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Friday, December 31, 2010

Blizzards and blowhards, part II


 

Where were we yesterday? So Providence mayor David Cicilline was blamed for not averting the 2007 “December debacle” by former Providence mayor (and convicted felon) Buddy Cianci.

 

 

Let me tell you about Buddy.


 

Buddy was the most corrupt mayor Providence ever had, and that's saying something.  He got out of jail a few years ago – he was in for racketeering, by the way – and has since repositioned himself as a political commentator on radio and TV. He holds forth daily on how he “saved” Providence when he was mayor, and how terrible the current administration is.

 


People actually listen to this lump of soggy polenta!

 

 

But here's the great thing about him: his predictions are wrong with great regularity.


 

I followed his political prognostications during the local 2010 elections with great interest.  He had very strong opinions about everything. He knew what was going to happen.

 

 

But he was very often wrong.

 

 

For example: Buddy said Angel Taveras, the Democratic nominee for mayor, was going nowhere.

 

 

Taveras won in a landslide.

 

 

(Oh, Buddy changed his mind right before the election, when the polls showed Taveras with an unstoppable majority. I can't blame Buddy for illiteracy. He can at least read the paper.)

 

 

Anthony Gemma, a local (and completely politically inexerienced) businessman, ran for Congress against the adorable David Cicilline.  Cicilline won easily. Gemma made a mess of his whole campaign, and lost badly. Cianci championed Gemma.

 

 

Guess what? Cianci was wrong again.

 

 

So why do people listen to this dope?

 

 

Well, have you ever had a really ugly old dog, with terrible bad breath?

 

 

Sometimes you just put up with it.

 

 

Cianci still thinks and acts as if it's 1980. There was still a regimented Democratic political machine in the state in those days, and things happened according to plan.  Also, the ethnic balance in the state has changed enormously.  Also . . . 

 

 

Times have changed.

 

 

But people still listen to convicted felon Cianci on the radio and on TV.

 

 

To paraphrase Cindy Adams: Only in Rhode Island, kids, only in Rhode Island.

 

 


 

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Blizzards and blowhards, part I


Rhode Island just had another “blizzard.” It was a scrawny little blizzard, let me tell you. We had maybe ten inches of powdery snow, although it looked ferocious, what with all the blustery wind and such.

 

 

You must understand that Rhode Island has a thing about snow. Back in early 1978, there was a big unexpected snowfall that brought the state to a halt for several days. People were stranded everywhere – at their offices, in their cars, in their homes. I arrived in the state six months later, and everyone was still nattering about it. Now, thirty-two years later, they're still nattering about it.

 

 

To this day, when there's snow in the forecast, people go mental. “Milk and bread” is the catchphrase. The supermarkets are insane asylums; I went into the local market on the day before this year's “blizzard,” and it looked like a riot scene. There was broccoli on the floor in the produce department. People were fighting over broccoli!

 

 

So we're crazy. Okay. We're a small state, we exaggerate things. A few years ago, there was an early-December snowstorm that turned out a little worse than expected, and hit slightly earlier in the day than predicted. People got stuck in their evening commutes, and a couple of school buses were delayed. It was the Rhode Island version of the Apocalypse. It is still referred to, several years later, as the “December debacle.” I'm not kidding. People blamed this, if you can believe it, on the mayor of Providence. (That mayor, David Cicilline, a very nice openly-gay fellow, is Rhode Island's new First Congressional District Representative in the U.S. House of Representatives as of 2011, by the way.)

 

 

Actually, there was one particular local personality who kept yapping about it: ex-Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci.

 

 

More about Buddy tomorrow. Stay tuned.

 

 


 

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The dumbification of America

 


There was a recent piece on Nova.com about the new Spider-Man musical.  The blogger was okay with the musical, but didn’t like the idea that the villains are mad scientists.  Why make scientists the bad guys?


I usually have little sympathy with people whining about fictional victims. Fiction has featured mad scientists for a long time, and the USA doesn't have a monopoly on them: Doctor Faustus and Doctor Frankenstein come to mind.

 

 

But it's true that science, and scientists, aren't respected in our culture very much. We as a country, as a people, don’t put a premium on education.  The glory professions are all flukes and shortcuts: entertainer, singer, athlete, Kardashian.  You don’t hear kids talking about wanting to be doctors and lawyers and scientists anymore.  What modern kid would ever want to be a pointy-headed smartass?

 

 

There are people – let's be ingenuous and call them “anti-educationists,” though I think we all know who we're talking about – who encourage this galloping charge toward the dumbification of America. They are great believers in “common sense” and “native intelligence,” which is (according to them) a whole heap more valuable than book larnin'.

 

 

Anti-educationists dismiss science as a “belief system,” neither more nor less worthy of credence than any particular religious belief. (Never mind that it's based on empirical research rather than feelings and religious texts and I-say-so.) They've put evolution and "intelligent design" on a par with one another; if one's worthy of respect, then so is the other. They're both “theories,” after all.

 

 

However, as one particular judge in Dover, Pennsylvania can tell you, they are not both “theories,” and anyone who says so betrays his own ignorance of the meaning of the word “theory.”

 

 

Anti-educationists say that science is a useless smartypants charade, a way for sneaky people to waste money. I recently watched Senator Coburn of Oklahoma listing some wasted-money projects: one was “the study of cow farts.” How silly, right?

 

 

But science is always silly, girlfriend. Coburn would have had a lot of fun at the expense of Alexander Fleming fooling around with moldy bread in search of penicillin.  Because, hyuk hyuk, this guy's spending money experimenting on rotten food!

 

 

As you can tell, I have little patience with the anti-educationists. I do not believe that there is any such thing as “native intelligence” or “common sense,” or “God speaking in the heart” for that matter. God may speak to you in your heart, but just try asking him to calculate a tip sometimes and see how much math he knows.

 

 

I will predict right now that, in that instance, God will know exactly as much math as you know yourself.

 

 

You'll see I'm right.  I have weird powers of prophecy in these matters.

 

 


 

 

 

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The royals


Partner and I saw “The King's Speech” on Sunday. Geoffrey Rush is especially notable as the nonconformist speech therapist who says disrespectful things, but says them with love. Firth is the Duke of York / King George VI, full of bottled-up rage, but a pukka sahib nonetheless. It's probably a harder acting job than Rush's, but it isn't as flashy.

 

 

There are lots of fun actors in the bits-and-pieces roles: Timothy Spall (Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter franchise), shaking his jowls like mad as Winston Churchill; Anthony Andrews (babe, where have you been since “Brideshead Revisited”?) as Stanley Baldwin; Derek Jacobi as the unbearable Archbishop of Canterbury; Helena Bonham-Carter as Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, plump and sugar-sweet and sure of herself; Michael Gambon, dumping the Dumbledore routine to portray a nasty crusty George V; and Guy Pearce, playing the Prince of Wales as a Jazz Age creep.

 

 

I commented to Partner on the way home, as we slogged through the snow, that I remembered something called “The Woman I Love,” which portrayed the Prince of Wales (the ethereal Richard Chamberlain) as a misunderstood romantic. In “The King's Speech," the Prince is a dimwitted simp, thoughtless and easily manipulated.

 

 

Funny how attitudes change.

 

 

I recently watched “The Queen” again. Watching Helen Mirren is like watching QEII herself; she has exactly the right reserve, the dry pursing of the lips, the very light touch of coarseness (deerstalking, corgis, big ugly scarves).

 

 

But she's a myth.  All of the royals are myths. I think Americans like me mythologize them more than the British do. They personify whole periods of history: the Victorian Era, the Edwardian era, the Tudor period for God's sake!

 

 

But they don't always personify what they want to personify.

 

 

If you asked Elizabeth II what she thought she stood for, she'd say something stolid and proper like: England. The United Kingdom. The Commonwealth. Traditional values.

 

 

And the real answer would be: The stubborn maintenance of outdated attitudes. The necessity of being polite to your grandma, even though you disagree with her about everything.

 

 

And, most of all, the importance of always carrying a handbag.


 


 

 

Monday, December 27, 2010

Coming attractions: art-house edition

 


Partner and I slogged through the snow up to the Avon Cinema to see “The King's Speech” on Sunday afternoon.  The theater is very cute, very close to the Brown campus, with the usual wacky / eccentric college-town crowd. They've been playing the same recordings of Chopin and Scarlatti and Mozart piano favorites before the feature since at least 1978. And to confirm their ironic / hipster status, they use the 1950s animated “Let's All Go To The Lobby” clip, and a No Smoking / Enjoy the Movie notice from around 1989.

 

 

 

And now: your coming attractions, art-house edition.

 

 

Blue Valentine. Is that David Arquette playing the ukulele? No, Ryan Gosling. And Michelle Williams of “Brokeback Mountain,” tap-dancing on the sidewalk. Random scenes of love, loss, yearning, infatuation, city skylines. Enough said? Coming, um, whenever.

 

I Love You, Phillip Morris. Jim Carrey, who is a pretty odd duck, may have finally found the right vehicle: he's a gay con man who falls in love with his prison cellmate, Ewan MacGregor, who is very fetching as a blond. Carrey gets to flail and shriek as usual, but somehow it seems . . . in character. The last image is of Carrey jumping into a dumpster. I like it! Coming soon.

 

 

(Partner and I look at one another and nod. This one we'll make a point of seeing.)

 

 

Mademoiselle Chambon. For some reason, a man is bashing through a wall with a hammer. Also, for some reason, they keep the hammer sound-effect going through most of the preview. Also a blond woman – the title character? - who plays the violin. Finally Hammer Man and Violin Lady speak, and it's a good thing they used subtitles; I thought I spoke French, but, man, evidently I need a refresher course. Basically, however, it's “Blue Valentine,” with a violin instead of a ukulele. A paraitre janvier/fevrier.

 

 

And now, mesdames et messieurs, Damen und Herren, ladies and gentlemen: your featured presentation.


 

 


 

 

 

 

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas blog: Happy holidays with Run DMC


Wishing everyone a very happy Christmas 1987: new sneakers, and macaroni and cheese, and a dog with reindeer horns, and Mom chasing an elf out of the house with a broom.

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

Friday, December 24, 2010

Repost: Minty, the candy cane who fell on the ground


I posted this new Christmas classic last Sunday, but I used the YouTube link, and it got nuked by the copyright police.

 

So I did my homework, and this link seems to be legal.

 

“Never fear / 'Cause Minty's here / And he'll make Christmas excellent . . .”

 

 

 


 

Christmas Eve blog: Santa Baby


 

 

Blogger's rule: if it's a Sunday, or a holiday, or anything even remotely resembling a holiday, I can post something unoriginal and interesting.

 

 

This is very interesting.

 

 

Ladies and gentlemen: Miss Eartha Kitt (of blessed memory), performing “Santa Baby.”

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Bad Santa


As a kid, I loved Christmas: toys and lights and reindeer. But I was also vaguely aware that my mother hated Christmas, and I never quite understood why.

 

 

Now I am all grown up (and then some), and now I understand my mother's point. Blighted hopes. Overblown expectations. Social obligations.

 

 

Evidently my mother and I are not alone.

 

 

For some time now, television has been acting out against Santa Claus.  Here's a very incomplete incident list, just off the top of my head:

 

 

  • 1966: The Grinch. Sort of the Antichrist version of Santa.

  • 1987: Married With Children. A skydiving Santa crashes on the Bundy family's roof, dies, and is carried away on a gurney, sleighbells jingling.

  • 1998: Just Shoot Me. “How The Finch Stole Christmas.” David Spade as the evil Finch spoils everyone's Christmas.

  • 1999: Futurama. Santa in the year 3000 is an evil robot (voiced by John Goodman) who kills everyone who hasn't been good during the past year.  And that's everyone.

  • 2003: Billy Bob Thornton as Bad Santa. And Lauren Graham, who has a sexual Santa fetish.

  • 2009: Modern Family. Santa is a homeless ex-con who punches out Cam's hated rival.

  • 2010: Family Guy. Stewie goes to the North Pole to kill Santa. It turns out, however, that Santa is a haunted wreck who hates his own life.

 

 

From Graham Greene's “Travels With My Aunt”:

 

 

'It's the festive season,' Major Charge said. He blew another raspberry. '”Hark! The herald angels sing,”' he said in a tone of savagery, as though he were taking some kind of revenge on Christmas Eve and all its impedimenta of holy families and mangers and wise men, a revenge on love, a revenge for some deep disappontment.”

 


Ho ho ho.

 

 


Wednesday, December 22, 2010

New England light


 

I am a New Englander by adoption, not by birth. I've only been here for 32 years, which means I'm still a newcomer, though I have been (grudgingly) accepted by a few of the locals.

 

 

But I love it here. I love the look of the place. I love the grubby grungy streets of Providence, and the tired little villages with churches and liquor stores side by side, and the worn-looking train tracks, and the birds chattering on the telephone wires.

 

 

And I am fascinated by the light.

 

 

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so I thought I knew the sky pretty well. But New England was a whole new experience for me. There's a strange diffuse light that spreads across everything. Colors dampen and merge, like an overexposed Polaroid photograph. Bright red fades down into brick red. Bright green turns into a somber olive green.

 

 

Some moviemakers know this. I first noticed it in “Good Will Hunting”; Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, both local boys, got the look of Boston just right. There's a wonderful final scene of Matt driving west on the Mass Pike, filmed from far overhead: his car disappears into the endless washed-out green of the trees around the highway.

 

 

Affleck did it again recently in “The Town.” It's set mostly in Charlestown, and there's that same washed-out look: run-down tenements, rutted asphalt, smoky light.

 

 

Even Martin Scorsese – Mr. New York! - has begun paying attention. He got it right in “The Departed,” which has some great camerawork and cinematography, and captured the look of downtown Boston very nicely. He tried again in “Shutter Island,” which was maybe too lurid and Gothic for its prosaic Boston Harbor setting, and which was not a wonderful movie, but which has a few good moments. But – what can I say? - he's a New Yorker. And New York, as everyone knows, is black-and-white. Just ask Woody Allen.

 

 

Do I need to mention the Farrelly brothers? As cinematographers, they're not great. But they know New England, and they get the people right. Maybe not so much the light. But I forgive them. Special mention: “Outside Providence” and “Stuck On You.”

 

 

And now, “The Fighter.” Set in Lowell, Massachusetts, where it was filmed. If you've never been there, see the movie, and you won't need to go there. Trust me, that's the way it looks: shabby, worn-out, working-class.

 

 

And that light.

 

 

Some other time I will tell you about the light in the Pacific Northwest. But for now, study that New England light.  It's very interesting.

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The fighter


Partner and I saw “The Fighter” on Sunday. Partly it's because I have a, hmm, thing for Mark Wahlberg. I saw him on the cover of Sports Illustrated last week, wearing nothing but boxing trunks and a smile.  I nearly passed out.

 

 

But I also kind of like boxing movies. It's the only subgenre of sports movies I enjoy. Basketball movies are dull, with the exception of “Space Jam”; high-school and college sports movies feel like after-school specials; football movies are usually goofy comedies like “The Whole Nine Yards.” And let's not even talk about baseball movies, they're so bloody reverent. My favorite movie reviewer, Libby Gelman-Waxner, made it a general rule: “Anytime I hear someone say 'This movie's not about baseball, it's about life,' you can be absolutely sure the movie's about baseball.”

 

 

Why boxing? Why boxers? Here are some theories:

 

 

  • Actors who play boxers are usually handsome and in pretty good shape, and are thus nice to look at. (In real life, getting hit repeatedly does not do wonders for your looks).

  • They disrobe frequently.

  • It's fun watching them work out.

  • They are a rich source of “My boyfriend can beat up your boyfriend” fantasies.

  • They look so sad and vulnerable after the fight, sitting in the locker room with black eyes and bruises and bandages on their faces.  They look like they need Mommy to take care of them.

  • Some things are always the same: the early (losing) bouts, the training montage, the awkward love scenes, the big final match. These are very convenient for bathroom / snack breaks, as you won't miss too much if you time yourself carefully.

  • They are full of delightfully quotable dialogue like “I hit people for a living, Ma! I'm a loser!” and “I gotta get back in there, Joe! I gotta get back in the ring!” and “Get up! Get up, you bum!”

 

 

Also: this was a very good movie. Mark Wahlberg is really an excellent actor. Christian Bale is funny and crazy and sad. Amy Adams explodes her sweet-girl persona into smithereens. And there's a supporting cast to die for, and the small-town Massachusetts setting is captured just right, and the writing is clever and dramatic and interesting.

 

 

Go see it, you lousy bums.

 


 

 

 

Monday, December 20, 2010

Coming attractions II


Back to the Showcase Cinema: two large Diet Cokes and two seats close to the aisle.


But first, the previews:


No Strings Attached. This is the third time I've seen this preview, and every time I see it, Ashton Kutcher looks more and more like my fat unmarried cousin. Why do they keep casting him as a cute young stud? And doesn't Natalie Portman have better things to do? Evidently not. Coming January 21.


Sanctum. The new James Cameron feature. Huge glowing underwater structure, which I think Cameron had left over from “The Abyss,” or maybe “Avatar.” A bunch of people diving into bottomless pools hidden in huge caves. Claustrophobia is the latest big thing, I guess. One of the actors whimpers, “I don't want to die down here!” Well, dumbass, why did you go skin-diving in a bottomless pit hidden in a dark cave? Coming February 4.


Season of the Witch. Nicolas Cage's hair used to get more and more disheveled as his movies progressed. Now he just starts the movie disheveled and lets the chips fall where they may. He's got a real Annette Funicello thing going in this one. Castles, ominous-looking birds – um, crusaders? Oh, there's a woman in a cage. They think she's a witch. She's not a real witch, though. Oops, yes she is! Coming January 7.


Thor. Large blonde beefcake number with scruffy beard. He looks sullen and takes off his shirt twice in a two-minute preview. Now we're talking. Now we're in Valhalla! Lots of Art Deco architecture. Apparently the Norse gods wear workout outfits designed by RuPaul. Anthony Hopkins is wearing a platinum eyepatch. Fight, fight, fight! Hit me with your big ol' hammer, Thor! Coming May 6.


(“We're seeing that one,” I whispered to Partner. Partner scowled and mimed braining me with a box of Raisinets.)


Unknown. Liam Neeson looking intense. He has amnesia! Or does he? He's running all over Europe trying to convince people of his real identity. Isn't this the same movie he did a few years ago? If I'd saved my movie stub from that one, would I get to see this one free? Coming February 18.


And now: your feature presentation.





Saturday, December 18, 2010

The passing of Captain Beefheart


 

A brief note in the Times on Friday evening: Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, has died at the age of 69, from complications of multiple sclerosis.

 

 

The Captain was slightly too far out for me back in the 60s and 70s. I thought his friend Zappa was a lot of fun, and I always found Zappa pretty accessible. Captain Beefheart, on the other hand, was usually obscure and frequently creepy.

 

 

But Zappa and the Captain made a live album together - “Bongo Fury” - that I still have on the shelf, and that really holds up. Who but a genius could have written and performed a song/poem called “Sam With The Showing Scalp Flat Top”?

 

 

But that album encapsulates the whole problem both men had with – ahem – “comedy music.” Zappa frequently did funny stuff on purpose; to me, “Billy The Mountain” is mostly a 30-minute comedy routine with some (pretty good) tunes stuck in it here and there. But Zappa was a serious musician who wrote complex scores, and who took some of his early inspiration from the avant-garde composer Edgard Varese. The conflict shows in the music; he clowns defiantly, and he's very funny, but he's also definitely angry about not being taken as seriously as he deserves.

 

 

So now look at the Captain. Can you do an album called “Trout Mask Replica” (see cover art above) and expect everyone to understand, or take you seriously? Some people will laugh, thinking it's a joke; others will mock. But some people will look underneath and see the originality, and the complexity, and the raw talent.


 

God bless 'em both, though, and send them to rock-and-roll heaven, if there is such a place.


 


 

 

Friday, December 17, 2010

The ickiness of children


Partner and I saw the new Narnia movie last weekend. I read the whole Narnia saga in my early teens, having been lent the whole set of books by an earnest missionary-type neighbor during one of my stabs at Christianity. I remember only bits and pieces of the story, but I do remember that the character of Eustace was entertainingly unpleasant (Lewis likes writing about bad children, and does it pretty well).

 

 

The movie, though pretty, is pretty unmemorable. But the boy playing Eustace is terrific. He's a perfectly normal-looking little boy, but he spends most of the movie with an unpleasant expression – something between a smirk and a scowl. And his voice is a cajoling peremptory whine, like a car alarm in the middle of the night.


 

But he's fun to watch. Unfortunately, he gets reformed (in Narnia, we are all about Redemption with a capital R). He's much less fun after he becomes nice.


 

But there are all kinds of unpleasant children in the movies. “Meet Me In St. Louis” was on TCM the other evening, and I was horrified once again by the monstrous little Margaret O'Brien, with her goofy expressions and her ain't-I-cute? voice. She is an imp from hell. Partner came out at one point, studied the TV screen for a moment, and said: “My mother always hated her.”

 

 

“Your mother and I are right in tune on that one,” I said.

 

 

My favorite child actor is Pee-wee Herman, anyway.

 

 

 


 

Thursday, December 16, 2010

In dreams


 

I write my dreams down, when I remember them. I'm not sure why, except that I have a sense (as do we all, probably) that I'm a completely fascinating person, and everything about me is wonderful.

 

 

And maybe I will learn secrets from my inner self.

 

 

So far, however, not much valuable info has come to light.

 

 

I don't have many bad dreams. Once in a while I have an anxiety dream – losing my wallet, missing a airline connection – but I usually wake up relieved to find it wasn't real. Sometimes I think that's the point: my mind is trying to tell me to worry less. Things could be worse.

 

 

And actually my dreams are very pleasant, most of the time.

 

 

I spend a lot of my dream time in the big house I grew up in, back in rural Washington state. Everything is just the way it was in 1968. My late parents are still alive in my dreams, and are usually both in pretty good moods. Both of my sisters are still alive too, and make regular appearances. I'm often traveling somewhere, by train or bus or airplane. Sometimes I'm back in North Africa, walking down long sunlit boulevards in Tunis or Casablanca, looking down toward the ocean.

 

 

I confess I don't really believe in heaven. It'd be lovely if it were true, but I'm not pinning my hopes on it. But, if there's a heaven, it would be nice if it were like my dreams: big cloudy landscapes, one place blending into the next, always places to go and people to see, and all my dead family and friends still popping up to say hello.

 

 

Here's hoping.

 


Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Sports for dummies


I grew up as a scrawny nerd and never paid any attention to sports or athletics. Partner, on the other hand, is a tough old screwball, and used to hang out with the Boston Bruins, and he claims he actually took a bath in the Stanley Cup, or something, I forget.

 

 

Well, you know how they say that spouses grow more and more like one another?

 

 

Apparently all those TV football games and baseball games over the past two decades have had some small effect on me.

 

 

I was in the bank last week, wearing my Gonzaga alumni jacket (yes, I earned it, I'm a Zag). The teller, a young man, mumbled something I couldn't make out while he was processing my deposit. “What?” I said.

 

 

He motioned with his head towards the Bulldogs insignia on my jacket. “Gonzaga.”

 

 

“Oh, yeah.” I said. See, I know now that when people hear “Gonzaga,” they don't think, “Oh, of course, one of the leading seminaries of the Pacific Northwest Jesuit Province”; they think, “Basketball!”

 

 

So I smile ingratiatingly at the teller and say, “Who do you like?”

 

 

He smiled shyly and said, “Carolina.”

 

 

I have no idea if that's good or bad. But I know what to say next. “What do you think their chances are this season?”

 

 

He dropped his eyes and shrugged and giggled.

 

 

I repeated the whole conversation to Partner that evening, and he told me I got it exactly right.

 

 

See? I'm not unteachable after all.

 


 

 

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Bananarama


Partner suggested a few weeks ago that I make banana bread.  I found a nice wholesome recipe for it in the King Arthur cookbook, and after tweaking it a little (more raisins, more walnuts), I have become very partial to it; I just baked my fourth loaf in ten days.

 

 

It is very aromatic and spicy and enticing. But it struck me the other evening that, apart from a little vanilla, there isn't any spice in it: just whole wheat flour, sugar, raisins, walnuts, eggs, butter. And bananas. “Well,” Partner said, “bananas do that.”

 

 

Do they? I suppose they do. I rummaged around on the bookshelf until I found a quote I remembered from a Dutchman named Pieter de Marees, who tried his first banana while traveling in Africa in the early 1600s:

 

 

Very delicious to eat . . . Soft to bite, as if it were made from a mixture of flour and butter . . . The smell is like that of roses and very good, but the taste is even better.”

 

 

It's lovely to appreciate something familiar as if it were exotic and brand-new. How strange the banana is! It is, I find, a “parthenocarp”: the female flowers (see the outrageous picture above) develop into fruit without being fertilized. Thus, no seeds. (I still think those little black things inside the banana are tarantula eggs. At least that's what I tell small children.) Unlike its wild ancestors, the edible banana must be cultivated by human beings. (I had a nice potted banana plant in the house for a long time. It was about four inches tall when I bought it; it grew to a height of six feet, but then it faded and died. It was longing for the tropics, probably.) The leaves can be used in cooking, in construction, and to make fabric. In tropical Africa, a farmer can feed himself and his family with a hectare of banana plants - about two and a half acres. They can bear fruit year-round, if they get enough rain and the weather is warm.

 

 

And the smell is like that of roses. And the taste is even better.

 


 

 

Monday, December 13, 2010

I love you, Tyler Brule


 

I like reading the Financial Times. It makes me feel smart and cosmopolitan. I like the almost-unvarying reaction of people around me when I read it: “Excuse me, why is your newspaper that color?” (It's printed on its own unique salmon-colored paper, so everyone knows you're reading the FT. Even their website is that color.)

 

 

I mostly like the crossword puzzles. Ahem, ahem, I won their crossword-puzzle contest a few months ago. I won a dictionary and a word guide, both of which I gave away. But my name appeared in the Financial Times.

 

 

I also like the columns. Lucy Kellaway is great. The weekend edition is full of great feature writers: Sir David TangMrs. Moneypenny, Harry Eyres, Robin Lane Fox.

 

 

And Tyler Brule.

 

 

Harry Eyres and Tyler Brule write complementary columns on weekends. Harry writes “The Slow Lane,” about ruined cathedrals and chamber-music recitals and flower shows; Tyler writes “The Fast Lane,” about flying to Helsinki and where to eat in Montevideo and what kind of underwear to buy on the Ginza.

 

 

Tyler is an almost-unbelievable character: Canadian, son of a soccer player and an artist, journalist, socialite, cosmopolitan, editor of a magazine called Monocle that you've probably never read, but that actually creates trends. He is gay, handsome, perfectly self-assured. He writes about flying from Sao Paulo to Frankfort to Dubai as if – well, of course, you do that too, right? And how tedious it is! So you should bring your bottle of Sea Breeze, and your best silk robe from Kuala Lumpur (he always mentions the brand names, and the stores, and the cities in which he bought them).

 

 

But he is also gracious. He speaks to you as if – of course! - you live the way he does. You fly everywhere, you do everything. You are exhausted (as he is) from living on the run. You are relieved to spend a day or two by a remote lake in Finland with some dear friends, before flying to London and Lusaka and Luang Prabang.

 

 

The perfect host makes you perfectly welcome in his world.

 

 

I love you, Tyler Brule.


 


 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Sunday blog: Mind and heart


 

For the third Sunday of Advent: one of my favorite bits of Wallace Stevens. To be read aloud.

 

 

*

 

 

Day is the children's friend.

It is Marianna's Swedish cart.

It is that and a very big hat.

 

 

Confined by what they see,

Aquiline pedants treat the cart

As one of the relics of the heart,

 

 

They treat the philosopher's hat,

Left thoughtlessly behind,

As one of the relics of the mind . . .

 

 

Of day, then, children make

What aquiline pedants take

For souvenirs of time, lost time,

 

 

Adieux, shapes, images -

No, not of day, but of themselves,

Not of perpetual time.

 

 

And, therefore, aquiline pedants find

The philosopher's hat to be part of the mind,

The Swedish cart to be part of the heart.

 

 


 

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Totalitarian beefcake


 

I think our fascination with famous people comes from the same brain cells that brew up our religious impulses. Celebrity worship is sort of like regular worship, right? We imbue famous people with all kinds of qualities they might or not possess. We imagine that they live in a combination Valhalla / Wonderland / Ritz Carlton. We assume they're all peers (some on a higher level than others, of course), and that they all know each other. (On talk shows they actually pretend that this is true.) We long to see them, touch them, be with them.

 

 

And we choose our gods, and our celebrities, with our hearts.

 

 

And the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing at all.

 

 

I have been mesmerized by the spate of Vladimir Putin photos lately. Take a look at them if you haven't seen them. The best batch (released by his own public-relations people) are from his 2009 Siberian vacation with Prince Albert of Monaco. Putin is portrayed as Papa Bear – a big muscular he-man, goin' a-huntin' and a-fishin' and a-ridin'. It's soft-core porn with a balalaika soundtrack, and I like it very much. (His Serene Highness Prince Albert, on the other hand, looks like a pudgy CEO on a dude ranch vacation.)

 

 

So what does my sincere admiration of Vladimir Vladimirovich say about me?

 

 

Nothing flattering.

 

 

Apparently I'm just waiting for a hunky / corrupt / aloof / intense Slavic-looking dictator to sweep me off my feet, take me camping in the Kyzyl region of Siberia, and maybe give me something nice for Christmas, like Lithuania, or Lake Baikal.

 

 

What can I say?  Nobody's perfect.

 

 


 

 

 

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Nook vs. book


 

I'm doing my holiday shopping as I always do: watching for some little adorable thing for myself. What fun is gift-shopping if you don't buy yourself a little something along the way?

 

I had thought that this might be the year to give myself an e-reader. Imagine carrying a whole library around with you! I've researched them enough to know some of the differences (WiFi / 3G / 4G) and pitfalls (difficult to read in sunlight, mostly black-and-white screens, illustrations sometimes not so great). A nice lady at the mall let me play with the Nook a few months ago, and I liked the look and feel of it very much. And the price is almost right: the basic Kindle is $139, the Nook only slightly more than that, and you can get off-brand readers for under $100.

 

But I was mooching along downtown on Saturday, with a paperback copy of Tim Robinson's “Connemara” under my arm, and it suddenly hit me: what benefit would an e-reader bring me?  It'd weigh the same as my little book. It would serve the same purpose. I bought my copy of “Connemara” for $9.99 from Daedalus Books Online; I could have downloaded the Kindle edition for about the same, so price is a wash. I can write in my book, and tear the endpapers out to make notes, and use it as a coaster; I wouldn't do any of those things with an e-reader (I think some e-readers let you make notes, but surely not with the hectic casualness I scribble in a book). E-readers have batteries that need to be charged up; my little copy of “Connemara” will probably outlive me, sitting on a dusty shelf somewhere, and it will never need to be charged up at all.

 

It'd be great, of course, to have a hundred books to read in one package.  Maybe if I were on a long trip, I suppose.  But did I need a hundred books for my Saturday stroll? If I'd had an e-reader, would I have turned from "Connemara" to “Troilus and Cressida,” or “Gravity's Rainbow,” or the Apocrypha, or Emily Dickinson? Maybe. But I spent the day musing over Robinson. He's a little tedious on the surface – so much detail! so many names! – but he builds up his text by accretion, one stone on top of another. He benefits from quiet attentive reading.

 

So I think maybe I will not buy an e-reader this year. Once they've integrated the e-reader with one or two other things – maybe an MP3 player and a phone and a camera – and brought the price down to the same point, they'll convert me. But not until then.

 

Now what am I supposed to buy myself for a present?

 


 

 

Java jive


Frank Bruni had an article in the Times recently about making the perfect cup of coffee.  He went from automatic drip to French press to Chemex (which spat boiling water into his eye) to something called the Hario system, which is basically like performing the Japanese tea ceremony every time you want a cup of coffee.

 

I love a good cup of coffee, especially after a nice dinner. My morning coffee, on the other hand, is liquid caffeine. To quote Bruni, it's “medicine.” I want it quick and easy. I don't care if it's not a gourmet delight.  At seven a.m., I am incapable of enjoying gourmet delights.

 

But it shouldn't taste like battery acid.

 

For a very long time I ground the beans every evening for the next morning's coffee. I hated the process, and finally I just started buying big drums of ground coffee, just like my mother did.

 

But Partner found a little tip online that actually helps.

 

If you use a automatic-drip machine, try adding a tiny pinch of salt to the ground coffee in the basket. No more than an eighth of a teaspoon or so.  It actually works!   It counteracts the bitterness, and it gives a nice mellow flavor.

 

It is the great discovery of our age.

 

If you try it, send me a dollar.

 


 

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

All I want for Christmas is a little situational irony


I was on the treadmill at the health club last night when “A Charlie Brown Christmas” came on TV. Oh, good, I thought, nostalgia. But, my goodness, ABC packed in lots of commercials! I kept checking the clock and thinking: There's no way they can finish this in half an hour. Are they going to cut the ending somehow?

 

They did not cut the ending. They jammed the show double-full of commercials so that it would run long, and then – when it was finally over, around 8:40 pm – they announced that it would be followed by a new “animated short.” A seven-minute animated short, by the way. Packed on both sides with lots more commercials.

 

And what is “A Charlie Brown Christmas” supposed to be about?

 

The overcommercialization of the holidays.

 

Eek!  Awk!  Argh!



 

 

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Who's a good boy?


I was never much of a dog lover when I was young. We had one when I was a kid – a misbegotten cross between a chow and a husky, which resulted in a gigantic husky-sized chow with a purple tongue and a bad attitude.  I went without pets until years later in Tunisia, when I inherited a bipolar tomcat named Nimmer. Nimmer went feral every winter, then came home again in the spring for sardines and milk. He used to bring around his nasty-looking girlfriend, who had big white blotches on her face. I always shot her with a water pistol when Nimmer wasn't looking.

 

Partner adores dogs. His last dog, Willy, was a big golden retriever who worshiped him. When we were first dating and I tried to sit on the sofa next to Partner, Willy would jump up and sit between us. When Partner left the room, Willy would jump off the sofa, run across the room, turn his back to me, and sit in huffy silence until Partner came back.

 

Willy hated me.

 

Willy notwithstanding, Partner's love of dogs has rubbed off on me over the years. Our current apartment does not allow dogs, and apartment life isn't good for dogs in any case – too dull, too stifling. But we know all the dogs in the neighborhood; we know them better than we know the people, in fact. There are two golden retrievers who live down the street, who watch us walking to work every morning; they sit looking out the window side by side, their chins resting on the back of the sofa. As we walk by, they follow us with their eyes, but they refuse to turn their heads. It would be too obvious.

 

Then there's the little black Pomeranian whom we see walking her owner sometimes. She's tiny and she holds her head up like a lady, and she walks tap-tap-tap-tap, quick and very delicate. Partner says she reminds him of one of those Italian girls from New Jersey with a big hairdo and a big black fur coat and high heels.

 

There's a dachsund we always call “Barky von Schnauzer,” which name we got from a TV commercial, and I think the owner heard us calling the dog that one day, and he didn't like it. And the big husky with the fluffy coat and the lolling tongue and the big smile, who barks and sings to everyone, and who likes to be fawned on, very Big Man On Campus. And the nervous-looking whippet who lives across the street (well, whippets always look nervous).

 

And a host of others.

 

At Thanksgiving, our hostess had a long-haired chihuahua named Winston. “Be careful,” Hostess said. “He's nippy. He bit the DirecTV guy.” And, sure enough, Winston nipped my finger.

 

But in no time he was sitting in my lap looking up into my face dreamily.

 

You see? Time has passed, and now I can commune with dogs, soul to soul.

 

Or maybe I just smell like bacon.

 


 

 

Monday, December 6, 2010

But I'm an intellectual!


In late November, Steve Martin went to the 92nd Street YMCA in New York City to discuss his new novel, “An Object of Beauty,” with an art critic from the New York Times, in front of a paying audience.


The YMCA has since offered a refund to spectators, saying that the session “did not meet the standard of excellence” they were accustomed to offer.


It was a discussion about art and the collection of art.


 

The audience came to see Steve Martin.

 

 

Okay. I see the problem.

 

 

Steve Martin is a very intelligent man. He even studied philosophy (for a while) when he was in college.  Did he graduate with a degree in philosophy? No, he did not. He went on to do stand-up comedy, with a banjo and an arrow through his head.

 

 

You would think that he'd have a sense of humor about this, since “humor” is how he's been earning his bread and butter for the past thirty years.

 

 

But no!

 

Someone from the YMCA audience the other night sent up a note: “Talk about Steve's career.” And, according to Steve in the Sunday Times, this derailed the whole fascinating conversation about art and life and collecting. Who knows what might have come next? Some fascinating revelation about what it's like to own a Kandinsky, no doubt.

 

But instead, someone had the nerve! to ask about Steve's movies.

 

(After he'd had the nerve to make them, of course.)

 

According to Steve, the YMCA crowd didn't give him a chance. If they'd waited, they would have been treated to gems of conversation! . . . which, evidently, were lacking earlier.  

 

Comedians like to be taken seriously.  Groucho Marx was embittered by the need to be a clown his whole life and longed to be taken as an intellectual.  Woody Allen keeps making serious movies - I've seen "Interiors" at least twenty times, for whatever it's worth - but people still like the old Woody Allen.  An alien in "Stardust Memories" tells Woody: "People on our planet like your movies.  Especially the earlier funnier ones."

 

Steve didn't achieve seriousness the other night by putting on a pair of Marian-the-Librarian glasses and making obvious comments about Edward Hopper.

 

He achieved pomposity.

 

Steve, honey: get over thyself.

 

It is extremely difficult to be taken seriously after being seen pulling handkerchiefs out of your fly.

 

Just give the people their refunds and shut up.

 


 

 

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Sunday blog: We can dance if we want to


For the Second Sunday of Advent: a song and a dance.

 

 

“And you can act real rude and totally removed / And I can act like an imbecile . . . “

 

 

 


 

 

 

Saturday, December 4, 2010

The earth abideth forever, but human beings not so much


I recently bought James Lovelock's most recent book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia. Lovelock's body of work revolves around the concept he calls the Gaia Hypothesis, which goes something like this (scientists in the crowd, please forgive me):

 

The earth as a whole behaves in the manner of a living organism. This is largely (if not totally) because of the existence of life on earth. Living creatures are the reason that there's a constant and consistent percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere; they're also the reason that the earth's overall temperature is maintained within certain boundaries which are optimal for life.

 

And this means that everything has consequences.

 

Anytime the balance changes, the entire system needs to be rebalanced. This can happen in many ways: temperature fluctuations, extinctions, epidemics.

 

Life on earth will go on. Human beings may or may not be part of it.

 

Lovelock is now ninety-one years old. He has been beating the drum for Gaia for decades; he has been written off as a hippie, a do-gooder, a tree-hugger, a mystic. Slowly, however, his theories have become mainstream. There's little doubt now that he is largely correct about the large-scale consequences of small-scale changes in life on earth.

 

But, according to his latest book, it's too late. We are doomed now to watch and wait - batten down the hatches and wait for the deluge. Lovelock says that, if there were a hundred million people on earth, it wouldn't matter one way or the other how we lived; there wouldn't be enough of us to make a real difference. But there are now seven billion of us, and we are living beyond our means. The ice is melting. The sea levels are rising. The storms are getting worse. The weather is far more unpredictable.

 

Lovelock loses some of his spark when he turns from climate science to predictive futurology. Some of us will survive, he says, and I tend to agree. But then he becomes more fanciful. He sees mass migrations to the more habitable parts of the world, and draconian governmental changes.

 

These recommendations and predictions may or may not be worth listening to.

 

But they won't be.

 

As I've said before in this space, I have at most twenty or thirty more years on earth at most, so I will probably be spared the worst of it; according to most climate scientists, the worst won't happen for another fifty years or more.

 

I make no predictions, because I'm far too gloomy about the general outlook, and I don't want to put a jinx on the whole affair.  But I hope at least a few people survive. We can be really lovely at times, when we really want to be.

 

Sometimes even despite ourselves.