that a bright late-winter morning found Nool and me stumbling with multiple blearinesses across a damp, manure-strewn parking lot to take our place in a surprisingly long queue with our confreres du mort. 

The world had morning breath.  There was a pointed dearth of coffee.  Everyone was out of sorts and aching for home comforts, or, at least, a hot breakfast.  And as we know, where a market arises, a marketer will emerge to exploit it.  This day, that exploiter was Mr Pretzel Dude. 

In Philly, the soft pretzel is considered tantamount to a food group of its own.  They’re big ovals of salted bread with a crossbar in the center, not the macrame knot version with which I’d grown up.  But they tasted good, warmed you up, filled bellies and provided a full RDA of crystal sodium and yellow mustard.  Along with street dogs, the soft pretzel was a ubiquitous Philly snack.  Mr PD was positively loaded with them.

He was a lean, enervated man, face drawn and spine slumped with the weight of pretzels and the strain of selling them.  He looked like he was rather resentful of us for making him get up so early.  But he was there to flog his wares, so flog them he did.  He trudged up and down the line we’d formed, a sack of snacks slung from his bony shoulder, seemingly more out of it than even we deadheads were.  His pretzel-monger’s cry fell dully from his lips: “Soft pretzels… who wants a soft one?  Soft pretzels… who wants a soft one?” He repeated it over and again, till all the meager poetry was drained from the phrase. 

“Soft pretzels… who wants a soft one?” He’d come abreast of me, a poverty-struck student with more wit than energy, and more energy than cash.  I replied to him, irony purling from my lips, “Who wants a soft one?” The ‘heads around me, starved for entertainment as much as for carbohydrates, burst into laughter.  Pretzel Dude regarded me with an injured yet callous expression, and kept walking, intoning his cry despite my jibe.  It was his living, though it was the butt of my joke.  And to this day, I don’t know how I feel about having said that to him.  Yes, I gained the approbation of a horde of unwashed strung-out strangers, but at the cost of humiliating a man who sought only to earn an honest wage.  Oh well, I’m sure I’m not the first to have said it to him.  And even now, there are still times when, in fact, a soft one is exactly what I want. 

the one photo from the Nool visit I feel okay about sharing:

this is the lamp post outside Henry’s Hunan on Sansome.  After supper, it’s apparently traditional to get a few Ande’s chocomints and to jam their green foil wrappers into the cracks in the wood of this post.  So jam and post I did, and now you can enjoy it too.  Last night’s supper was better.  I mean, crazy good.  More later.  Going now.  Bye.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Sunset in a Tumbler: Second Act

How many years ago was it?  Five, or more?  I’d seen him around enough to have given him a nickname, reflecting my fantasy of his having the interior life of a bard, based on nothing more than his minstrel’s long silvery hair and beard, and the delicacy of his clouded prospect as he stumbled along the sidewalks of my neighborhood with his wizened little frame and single battered duffel.  I knew from the first that my imaginings were unfounded - he was merely another man of the streets, pared down to nearly nothing by the rigors and indignities of his asphalt path.  Still, I couldn’t help but invest him with an unwarranted sophistication, a fantasy of artistic sensitivity, despite that I only ever actually saw him slumped or shuffling, rolling cigarettes from leaf he kept in a rusty french tea tin, or begging for change with a cup in his hand and his eyes on something visible only to himself.  I never really helped him out; I just made up some indulgent story for myself about him being all wise and poetic because he looked like some Shakespearean character.  All in my mind, of course - only in my mind.  I had apparently chosen imagination over reality once again.

This was the guy I saw all those years ago, sitting on a gnarled root near the boulevard at sunset, gazing at the engorged lowering orange sun through the incised glass of a small fragile cup which he held, empty, before him, smiling raptly at the blazing vision he beheld.  Where he’d gotten that vessel, why he’d kept it or how, what he saw in it - too many questions crowded my mind that evening.  For some reason it made me anxious.  I left without speaking to him or making any kind of contact whatsoever. 

I’ve wondered ever since then about that experience.  The bard still hangs out in the ‘hood and I see him fairly regularly.  I’ve wondered a lot about what he was doing with that cup, but I never spoke to him.  I figured I’d wait for the perfect opportunity. 

Not so long ago I saw him with his vision cup again, this time at the corner of my own block, almost right on my doorstep.  He stood looking west, his grubby duffel at his feet, his clothes tattered, deep creases incised into his face and hands by a lifetime in the weather… Yet he stood erect, pulled up to his full (though diminutive) measure, gazing with loving intensity through the delicately-faceted glass of a small tumbler, toward a spectacular setting sun.  I thought it might even have been the same tumbler as I’d seen him use so many years before. 

He seemed lost in his vision again, but as I passed him he broke off, glanced to me, and smiled.  I could not read that smile.  Rather, I kept walking.  I didn’t say a word to him, nor he to me.  I just took the last few steps that lay ahead of me toward the warm comforts of my home.  I let the story of sunset in a tumbler remain locked in the vagrant bard’s heart.

Now I know that now I may never learn that story.  Really, it makes no difference why some old homeless man does what he does, but that’s no nevermind.  I want the knowledge, and it’s there for the asking.  I just seem to be stuck at that first step. 

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Forget-Me-Nots

I do have stuff to transcribe and share, stuff so valuable and important that it pains me, metaphorically, not to get into it with you right here and now.  But as trenchant as my rants about words or laundry or that dude with the little cup may be, I am instead going to disabuse myself of the following pieces of intellectual flotsam.  Use a q-tip after reading.  IN YOUR EYE. 

1) Why am I getting multiple advisories for oldies tribute shows 400 miles from my home?  It’s one thing to get invited to “Tribute to The King” Elvis-wannabe concerts.  I suppose there’s an assumption that EVERYBODY loves Elvis, perhaps even in a physical way.  I’m a bit nonplussed, though, by the notices I get for Neil Diamond tribute shows.  Is he even dead yet?  Is there something about my pants that implies to Messers. Gugle et al at Omniscience Incorporated ("We’ve Got Your Number") that I’m itching to get down with the rockabilly rehashes and mid-century boogies of (but not *by*) two of America’s most imitated performers, imitated yet again for my self-deception pleasure?  (The thing that makes these shows different: They’re in Thousand Oaks.  You know what that means - Oxnard adjacent!  And you know what’s adjacent to an ox’s nards.  Let’s roll that video.)

2) I am not interested in the rehash boogie.  I like the new boogie.  In particular, and currently, I mean the new Goldfish boogie.  I’d love to link via a screencapture photo but that’s not possible for me in the here and now. Instead, satisfy yourself with this.  I discovered it on Channel Frederator (via TiVo’s on-line updates options) and since then we’ve been playing it a lot lately.  Some days it’s the main reason we have the internet.  I mean, other than the obvious.  And a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat.  Nudge nudge. 

3) Roshambo, or Rock-Paper-Scissors, actually has a two-century heritage going back to the Revolutionary War.  I’d be happy to expound all over this subject but I’d be depriving you the joy of discovery, so surf it yourself, sucker.  I’m just here to let you know that when you and 100 other like-minded vacillators need to make a decision, now you have the option of playing Roshambo 101.  Let me know how that turns out for you.

This has been another episode of “Now I’d Better Get the Hell Back to Work.” More later, but maybe I’ve already lost you. 

Friday, March 13, 2009

I Hear Voices

They’ve been looking over my shoulder now for more than a month, but it’s not freaking me out.  Really, I find their attentions comforting, almost benevolent.  And how much malice could they really inflict when they’re bound up in sealed plastic like that?  The eight of them hover above my workspace, their 14 eyes vacant and almost blissful.  Yes, 14 eyes for the eight of them - Enterprise was depicted without ocular sensors, just as envisioned by its creators lo these four decades ago.  Sheesh, that would be crazy!

Let me clarify: For Jesse’s birthday, goodfriends Sha and Helena brought him a boxed set of original Star Trek commemorative pez dispensers - all seven main characters plus their conveyance, which is gorgeously rendered with engines blazing red, zooming at an angle through starry space high above an earth-like planet.  The other characters are each shown as headly-and-chestly busts with trek logos over their respective breasts, arms severed bloodlessly like so much Roman statuary.  Behind them are ensconced a full dozen packages of Pez candy in the traditional flavors of purple, orange, and red, awaiting implementation with sugary patience. 

The packaging presents the character-dispensers facing forward in individual transparent plastic niches, with the words “Star Trek” and “Pez” each in iconic typography on the two upper corners, and an illustrated panel spanning the entire 14"-width at the bottom featuring a photoreproduction of Kirk looking thoughtful, the Enterprise looking imposing as it flies overhead, and a big yellow-and-red legend to the right that reads, “COLLECTOR’S SERIES.” There’s even a little medallion of the Stars and Stripes, proudly proclaiming that the candy (total net wt 3.48 oz) is Made in U.S.A.  And most impressive of all, there’s a holographic sticker near the top that informs me that this is 192,723 of only 250,000 of these sets. 

It goes way, way beyond geeky, circling back to mega-cool.  Zach was hell-bent to open it up and start eating candy as soon as he saw it but HELL NOES that was not going to happen.  I went and got him some disney-character one-off pez dispensers to placate him and took the Trek Pez Set to work with me, where it keeps me vigilant company as I do whatever the hell it is I do here. 

Lately I have realized that each of the eight dispensers actually embodies an unspoken line of text - something it would say if its molded plastic lips could speak.  And now I will share these pearls of pez-dom with you.  I do this because I care.  And because I think they’ll jump me if I don’t do their bidding.

Kirk: “I’ve!  Never!  Felt!  More!  Alive!”
McCoy: “I’m a doctor, not a promotional plastic head on a tube of glucose lozenges, dammit!  Wait, no.  Oh, snap.”
Spock: “Please don’t do that to my head anymore.”
Uhura: “I’m getting a communication - and it’s delicious!”
The Enterprise: “Majel?  Is that you?”
Scotty: “She’s breaking up, Captain!  And the pieces are extruding from my throat!”
Chekov: “They put candies.... in my body....”
Sulu: “Gene?  Is that you?”

This has been another episode of, Why Toys Can’t Talk.  Today I get to have lunch with Patricia, who’s abandoning the left coast like a cheap Prada knockoff for the rich buttery leather of genuine east-coast Coach.  Damn, I’ll miss sharing a time-zone with her.  But then, tonight, I get to have a reunion supper with six or seven of the eight of us who lived in palatial splendor at 4008 Pine Street senior year of college in 1985-6, with three of our co-alumni joining up for good measure.  I’m excited - almost excited enough to forget that I only got about 2 hours of sleep last night.  Well, I think I’ll do better this evening once I eventually return home.  In the meantime, I’ve got 3.48 ounces of US-made pseudodilythium to keep me energized - even if only by its hermetically-sealed presence.  Set pez dispensers on stun!

Monday, March 09, 2009

Tired, Sad, Elated, and Irritated - Just Like Usual

There is much to say and share today.  I underslept - J is doing a fair amount of midnight screaming - and forgot to take my anti-drug medication this morning, so I’m tired and aching.  However, blogging being so critically important to the national intellectual economy, I must share as follows:

> I was glad to see my dear friends P, T and D&J on Saturday in Modesto, for a truly unjoyful occasion but a good time anyway.  I know they know my heart is with them and their family, but it doesn’t hurt to reiterate it publicly. 

> Zach turns four years old today.  I left him thrashing in fitful sleep in my bed this morning, but hope that we will spend some quality time together tonight rashing our graggers and stamping out the sound of Haman’s name.

> Some other dear friends came over on Sunday to make hamentashen and eat Ethiopian food.  When we asked Z who he wanted to invite for his birthday party, the first names on the list, repeatedly, were these close friends of ours, people we’ve known for 20 years or so - not the pishers from his class or playground, but the wise and wonderful allies I see as my siblings-by-choice.  We had a great time and are still gorging on the ‘tashen, which came out great.*

> Sunday morning we went to the closest synagogue, “God’s Half-Pipe,” and cavorted at a Purim festival.  Z won enough prize tickets to get a hair-entangling bracelet, and a tiny combination lock.  Good for him.  Good for all of us.

> The State Bar Board of Governors has rejected our (scaled-back) employee contract proposal for 2009.  I’m on the bargaining team and have been working hard to come up with a compromise position that would offend the fewest number of people on all sides.  Obviously this effort failed.  I’m kind of stressed out about what’s going to happen next, but we’ve got some great people working for us and with us so whatever the future brings I’m fairly confident it’ll suck to the least possible extent.  However, that doesn’t mean it won’t suck. 

> Tonight is Purim.  As Lori says, this is another holiday that meets the “9-word Standard” for Jewish festivals: “Someone Tried to Kill Us.  We Won.  Let’s Eat.” For a more detailed exegesis, please see this multiple reiteration of the story of the Book of Esther.

And now, back to the amazing pile of crap I call my workday.  I think the Monday after “Spring Forward” ought to be a holiday, but instead I’ll just be super productive and ignore my 3.5-hr-sleep daze.  I have cookies and coffee, and bourbon for the megilla reading tonight.  That’ll have to motivate me for the next seven hours or so.  What’s *your* secret motivation?

* Flavors, for the record: prune-mango, apricot-peach (with sherry and honey), and (surprise favorite) lychee and hibiscus.  Dough was my traditional orange-flower-scented paper-thin pastry.  For perhaps the first time, I used up all the filling and still had a quarter of the dough left over.  I guess I’ve got some sprinkle cookies to bake. 

Friday, March 06, 2009

Change of Heart

It seems to happen every couple of months, regardless that we live in such a mult-culti neighborhood.  Pho, tapioca and bulgoki places line the streets; Russians, Irish, Brazilians and Mexicans crowd the buses.  Its fairly typical for me look around and realize that my boys look more like everyone else around here than I do.  Maybe that’s why I have come to expect to be asked that one question so often: Is their mother Chinese?

Actually, it’s rarely a question - it’s presented as a fact, logically deduced.  “Your wife is Chinese!” The boys have golden skin, and almond eyes as brown as their fine flat hair; my skin by contrast is pale pink, and my blue eyes set off a heavy Semitic schnoz.  While we’re out walking together, we enjoy quiet conversation, silly games, and lengthy two-way Q-&-A sessions.  We are so close and share so much with each other that the physical distinctions between us fade from my awareness.  But the popos and ajumas marching with their shopping carts to the local fish markets and discount stores hone right in on those differences anyway.  Something sets us apart and they’re bound and determined to find out everything they can about it.

I’m very used to the approach; I can sense it coming well before the question’s asked.  I see the wrinkled gaze crinkle up with a smile at my (objectively) adorable kids as they toddle or ride their stroller, eyes wide with excitement, cheeks flushed with toddler energy.  The woman’s gaze shifts from the childrens’ faces to mine, obviously their dad, obviously busting with love for my sons, and I see her throw the mental switch to make the connection she seems to think is the only possibility.

“So cute!,” she tells me.  I smile and agree.  “Your wife is Chinese!” My smile freezes.  What do I say this time?

It’s not the eastern European babushkas who raise this issue; they just exclaim over the kids’ vibrancy and cleverness.  The Irish nannies - when they deign to speak to me at all - discuss eating habits and nap schedules.  Several African-American women have surprised me by confidently asserting, “Korean,” right off the bat.  But it’s the Asian ladies who jump in with prying insinuation.  Who is his father?  So, he looks like his mom?  Did his mother teach him English?  The questions are barked out quickly, and my answers always seem to disappoint.  Her searching, squinting eyes pick us over like cabbages at the greengrocer’s.  The boys want to keep going; she’s making them uncomfortable.  I don’t want to be rude to her, but that’s how I think she’s treating us.  Then again, I don’t want to share our personal business with some nosy stranger.  Her curiosity is couched in such a backhanded way that I feel I’m being called out.  I feel defensive.  My hackles rise.

We’re raising our kids with their adoption stories as proud parts of their personal histories.  They retain their Korean names along with our chosen old-testament ones for them, and we take care to make Korean food and culture as much a part of their lives as we are able.  But neither my wife nor I can claim that culture as our own, and we’re dogged by the knowledge that we could do more - learn the language, marinate the bulgoki, teach them to ride the playground swings standing up.  We try to be good parents but there’s always room to improve.  That said, the kids are happy and healthy, active and curious and gregarious.  I think we are doing pretty well.  I certainly don’t feel like being called on the carpet about it by some granny with an attitude about who my kids are and -how they’re being raised.  Her inquiries, however they’re intended, force me to confront the differences in my family, when what I want to emphasize - to her, at least, at this moment are the bonds and commonalities that tie us to each other.

It’s easy to forget those differences, as easy with Zach who’s been with us three years as with Jesse who’s only been part of the family for a few months.  A hug is a hug is a hug; when we all share a bed on a lazy morning, drowsing and lounging, no one feels distinctly Korean or not-Korean.  The only feeling is that of being a family.  But recently, none other than Martin Luther King Jr. forced me to address these differences head-on again, and maybe even gave me a strategy on how to deal with old popo herself.

It was January 19, 2009 - the MLK Day before Obama’s inauguration.  I was out walking with Zach, trying to explain why it was a special day, the significance of this particular moment in history.  He knew Obama’s name and that we were waiting for him to take up the presidency, though what exactly that meant and why we were so excited about it were still pretty vague to him.  I told him, “Today is a holiday because we are remembering a very good man named Martin Luther King.  Martin helped us understand that we should treat all people the same no matter what they look like.  Martin had dark skin and back then people were mean to people with dark skin.  People with dark skin weren’t allowed to go some places or do some things that people with light colored skin could do.  It was wrong to treat those people that way; Martin Luther King helped us understand that.  And now, tomorrow, Barak Obama - a man with dark skin - is going to be the President of the whole country, in charge of everything.  That means we’re doing better, and that’s good.” It felt like a decent explanation for a three-year-old.

Zach replied after a quiet moment with a measured voice: “My skin’s the same as yours, dad.”

I took a breath before answering.  “Not really, my boy.  You have golden skin and I have pink skin.  You’re from Korea, and people from Korea and China and the other countries around there, their skin"s like yours.  And mine and mom’s is different.  Martin taught us not to treat people differently because of that, but once it made a big difference.  But not anymore, son.  Not anymore.” His silence, I took for assent.

That’s a conversation I have never had with any of the popos, ajummas, or halmonis of my neighborhood.  I’ve watched the process unfold so many times; I fight the temptation to prejudge, but it’s not like I can’t discriminate the difference between the AA auntie who gazes down at the angelic children beside me and immediately understands so much about them, and the popo who sidles up to quiz me on my spouse’s ancestry. 

She is a charismatic, opinionated, possibly language-challenged matriarch, whose world and mine overlap far from completely.  I see her take notice and come in for a closer look, sticking to a script I’ve memorized over repeated replaying of the same events.  How should I handle it this time?  Do I open up my life to her, my childrens’ lives, the private details that would undoubtedly oblige long explanations and possible misunderstanding?  Or do I just smile and agree with whatever she says?

I want to be outraged at being put in this position - conflicted and anxious, my boys once again fending off extrajurisdictional interrogations, looking to me for protection and assurance as sons rely on fathers across all cultural lines.  I want to be outraged, yes - but I know in my heart that for popo it’s not like that.  She doesn’t mean to antagonize me.  In a sense, I could almost take it as a compliment to be put on the spot like this. 

I am willing to bet that she treats most everybody in her life this way.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she were an overbearing shrew at home and away, to friends and relations alike, and that she rules her household with talons of iron.  If she had truly been antagonistic to me, she’d probably have kept it to herself; reaching out to me at all is an act of maternal solicitude even if it’s coming off like she’s sharpening her knives on my liver.  She’s trying to be nice, because my boys are so engaging and I’m so clearly devoted to them.  I might feel outraged and offended but that’s really not called for. 

Maybe I can ratchet my response back a little, from “outrage” to “irritation.” And whatever answer I give her when she tells me that my wife is Chinese, I should make sure I keep a civil tongue in my mouth.  I came from my own eastern-European clan that is still run by Grossie Lena from well beyond the grave; I know how matriarchies operate.  There’s really very little difference, when you get to the heart of things.