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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The stars last weekend

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I don’t know if you were out after dark last weekend, or looked out a west-facing window.  If not, you missed quite a show.  The very young crescent moon, Venus, and Jupiter were all together in the western sky shortly after sunset.  On Friday it was (top to bottom) Jupiter-Venus-moon, in a long curving line; then, on Saturday night, the moon and Venus were making out, right next to each other, with Jupiter looking on from above; Sunday evening, it was moon and Jupiter, with Venus glaring down below; on Monday, another long curve, top to bottom Moon-Jupiter-Venus.  (Mercury was supposedly down there somewhere, but, as I’ve noted before, I am evidently destined never to see Mercury.)

 

 

It was beautiful, and scary, and brilliant.  I actually took pictures of it, and if you’ve ever tried to take pictures of the moon or stars, you’ll know that the photos usually don’t turn out.  You can see in the photo above how bright the conjunction was, and how remarkably beautiful.

 

 

It’s a cosmic optical illusion.  The moon is only a quarter of a million miles away. Venus is – what? – maybe thirty million miles away.  Jupiter is hundreds of millions of miles away.  But they all happened to be in the same line of sight at the same time .

 

 

We were watching a game of cosmic Skee-Ball.  All these planets and moons whizzing around in our line of sight!  Beautiful, eerie, mysterious.

 

 

From Diane Ackerman’s book “The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral,” the last few lines of “Asteroids”:

 

 

But now

                        They lumber

So wide apart

From each

To its neighbor’s

Pinprick-glow

                                                                        Slant millions

                        And millions

                        Of watertight miles.

                                                            Only in the longest view

Do they graze

            Like one herd

                                                On a breathless tundra.


 

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Expiration dates

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I tend to mock expiration dates.  As Peg Bundy memorably said on the old “Married . . . With Children”: “It doesn’t say ‘Use before this date.’  It says: ‘Best if used before this date.’”

 

 

Amen to that.  I am dubious of expiration dates, because I recall things sitting in the cupboard and the fridge for literally decades back when I was a kid.  And we still used them.  And I’m still here, aren’t I?  (Maybe not in the best shape, but still.)

 

 

I am invariably amused by my work friends Apollonia and Cathleen, and their religious dread of expiration dates.  I can’t even give them aspirin without their checking the expiration date. What happens to aspirin after the expiration date?  Maybe it gets a little less effective.  I don’t think it turns into something poisonous.

 

 

Now just look at this BBC story: an 87-year old man in Germany kept a can of lard sent from America in 1948, “just in case.”  He opened it recently, and had it tested for safety, and – guess what?  It was fine.  (A little gritty and tasteless, he said, but my god it’s lard, of course it’s gritty and tasteless.  Did I ever tell you my grandma Boitano used to eat lard on toast?  But I digress.)

 

 

I never really felt bad about keeping things after their expiration dates.  Now, I really don’t feel bad about it.  (Well, maybe dairy products.  I don’t want to be racked up by a container of sour cream.)  But: cereal.  Canned goods.  That’s why they’re canned, right?  To keep for a long time.  Preserves.  Baking ingredients.  (I have chocolate chips that have been in the house for a very long time.  You know what?  Throw them in some oatmeal cookie dough, and they’ll be just fine.)

 

 

Fat goes rancid over time, naturally.  But evidently, if it’s packaged correctly, it doesn’t.

 

 

Here’s to living forever, with lard.


Sunday, February 26, 2012

The Academy Awards telecast, February 26, 2012

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Last year I did a little running commentary on the Oscar telecast with James Franco and Anne Hathaway.  This year I will attempt it again. 


8:30pm, Eastern Standard Time.  It’s Billy Crystal!  He leaps from movie to movie in a crazy montage (James and Anne did the same thing last year), kisses George Clooney, gets to muss up Tom Cruise, does one of his own lines from “Princess Bride.”  Billy looks strange; his face is pale and stretched, as if he’s wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask.  He still has a lot of flair, however; he does his little song about all the nominated films, and I suddenly realize that Billy is a tummler in the old Borscht Belt tradition, working the crowd, making them laugh.  (He also does the first of many jokes about the Kodak Theater being renamed after the company’s bankruptcy.)


“Hugo” wins two awards.  (Note to self: see “Hugo,” it actually looks sort of lovely.)


(Commercial for JC Penney, featuring Ellen DeGeneres in the Old West.  Cleverest thing on the show so far.)


J-Lo and Cameron Diaz present makeup/costume Oscars.  Seriously?  I guess these have been identified as “girly awards,” which can only be presented by girly girls.  Jim Rash, the crazy actor who plays the cross-dressing dean on “Community,” would have been ideal for these categories.


The foreign-movie Oscar goes to the Iranian movie “A Separation.”  Partner comments that the Republican Presidential candidates will no doubt be incensed by this.  I’m sure he’s right.  (And did you know that Sandra Bullock speaks German?  It’s like finding out that Jayne Mansfield played the violin.  Seriously, she did.)


Octavia Spencer wins Best Supporting Actress for “The Help.”  Good for her: it was well-deserved.  “The Help” was one of the few nominated films Partner and I saw this year.  Olivia is overcome during her acceptance speech; “I’m freaking out!” she says toward the end.  And the audience loves it. 


(Seriously: what’s with that hypercool bongo-and-electric-violin combo playing up in the balconies?  It reminds me of the cantina scene in “Star Wars.”)


We are treated to a mildly amusing sketch about a 1939 focus group tearing apart “The Wizard of Oz”: not enough monkeys, get rid of Dorothy, etc.  (Tip to Oscar directors/writers: please stop doing these sketches.  We really just want to see who wins the awards.)


(“Hugo” is quietly piling up a whole bunch of technical awards.  Hollywood loves Scorsese.)


Oh Jesus now it’s Cirque de Soleil.  It’s lovely, but – come on.


Gwyneth Paltrow (ew!) and Robert Downey Jr. come out together to present the award for best documentary.  I love him so much; he’s naturally funny, over-the-top goofy, and I don’t care that he’s wasting time, he’s a big-time actor and I’m not completely sure that he’s not off-script right now.


Chris Rock presents the award for best Animated Feature.  He is so damned funny.  I was one of the people who thought he was terrific as an Oscar host; I was watching the audience roar at his jokes, and thinking: Maybe they’ll give him another chance one of these days.  (I still remember a bit he did: he went to a regular neighborhood theater and asked people what movies they were seeing.  No one was seeing the Oscar Nominated Movies.  Everyone was seeing “Saw IV” and “Fright Night.”  I thought his bit was funny and smart.  I think the Hollywood audience thought it was rude.)


Melissa Leo, who dropped the F-bomb last year when she won for Best Supporting Actress, presents Best Supporting Actor.  She is very dignified this year, naturally.  Christopher Plummer wins, for portraying a gay man in “Beginners”!  (He says, to his Oscar: “You’re only two years older than me, darling.  Where have you been all my life?”)


(Billy throws big Jumbocam pictures up on the screen of audience members and speaks for them.  When it’s Nick Nolte, he just groans.  When it’s Uggie, the cute little dog from “The Artist,” he yells, “If I had ‘em, I’d lick ‘em!”)


Will Ferrell and Zach Galifikinakis come out, inexplicably, both with a pair of cymbals which they crash on and off, to present the award for Best Song.  “Am I A Man Or Am I A Muppet?” wins.  One of the guys from “Flight of the Conchords” wrote it, and accepts the award, charmingly.  Delightful all around.


Angelina Jolie presents.  She is all over the place, lots of flesh.  Her lips are gigantic.   They terrify me.  (The first award is for Best Adapted Screenplay.  OMG! Jim Rash (see above comment re J-Lo and Cameron Diaz) wins an award! He poses like Angelina, with his hand on his hip! The second is for Original Screenplay, and Woody Allen wins. Naturally he’s not there.)


Milla Jovovich does the summary of the technical awards. She is a very special person, and they did some nice clips. I always feel bad at this point: these guys, the technical guys, have to receive their awards off-camera, from a B-list celebrity.  But – you know what? – Milla Jovovich is kind of okay for this.


The actresses from “Bridesmaids” present the award for Short Film.  They are very funny, talking about Long and Short, and which feels better to them.  “Short’s okay, if it’s got some heft to it.” (One of the awards goes to a Pakistani film, “Saving Face,” about women in Pakistan who have acid thrown in their faces.  Once again Partner predicts that the Republicans will be pissed off, and again, I’m sure he’s right.)


Best Director: Michael Douglas presents the award.  He doesn’t look good at all; he looks hollow and ancient. And the winner is . . . Michel Hazanavicius, for “The Artist”!  Surprise, because I thought it was going to be Scorsese!  Hazanavicius makes a gracious speech.  Good for him.  (Looks good for “Artist” as Best Picture, right?)


Meryl Streep announces special awards: James Earl Jones, Dick Smith, and Oprah Winfrey.  Wha’?  (Dick Smith has done makeup since forever.  The other two recipients you probably already know.)


Now we do the Necrology.  Esperanza Spalding sings “Wonderful World,” beautifully.  Farley Granger, Whitney Houston, Michael Cacoyannis, Peter Falk, Cliff Robertson, Sidney Lumet, Sue Mengers, Steve Jobs (?), Hal Kanter, Jackie Cooper, Ben Gazzara, Elizabeth Taylor.  (Such a lot of talent we lose in any given year.  This always makes me sad.)


Natalie Portman presents the award for Best Actor.  She’s very cute!  She does long introductions for all of the nominees.  Jean Dujardin wins for “The Artist”! He’s adorable, big nose and all, and he has a great smile.  He’s cute and charming and gives a nice thank-you speech in broken English.


(The third Ellen DeGeneres commercial just aired; she’s in ancient Rome now, trying to return something.  These commercials are wonderful.)


Colin Firth is presenting the award for Best Actress.  He reminds us that he was in “Mamma Mia” with Meryl Streep.  And Meryl Streep wins!  (This is her seventeenth nomination, and only her third win!)  She’s wearing a golden sheath!  She’s charming and lovely.



Oscar for Best Picture. Tom Cruise presents.  We have to sit through nine! previews.  Mercifully, they’re very short.  Also, they’re very mixed up.  Winner: “The Artist.”  (I started typing that before it was announced.)  Uggie the dog is on the stage, and he’s adorable.  Producer is making speech, and – who cares?  Director M. Hazanavicius takes over.  He thanks Billy Wilder three times over, and I think that’s very nice.


11:38 pm, and Billy Crystal yells, “Good night, everyone!”


So I suppose that’s it for another year.


Not quite as exciting as last year’s Oscars, but . . . .

 

Music video: the Bangles sing "Walk Like an Egyptian"

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There are video slot machines (you can find them in just about any casino) called “Pharaoh’s Fortune,” with a big King Tut wearing sunglasses on top.  This song plays every time you spin the reels.  You get longer selections during bonus rounds.

 

 

So now I associate it with gambling.

 

 

All together now:

 

 

All the old paintings on the tomb
They do the sand dance, don'cha know? 
If they move too quick (oh-way-oh) 
They're falling down like a domino 

 

And the bazaar man by the Nile 
He got the money on a bet 
Gold crocodiles (oh-way-oh) 
They snap their teeth on a cigarette 

 

Foreign types with their hookah pipes sing
Way-oh-way-oh-way-ooo-aaa-ooo -
Walk like an Egyptian.

 

 

 

 


 

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Why Ron Paul should not ever ever be President of the United States of America

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I wrote the first draft of this blog just after the Iowa caucus, and I am revising it after the Florida primary.  The Iowa caucus is something between a state fair and a freakshow; it mostly demonstrates the voting preferences of white evangelical Christians with nothing better to do on a cold Tuesday night in January in Iowa.  The other primaries thus far have also been freakshows, as far as I’m concerned: Gingrich posturing in Florida about a moon colony, Gingrich in South Carolina making a particular point of disrespecting poor people and black people.

 

 

Ron Paul and Rick Santorum both made strong showings back in Iowa.   Santorum I’ll deal with another time.  Right now I just want to say a word about Ron Paul.

 

 

I used to think that, as a libertarian, he was (in the words of Douglas Adams) “mostly harmless.”  He was for the legalization of drugs, for example.  He seemed friendly to women’s rights and gay rights (at least in the abstract.)

 

 

Then, recently, some of the newsletter stuff from the 1990s has been coming to light. 

 


Here is a link to it.  Please read at your leisure.  It is abominable.  It basically rescinds all of the civil rights legislation of the last fifty years. 

 

 

In brief: Ron Paul says that the government has no right to dictate guidelines on hiring.  If you, as an individual, do not see your way clear to hire black people, or women, or Hispanics, or gay people, that is your right.  Those people whom you’ve disadvantaged (blacks, women, Hispanics, gays, et cetera) can just go out and find other employers.

 

 

Do you see where this leads?

 

 

Uh huh. 

 

 

If Citizen X doesn’t like black people and doesn’t want to hire them, for whom would he vote: Ron Paul or Barack Obama?

 

 

Naturally.

 

 

And would Ron Paul welcome his vote?  Naturally he would.  He welcomes all those who share his world-view, for whatever reason.

 

 

If, in some odd alternate universe, Ron Paul actually captures the Republican nomination (which he probably won’t, but I’ve been wrong about things before), how many black people, how many Hispanics, how many women, how many gay people would vote for him?  Not many.

 

 

Ron: we, the American people, do not choose to employ you.  Go find another employer.

 

 

(And if I should be wrong about all this, and he somehow through some reverse miracle climbs into the Presidency: Jesus Buddha Allah Krishna save us, it’s the Mayan calendar 2012 apocalypse after all.)


 

Friday, February 24, 2012

Atheists and why you should avoid talking to them

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I found the most delightful piece of Sunday-school instructional material on Tumblr recently (see illustration above).  It’s a sketch of an atheist – “Mr. Gruff” – drawn as a goat, wearing a bathrobe, holding a cup of coffee.  “Bah!” he says.  “I don’t believe in anything!  I’m staying home on Sunday!”


Most thrilling of all are the instructions given below the illustration.  TELL YOUR PARENTS OR PASTOR IMMEDIATELY, we are told.  This is an advanced case, well beyond a child’s powers of conversion.  Atheists try to turn you away from God’s Word, so stay away from them!


My favorite bit: “Atheists such as crochety old MR. GRUFF think they’ve got it all figured out . . . But then why are they always so sad?”


Well, sometimes (as in my case) they have kidney stones, and sciatica.


Other times (such as right at the moment), we are moderately cheerful. 


I don’t know.  Am I an atheist?  I’m certainly not a Christian. It’s too complicated, and I just don’t believe all that stuff.  I’m not quite a Buddhist, because I haven’t given up all my attachments to the material world.  None of the other world religions hold any interest for me.  (Well, maybe Baha’i or Vedanta.  We’ll see.)  I am partial toward the polytheistic world of Hinduism, with a god for everything and everyone, cheerful and somber and serious as the occasion warrants.  But I wasn’t born to Hinduism, so I can’t really commit to it with any real feeling.


So I guess I’m Mr. Gruff after all.  


C’mon: he’s kind of cute, with his bathrobe and coffee cup.


Even if he is going to hell.­­


Thursday, February 23, 2012

Why I should probably stop trying to talk about sports

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I was never much of a sports fan, so I have a hard time picking up the lingo.  Partner is a diehard sports fan (football, hockey, baseball), and I have picked up some odds and ends from him.  It was also helpful to have a college football player working for me last summer; he had obviously explained the sport to his elderly female relatives, so he knew all the right terms to use to help me understand it. (When I asked him what position he played, he told me he was a linebacker.  When I looked blank, he added helpfully, "I just push people around.")  Also, as I grow older and more wizened-looking, people – especially men my own age – assume that I know all about sports.  And who am I to disappoint them?

 

 

A few weeks ago, a couple of weeks before the Super Bowl, one of the university shuttle drivers hailed me at lunchtime and pulled over and asked: “Who do you like this weekend?

 

I laughed in what I hoped was the correctly rueful tone.  “Well,” I said, “they’d better win.” (By “them,” of course, I meant the New England Patriots, the local favorites.)

 

 

He chuckled and waved.  “It’s gonna be a tough one,” he said.  “I don’t know.”

 

 

He drove off.  I was very pleased with my performance on that one; he’d been a semi-pro player and a football coach, so if I could fool him, I figured I could fool anyone.

 

 

But then this happened:

 

 

The Patriots had just won the AFC championship by three points.  (Partner was ecstatic, naturally.)  After the game, I went down to the health club.  I was checked in by a skinny kid who was staring at the after-game show on the TV over the desk.  “Is everyone happy?” I said.

 

 

He looked at me blankly.  “Why?”

 

 

I gestured up at the TV set.  “The game.”

 

 

He looked up again, still blank.  “The – oh, the game.” 

 

 

I tried one more time.  “Everybody was happy at the end? Everybody cheered?”

 

 

He gave me that simpering grin that you give a gibbering child or a person with an impenetrable accent, and looked away from me. 

 

 

I will never try this again.  I’m obviously still not doing it right.


 

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Madonna

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My goodness, how Madonna has evolved over the years!  “Material Girl.”  “Papa Don’t Preach.”  “Celebration.”  Warren Beatty.  "Sex." Sean Penn.  “Vogue.”  “Truth or Dare.”  Pointy bra. “Like a Virgin.”

 

 

A true original.

 

 

And a true pain in the ass.

 

 

Then she married Guy Ritchie and moved to England, and became, apparently, the Duchess of Absolutely Everything.  Even her accent changed.  (She’s from Michigan, for god’s sake!)

 

 

Now she’s a sophisticate.  She is a director, and a tastemaker.  She is unbearably pompous. She made a fuss last year because someone gave her hydrangeas.  Everyone! knows she hates! hydrangeas.  Then there were some of her comments at the Golden Globes this year: “Foreign films,” she intoned in a Dame Edith Evans voice, “are not foreign to me.”

 

 

Oh, honey, yes they are.

 

 

The Financial Times just reviewed her new directorial attempt, “W. / E.”, about Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII.  They praised the actress who plays Wallis, but described the movie as a “jewelled dustpan.”  (“What?!” my old friend LaRue shrieked at me the other night over drinks.  “You read the Financial Times for the movie reviews?”  Yes I do.  So sue me.)

 

 

Anyway: Madonna depicts Wallis Simpson as a brilliant wonderful intelligent woman, who takes a stupid easily-led man – the Prince of Wales, soon to become King – and enthralls him. 

 

 

Hm.  Is Madonna doing autobiography here?  Not sure.  Probably.

 

 

Haven’t seen the movie.   Prepared to hate it, though.

 

 

Funny: I used to like her so much.


 

 

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Downton Abbey

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I have strenuously avoided writing about “Downton Abbey” before now.  Like many others, I learned about the show after it had begun, and Partner and I started late, but we directly fell under its spell.  We finished watching the second season the other night, and – whew!  Affairs, murder, sudden death, imprisonment, scandal, the Great War, Spanish influenza, amnesia!  I need to lie on my chaise longue for a few moments so that I can catch my breath!

 

 

Seriously, the show’s terrific.  It has everything: a beautiful setting (Downton Abbey is actually Highclere Castle in Hampshire, one of those unbelievably beautiful English country homes that seem only to exist in dreams), a brilliant cast combining fresh faces like Michelle Dockery and Dan Stevens with familiar ones like Maggie Smith and Elizabeth McGovern, and brilliant writing by Julian Fellowes (who also wrote “Gosford Park”).   It’s a pleasure to hear a witty line of dialogue delivered by someone like Maggie Smith, wearing perfect 1920s couture, in a beautiful room full of beautiful furniture.

 

 

I was alive way back in 1971, when “Upstairs Downstairs” debuted on American TV.  It covered much of the same ground as “Downton,” and we were mesmerized by it as well: the serene Bellamy family upstairs, the turbulent servants’ quarters downstairs.  It even used a lot of the same plotlines (or is it the other way around?): relationships between the gentry and the servants, the Titanic, the Great War . . .

 

 

Oh, who cares?  (Well, maybe Jean Marsh cares.  She worked for a long time to bring about a new version of “Upstairs Downstairs,” which came out at almost exactly the same time as “Downton Abbey.”  “Downton” blew her show away.  She was publicly bitter about this, and I don’t blame her; it must have been a great blow.)  But, you see, “Downton” has such spectacular production values: the scenery, the sets, the cast.  And no one except dinosaurs like me remembers “Upstairs, Downstairs.”

 

 

This is not to say that “Downton” is perfect.  There was, in the second season, a perfectly ridiculous plot concerning amnesia, which reminded me of something out of “Guiding Light” or “Days of our Lives.”  It only lasted a single episode, thank god, but it was pretty ridiculous.  Also there have been some less-than-satisfactory character shifts; the precise and efficient Cousin Isabel (Penelope Wilton), who was such a perfect antagonist for the stuffy Lady Violet (Maggie Smith) in the first season, became insufferable in the second season.   (And, speaking personally, I could have lived perfectly happily without seeing Bates (Brendan Coyle) and Anna (Joanne Froggatt) in bed together after their wedding; they’re perfectly nice people, and I’m all for them, but they’re a little on the pale and pudgy side when they’re unclothed.)

 

 

New York magazine did the most beautiful set of paper dolls of some of the characters recently.  Their readers howled for more: they want the whole cast, the house, the car, the dog!

 

 

I think that would be just fine.

 

 

(I hear, in season three, we’re going to meet the American grandmother of the family, Lady Cora’s mother, Martha Levinson, played by Shirley Maclaine.)

 

 

(Levinson? Jewish? Lady Cora’s Jewish? Oh my.  It will be difficult to wait this one out. Lady Violet will have a fit.)

 

 

In the meantime: if you haven’t seen the show, seek it out.  You are in for a treat.

 

 

Tell them Mr. Pamuk sent you.


 

 

Monday, February 20, 2012

For Presidents' Day: "Mark Twain as a Presidential Candidate"

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This little gem from the Library of America came along in my email yesterday morning, just in time for the Presidents’ Day holiday.  I have to admit that Mark Twain is not my favorite writer, but this piece is pretty funny; it is brief, and savage, and it has not aged a bit since it was written in 1879.

 

 

 

I have pretty much made up my mind to run for President. What the country wants is a candidate who cannot be injured by investigation of his past history, so that the enemies of the party will be unable to rake up anything against him that nobody ever heard of before. If you know the worst about a candidate, to begin with, every attempt to spring things on him will be checkmated. Now I am going to enter the field with an open record. I am going to own up in advance to all the wickedness I have done, and if any Congressional committee is disposed to prowl around my biography in the hope of discovering any dark and deadly deed that I have secreted, why—let it prowl.

 

 

 

In the first place, I admit that I treed a rheumatic grandfather of mine in the winter of 1850. He was old and inexpert in climbing trees, but with the heartless brutality that is char­acteristic of me I ran him out of the front door in his night-shirt at the point of a shotgun, and caused him to bowl up a maple tree, where he remained all night, while I emptied shot into his legs. I did this because he snored. I will do it again if I ever have another grandfather. I am as inhuman now as I was in 1850. I candidly acknowledge that I ran away at the battle of Gettysburg. My friends have tried to smooth over this fact by asserting that I did so for the purpose of imitating Wash­ington, who went into the woods at Valley Forge for the purpose of saying his prayers. It was a miserable subterfuge. I struck out in a straight line for the Tropic of Cancer because I was scared. I wanted my country saved, but I preferred to have somebody else save it. I entertain that preference yet. If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon’s mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me to be Napoleonic in its grandeur.

 

 

My financial views are of the most decided character, but they are not likely, perhaps, to increase my popularity with the advocates of inflation. I do not insist upon the special supremacy of rag money or hard money. The great funda­mental principle of my life is to take any kind I can get.

 

 

The rumor that I buried a dead aunt under my grapevine was correct. The vine needed fertilizing, my aunt had to be buried, and I dedicated her to this high purpose. Does that unfit me for the Presidency? The Constitution of our country does not say so. No other citizen was ever considered unworthy of this office because he enriched his grapevines with his dead relatives. Why should I be selected as the first victim of an absurd prejudice?

 

 

I admit also that I am not a friend of the poor man. I regard the poor man, in his present condition, as so much wasted raw material. Cut up and properly canned, he might be made useful to fatten the natives of the cannibal islands and to improve our export trade with that region. I shall recom­mend legislation upon the subject in my first message. My campaign cry will be: “Desiccate the poor workingman; stuff him into sausages.”

 

 

These are about the worst parts of my record. On them I come before the country. If my country don’t want me, I will go back again. But I recommend myself as a safe man—a man who starts from the basis of total depravity and proposes to be fiendish to the last.

 

 



Sunday, February 19, 2012

For Sunday: Lady Gaga sings "Bad Romance"

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I cannot believe I haven’t posted this video here before.  It is spectacular.

 

 

Ladies and gentlemen: Lady Gaga singing (and performing, in multifarious ways) the song “Bad Romance.”

 

 

 


 

 

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Home remedies for kidney stones

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Ever since my diagnosis with kidney stones, I have been a very good boy.  I drink coffee only until noon each day, and water thereafter.  I have stopped drinking Coca-Cola altogether, as one of the websites I consulted recommended discontinuing “dark beverages.” 

 

 

And then there are the home remedies.

 

 

Here’s one: six cans of Coca-Cola, twenty minutes apart.  Then puree one can of asparagus and drink the result, followed with two large glasses of water.

 

 

One of the cures recommends asparagus all by itself.

 

 

The funniest of all recommends kidney beans.  This is a great example of sympathetic magic: if a plant resembles a body part, it must be good for the health of that body part.  (See “liverwort” and “lungwort” for further examples of this.)

 

 

Here’s the thing: kidney stones hurt.  So I am tempted to try all of the above silly cures (which seem to be at least non-life-threatening), just to see if they’ll work.

 

 

But I know they won’t!  (The kidney-bean one especially.)

 

 

And the simple course recommended by my doctor – hydration, i.e. drinking lots more water than I had in the past – seems to be working, because the pain is considerably less than before.

 

 

But if the pain gets worse again, I may well try the six-Coca-Colas-and-a-can-of-asparagus cure.

 

 

It can’t possibly kill me. And who knows?  It might work.

 

 

(But probably not.)


 

Friday, February 17, 2012

Why I should learn to swim

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I don’t think anyone in my family really knows how to swim.  I think my brother Leonard can swim a little, but that’s it.

 

 

We didn’t have a pool when I was a kid.  Nor did we live near placid clean bodies of water.  The local swimmin’ holes – the Lewis River, the Columbia River, Battle Ground Lake – were either too brisk or rocky for swimming, or big bowls of tepid water and bacteria. 

 

 

During Peace Corps training in Puerto Rico, I tried to learn.  There were fifteen of us in the training group: twelve other guys going to Morocco, and two women going to the Turks and Caicos Islands.  One of the women was a very nice happy lesbian and didn’t care about the guys at all, except as friends; the other was straight and moderately attractive and was being peppered on all sides by offers of sexual congress from fellow trainees.  She and I liked each other, and I think she found my company peaceful, as I wasn’t trying to get her into bed.  Anyway, she tried to teach me to swim in the Caribbean, with the barracudas darting around our feet, and the straight guys in our group were very envious of me as I was being held in the water by my ladyfriend.

 

 

But I can’t really swim, to this day.  (They tried to teach me to float.  Depending on what I happen to be wearing on any particular day, I may be able to float.)

 

 

Years ago, when I was a kid, my family went to Copalis, Washington, to dig clams and play on the beach.  I was left alone to play.  Apparently the tide came in very rapidly.  I remember (vividly) playing in the sand.  I remember the water coming in rapidly, but I wasn’t worried about it.  Then I heard screaming, and my family ran through the rapidly-deepening water and scooped me up – and then I was concerned. 

 

 

My memory is in black-and-white, but very sharp.  I wasn’t scared until I heard the screams and the people running toward me.

 

 

Ah well. Here I am today.

 

 

Let the chips fall where they may, kids. 

 

 

Here’s to another hundred years of foolish heedless living.

 


 

 

Thursday, February 16, 2012

RuPaul's Drag Race, season four

Aaa


I just need to check in with you on the new season (Season Four!) of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

 

 

Okay.  You know I love it, and I would love it even if it were awful.  So read on.

 

 

This season is different, in a lot of ways (and I’m only writing this after the third episode!).  The contestants are edgier, less pretty. Ru is exploring drag, I think; he’s exploring what it says about culture in general.  He mixes it up gloriously.  One of the celebrity judges on the first episode was the wonderful and very funny Elvira, Mistress of the Dark; on episode two we had two basketball players, Rick Fox and John Salley.  What does that say about drag and popular culture, to have two straight athletes judge a drag-queen show?

 

 

One of the contestants this season uses a man’s name for a drag name: Chad Michaels.  One of the contestants is a skinny queen with a “meth look,” with the piquant name of Sharon Needles.  We have Latrice Royale, a gigantic (and very nice) black man who’s been in prison.  We have Madame LaQueer, and you really have to be a gay man over fifty to understand how the reclamation of the word “queer” has been refreshing.  Ten years ago I had trouble listening to younger gay men use the word “queer”; now I think it’s wonderful.

 

 

A friend has told me that he doesn’t know if he likes this season yet or not.  Too early to tell, I told him.  But you know what else?  The winner of Season One, the very beautiful Bebe Zahara Benet, won $20,000.  This season’s winner will take home $100,000. 

 

 

Does the increase in the prize money tell you anything?

 

 

RuPaul is, in his very sneaky way, doing two things at once.  He is exploring drag and its relationship with popular culture; he is also creating a funny messy all-over-the-place reality show that anyone can watch, and that people (and sponsors!) are paying attention to.

 

 

And, ladies and gentlemen, that takes a lot of brains and skill.

 

 

And now it’s time to lip sync for your life!


 

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

"We don't have a TV"

Anti-tv


I was talking to a new guy in the office the other day. I said: “Do you watch ‘The Simpsons’?”  And he said: “Oh, we don’t have a TV.”

 

 

I swear, it’s like saying “We don’t have electricity,” or “We haven’t put in one of those newfangled flush toilets yet.”

 

 

It happens at least a couple of times a year: someone telling me that he/she doesn’t have a TV, or that he/she doesn’t watch TV at all.  (At least this guy hedged and admitted that his family had Internet access, which means that Hulu and all kinds of other things are probably already polluting his kids’ minds.)

 

 

But I still feel that I’m been judged and found wanting.

 

 

I feel like someone in ancient Rome asking my neighbor if he’s going to the big Bacchus thing next week, and he says gravely: “Oh no.  We believe in Jesus now.” 

 

 

Don’t you just want to take that Christian neighbor to that Bacchus thing and offer him up as a sacrifice?

 

 

Well, hm, no one is pure these days, there’s that consolation.  This guy admitted that his kids probably watch TV on their computers.  A few years ago, a TV-hating friend of mine finally bought a TV, but only watched VCR movies (which she got from the local public library) on it.  I can tell you that, by now, she has certainly moved on, and I’m sure she’s watching “The Good Wife” as I’m writing this.

 

 

“Television,” after all, is no longer a discrete medium.  It’s just a delivery system, like a syringe.  You can absorb the sweet poison of your choice – “The Good Wife,” “NCIS,” “Jersey Shore,” “Bad Girls” – in so many other ways: mobile, laptop, tablet.

 

 

Televison sets seem so inert now.  You have to hook things up to them to make them interesting: a cable box at least, a Roku unit, a Wii, an Xbox, a DVR.  Otherwise, you (with your rabbit ears and digital converter box) will be stuck with four fuzzy local broadcast channels, just like when I was a kid.  (Well, we had five – the three networks, a Portland independent station, and PBS – but the PBS station had lots of static, and my mother was convinced that static ruined the TV set, so I could only watch it when she wasn’t paying attention.)

 

 

TV haters: come out of the closet!

 

 

We know you’re watching something!

 

 

Just admit it!


 

 

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

For Valentine's Day: Paul McCartney sings "Martha My Dear"

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I couldn’t think of anything appropriate for today.

 

 

Then I thought of this: Paul McCartney’s love song to his sheepdog Martha.

 

 

Hold your hand out, you silly girl; see what you’ve done . . .

 

 

Happy Valentine’s Day.

 

09_Track_9.mp3 Listen on Posterous

 


Monday, February 13, 2012

Movie review: "The Man Who Came To Dinner"

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Of the making of movies there is no end.  I used to think it was possible to see them all, every single one of them.  Of course, that was back in the 1970s, and there were a lot fewer movies back then.  Since then – well, the mind boggles.  I have given up on that particular life goal.

 

 

But there are so many good movies back in the vaults!

 

 

That’s why I treasure TCM.  They trot them out, the good and the bad and the obscure.  They are remarkably judgment-free.  I owe them so much, for seeing gems like “Sweet Smell of Success,” and “Fanny,” and “The Heiress.”

 

 

Also, just recently, for the very first time in my life, “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

 

 

It’s a filmization of a successful Kaufman/Hart play which they wrote (very obviously) about their friend Alexander Woolcott, a radio personality who had a huge personality but who was also completely insufferable.  Sheridan Whiteside (the Woolcott character) is touring the Midwest when he gets (mildly) injured and has to spend December holed up with a nouveau-riche Ohio family, and naturally he takes over the whole house and starts interfering in everything.   The cast is rich with talent: Bette Davis as his fed-up secretary, the curvy Ann Sheridan as his bitchy actress friend, Jimmy Durante as Harpo Marx.

 

 

 

But the great revelation here is the brilliant Monty Woolley.

 

 

Woolley was a stage actor who’d done the role on Broadway; when Hollywood took on the project, naturally they wanted someone famous, but once they’d signed enough high-powered talent like Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan, they deigned to allow Master Wooley to keep his leading role.

 

 

He is amazing.  He is evil and dynamic.  He is Santa and Satan at the same time.  His eyes gleam demonically, and he bares his teeth in the most alarming way.  He spends most of the movie in a wheelchair, but you are constantly terrified that he’s going to leap up and beat the hell out of people.  He uses “repulsive” and “gruesome” as pet names (as, reportedly, did Woolcott).  He ends up being the hero of the day, solving everyone’s problems (and one really wonders if Woolcott was as nice as that). 

 

 

One of my favorite lines: his nurse, the terrified Mary Wickes, his nurse, sees him eating candy and tells him it’s not good for him.   His response: “My great-aunt Jennifer ate a box of candy a day for her entire life.  She lived to be one hundred and two, and three days after she died, she looked better than you do now.”

 

 

(Postscript: one of my college friends just wrote me a nice New Year’s note to say that he’d just seen this movie on television.  “And,” he said, “Sheridan Whiteside always reminds me of you.”)

 

 

(I was amazed, and startled, and very very flattered.)


 

 

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Bananaland

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I discovered a nice sansevieria plant in the garbage at work recently.  I rescued it and repotted it and put it in my window; then I looked online to see how best to take care of it.  On one particular website I found these two gems: “Likes bright sunlight,” and “Keep out of bright sunlight.”

 

 

Welcome to Bananaland.

 

 

I first learned about Bananaland from my friend Joanne, when we were both in graduate school.  She was doing philosophy, I was doing Italian literature.  “What did you cover today?” I asked her one day.

 

 

“Well,” she said, “we learned about Bananaland.”

 

 

“Do tell,” I said.

 

 

“In Bananaland,” she said, “two things are true: ‘all chairs are green’ and ‘no chairs are green.’”

 

 

“Are there no chairs at all?” I asked, puzzled.

 

 

“No,” she said.  “That’s the thing.  It’s possible to have two statements that clash with one another.”  She grimaced.  “It’s a paradox.”

 

 

It happens almost every day.  Sometimes I see a store with both an OPEN and CLOSED signs displayed, and think: Welcome to Bananaland.  How about at the supermarket?  One salad dressing for $1.79, two for $4.99.  How about street signs?  Those are the commonest Bananaland combos of all: MERGE and DO NOT ENTER on the same signpost, or NO PARKING and PARKING 6:00AM – 9:00PM ONLY. 

 

 

In Bananaland, everything is permitted without argument.  You can be blonde and brunette at the same time, tall and short, fat and skinny. 

 

 

I think the entire crazy world may be Bananaland.

 

 

It’s a lot of fun, actually.

 

 

The sansevieria is thriving in my office window, by the way.  I’m giving it a lot of direct indirect light, and watering it frequently once a week. 

 

 

I expect a nice crop of bananas any day now.


 

 

Friday, February 10, 2012

The joy of soy

Soy-milk-estrogen


Normally I buy a pint of milk once every two weeks.  I use maybe half of it, on cereal and in occasional baking/cooking projects.  Then I buy a new one and throw the old one away.  Expensive and wasteful.  But what’s to be done?

 

 

Well, there’s soy milk, naturally.  And cashew milk, and almond milk, and all kinds of other things.

 

 

I tried soy milk about two years ago.  I was suspicious of it; I was prepared for it to taste weedy and green and wild, not like milk at all, but like edamame, about which I am not crazy.  And, naturally, I conned myself into thinking it did taste like that, and so it fulfilled my worst expectations.

 

 

But it kept preying on my mind.  So, a few months ago, I bought two waxed-paper cartons of WestSoy soy milk, one vanilla-flavored (which sounded mostly innocuous and less like edamame), the other plain. 

 

 

I find that I like them both.  The vanilla soy milk is delicious on cereal – better than regular milk.  The regular soy milk is also not bad. 

 

 

Soy milk lasts a lot longer in the fridge than regular milk.  You have to shake it up before you use it, but I don’t have a problem with that.  And it’s faintly sweet (at least the WestSoy product is), which is pleasant.  I want to see how it works in baking projects, and mashed potatoes, and sauces, and things like that. Then we’ll see.   (It’s also – supposedly – packed with some botanical equivalent to estrogen, so I will be watching to see if it takes away any of my intense masculinity.)

 

 

My brother-in-law Dwight was a dairy farmer for years.  He and my sister used to leave little nasty notes at restaurants when they were served margarine instead of butter.

 

 

I can only imagine what Dwight might think of soy milk.

 

 

But, hey, you gotta live a little.


 

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Kidney stones

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Gather round, children.  Momma has some pretty awful news.

 

 

She has a kidney stone.

 

 

I’ve suspected this for some time, actually.  I’ve suffered with a dull ache in my lower back for years, centralized right around where I know my kidney to be.  My doctor insisted I was mistaken, my urine tests were clear, it was just a muscle cramp, blah blah blah.

 

 

Well, now we have X-ray confirmation.

 

 

Eh.  It’s a small stone, apparently, which is why I am not rolling on the floor in agony.  There’s no real treatment, except to increase fluid intake and try to avoid certain foods.  Beer.  Broccoli.  Beets.  Beans.  Bran, for god’s sake!  And those are only the Bs.  (Not to mention that I have increased my consumption of beans and broccoli and bran over the past few years, because they were supposed to be healthy for me.  Go figure.)

 

I looked up the condition online.  Lots of famous people have suffered with kidney stones: Napoleon, Giovanni Gabrieli, Michel de Montaigne, Michelangelo, Billy Graham, Lyndon Johnson.  I’m not sure why this matters, but it makes me feel a little better about the whole thing. (Especially Gabrieli and Montaigne.)

 

 

I do not intend to give up my beloved beans and broccoli and bran, not altogether.  So I am resigned to drinking lots and lots of water.  Lots and lots and lots of water.

 

 

Which reminds me of a funny story:

 

 

In Morocco, we drank mineral water exclusively.  There were three brands: Sidi Harazem and Sidi Ali, which were both flat, and Oulmes, which was sparkling.  As an aesthete, I preferred Oulmes, because the bottles were prettier. 

 

 

One day I was idling in a café with my British friend Austin and reading the legend on the Oulmes bottle.  “Oulmes is naturally carbonated,” I read, “and radioactive –“

 

 

I stopped.  Austin laughed.  “Didn’t you know that?” he said. "The water comes from a hot spring. It’s radioactive lithium, I think.  A friend of mine used to drink the stuff all the time.  He developed kidney stones, and they showed up beautifully on the scans, because they were radioactive too.”

 

 

(I notice, by the way, that the Oulmes website does not mention this.  Hm.  They’re marketing in Europe now.  I wonder if they’re just lying, or if they’re actually bottling non-radioactive water.  Who can say?)

 

 

So, you see, things could be worse.

 

 

At least my kidney stone isn’t radioactive.


 

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Super Bowl XLVI

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As you are probably aware, New England lost the Super Bowl last weekend.

 

 

Partner retreated into the other room immediately after the end of the game. He does not like losing.  He is a born New Englander, and he is used to losing, but he prefers to win.  The Red Sox have finally broken their losing streak – twice over the last decade - and the Bruins won the Stanley Cup just last year, and the Patriots have won the Super Bowl three times.

 

 

But not this year.

 

 

Here’s the thing: New England teams are not terribly attractive to the rest of the nation.  When the Patriots last lost the Super Bowl, the Onion headlined: “Patriots' Season Perfect For Rest Of Nation.”

 

 

We are hated, we know.  When our teams lose, we have to put up with a lot of gloating by fans of the other teams, who now feel that their hatred is justified.

 

 

And now we sulk in defeat.

 

 

But you just wait!  We’ll be back.

 

 

And as a recent issue of the Onion so cleverly put it, in a piece written just before the playoffs: “NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS: Opponents may think they're not what they were when they were younger, but have they considered Tom Brady might get even more handsome with gray hair?”

 

 

(He will, you know.)



Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Salt

Download


Food has gotten very fancy

 

 

My mother never in her life used pure vanilla extract; imitation vanilla extract was good enough for her.  But nowadays?  If you’re not using pure vanilla extract – and Madagascar vanilla at that – you’d better just slit your throat.

 

 

(Unless, of course, you purchase fresh vanilla beans and scrape the seeds into your project.  In this case, we will grudgingly allow you to continue.)

 

 

Remember when Apollonia and I were arguing over oils, and vinegars?  Olive oil, vegetable oil, sesame oil, walnut oil, almond oil.  Balsamic vinegar, white vinegar, cider vinegar –

 

 

And now: salt.

 

 

Salt is interesting.  Mom used Morton’s exclusively: “When it rains, it pours.”  Nowadays, of course, we know that there are so many interesting Salts of the World: the grey salt they harvest on the Ile de Re in France, the pink salt from the Himalayas.

 

 

I have purchased both of these.

 

 

They both taste – mneh – like salt. 

 

 

It would be lovely to pretend that they are Ubersalzen, that they have magical flavors not possessed by other salts. 

 

 

It wouldn’t be true.  They are – um – salty.

 

 

But the Ile de Re salt is grey, and is raked up from the sand, from the ocean, by people in France!

 

 

And the Himalayan salt is up in the mountains, from an ocean that dried up over 200 million years ago! 

 

 

And it’s pink!

 

 

(Well, it might be from Pakistan.  Not really from the Himalayas.)

 

 

(And I paid $1.99 – plus tax – for two ounces of the Himalayan salt.  That’s roughly $16/pound.  Mighty steep!)

 

 

It’s not the (salty) taste nor the packaging: it’s the mental imagery.  It’s the lovely image of those people on l’Ile de Re in their funny hats, raking salt on the seashore, and the quiet chilly bed of pink! salt lying so high up in the Himalayas.

 

 

I had some pink Himalayan salt on my mashed potatoes this evening.  It was spectacular.  It was completely different from any other condiment I might have used.

 

 

Who are you to deny it?


 

Monday, February 6, 2012

The painting over the sofa

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I was reading a little vignette about a writer I’d never heard of, Nathan Englander, in the Financial Times a few days ago.  He is evidently an up-and-coming genius of 42.

 

 

I have decided that I don’t like him.

 

 

The FT often does something like the Proust questionnaire with certain celebrities.  They ask them questions from a list: What’s your favorite virtue?  What do you most dislike about yourself? If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?  (New York Magazine does it, James Lipton does it on “Inside the Actors Studio,” everyone does it.  If the interviewee is intelligent or witty or (insh’allah) both, the results can be a lot of fun.  If not, it can be excruciating.)

 

 

Mister Englander tends toward the excruciating.  His answers are leaden and pompous: he mentions that he finds writing “all-consuming” in the same breath that he claims to take exactly 49 minutes to brush his teeth.  He is trying too hard.

 

 

This answer especially brought me up short:

 

 

If you could own any painting, what would it be?

“Guernica.”  I remember being taken to say goodbye to it in New York by my mum.

 

 

Dear Jesus.  Can you imagine “Guernica” hanging over your sofa?  How charming to come home after a hard day of work and sit down in the living room in front of a Cubist painting of lightbulbs and corpses and mutilated cattle.

 

 

I’d find it a little unnerving.

 

 

I asked myself the same question, and the answer came to me easily.  And the painting lives right now the road from me, too.

 

 

About ten blocks away from our apartment, in the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, hangs a painting by a Dutch landscapist named Salomon van Ruysdael called “The Ferry Boat.”  It was painted in 1645, and it looks as fresh today as it ever did.  I always spend a few minutes with it when we visit the RISD Museum.

 

 

The above image doesn’t capture all of the detail, but it will give you the general impression.  First: the soft colors, especially the pale blue sky and drifting dark clouds, and the dark green foliage, and the gray water.  Then the composition: the trees leaning right, the clouds leaning left, the church in the center (or just off-center) pointing straight up, the sailboats just a little askew.

 

 

It is perfect peace.  It is a country morning, and the day will be mostly sunny; the clouds are a little dark, so it might rain a bit later, but it will certainly clear up again.

 

 

Now this part you’ll have to take on faith.  You can’t really see the faces of the people on shore or on the ferryboat, but if you could, they would surprise you: they are grotesque little figures, some of them grimacing and leering.  The first time I took a really close look in the museum, I nearly jumped back.

 

 

I love the painting even more for that.  It’s perfectly serene, an ideal landscape for over the sofa.  And it has hidden secrets that it only reveals if you look at it closely.

 

 

And, if I really worked at it, I could probably steal it and bring it home.

 

 

Perfect.


 

 

Sunday, February 5, 2012

For Sunday: "Mad World," by Tears For Fears

Mad_world_tears_for_fears


This is a necessary song.  I never heard it before a few years ago, and I am desperately sorry I hadn’t heard it earlier; it’s been around since the 1980s.  It rose to prominence after being featured in the movie “Donnie Darko,” apparently.  Well, hell, who cares.  It’s a great song.  And this is a great (and creepy) little video. 

 

 

The dancing!  The skinny man clutching the window pane!  The birthday party!

 

 

Kids: it’s a mad world.