Oscar night, 2011

---

There are things that gay men have to do. One of them is watching the Oscar telecast, whether we want to watch it or not.

Here, for the rest of you, is what you may or may not have missed last night, the highs and the lows:

• In the obligatory funny opening, James Franco and Anne Hathaway teleport through this year's movies, in a conceit borrowed from “Inception.” Cute, right? Until they did “Black Swan.” Anne wears a dreadful duck outfit; James is in a very tight white leotard, and kids, he has a killer ass.
• Kirk Douglas looks dreadful, but he's very funny, and he can't get enough of the camera. And they can't get him off the stage. “Australians always think I'm funny!” he cackles, pointing to Hugh Jackman.
• Melissa Leo, accepting her award, uses what will be known forevermore as “the Melissa Leo f-word.”
• Justin Timberlake claims to be Banksy. Too highbrow for this crowd?
• Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem, who have a whole boatload of cute between them (Javier, if you're reading this, call me!), look awful in their matching white tuxes, which (Partner and I agreed) appear to be made from old flour sacks.
• David Seidler, the sweet old man who won for writing “The King's Speech” (and who waited almost thirty years to write it, so as not to offend the Queen Mother), jokes charmingly about being a late bloomer.
• Anne Hathaway sings really well! Dressed in a natty tux (take note, Javier and Josh!), she does a cute little lament to Hugh Jackman, mentioning his “fake retractable claws.” (Everyone loves Hugh Jackman.)
• After Anne's song, James Franco comes out in Marilyn Monroe drag, matching Anne's Marlene Dietrich tuxedo drag. (I give them both credit. You know I have deep respect for drag.)
• Russell Brand and Helen Mirren, presenting an award together, are inexplicably perfect as a combo, like Canadian bacon and pineapple on pizza. She is icy and speaks French; he is crazy and idiotic. And (producers take note!) they are not on stage for very long.
• Christian Bale, with a neatly-trimmed Captain Ahab beard, references “the Melissa Leo f-bomb” in his thank-you speech.. (You could tell he expected to win. I bet he would have thrown a brilliant tantrum if he hadn't.)
• Matthew MacConaughey looks like a dried codfish.
• James Franco called the winners of the Scientific and Technical awards “nerds.” Nice guy!
• Cate Blanchett, reading the nominees for Best Makeup, calls the clip from “The Wolfman” “gross.” Big laugh. Guess who wins? Rick Baker for “The Wolfman.”
• Kevin Spacey: “Good evening. I'm George Clooney.” (Yo, Kevin! Call me!)
• Every time I hear Randy Newman perform, I think of Will Sasso on “Mad TV,” who did it better than Randy ever did.
• (Why the hell is Adrien Brody doing a Stella Artois ad?)
• A crazy man with mop hair, Luke Matheny, wins for short subject. He thanks his mother for working as craft services! And Franco gives him a shoutout for NYU!
• Billy Crystal does a shoutout to Hugh Jackman in the audience. It was at least the third Jackman shoutout of the show. Everyone loves Hugh Jackman! (Yo, Hugh! Call me!)
• Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law have huge chemistry together. I want them to start making out, right there on stage.
• I'll kill Gwyneth Paltrow with my own two hands if she keeps pretending to be a singer. Especially after being introduced as “country music's new sensation.” Does Country Music know about this?
• (Randy Newman update: he won for his “Toy Story 3” song. And he was funny and self-deprecating in his speech. I take it all back.)
• Best Oscar-themed commercial of the night: “Modern Family” cast, doing charades. “Lovely Bones! Milk!”
• Natalie won Best Actress for “Black Swan.” Good for her. I'm glad that stupid Ashton Kutcher movie she made didn't kill her chances.
• Sandra Bullock is very funny during her presentation speech. She calls Jeff Bridges “Dude”!
• Colin Firth wins Best Actor. Partner just said: “What a relief! Imagine being the favorite and not winning!”
• Anne Hathaway promised seventeen outfits for the evening, and she delivered. And she looked good in all of them.
• “The King's Speech” wins Best Picture! One of the producers thanks his boyfriend. Good for him.

Good night, good night. Until next year.

And thanks to the Academy.

(This is exhausting.  I hope you appreciate what Partner and I do for you.)

---

Sunday blog: No-knead bread

---

This recipe goes out to all those who are fearful of baking bread.  It's very simple (so long as you follow the basic outline), and the result is very nice indeed: a chewy crust and a nice fluffy white interior. Mark Bittman says that this is his most popular recipe of all time, and only regrets that he didn't create it (it came from his acquaintance Jim Fahey).

 

 

The only problem with this recipe is that the dough needs to meditate for long periods of time. Last time I made it, I started the process on Friday evening, checked in on the process around noon on Saturday, and put it in the oven at three p.m.  Voila! Home-baked bread for dinner.

 

*

 

Thoroughly mix in a large bowl:

 

 

3 cups all-purpose white flour

1 5/8 cups water (be precise)

1 ¼ teaspoon salt (again, be precise)

1 packet active dry yeast or instant yeast

 

 

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave it in a warmish place for at least 12 hours.

 

 

You should now have a bowlful of white goo covered with little bubbles. Turn the goo onto a floured surface, flour it again, fold it once or twice, cover it with the same piece of plastic wrap, and let it rest for about 15 minutes.

 

 

Now: flour your hands lightly, shape the dough into a ball, and flop it onto a cotton towel which you've sprinkled with cornmeal, or bran, or flour (I prefer cornmeal). Sprinkle more cornmeal on top. Fold towel over, or cover with another towel. Kiss it tenderly, and let it rest for at least two hours.

 

 

When you're ready to bake, put a covered metal pot or saucepan (at least four-quart capacity) in the oven (ungreased) and preheat it to 450 degrees (at least 15 minutes). Take the pot (carefully) out of the oven. Take up your glob of dough (carefully) and plunk it into the sizzling pot. Shake the pot once or twice to smooth out the dough.

 

 

Bake, covered, for 30 minutes at 450 degrees.  Uncover and bake for about 15 minutes more, or until “beautifully brown.” Cool on a rack.

 

 

*

 

 

Thank you, Messrs. Fahey and Bittman.

 

 

---

 

 

The war between plants and people

---

I like plants, but I'm wary of them. They only seem peaceful and friendly because they're slow-moving. They're full of toxins. Some plants poison the soil so no other plants can grow around them. Big plants smother small plants by hogging the sunlight.

 

If they hate one another so much, imagine how they must hate us!

 

Christopher Walken did a sketch on “Saturday Night Live” about a man who was terrified of houseplants. He pointed to a Boston fern. “What if they all ganged up on you, and crammed their leaves down your throat, and strangled you?” he said. “What would your last thought be? Mine would be: 'I always knew it would be the ferns.'”

 

 

Amen to that.

 

But I think the war between plants and people has entered a horrible new phase.

 

I have a nice big amaryllis blooming on the bedroom windowsill. I was opening the curtains the other morning when it jumped me. It only grazed me, and it seemed shaken when it hit the floor, but it was okay.

 

Then,a few minutes later, I noticed a big blotchy yellow-green stain down the front of my shirt.

 

The thing tried to pollinate me!

 

They want to infiltrate the human species by interbreeding with us!

 

 

Well, forget it. I'm not ready to have children. Or seedlings. Or whatever.

 

 

Although the amaryllis is very attractive.

 

Maybe if it took me to dinner and a movie first.

 

 

---

 

 

There's nothing like a good ol' slapfight

---

I've mentioned that my friend Apollonia is a little gaga for “Twilight” in general, and Robert Pattinson in particular. She's completely irrational on the subject, in fact.

 

 

I love needling irrational people.

 

 

The other day she was mooning over a photo of Pattinson on the cover of a fan magazine. I leaned over to get a better look at it. “So tell me,” I said. “Was he actually born a man?”

 

 

Her pupils dilated. “Were you?” she hissed.

 

 

Well, I got a good laugh out of that.

 

 

Later, we were discussing a salesman we've both been dealing with. Apollonia doesn't think he's a very good businessman; I think he's okay, and sort of cute besides. “Next time you talk to him, you should cut him off at the knees,” she growled. “He's not good at his job.”

 

 

“Oh, have mercy on him,” I said. “He's fine. He's just a little green.”

 

 

“Nothing doing,” she said, her eyes glinting. “This is revenge. You like him, so I hate him. You take out one of mine, I take out two of yours. This is only the beginning.”

 

 

“Bring it,” I said loftily. “By the way, Pattinson's hair looked a little thin and stringy in that photo. Probably the stress is making it fall out.”

 

 

“Jealousy,” she shrieked. “Pure jealousy. You should have such hair.”

 

 

And so on, for hours and hours.

 

 

Children, please don't follow our example. Peace, love, et cetera.

 

 

But I have to admit that a good slapfight is fun once in a while.

 

 

---

 

 

I am the Queen of England

---

My great-great-grandmother Mary Rowe fell for the 19th-century “Bogardus hoax,” which alleged that if you could prove your descent from a person named Aneka Jans Bogardus, you were part-owner of a big chunk of property in downtown Manhattan. American courts were clogged with these cases for a while. My poor great-great-grandmother died in the loony bin, still clutching her legal documents, or so we are told.

 

 

The secret attraction here was not only the promise of money, but the allure of royalty. Aneka Jans was supposedly a daughter of “King William of Holland.” And don't we all wish we were descended from royalty?

 

My grandmother Minnie found her grandmother Mary's various family trees and affidavits, and caught the genealogy bug. My aunt Louise has kept the franchise going; she published a gorgeous book, “The Pioneer Spirit,” which incorporates much of the research she and her sister Lucille and their husbands have done over the years.

 

I have done my tiny bit to help. Early on, however, I gained a healthy respect for what Louise and Lucille and Minnie and even crazy great-great-grandma Mary accomplished. It's hard work! You end up with a tangled heap of contradictory claims. Even the reference books aren't very authoritative.

 

But wait until you hear this!

 

Some years ago I discovered a website called Geni.com, which allows you to upload and share family information. I noticed the other day that someone had added a little extra info on my seven-times-great-grandfather Luke Bromley. It turns out that his wife, Hannah Stafford, was not only a Stafford (the family of the Dukes of Buckingham), but was also descended from the Woodvilles, and the Percys, and the Poles, and the Bohuns. It's a regular Who's Who in Fifteenth-Century England. Ultimately, the family goes back to King Edward III and Philippa of Hainault.

 

Dearie me! Royalty at last! Great-great-grandma Mary would be thrilled!

 

 

In the words of a poem in the National Lampoon back in the 1970s:

 

I am the Queen of England,

I like to sing and dance,

And if you don't believe me,

I will punch you in the pants.

 

And I'll do it, too.

 

---

 

 

Uncle Freakshow

---

Two of my nephews call me “Uncle.” Not “Uncle Loren,” mind you, just “Uncle.”

 

 

I like this. It’s almost a nickname, but not quite. It assigns a role within the family, but it's not a very difficult role to portray. What do uncles have to do, after all? Heckle from the sidelines and tell embarrassing stories about what your parents did when they were young.

 

 

My family was always full of odd nicknames. My sister Darlene was always just “Sister.” My mother, whose given name was Tosca, went by “Shim” within the family (she was quite a dancer in her youth). As a young man my father was “Doc,” because he was the family veterinarian. My late uncle Primo was “Bud” (no idea where that came from). My aunt Loretta was (and still is) “Toots.” My late uncle Louis was “Sonny” (his father was named Louis too).

 

 

I have no idea what my family calls me behind my back, of course. I can only guess.

 

 

Lately my friend Apollonia has been coming up with comical / clever nicknames for me in the office. She is very creative. My favorite so far is “Freakshow,” although I’m also fond of “Sweet Potato.”

 

 

So long as my nephews don't find out.

 

 

“Uncle Freakshow” doesn’t sound very complimentary.

 

---

 

 

Everyday life in the Milky Way Galaxy

---

Scientists recently reported that there may be as many as 50 billion planets in our own Milky Way Galaxy alone.

 

 

I, for one, am delighted.

 

 

An astronomer named Frank Drake came up some years ago with an informal way of calculating how many civilizations there might be in the galaxy. It depends on a lot of variables: how many stars, how many planets, etc. If you put in the new number of planets – well, boy howdy. I twiddled around with the calculator on the above link, and I came around a thousand intelligent civilizations!

 

 

Stephen Hawking, among others, has warned that this might not be cause for celebration. If any of these civilizations has mastered interstellar travel – well, we're probably done for. Our own terrestrial explorers spread nothing but trouble from continent to continent on Earth over the past few thousand years; can you imagine what advanced extraterrestrials might do to Earth's civilization, wittingly or unwittingly, if they came to visit us?

 

But there are other scenarios.

 

 

For one thing, the Drake equation allows that life doesn't always produce intelligence, or civilization. Gorillas are perfectly nice, but they're not building skyscrapers, or death rays for that matter. Ditto border collies. Ditto paramecia.

 

Science fiction authors have portrayed lots of different kinds of extraterrestrial life, both intelligent and unintelligent (and in-between, like us). Talking plants. Humanoid geese. Slow-moving heaps of liquid nitrogen. Lumps of telepathic protoplasm. Giant delicious superintelligent slugs. (If you’ve read science fiction, you may be able to guess which stories and novels I'm thinking of.)

 

I'm sure there are lots of freaky geese and slugs and plants out there. They're just planetbound, the way we are: trapped in our fishbowls, not ready (or able) to jump over the side yet.

 

 

I am encouraged to think that, with science constantly improving our ability to see afar, we may be able to detect signs of life on those far-off planets without actually visiting them.

 

 

We don’t have to visit. We can just wave hello from a (safe) distance.

 

 

It’s a shame, though. I bet those slugs are really delicious.

 

---

 

 

Berry picking

---

Where I grew up, picking strawberries was a way for kids (and adults) to make money in June after school was out.

 

 

It sounds like fun, children, I know. But let me assure you that it's not.

 

 

You have to pick the berries early in the day while it’s cool; otherwise they smoosh into jam in your hand. So, before dawn, they truck you to the fields in schoolbuses and assign you a nice wet endless row of strawberry plants. You crawl down the row on your knees, or you do a grotesque hopping squat, whichever you prefer. The work pays next to nothing. Then there are the field bosses who yell at you and berate you for picking too slowly, or for missing too many berries, or picking too many unripe berries.

 

 

You’re home by mid-afternoon, muddy and covered in sweet red goo, and you can actually see strawberries when you close your eyes.

 

 

Raspberry season comes after that. Raspberries grow upright. Much easier to pick, right? Well, they have thorns. And they smoosh in your hand even more easily than strawberries.

 

 

Then, toward the end of the summer, people go up into the Cascade foothills to pick huckleberries. For fun! (Huckleberries are a wild variant of blueberries; they don’t have the powdery sheen that blueberries have, and they tend to be sweeter. There are whole thickets of them hidden on the mountainsides.) We took coffeecans with makeshift wire handles and went up into the hills (everyone had a favorite secret place to go) and spent whole August days picking. (The black-and-white picture above is my mother, on Doughgod Mountain, in 1970. If you look carefully, you can see that she's holding a coffeecan full of huckleberries.)

 

 

I was a terrible huckleberry picker. My family never lets me forget it.

 

 

But the views from the mountaintops are spectacular.

 

 

Someday, when we're visiting the Northwest, maybe I'll get Partner to go up there. We can pick a few huckleberries and watch the sunset.

 

 

---

 

 

The secret recipe for Coca-Cola

---

Last week, Ira Glass of NPR's “This American Life” broke one of the great secrets of our time: the formula for Coca-Cola.

Coke was invented back in the late 19^th century, when druggists all over the United States were formulating their own counter beverages. It had real cocaine in it, by the way, which explains the name. (Back in those days, cocaine was considered a harmless stimulant, like caffeine. Sigmund Freud was a cocaine user in his youth, and warned a girlfriend in a letter: “I hope you're ready to fight off a big wild man full of cocaine!”)

The Coca-Cola Company denies that this is the real recipe. Naturally they do. They are also obviously enjoying this very much, as it draws attention to the uniqueness and mystery of their brand. They also know that, if anyone is crazy enough to make this stuff at home, it will taste more like Windex than Coca-Cola.

I love this recipe, though. If I had lots of time and a couple of hundred dollars to throw away on a completely pointless enterprise, I'd make a batch myself. Since I don't keep neroli oil and Fluid Extract of Coca around the house, I would probably have to make a couple of purchases, and possibly break the law a few times. (Neroli oil is a perfumery ingredient, by the way. Maybe I can substitute some cologne. As for Fluid Extract of Coca, I am informed that I can buy whole-leaf coca tea and make my own. I'm off to the local Whole Foods right this second!)

Cookery is just throwing things in a skillet any old way. Baking is more like chemistry: if you don't combine the right things in the right proportions, you'll end up with bowling balls and hockey pucks instead of cakes and cookies. Candy-making is like nuclear physics: precise amounts, precise timing, precise temperatures.

But, evidently, creating a new soft drink is more like science fiction, or the laboratory of Doctor Frankenstein.

I'm perfectly happy to accept the recipe as correct. It looks crazy and random and highly caffeinated, like something a druggist would throw together. I'm sure it's been modified over the years – well, of course it has, they took out the cocaine, didn't they? But it's a starting point.

Now: what in the hell do they put in Dr Pepper?

---

Sunday blog: Erik Satie's "Premier nocturne"

---

I've been a Satie fan since 1971, when I discovered a strange gatefold album of his music in a department store in Vancouver, Washington. The album's performers (who called themselves the “Camarata Contemporary Chamber Group”) took Satie's piano music and arranged it for Moog synthesizer, harpsichord, guitar, plaintive woodwinds, and a whispery string ensemble. It wasn't the way Satie originally wrote it, but I didn't know that. All I knew was that I'd never heard anything like it before.

 

 

I now own three complete sets of Satie's complete works by different performers. His Nocturnes, which he wrote during the last few years of his life, are among my favorite pieces of music. Rollo Myers says of them: “The style is chastened, simplified, uncompromising in its rejection of any sensuous appeal, but the music is strangely impressive in its bleakness and almost inhuman detachment.”

 

 

It is also, when performed sympathetically, music of great tenderness.

 

 

Here, from the LP I bought in 1971, is the Camarata arrangement of the First Nocturne.

 

  
Download now or listen on posterous

14_Trois_Nocturnes_Le_Premier.mp3 (5504 KB)

 

---

 

 

In memoriam: Betty Garrett, Kenneth Mars, Len Lesser

---

I have a movie book called “Who Was That?” It is full of little headshots of character actors from the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, sorted into categories: Loose Women, Society Dames, Thugs, Nebbishes. It’s a nice tribute to one of the great resources of the movie industry: the supporting actors and actresses who fill in the gaps, who give interest and flavor to the narrative. If a movie were cookie dough, the raisins and chocolate chips would be the stars; character actors would be the pinch of nutmeg or the splash of vanilla extract.

 

 

In the past week, we lost three very flavorful performers: Betty Garrett, Kenneth Mars, and Len Lesser.

 

 

Betty Garrett was the wise-ass cabbie in “On The Town” who keeps trying to seduce Frank Sinatra. She was also Mrs. Babish, the landlady on “Laverne & Shirley,” getting drunk on cooking sherry and playing the blues on the saxophone when Laverne gets arrested for shoplifting. She was hard-edged but funny, and she could sing.

 

 

Kenneth Mars was the wise old Danish magician in “Shadows And Fog”: “Yoomp! Yoomp into the mirror!” (No one did mock-Teutonic like Kenneth Mars.) He was the Mitteleuropean Inspector Kemp in “Young Frankenstein,” trying to keep young Doctor Fronkonsteen from “vollowink in his vater's vootshteps.” He was the big threatening-looking ex(?)-Nazi in “The Producer” who kept bursting into tears.

 

 

Len Lesser – well, he was in lots of stuff. But mostly he was Jerry Seinfeld’s Uncle Leo. “Jerry! Hello!”

 

 

Frankly, I’d rather be a character actor than a big-name star. Big-name stars have ups and downs, but character actors keep working come hell or high water. Directors may tire of Robert Downey Jr. or Julia Roberts, but they will always need a tough landlady, or a comedy Nazi, or a crazy uncle.

 

 

So remember Betty and Kenneth and Len kindly today.

 

 

And let's all vollow in their vootshteps.

 

 

---

 

 

The grandma dichotomy

---

Both my grandfathers died before I was born, but my grandmothers were still around during my childhood. One was a tough scowling old Polish lady with a low gravelly voice, who cooked all day long and complained about everything; the other was a sweet smiling lady who lived in a big farmhouse, and who cooked all day long and never complained about anything.

 

This brings me to the observation that there are two basic kinds of grandmother.

 

 

Betty MacDonald, in “The Egg and I,” noted this first. Her two grandmothers were: a) “Gammy,” a crazy old bird who lived with them and made them do things they didn't want to do and eat things they didn't want to eat; and b) “Deargrandmother,” a frail lacy thing who visited from time to time, and who was lovely and delicate.

 

 

Aha!

 

This appears to be a law of life. My friend P., who lives with her son and his family, is Type A. She is very full of beans. She argues with her grandkids, and is stern with them. She is not a frail lacy grandma. She is a tough grandma.

 

Now let's take the next logical step. Could it be that this yin/yang grandma dichotomy isn't limited to grandmothers?

 

 

For years, everyone told me how much I resembled Farmhouse Grandma. Oh my! they said. You have Grandma's blue eyes and fair complexion! You look just like her!

 

But I know I didn't feel like her. I certainly didn't feel sweet and helpful.

 

Can you guess what I felt like instead?

 

Grr. I'm complaining and scowling right now.

 

---

 

 

Djerba

---

Djerba is a big molar-shaped island lying off the southern coast of Tunisia, near the Libyan border. It is flat, flat, flat. It is littered with palm trees and resort hotels. The first time I went there, a friend and I flew down from Tunis together (we pretended to be married so we could get cheap tickets, and I hope someone at Tunisair is reading this, ha ha we fooled you!). We arrived at night and took a cab from the airport to the hotel, under a full moon, with those perfectly-spaced palm trees whisking silently by, and I thought: this is one of the most perfectly beautiful things I will ever see in my life.

 

 

The beach was very nice. We loved especially watching the Germans go splooshing into the water in the nude. It was wintertime, and the Mediterranean (while warmer than, say, Lake Michigan) is cold that time of year, so the Germans were pretty blue and shriveled when they came out of the water. But they always pretended they were enjoying it. Who knows? Maybe they were.

 

 

I had learned most of my meager Arabic in Morocco. All my Tunisian friends mocked my Moroccan vocabulary and accent, so I generally stuck to French. I was delighted to discover that Djerban Arabic was very similar to Moroccan Arabic, and – for the first time in Tunisia – I was more fluent than any of my acquaintances. I had long conversations with everyone, storekeepers and hoteliers and cabdrivers, and I was able to haggle like a tiger, yelling and waving my hands in the air, instead of whispering and simpering as I usually did.

 

 

There is a beautiful delicate old synagogue in Houmt-Souk, the island's main city. It's said to be the oldest synagogue in the world, and its Torah is one of the oldest in the world too. The building is plain on the outside but full of curvaceous intricate blue woodwork on the inside. For a few dollars, the Old Testament caretaker tottered over and brought the old Torah out for us to see.

 

 

In 2002, al-Qaeda blew up a truck outside the synagogue, killing several dozen people, mostly tourists.

 

 

But the old delicate synagogue still stands.

 

 

I hope I can visit it again someday.

 

And I hope it lasts another thousand years.

 

 

---

 

 

Things do not get better, but worse

 

 

Partner and I saw the movie “2012” last year, with the neutrinos and the earthquakes and the continents slipping around like fried eggs in a buttered skillet.  Some nice special effects, but – meh.

 

 

But people do love to talk about the end of the world.

 

 

When I was a kid, the whole fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world thing was going gangbusters. Hal Lindsay was explaining how Russia was Gog and Magog, and it all proved that the rapture was going to happen any day now!

 

 

And I had a Jehovah's Witness friend who told me, with perfect assurance, that the Apocalypse would begin in 1975.

 

 

You may recall, if you are old enough, that the Apocalypse did not begin in 1975.

 

 

This does not deter the end-of-the-world theorists.  It did happen, you see, but we didn't notice.  Something happened – something epochal, something horrible, something hidden – but we weren't aware of it.  How about the birth of the Antichrist?  That sounds suitably ominous . . .

 

 

Well, if he was born in 1975, the Antichrist should be 36 by now. Old enough to be out Antichristing, anyway. 

 

 

But he ain't.   All I see on the evening news is the usual weary human nastiness.  It's not good, but it's nothing new. 

 

 

You never know.  Maybe the world will get squashed by an asteroid this evening.  Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster will arrive and we'll all be saved.

 

 

But I don’t think the world will end with a bang.  I think it will slump and whimper its way downward toward the end, just the way it’s always done.

 

 

Cheerful, eh?

 

 

My title’s from a limerick by Edward Gorey, which I think would be very appropriate for my (or anyone's) tombstone:

 

 

A lady born under a curse

 used to drive forth each day in a hearse;

 From the back she would wail

 through a thickness of veil:

“Things do not get better, but worse.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The health club: an observer's guide

---

I go to the health club almost every day. It's only about two blocks from our apartment, so I really have no excuse. Partner likes to ride the stationary bike. I prefer the treadmill; it's dull and repetitive, like me.

 

And I love the floor show.

 

 

First, there's the staff:

 

• The earnest girl at the front desk who scans my key card and wishes me a good workout!

• The managers, who wear very tight shirts, and have interesting tattoos. (I think Manager Mike's tattoo says “Charlotte” – his girlfriend’s name? – but the tattoo is very ornate and runs all the way up his arm, so it may be part of a much more complex sentiment, like “Charlotte Rae was a member of the supporting cast on ‘The Facts of Life.’”)

• The trainers. Our favorite is Sean, who's tall and has an interesting hairstyle and big shoulders and a cute little smile. Our second favorite is Robot #1, who is very tall, very big, very young, very loud, a regular Li'l Abner type. Our third favorite is Robot #2, who is just like #1 except a little older, a little shorter, a little broader, a little more brooding. He leans on the exercise equipment with a kind of Marlon Brando moodiness. (There used to be another one, a gigantic furniture mover with a perpetual sneer, who had a name tattooed from his collarbone to his jaw. I called him “Zipperneck.” I didn't like him.)

  
  

 

Then there are the members:

 

 

• The scrawny (young / old). I am in this group, naturally.

• The formerly fit. These mostly look like former gym teachers. They grimace a lot when they work out, as they are putting out one hundred and ten percent effort! They sport casts and crutches a lot. You don't suppose they hurt themselves working out too strenuously, do you?

• The college boys. These wear T-shirts featuring beer, or computers, or both.

• Creeps and nimrods. Some are dessicated-looking, like praying mantises. Others have huge arms and skinny legs, or vice versa. Sometimes they do sparring moves while they're on the treadmill. Sometimes they do creative workouts involving jumpropes and kung-fu moves and shopping carts. Sometimes they crawl along the back wall of the workout area. (I'm not making these up.) Partner and I scowl at them when they come too close.

• Cuties. These vary from visit to visit. My current favorite is a big lean guy with a face like an intelligent chimpanzee.  He works out very intently with dumbbells for a while, then does jumping jacks while watching himself in the mirror. I just want to put him in my pocket and take him home.

• Women. I suppose there must be some. I don't really notice.

 

 

The foregoing may seem to indicate that I pay too much attention to my surroundings when I really should be concentrating on my healthy activity.

 

 

But listen: when you're trudging along on a treadmill, or pedaling a stationary bike, you need all the distraction you can get.

 

 

---

 

 

Valentine's Day blog: Stefon tells you where to go

---

We keep recording and watching SNL, even though it's a sucker's game sometimes. Why, we ask ourselves while pounding our heads against the floor, do the writers and performers keep repeating unfunny sketches? (I'm looking most especially at you, Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen.)

 

 

But sometimes a repeating character turns into something special.

 

 

Here's Bill Hader as Stefon, who knows just where to go on Valentine's Day.

 

 

See you at Booooooooof.

 

 

L'chaim!

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

Sunday blog: Frank Zappa sings "Camarillo Brillo"

---

Another song from my misspent youth: Frank Zappa performs “Camarillo Brillo” on his 1974 “Overnite Sensation” album.

 

She had a snake for a pet / and an amulet / and she was breeding a dwarf! / but she wasn't done yet;

She had gray-green skin, / a doll with a pin; / I told her she was all right, / but I couldn't come in . . .

 

  
Download now or listen on posterous

10_Camarillo_Brillo.m4a (8537 KB)

 

---

 

 

Multiblogging

---

I started this blog on Posterous.com, because two bloggers I read and respect (Mark Bittman and Seif Nechi) use the site. It turned out to be a good choice. It's versatile, and allows me to do a lot of interesting things, and it's relatively easy to use (I caught on to most of its subtleties within a week or two).

 

 

It also allows me, charmingly and altruistically, to post my blog to other websites. Bandwidth hog that I am, I chose five: Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Tumblr, and Wordpress.

 

 

They are all very different places.

 

 

Facebook gives my friends and family an opportunity to see my blog. Eek! Do I want that? Sure. Why not? So what if my aunt Loretta sees my opinion of “RuPaul's Drag Race”?

 

 

Twitter – well, again, why not? I liked Twitter for a while, but I tired of it. It has become a relentless branding exercise for grade-B celebrities. I barely glance at it anymore; when I do, I find that my Twitter feed is clogged with Snooki and astronauts and comedians from Chelsea Lately, and most of them have very little to offer (well, the comedians sometimes).

 

 

Blogger and Wordpress are like Antarctica: frigid, windblown places. I don't think I get more than five or ten hits a day from both combined. I'm not sure what gets you noticed there, but whatever it is, I'm not doing it.

 

Tumblr is sort of a rebellious Facebook community of people who've formed their own pirate republic, full of animated GIFs and kitties and sunsets and swearwords. It's not all wasted space, to be sure. There are some real people there, and some real commentary, and some nice art. But you see the flashes of anger when someone unfollows someone, and you think – yikes! These people need to get out more!

 

But such is the Internet, my ducklings. A peculiar place, full of nooks and crannies, like a Thomas's English Muffin. A place for everyone.

 

Ouch! Someone just unfollowed me! How dare they! What the f***!

 

 

 

---

 

One two three, look at Mister Lee

---

So there's this guy, Chris Lee. I've never heard of him, as I'm not from New York's 26^th Congressional District. He is married, and he has a little boy, and he lives in one of those upstate New York towns with a name like a Ben & Jerry's flavor.

 

Also, he recently opposed gay people serving openly in the military.  And he had an op-ed piece in the Tonawanda News two years ago, starkly warning of the dangers of sharing too much personal information on the Internet.  Aha!  A social conservative!

 

He's not bad-looking, as you can see from the above photo. He was trolling Craigslist last month, and he got into a sort of flirting thing with a woman, and he sent her the above picture. He also told her some egregious lies about himself: he shaved about seven years off his age, he said he was divorced, he said he was a lobbyist. Gawker, which broke the story, has the whole email string here.

 

You will notice that he used his real name, as well as an email address linked to his Facebook account.

 

The woman with whom he was flirting was smart enough to do a quick websearch on this guy. Just to see what happened, I did the same. Well, you get a lot of Christopher Lee who played Saruman in “The Lord Of The Rings.” And then, right after that, you get the websites associated with Congressman Chris Lee, NY-26, complete with family photos and bio.

 

First his office said it was a put-up job, his Blackberry was hacked, etc., etc. Then, within hours, the Congressman resigned. Kaput!

 

One Internet comment struck home with me: “When I see a story like this, I hold my breath until I get to the party designation. If it's a Republican I curl my lip in disgust. If it's a Democrat I just sigh.”

 

Listen, stupidity is common to all. I know that. Look at Al Gore and John Edwards, for God's sake! Two of the most wooden-headed boobs on earth. I used to like Al Gore. He seemed to have a sense of humor about himself, along with the stiffness and pomposity. But look at what he did to himself! (Not so much John Edwards; he always seemed to me like a walking hairstyle. As it turns out, that's pretty much all he was, too.)

 

But it's nice when lightning strikes on the other side of the aisle too.

 

And always remember: sex makes smart people stupid.

 

And I remember a comment I read in “George” magazine in 1996, made by a prostitute who was working the political conventions that summer: “Republican conventions are wild. Most of those guys are up there on the podium wearing ladies' underwear under their dark suits. We get a lot of business then. Not so much Democrats. They don't need us. They're doing it with each other.”

 

I leave you with this link. It's peripherally relevant, and it's a good song.

 

---

 

 

Travel tips from Ayesha Pulaski

 

I moved into a small apartment on the second floor of a converted villa in a city in northern Morocco in the summer of 1984.  My landlords were an Italian/Jewish couple who owned most of the bars in town (Muslims don't drink, and can't own bars as a result).  My landlords also ran most or all of the prostitution in town. I'll tell you all about it some other time.

 

Around midsummer, an interesting gargoyle stuck her head through the hole in my window screen.  “I thought I heard somebody talkin' English in here!” she rasped in a cigarette voice.  “I'm Ayesha Pulaski.  I'm your neighbor.  You want a drink?  Bring ice cubes.”

 

Ayesha (not her real name) was a local girl, and had worked for a long time at one of the bars in town.  She'd married an American serviceman, Stan Pulaski (not his real name).  They lived in Maryland and had two kids.  (“Honey,” she griped, “I don't have to be here right now.  I could be home right now.  I could be crabbin'.”)  Her husband was on assignment in the Mediterranean, and the kids were at camp, and she'd decided to come back to visit her home town. 

 

“Honey,” she said to me one day, “write me a postcard.  I don't write so good.”  It was a girlie postcard.  "Okay. Write this: 'Dear Stan: Here's a pretty girl for you to look at.  Ha ha.  I need some more money.'  Okay?  Now sign it for me.”

 

Her mother came to stay with her.  Momma was a Berber woman, three feet tall, with blue tattoos on her cheeks.  I came out on the terrace one day and found Momma grinning up at me like a garden gnome, clutching a broom.  “GOOD MORNING!” she shrieked at me in Arabic, sweeping like a demon.

 

“Gonna take Momma back to the United States,” Ayesha confided to me that evening.  “I gotta get her a passport first, though.  Honey, can you imagine that little old lady on a plane?  She's gonna be runnin' up and down the aisle, screamin' her head off.  What am I gonna do?”

 

One last Ayesha story.  I'd just come back from Casablanca, she'd just come back from Spain.  She brought the Jack Daniels, I brought the ice cubes.

 

I told her: “My friends in Casablanca want to explore the desert.  They want to take the train into the Sahara.”

 

 

Ayesha looked disgusted.  She said: “Honey, you tell your friends they're crazy.  My boyfriend and I, we went to the desert.  Honey, there ain't nothin' there.  Ain't no grass, ain't no trees.  Ain't nothing but sand.  I seen this old Berber man, and I says, 'Gimme water,' and he says, 'Gimme money.'” 

 

 

She shook her head, grimacing, remembering that horrible trip, and took another sip of her drink.  “Honey,” she said finally, “my camera melted.”

 

 

 

Fiber: a beginner's guide

 

 

Partner and I are both over fifty, and you know what your doctor tells you to do once you're fifty.  It involves fasting for a day beforehand, and not eating red food, and – ahem.

 

 

Our test results have been okay so far.   I had some small abnormalities a few years ago, but they weren't serious enough to merit special attention.  But it's been around five years, and I have my yearly physical in a few weeks, so I have a feeling I know what will be happening again soon. 

 

 

If I have learned anything through all of this, it is to eat more fiber.

 

 

A man of my age and weight needs about 25 grams of fiber a day.  A paperclip, or a raisin, weighs a gram.  So if I eat twenty-five paperclips worth of fiber a day, I will be fine, and the inside of my colon will be as clean and delicate as a baby's skin.

 

 

This is easier said than done.

 

 

Here's the fiber lowdown:

 

 

•                  Foods that you think might be full of fiber are not full of fiber.  Most cereals.  White bread.  A surprising number of vegetables.

•                  On the other hand, beans have a lot of fiber: red beans, black beans, kidney beans, Roman beans, cannellini beans.  Also chickpeas.  Also lentils.  Prepare to be very gassy.

•                  Peas are remarkably high in fiber.  In fact, anything with a skin is rich in fiber.  Each cute little pea has a little skin around it.  See?

•                  Pasta is made from hard wheat, and so is full of fiber.  Marinara sauce is made from whole tomatoes, and is also full of fiber.  No wonder Italians are so vibrant.  It’s the fiber!

•                  You can actually buy Double Fiber bread.  It tastes just like regular bread, and it blasts through you like an Atlas missile.  It's terrifying.

 

 

This is what we do for health.

 

 

It's worth it.

 

 

My parents' house

 

---

Venersborg, Washington, where I grew up, is a loosely-organized rural community on the side of a smallish mountain, about thirty miles southwest of Mount St. Helens. When I was a kid it was just a few farms scattered among the trees, with unpaved dirt and gravel tracks for roads. Venersborg had been settled by Swedish immigrants about sixty years earlier; later some Finns joined the mix, along with a few odds and ends like my parents. There was one church and one store. The store was almost always closed.

 

 

My parents' house was at the end of the road, literally. Just past our driveway, there was a chain across the road. Past that chain, you could see some wheel ruts running up the hillside, and that was it. 

 

 

It was sold soon after my mother's death in 1999. I've gone up there with Partner once or twice since, just to take a look at it from the road.  

 

 

It's different now.

 

 

All of the old trees are gone. There used to be Gravenstein apple trees dating back to the 1940s (to be fair, they were scraggly and old and covered with lichen when I was a kid, they'd probably have died of natural causes by now), and a couple of nice old pear trees, and a huge Royal Ann cherry that attracted birds by the hundreds. And my parents planted all kinds of trees – blue spruce, pine, cedar – around the house when it was new. There were too many, and by the 1980s the house got almost no sunlight at all, but they were beautiful trees.

 

 

And all of my mother's huge rhododendrons are gone, and the camellia she loved so much, and her roses.

 

 

I look at it sometimes on Google Earth. The new owners have built it up enormously; it looks like a functioning farm now, which is what my father really always wanted (he'd grown up on a farm, and spent evenings and weekends fooling around with his five acres of hay and a couple of cattle and a vegetable garden).

 

 

When I look at it online, I feel like a disembodied spirit, looking at it from above. It makes me want to reach down and touch it.

 

 

And then I can drift across the map, a mile or two away, to the Venersborg Cemetery, where Mom and Dad are both buried, and one of my sisters.

 

 

The image is so clear that you can see the gravemarkers on the ground.

 

 

Ah, me, kids.

 

 

It all goes by so quickly, doesn't it?

 

 

---