This isn’t the original, but it’ll do.
Happy Halloween!
And whatever did happen to the Transylvania Twist?
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Travel tips from Apollonia
My colleague Apollonia has been to Europe many times over the past few years (she has family in Italy), so naturally I sought her advice before our recent trip to France.
She gave me ten euro in bills and coins, and some travel tips.
Here are the tips, and some commentary:
#1: “Wear this scapular on the plane. I wear it when I fly. It couldn’t hurt. You don’t want anything to happen, do you?”
No, of course I don’t want anything to happen. I wore the scapular on the flight from Boston to Paris, and sure enough, nothing happened. Then, as a control experiment, I carried it in my hand luggage on the return trip. Nothing happened then either. (Actually, the return trip was faster and easier than the away trip.)
#2: “You’ll need the change I’m giving you. You have to pay to go to the bathroom, you know.”
Only partially true. Some bathrooms have an attendant (whom the French call, charmingly, “Madame Pipi”) who collects her fifty cents as you go in. Some have an honor system: a little box outside the bathroom into which you can drop a few coins. Many are free altogether (we encountered many of these). Some, interestingly, are self-cleaning. Here’s how they work: you put in your money (usually thirty cents) and the door unlocks. You do your business and leave. After the door closes behind you, an infernal device sprays the toilet – and the whole room – with water and disinfectant.
(At the Deauville train station, an elderly couple taught us how to get around this: you pay your thirty cents, use the facilities, exit – but you don’t quite close the door. Your accomplice / partner dashes in while you hold the door, and voila! Free bathroom!)
(Of course, if you were to let the door close while your friend was in the bathroom, he’d get a blinding faceful of disinfectant.)
(Which would be very funny.)
#3: “Versailles was filthy. There were dust bunnies under the furniture. All the glass surfaces in the Hall of Mirrors were dirty. It was worse than Nazi Germany in there.”
Okay, I didn’t see any dust bunnies in Versailles. The mirrors are plenty warped, but – hey – they’re over three hundred years old.
As for Nazi Germany, here’s Partner’s comment:
“I used the bathroom in the Visitor’s Center in Honfleur. It smelled worse than a barn in there. I still have the stink in my nose. Please tell Apollonia that, if she wants to experience Nazi Germany, she should go to Honfleur and give that bathroom a try.”
Travel is so broadening, isn’t it?
Monday, October 29, 2012
Montmartre
Our very first day in Paris – though we were both still deathly weary from the plane flight – we went, on foot, up into Montmartre.
(This seemed appropriate to me, since my favorite composer, Erik Satie, used to walk back and forth between le Chat Noir (the Montmartre bar in which he worked as a cabaret pianist) and his home in Arcueil (south of Paris) every day. He drank his way from bar to bar on both trips, and he carried a hammer in his pocket, just in case he was attacked on the way.)
So we climbed Montmartre. It was a brilliantly sunny early-autumn day. Partner knew the way, as he’d visited it several times on Google Earth, and he amazed me; he knew exactly which streets to take.
We ended up in front of Satie’s house on the Rue Cortot:
Next door is the Musee de Montmartre. It is a huge rambling old house, in which Renoir worked, and Suzanne Valadon and Maurice Utrillo lived, and Aristide Bruant, and many others.
It is beautiful. All of Paris is laid out at your feet. Look:
Partly we were still dazed and jet-lagged. But partly also we were wandering in an earthly paradise. If I didn’t have a photographic record of it, I’d swear it was a dream.
Two of my friends in Tunis used to call me “Hajj” as a joke; it’s the title of respect given to a man who’s visited the Holy Sites in Mecca.
Well, I’ve earned the title, because Montmartre is my Holy Land.
But don’t call me Hajj.
Call me Monsieur Hajj.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
For Sunday: Plastic Bertrand sings "Ca plane pour moi"
Long ago, in the late 1970s / early 1980s, a friend of mine used to sing this song incessantly. It drove me mad.
Now I kind of like it.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Hurricane Sandy
There’s yet another bizarre unseasonable hurricane headed our way: Hurricane Sandy. (“Sandy!” snorted Apollonia when I showed her the NOAA chart the other day. “And look! There’s Hurricane Tony in the mid-Atlantic! Sandy and Tony! What is this, an Italian wedding?”)
Sandy is churning its way up the coast as we speak. Predictions show it veering inland somewhere near Long Island on Monday or Tuesday. It could bring Rhode Island high winds, and drenching rain, and even snow!
I am philosophical about this. I don’t much care. It’s a shame, though; Monday’s the office Halloween party, when staff members bring their kids to the office, and they trick-or-treat down the halls, and we give candy (or not). It’s a nice system; people who don’t like it just make a point of being absent, or putting a bowl of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on their doorsteps. Some of us dress up. I usually just wear my skull necklace; it’s one of the few times during the year that I can wear something religious and get away with it.
I have come almost to enjoy this particular party. I like seeing the kids (even the kids who are just a wee bit too old for this) go from door to door; I get a kick out of it. Last year one of the athletics staff patrolled the hallway wearing a bear mascot outfit; I nearly died laughing when I saw him.
I would hate it if the hurricane deprived me of innocent pleasures like these.
So, Hurricane Sandy, go away. Come again some other day.
(And you Rhode Islanders: go out and buy bread and milk, and make it snappy!)
Friday, October 26, 2012
Les Maisons Satie, in Honfleur
Erik Satie, one of my favorite composers, was born in Honfleur, on the coast of Normandy, in 1866. His birthplace has been transformed into a –
A what?
Not really a museum. Not really a performance space.
A happening.
Satie was an oddball: a medievalist, a surrealist, an independent. He wrote his odd little pieces of music while working as a cabaret pianist. He wrote pieces called “Dessicated Embryos” and “Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear” and “Next-to-Last Thoughts.” He was probably at least a little mentally ill. He died of acute cirrhosis (too much bourbon and absinthe) in 1925.
The good people of Honfleur have transformed his place of birth into a kind of performance / representation of Satie’s music. In one of the first rooms, you encounter a six-foot-tall pear, slowly flapping gigantic albatross wings. There’s a room of shadow puppets and cutouts. There is – outrageously, unexpectedly – a carousel, which you are invited to ride. I mounted one of the bizarre-looking bicycle-creatures and began to pedal, and the mechanism activated itself, and a cabaret piece of Satie’s – “Le Picadilly” – began to play, and the carousel opened up, brandishing peculiar hybrid musical instruments: shoe-trumpets, umbrella-trombones. An inscription on the wall says (in part): “It won’t hurt you to be ridiculous. And remember: Satie is watching you.”
Then there’s the white room: white walls, white benches, and a white player piano. The piano, eerily, plays one Satie score after another:
Finally, you enter a small movie theater. You’re greeted by Satie himself – a voice from an empty armchair. He narrates a film showing scenes from some of his late ballets – “Parade,” “Mercure,” “Relache.” I knew the music to all three, but I’d never seen the dancing; it was beautiful and odd and otherworldly. Picasso designed the costumes and sets for “Parade,” and it shows: the circus managers who open each scene wear bizarre cubist outfits that look completely alien.
I was idiotically happy through the whole museum.
Here’s a video that gives you a nice impression of the place, through the eyes of an excited child:
My dears, do yourselves the favor of a lifetime, and visit Normandy. Sample the cheese and the fish. See the churches, and the villages.
And visit the house of Monsieur Satie in Honfleur, and ride the carousel.
It won’t hurt you to be ridiculous once in a while.
And remember: Satie is watching you.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
RuPaul's All-Star Drag Race 2012
I am only half alive when RuPaul isn’t on the air. I have barely survived over the past few months, eating flavorless food and breathing stale air.
But all that changed on Monday night.
Ru’s back, bitches!
This season is different: Ru has brought back twelve of the top queens from the past seasons. We have Nina Flowers, and Pandora Boxx, and Shannel! We have Yara Sofia, and Manila Luzon, and Latrice Royale!
Naturally I have my favorites. I love Manila (though I notice many of the queens on the show aren’t crazy about her; I suspect she’s pretty high-intensity in person). And Chad Michaels is a consummate professional, and I never before realized how very beautiful (both as a man and as a woman) Shannel is. And Nina Flowers is as funny and energetic and engaging as ever, and Latrice is herself (as always).
I’m not a drag queen myself; I have no impulse to dress as a woman. (I only wish I had that much fashion sense.) But I love the energy, and commitment, and bravery that the queens on the show have. I love their humor. I actually think I learn a little something about color and design when I watch them put their outfits together. So I suppose this counts as educational television too.
Also, I think there’s a deeper subtext here, about performance as a natural human act. Don’t we all construct characters and perform them for other people? Don’t you portray one person on the job and another at home? Don’t you act differently with your family than you do with your friends?
I thought so. Me too.
So: if you’re going to create yourself as a character, make yourself a memorable character, or a beautiful character. Or (preferably) both.
There’s a moment in the Mahabharata when Yudisthira, a prince in exile, is sent into exile with his four brothers. By the terms of a wager they’ve made (and lost), they must spend a year in hiding. Yudisthira asks his father, the god Dharma, what to do. And Dharma says: “Let your disguise be guided by your most secret desire.”
So Yudisthira, a gambler, becomes a teacher of gambling. His brother Bhima, a glutton, becomes a cook.
And their brother Arjuna, the greatest and most powerful warrior in India, becomes a woman.
And he goes on, after exile, to win the war.
You go, girl!
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Theater review: "The Winter's Tale," Providence, October 2012
I saw last week that Brown/Trinity was going to stage Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” downtown, in the Pell/Chafee Center. I bought tickets immediately.
“The Winter’s Tale” isn’t staged very often. It is an odd play, which Shakespeare most likely wrote late in life. It’s about the king of Sicily, Leontes, who becomes irrationally jealous of his wife Hermione, who (he’s completely sure) is having an affair with his best friend King Polyxenes of Bavaria. He tries to kill his friend the king, unsuccessfully; he imprisons his (pregnant) queen; he has his little son sent away.
The Oracle of Delphi tells him that he’s wrong about everything. He erupts into a rage, and then his wife dies, and his son. Unrepentant, he sends his newborn daughter to be eaten by wild animals.
One of his courtiers takes the baby girl to “the seacoast of Bohemia” (there ain’t no such place). He abandons her there, and is then (in Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction) “pursued by a bear,” who kills him.
The play’s last two acts are about redemption. The wife, Hermione, lives, and so does the baby girl. The son of the King of Bohemia marries the daughter of the King of Sicily. And so on.
It is sweet, and bittersweet.
This production was lots of fun. The sets were minimal: some sheets, a toy ship. A few of the actors are worth mention: Elise LeBreton, a dignified Hermione; Catherine Dupont, a wonderful Emilia; Ben Grills, a funny / dignified Shepherd; Mark Larson, a very funny Clown; and Zdenko Martin, a convincingly roguish Autolycus.
At the end of part one – “exit, pursued by a bear” – there was a whole chorus line of bears, performing a very athletic dance number. Then they ran up into the audience, and one of them stuck her bear-masked face into my face and growled, and I laughed like hell.
Then, at the beginning of Part II, after the intermission, the minstrel / scoundrel Autolycus came onstage, wearing a hat that looked just like the one I bought two weeks ago on Montmartre.
He’d taken it from under my seat. He came up into the audience after his musical number and returned it to me, very sweetly, and told me to be more careful in future.
Imagine! My hat’s a Shakepearean actor!
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
French as she is spoke
A long time ago – in the 1980s – I spoke French pretty well. I got a Foreign Service score of 4, which means that I could converse on a university level with people; I still had an accent, however.
And this years, after twenty-five years, I was going to France.
Imagine my nervousness after twenty-five years of not speaking French on a daily basis. I was terrified. I read a lot of French to prepare myself, and tried to practice as much as I could.
As it turns out, I was worried about nothing. Language is funny: once it’s in your brain, it’s there forever. It took me a few days to get going (mostly nervousness, I think), but by Day Two of the trip, I was having long involved conversations with people.
(Please note: my accent was still atrocious (even I could hear it), and my grammar was not the best. But I could make myself understood.)
I’d forgotten the picturesque phrases: all the different ways to say “goodbye,” depending on the time of day and the situation. “A tout a l’heure.” “A bientot.” “Adieu.” “Au revoir.” These came back quickly, thank goodness.
Then there are all the English-language borrowings (I think there are more of them now than there were in the 1980s): “sandwich,” “parking,” “weekend.” I bought a package of Petit Ecolier cookies with a contest advertised on the front: “GAGNEZ UN BABY FOOT!” Can you guess what a “baby foot” is? It’s a foosball table. Charmante, non?
Then there are the faux amis – the “false friends.” These are words that look like English, but aren’t the same at all. These work both ways. “What’s that sign?” Partner asked one day on the bus.
“Deviation,” I said. “It means ‘detour.’”
“Why don’t they just say ‘detour’?” he asked. “Isn’t that a French word?”
“Well, yes, but –“
There’s no explaining these things.
Best of all: we were watching the French version of “The Price is Right” (“Le Juste Prix”), and the contestant – a man named Fabrice – mentioned his “conjoint,” a man named Emmanuel. “Aha!” I said. “Now I know the correct French term for ‘partner’! It’s ‘conjoint’!”
“As in conjoined twins?” Partner said darkly.
“Well, indirectly, yes,” I said, “but – “
“I don’t like it,” he said positively.
“I do like it,” I said. “Maybe I’ll start referring to you as le conjoint in the blog.”
France has an effect on people. Partner looked at me with Gallic disdain. “Non,” he said definitively.
And that’s the end of that.
(But I still think it’s a better word than “partner.”)
Monday, October 22, 2012
Paul Ryan; or, this year's Sarah Palin
I should open this article by saying something nice about Paul Ryan.
Okay: he has pretty eyes.
Now on to some other issues.
Ryan is a “fiscal heavyweight.” He actually concocted a budget!
(Actually, budgets are easy to create; an intelligent ten-year old can put one together. Income should equal expenditures; if it doesn’t, then you need to spend less, or earn more, or some combination of the two. The question is: what kinds of things do we spend less on?
(Oh, that’s easy. The arts. Education. Social programs. Who needs ‘em?
(Not to mention health care – which, after all, is a non-issue, since (as G. W. Bush reminded us some years back), everyone can always go to an emergency room.)
In any case, I don’t think Ryan is quite ready for the national stage. Take the following incidents as examples:
- Then there’s the whole issue of those workout photos. Remember that adorable picture of Sarah Palin wearing a bikini and holding a gun? Same thing. Except, of course, that the Palin picture was photoshopped, and the Ryan photos are real.
The Right likes to portray Joe Biden as Mister Malaprop. Perhaps they should have given their own VP choice another look this year. They have a history of choosing doofuses for the position, like Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin; I do believe they might have done it again.
But those eyes: it’s a day’s work just to look into them.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
For Sunday: the Police tell us that "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic"
This song is ecstatic. The lyrics are bouncy, and the music itself (with its rising bass line and chiming piano chords) is brilliant, and the video (with the band hopping around in the studio, and then playing for the people in the street) is very nice.
And it was the 1980s, and we were so much younger then.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Rhode Island politics: Cicilline versus Doherty
Rhode Island politics are always very strange. We’re a blue state, and Democrats are mostly in charge, but we have a strange habit of electing Republicans from time to time, especially as Governor. (Rhode Island Republicans are very different from, let’s say, Oklahoma Republicans; they’re much more middle-of-the-road than the national norm. That being said, they’re still Republicans.)
We have an interesting Congressional race going on in RI District One. The incumbent, David Cicilline, a cute little gay Jewish Italian from a family known to consort with the old Rhode Island Mafia, was formerly Mayor of Providence. I voted for him twice as Mayor and once as Congressman, and we all thought he’d run Providence pretty efficiently.
Until he left office, and it was found that the city’s funds had been horribly mismanaged, and Providence was perilously close to bankruptcy.
He’s running for reelection. His Republican opponent is a tough Irish ex-cop named Brendan Doherty. Doherty is breathtakingly unqualified for the position, by the way.
But he has integrity!
We are continually reminded that he has integrity!
(I’m reminded, somehow, of the old “Peanuts” comic strip, and Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin, who would rise only out of the “most sincere pumpkin patch.”)
In one of Doherty’s ads, he’s walking through a dirty alleyway, talking about how he took on criminals, and he’s not afraid to take on “those politicians in Washington.” Does he think, as a freshman congressman, he’s gonna be able to beat people up until they see reason? I think not. They’ll eat him on toast.
So here’s our choice: a suave rascal (Cicilline) who votes consistently with the Democrats and the Obama agenda, or a crewcutted blockhead (Doherty) who fairly oozes integrity, and would almost certainly vote alongside the Republican House majority, once they work him over a few times.
Whom do you choose: the knave or the fool?
I choose the knave. I don’t care if Cicilline roasts and eats puppies for dinner, so long as he votes the right way in Congress.
(This, by the way, is the same kind of reasoning that kept Teddy Kennedy in the Senate, next door in Massachusetts. Horrible human being, but a great politician, and he always voted for the right stuff.)
I wish I could vote for someone I could feel really good about, though; someone like Barney Frank or Paul Wellstone; someone I respected, and who also voted the right way.
But we ain’t got nobody like that on the ballot at the moment.
So we votes the way we gotta vote.
(Sigh.)
Friday, October 19, 2012
French rudeness! (Or not.)
We do love our cultural stereotypes, don’t we? Germans are regimental and precise; Spaniards are passionate; Italians are argumentative; Russians are moody and unpredictable.
And the French, of course, are supercilious and rude.
Right?
On our second day in France, we took the train from Paris to Caen, and then took a cab to the hotel. Our driver was a big cheerful bloke who hoisted our suitcases into the cab’s trunk while grunting the word “Hop!” (I’d only ever seen it written. It’s closer to “Hup!” in English, but it’s also indefinably different. You kind of have to hear it to get the distinction.)
I struck up a conversation with him in the cab. He was very animated. He wanted to know where we were from, and when he found that we were American, he brightened. As it turned out, he had a brother in Sacramento, and visited him a few years ago. He went to Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon, and a place called Yosameet (I’ll let you figure that one out on your own), and he loved it all. He wants to go back, and he tells his kids that they need to go to the United States.
All that in a five-minute cab ride!
Then there were the concierges at the various hotels. All of them were cute, and most of them were funny. (But none of them had names. Even when they wore nametags, the “name” field was blank. Why? Are their names unpronounceable? Are they too high-pitched for human ears? Do they not have names at all?) One in Caen, a tall blondish fellow who looked like a slightly more soigné Jason Segel, turned out to be a passionate history buff, and regaled us with stories about Caen during World War II. (I’ll tell you that story another time.)
Then there was the saleswoman working outside the department store near our hotel in Paris (they had sidewalk stalls every day). I was pawing through the shirts, not sure what size I was, when she glanced at me and chirped (in French), “Forty-one.”
“You can tell just by looking at me?” I said.
“It’s my job,” she shrugged, grinning.
We went through the stack of shirts together. (They were only ten euro each, so they’ll probably melt in the washing machine, but – hey – I have shirts from Paris!) We both exclaimed over a nice pink one. “Rose!” she said. “J’adore cette chemise rose!”
“Moi aussi,” I said, and we put that one aside.
The next two were bright red and dull gray. (The French, for some reason, are favoring dark colors this year; we didn’t see many people wearing bright colors in the streets.) “This gray is very nice,” she said.
“I like the red one,” I said.
She regarded me very gravely. “But the gray is very nice,” she said in an almost-stern tone.
Well, I got the red one, and the pink one. But I think the clerk was unhappy with me, a little.
How about the lady in the Deauville train station? I was buying tickets for Partner and myself for the next day, Caen-Bayeux, round trip. She regarded me with the famous Normandy deadpan. “May I ask your ages?” she said in a quiet regretful voice.
“He’s sixty-six,” I said. “And I’m fifty-five.”
She shook her head at me very ruefully. “You, monsieur, are too young.”
I exploded into laughter, and then tried to do the Norman deadpan back at her. “You, madame, are the first person who has ever said that to me.”
So Partner got his ticket at a reduced price, and I got a good laugh out of it.
Then there was the candy store next to our hotel in the Marais in Paris. I was browsing there one day early in our stay, and a funny bright young man waited on me, and gave me a chocolate for free, and told me (in French – funny how much they open up to you when you speak French!) he’d lived in Boston for a year and a half, and been to Cape Cod (“Les baleines!” he said. “The whales!”).
We ended up spending over a hundred dollars in that store, and let me tell you, it was worth it. On our last visit, our clerk was a very sweet young woman. “There’s a little ceramic tajine candy dish over here,” I said. “Can you tell me what it costs?”
“Oh, a couple of euro,” she said. She rummaged under the counter, and then she looked up at me slyly. “Is it a gift?”
“No, no,” I said. “It’s for me.”
“No,” she said. “You misunderstand. It’s a gift. For you”
And she handed it to me with a serene smile.
Don’t let anyone tell you the French are rude, kids.
They’re just fine in my book.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Restaurant review: Le Bouchon du Vaugueux
Food in France is wonderful and plentiful, but it is generally not cheap. Even lunch at a corner bistro will set you back maybe thirty or forty euro. We lunched one day at McDonald’s (well, you need to touch home base once in a while), and even that was nearly twenty euro for the two of us.
As a result, we ended up eating prepared sandwiches and pastries a lot. This was not a problem, really; these are very inexpensive, and easy to find, and really pretty good most of the time.
But Partner and I agreed that we needed a few really good meals, just to complete our France experience.
Before our departure, Partner did a lot of web-surfing, and found a small restaurant in Caen called Le Bouchon du Vaugueux. The pictures were charming, and the menu was tempting. Here’s the current prix-fixe menu (a few items have changed since our visit):
MENU A 20 EUROS
Persillé de jambon et palette de porc aux lentilles ou
Velouté de potiron toast au fromage de chèvre ou
Salade de joue de porc et saucisson de volaille, vinaigrette de châtaigne.
*******************************
Carré de porc épais et moelleux , laqué à la moutarde douce et cornichons ou
Pavé de colin à la plancha beurre blanc poivre rose et ciboulette ou
Lapin braisé aux raisins et confit d'oignons.
********************************
Assiette de 3 fromages Normand ou
Crème chocolat-café et nage de poires à l'anis ou
Mousse ivoire aux litchis pulpe de framboises ou
Pudding façon pain perdu au rhum.
(I do not translate, on purpose. I want you to get the full flavor of the place.)
Partner corresponded with the manager, Mme. Poussier, and she confirmed our reservation well before we left.
We ate there on the evening of Friday the fifth of October.
I will remember that meal for a long time.
Mme. Poussier welcomed us warmly. “I know, I know!” she said when we arrived. “From the Internet!”
We both started with the celery soup, garnished with sesame seeds and served with toasted bread and cheese. Does that sound too simple? It was very simple. It was also wonderful. (I know we should have had two different appetizers, but we’re stupid tourists, and we both thought that the soup sounded too good to pass up. It was.)
For a main course, Partner chose the “carre de porc epais et moelleux” (thick juicy pork steak), with sweet mustard and French-style pickles as a garnish.
I had the rabbit.
Yes, I know.
(My mother long ago told me that, when she was growing up, her mother would serve rabbit from time to time, and tell the kids it was chicken. Grandma’s father, who lived with them, would wait until Grandma’s back was turned and then make little hippety-hop motions with his hands. And the kids would refuse to eat it, and Grandma was invariably furious, and never did figure out how the kids knew.)
Rabbit, if you’ve never had it, is delicious. You can certainly make believe that it’s chicken, but it’s really like nothing else. The rabbit I ate at the Bouchon – served in a sauce flavored with onions and raisins – was heavenly.
Dessert? I went with the cheese plate. Partner had the grilled pineapple with chocolate sauce. Both of us were very happy.
When we arrived at seven-thirty, the place (which is not large) was almost empty. By eight-thirty, it was packed: a few tourists like us, and lots of very contented-looking locals.
The service was immaculate. Mme. Poussier had the dining room running like a Swiss watch: I saw her more than once give instructions to a waiter with a nod of her head or a glance.
And all of the above, with the addition of a few beers and mineral waters and two cups of coffee, ran to sixty-five euro, which is approximately twice the price of two burger-and-fries combos at a Paris bistro.
I know, dear reader, you’re probably not planning a trip to Caen in the near future.
But if you are: please go to Le Bouchon du Vaugueux, and treat yourself to a wonderful meal.
And, when you’re there, please let Mme. Poussier know that we think of her daily.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
A world of opportunity
While in France, we were stuck (of course) with French TV. This is not so bad: they have game shows, and variety shows, and talk shows, and comedies, and dramas.
Since neither my nor Partner’s French is completely fluent, however, we pretty much stuck to CNN.
The news was – odd. They do a strange mélange overseas: American stories (GIANT EYEBALL FOUND ON FLORIDA BEACH!) to global-interest stories (the saxophone industry in Taiwan, for example).
(I’m not kidding. They did a story on the saxophone industry in Taiwan. We saw it at least six times, on six different days.)
All this is fine. But what really captured my attention were the commercials.
No more commercials for The Scooter Store or the Jitterbug! These were commercials for countries.
For example: every ten minutes (it seemed), CNN / France showed an edited version of this video, which portrays “the unforgettable energy of freedom” in the nation of Georgia. Behold!:
(I like the music, and the dancing. I was not, however, aware that there were Georgian Ninjas.)
Speaking of former USSR republics, here’s Azerbaijan:
Lots of factories and oil wells and fast cars, and a decent-looking restaurant. Okay! I will definitely build my saccharin factory there!
Many other countries were represented. There was a Taiwanese ad with a nice-looking man doing Chinese calligraphy with a mop. There was Kazakhstan (not so memorable). There was Morocco (all factories and factory workers, but with a nice Moroccan-music background). There was Montenegro (part tourism, part business).
But I will leave you with my very favorite, for eastern Poland.
And I ask you: why haven’t you invested in eastern Poland?
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Lance Armstrong
You have probably heard or read about Lance Armstrong’s latest troubles. If you haven’t, here’s the story: he is now accused, on the basis of very credible evidence (including the testimony of his teammates), of using illegal methods to win his various championships. He still denies it. Since the publication of the report a few days ago, however, even more acquaintances and teammates have come forward to corroborate the report’s conclusion.
All right, I’m giggling a little bit. Lance has always seemed a little smug to me, and a little too good to be true. I remember seeing a TV program in which they tested the physical endurance of normal human beings, and then gave Lance the same test; his results were off the scale. He just wasn’t human. And he just smiled secretly and allowed us to admire him.
I’m not crazy about self-promoting athletes: Lance Armstrong, Michael Phelps, Peyton Manning. I like a little modesty. (I make an exception for Tom Brady, because he’s adorable, and we’re all New England Patriots fans up in here.) I remember fondly seeing an boxer named Barry McGuigan on Irish TV back in 2007; he was on the Irish version of “Celebrity Iron Chef,” and he made no bones about not being able to cook, but he could mash the hell out of those potatoes, and he ended up winning the show. (Also he was sort of adorable, in an Irish featherweight boxer kind of way.) He seemed modest.
Most likely Lance was doing something called blood doping. This entails taking a drug called erythropoietin, which makes your body produce more red blood cells than normal; you then drain some of your blood off, have it processed and frozen, and reinject yourself with your own blood cells when you need some extra energy. “I don’t see that as doping,” Partner said. “You’re using your own cells. Why not?”
This is an excellent point. Why not indeed? It’s like saying that a weight lifter can’t lift weights between meets, because he might build extra muscle, and that wouldn’t be fair.
Except that the rules of cycling forbade it. Lance knew this, but broke the rules anyway. And then he lied about it.
He might have come out as a brave proponent of blood doping, pointing out – very fairly – that using one’s own blood cells isn’t the same as using a drug. He might well have won the argument, and the exception might have been made in the rules.
(Of course, then everyone would have been using the stuff, and Lance wouldn’t have been Superman anymore.)
There have been a few supporters jumping up and down to defend Lance. He’s a cancer survivor! they say. He’s done so much for charity!
Oh well, ho hum, and Stalin was very good to his momma. (No, seriously, he was.)
Lance used illicit methods to get to the top of his métier, and then he profited from it.
If he gave a little back to charity, well, that’s terrific.
But he cheated to do it.
So let’s just not talk about him anymore.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Return from Paris
We got back just this evening. Paris was cool and foggy this morning, well on its way into autumn; Boston, when we arrived this afternoon, was warm and almost muggy.
All this after flying over Greenland and Newfoundland!
My mind’s racing. I need to process the trip. I was making notes the whole time, and taking pictures (over five hundred of them).
I was dreading this trip. I always dread travel beforehand; it disrupts me. But once I’m on the plane, I give myself over to my own higher power, whom I think of as the Great Perhaps.
And the Great Perhaps rewarded me richly this time round.
This was one of the great vacations of my life. Every day was several hundred experiences, one after another. Some days were several thousand experiences. Not since my Peace Corps days have I had such a good time.
I won’t bore you with my Paris stories all at once. I need time to write them down and shape them a little bit. Also, I have some thoughts about the upcoming Presidential election, and a few ideas about other topics in the news.
Anyway: we’re back!
Sunday, October 14, 2012
For Sunday: the Cars ask us to "Shake It Up"
Okay, students of Rock & Roll Academy: whatever happened to rock & roll? Did it die in the 1960s? Were the Doors rock & roll? What about the later Beatles? What about Talking Heads?
I think there are still a couple of bands that are playing something that Dick Dale and Bill Haley would recognize. Maybe the Black Keys, nowaydays. And maybe even this song, from the early 1980s, from the Cars.
Shake it up!
Saturday, October 13, 2012
“And such small portions!”
An old joke, retold by Woody Allen in “Annie Hall”:
“The food is terrible here!” one woman says at a Catskills resort.
“Yes!” the other woman says. “And such small portions!”
We’re unreasonable creatures, aren’t we? We want it all. We want everything, and we want it cheap. In the words of a Simpsons character, speaking to a bagboy in a supermarket: “I want all my groceries in one bag, and I want it to be light.”
But there are also reasonable expectations.
Partner and I ate recently at a new place in the University neighborhood. It’s very glitzy, and all of the servers were trendy: most of the men had ponytails and tattoos, and one of the girls was wearing an outfit made out of men’s underwear, I swear to god.
This place serves “tapas.” I have lived overseas, and I have had real tapas. Tapas are the little plates of food they give you at the bar, so long as you keep drinking. They’re different all the time, and usually very interesting. Most of all, they’re free. They’re the incentive to keep drinking.
Tapas restaurants in the United States are a whole different thing. You pay for each little plate.
So we order one of the “tapas,” a zucchini fritter. It arrives shortly, and it is absolutely delicious, but it is about three bites each for each of us.
We then order “personal pizzas.” They arrive. They are about ten inches by four inches, with a very thin delicate crust. Mine was delicious (as was the fritter): more zucchini, tomato, sautéed onions. I destroyed mine in about three minutes.
We were both still hungry, but there was no way we were going to keep ordering food in this place. We’ve run up a $35 bill, and we both feel like we haven’t even begun the meal yet.
So we go home and have sandwiches.
A few days later, we went to Hemenway’s, a local high-end seafood place, both because we were both in the mood for seafood, and because I had a gift card. Partner had surf and turf, and I had paella. We both had appetizers. Everything was wonderful, and the portions were very ample. The total bill was over $100, but you know what? We were both stuffed, and we both took food home with us.
There’s been a spate of criticism over the last few years about the restaurants that serve huge portions of food – more than people can eat, more than people need!
But smart diners take food home from those places. Partner and I certainly do. We ate at a nice old-fashioned Chinese place in Attleboro, Shanghai Gardens, a few weeks ago, and we both took home food, and it was very nice.
Don’t get me wrong: the food at the aforementioned “tapas” place was excellent. It was just too meager.
This is a trick and a disgrace. This is using the “tapas” label as an excuse to bring out small portions of food and pretend that the restaurant (and you, the diner) are sophisticated.
Don’t believe it.
Expensive places – all places, really – should have good food, and lots of it. And you should never leave feeling hungry.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Jinx Falkenburg
The Providence Public Library is full of old unhappy-looking books which obviously haven’t seen the light of day in decades. I like to take them out into the sunshine, and wipe the dust off their covers, and sometimes even peek inside them, to see what people were reading during the Van Buren administration.
For example: I was strolling down the biography / autobiography aisle the other day when I saw the word JINX on the spine of an oldish-looking book.
I took it down, and sure enough: it was the autobiography of Jinx Falkenburg.
What? You’ve never heard of Jinx Falkenburg?
Jinx was a model in the 1930s. She was Miss Rheingold Beer, and a sort of actress, and a tennis star. She did a lot of USO work during World War II. She married a journalist, Tex McCrary, and after the war, they had a radio show which was broadcast from their very own home. Also they had a TV show for a while in the early 1950s.
She was very popular in her day. She was pretty in a Rita Hayworth way. She was a raconteur, and told endless stories at a breathless pace, one tumbling on top of the next. The book (whether she wrote it, or whether it was ghostwritten for her) tries to echo her chatty cheerfulness; now, after sixty years, it feels like cocktail conversation that wasn’t really very interesting at the time, and is definitely not very interesting nowadays.
Also, Jinx knew everyone: Rise Stevens, Bernard Baruch, Paulette Goddard, Pat O’Brien, the Ritz Brothers, the Paleys . . . .
Yes, I know. Who are these people?
It’s bad enough that Jinx was a name-dropper. It’s worse now, all these years later, when most of Jinx’s famous friends are just as forgotten as Jinx herself. This is my favorite passage along these lines: “Tex asked a whole group over to “21” for dinner – the Jack Strauses, Joanne Sayres and Tony Bliss, Carl Whimore, the Howard Twins.” I like to think I know who was who in the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s, and I have no idea who she’s talking about here.
(But this is a lesson in ephemerality. These were celebrities, not so long ago. And now they’re gone, and forgotten: Jinx, and Tex, and Paulette Goddard, and the Howard Twins.)
Everyone gets forgotten. Even Jinx and Tex. Even you and me.
It is a lesson to us all.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Cats
Sometimes, when I walk home the long way, I meet a little black cat on East Manning Street, about a block and a half away from my house.
She invariably comes running to meet me. We have a little routine: I point at her, and she immediately rolls on the ground very submissively.
I don’t know if the little black cat does this trick for everyone, but she certainly does it for me. I choose to believe that Little Black Cat is the first recruit for my Unholy Army of the Night, and she will do whatever I say. (Well, she rolls over for me, doesn’t she?)
(Of course, this usually happens in warm weather, and the warm pavement probably feels good to roll on, when you’re a little black cat.)
I used to have cats in Tunisia. My housemate Catriona and I inherited a strange little cat named Nimmer (Arabic for “tiger”), who went feral every winter and came home every spring. Then there were all of the street / alley cats who used to come in to share Nimmer’s food. (I gave Nimmer sardines. I love sardines, and so did he. And so did all of the other cats.)
Nimmer used to wait until I lay down to read a book, then crawl on top of me and breathe sardine breath into my face. Also he had all of his claws, and he used them when he climbed on top of me.
But cats are cats. In North Africa, they’re allowed to run wild, to keep the rat/mouse population at bay. It’s not considered a good idea to feed them, as they’ll get lazy and stop killing rats and mice.
Here in the USA, they’re friendly and decorative.
(But, like the little black cat down the street, they can still be part of my Unholy Army of the Night.)
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Keurig
Partner and I have gone through a lot of coffeemakers. We did the espresso pot (which was my baby, born of my North African experience), but you really have to love espresso, and Partner doesn’t. We’ve done Mr. Coffee at least twice, but you know how mediocre Mr. Coffee coffee can be. Also French press (which is a lot of work). Also a percolator, for a brief time.
Now I think we’ve found something that works for both of us.
I’ve had the Keurig system in the office for a number of years. My boss loved it, and (though it cost a lot of money) he insisted that we stick with it. The coffee, I admit, is very good. You make it a cup at a time, and you choose what coffee you make, as there are lots of different K-cup pods (depending on what you purchase). And it’s really mostly very good.
Partner and I had a gift certificate, and made up our minds to take the plunge.
Well, the home Keurig machine is wonderful.
First of all, the machine is adorable. It has a dim blue light playing around it when it’s active. It makes a soft crick-crick noise as it’s brewing coffee, like a cricket chirping. It’s sort of adorable.
Partner likes his coffee a bit milder; I like mine dark. We have already discovered preferred brands: his is Green Mountain Nantucket, and I am gravitating toward Caribou.
And both of us can have what we like!
It’s Utopia!
We can have tea, or cider, or chocolate. I have ordered a box of decaf, as I know that more than two or three cups of strong coffee turn me into a quivering wreck. Partner has ordered some chamomile tea, for sleepless evenings.
And we can keep exploring. Every coffee and tea manufacturer in the universe – Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Twinings – is into this. They put out variety packs, so that you can try different blends and focus on your favorites.
Caveat: it’s kind of expensive. The coffeemaker was $160. A box of 20 K-cups (which equal 20 cups of coffee) is more or less $12.00, depending on how rich your tastes are. (Of course, if you were used to buying your coffee from Starbucks, this is a huge savings.)
But here’s the thing: both Partner and I are enjoying our morning coffee now, in a way we weren’t before.
Isn’t that worth something?
Think about it, you coffee-drinkers.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Trigger songs
Everyone who knows me knows that I can’t keep a secret.
But apparently there’s something about me that inspires trust, however misguided that trust might be.
Take Apollonia, for example. I have ratted her out time and again, often in this very blog. She squeals and rages every time, and yet she continues to tell me intimate personal stories that curl my hair. (She threatens me with violence from time to time, but I am fairly certain that I am quicker and more limber than she is, so I could probably outrun her if I had to.)
Take today, for example. I don’t know how we got onto the subject, but she began telling a story to me and Cathleen about her childhood, and a song her sister used to sing to her while playing the piano. “It made me cry,” she said. “It made me cry every time. Later my sister told me she enjoyed singing it to me, because she liked watching me cry.”
“What was the song?” I said innocently / craftily.
And, reader, she told me.
I will not tell you the name of the song. If you are over fifty years old, you would recognize it immediately. I didn’t know its name (and neither did Cathleen, who’s older than me!), but we both began singing along with it as soon as we brought it up on YouTube.
“Aargh!” Apollonia shrieked. “It’s giving me goose bumps!”
Within minutes, she named another song that had the same effect on her. I will only tell you that it’s a country song and a classic.
Now I know two of her trigger songs. I can make Apollonia cry anytime I like, just by humming the first eight bars of either one.
Such power!
But seriously: why do people tell me these things? They know I’ll misuse the information.
(But lovingly. Always lovingly.)
Sunday, October 7, 2012
For Sunday: The Eurythmics sing “Sweet Dreams”
This is a wonderful song, and a wonderfully dreamlike video.
Enjoy.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Living under an enemy administration
On Election Night 1980, I was in the Graduate Center Bar at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, watching the election returns. The media declared Reagan the winner over Carter fairly early, as I recall. I was standing next to a short fat guy, who muttered: “Now it’s our turn.”
I got the creeps all over as he said it.
As it turned out, I had the creeps for another twelve years.
I have lived under a Republican Presidency for most of my life, as I calculate it: 1957-1960 (three years of Eisenhower, which I barely remember, as I was a toddler); 1969-1976 (seven years of Nixon/Ford, which was intermittently disastrous, but not entirely catastrophic); 1980-1992 (eight years of Ronald Reagan, tragedy/comedy, and four years of G. H. W. Bush, mostly comedy, with the terrifying exception of Operation Desert Storm); and eight years of George W. Bush (pure disaster).
So that’s thirty years of my life under a Republican administration. And I am still alive.
To be sure, Eisenhower was not out to kill or disenfranchise me. Nixon, much as he was a rascal, did not try to do so either. Gerald Ford, God bless him, was not the kind of person to do harm to a little periwinkle like me. G. H. W. Bush was a quasi-jerk, but not as extreme as his son. G. W. Bush was a total jerk, and eight years of him was agony.
Mitt Romney has declared himself against gay marriage, abortion, Affordable Care, etc. He says he wants to “take back America.” From whom? I don’t have it at the moment; I feel, in fact, that I am not so much in control of anything in America. So who’s he taking it back from?
Mitt Romney is the total anti-package. He is what I do not want.
I do not want to find myself on election night in November 2012, with a sweaty little fat man standing next to me, watching Romney being declared winner, and hearing him say: “Now it’s our turn.”
Once is enough.
Kids: you know what you have to do.
Vote, please. Vote your hearts. And make sure your friends and family vote. (And if you’re unlucky enough to have family in a Republican-controlled state, help them get their ID cards.)
Keep climbing.
We can do this.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Saturday morning jabbering
Most weekend mornings, Partner and I watch a program called “Up with Chris Hayes.” Chris is a bright-looking young man with hipster glasses, who moderates one of those political-panel shows featuring people you’ve never heard of discussing issues of the day.
The problem on Chris’s show is that nothing really gets said.
Chris himself is a big part of the problem. He’s a jabberer. He’s obviously very bright, but he asks questions that turn into ten-sentence essays, and he continually interrupts himself, talking at top speed, because his mind is (obviously) working so very very quickly.
Unfortunately, his guests (consciously or unconsciously) follow suit. They jabber, and interrupt themselves, and one another. It’s like listening to dogs barking at one another in an animal-rescue facility.
Also, Chris does not necessarily invite the best or most compelling guests to his show. A while back he had Michael Ian Black on the panel, to discuss immigration issues. Michael Ian Black is a comedian / actor / performer, okay? He’s quite bright, I’m sure; he even co-wrote a book with Meghan McCain, for whatever that’s worth. I’m not sure, however, that he had anything powerfully compelling to contribute to a discussion about immigration rights. Also, back a few months ago, Chris had Mike Daisey on several weeks in a row to discuss Chinese factories, and the terrible conditions therein. Daisey claimed he’d been there and taken all kinds of direct testimony from people. Guess what? Daisey lied about many of the details. When confronted with this, he responded that he was a performer, not a journalist.
Around eleven o’clock on a recent Saturday morning, I went to the health club, and turned on the treadmill television, and saw Melissa Harris-Perry was on, and I sighed with relief. Her show is a lot like Chris Hayes’s show, with the following exceptions:
- She speaks deliberately, in complete sentences.
- Her guests (mostly) speak deliberately, in complete sentences.
- Her guests (who on that morning included a former Cabinet official, a real journalist, and a professor) seem qualified to speak to the issues at hand.
It was a genuine pleasure to listen to her and her guests.
Chris Hayes, if you’re reading this: take a look at Melissa’s show. You might learn a thing or two.
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