RuPaul's "Untucked"

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You know by now how absorbed I am by every new season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”  We are getting very close to the end of Season Four, and have our final four drag queens (although, in a not-so-surprise twist, they’re bringing back an eliminated contestant next week, just to extend our agony.  And it had better not be Kenya Michaels.)

 

 

Everyone has a favorite reality show / competition; this is mine. Partner doesn’t share my fascination with Ru and the goils (though I’ve caught him watching the show once or twice).  So I have to gossip about it with the only person in my office who’s also a RuManiac: my friend Tab.  Tab is about twenty-five years younger than me, and much more in touch with the modern gay world (he just made a sweep of Washington DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and gave me a critique of the gay / social scene in each city).  We swoon and flutter over every week’s drama: Sharon Needles!  Phi Phi O’Hara!  Latrice Royale! Chad Michaels! DiDa Ritz! “I like Latrice,” I said the other day.  “I can see her winning.”

 

 

Tab looked at me very severely.  “Latrice will not win,” he said definitively.  He’s probably right.  It’s gonna be a gunfight between Sharon and Phi Phi at the end, with Chad as the spoiler. 

 

 

But every week’s episode of “Drag Race” has its own outtakes reel, shown immediately afterward: a half-hour show called “Untucked.”  It’s a montage of backstage gossip between the contestants, with a lot more personal revelations and a lot less makeup and sequins.  Tab told me that he thinks “Untucked” is more interesting than “Drag Race,” and I have to admit that I’ve begun to fall under its spell.

 

 

This week’s “Untucked” was terrific.  We were down to five drag queens.  One – Phi Phi – is really no one’s friend.  The others – Dida, Latrice, Sharon, and Chad – were sharing stories about being bullied and beaten up in school.  Dida was surprised with a video of her mother wishing her luck, which moved her to tears.  Chad said that the bullies who’d made her school life hell were now trying to reconnect with her on Facebook (I’ve had the same experience), and that she had no interest in reconnecting with them.  Latrice said that she’d been approached in the same way, but that he’d been reminded that there had been some good times in school too, and that it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

 

 

It was a profoundly human conversation.

 

 

Growing up gay is tough, believe me, I know, I was there.  But most of us, gay or straight, were mocked and bullied as kids.  It’s therapeutic to hear people talk about it – the good and the bad – and think about our own situations, and try to relate.

 

 

Maybe Tab is right.  Maybe the gowns and makeup and heels on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” are the less important things.  Maybe the heart-to-heart personal stuff on “Untucked” is actually more vital.

 

 

(But the gowns and shoes and makeup are fun too.)

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In memoriam: Adrienne Rich and Earl Scruggs

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I’m having a John Berryman moment.

 

 

Berryman, in his archival “Dream Songs,” chronicled the deaths of other poets and writers: William Empson, Delmore Schwartz. 

 

 

Well, two of the poets of my youth have just passed away.

 

 

Adrienne Rich was a feminist confessional poet and essayist. Her writing was rich and powerful, and she inspired legions of other writers.

 

 

Earl Scruggs was a “banjo pioneer,” and partnered with guitarist Lester Flatt to create the early hillbilly / country sound from which just about all modern country music flows. 

 

 

I still remember when Jack Benny died.  I was a senior in high school.  I felt very solemn.  I realized that he was an old man, but (as happens when we think about celebrities) I felt that he was someone I knew and liked.  And I had a very funny feeling about this whole death business.

 

 

Now, all these years later, I know what I was feeling. 

 

 

I was feeling for myself.

 

 

Here’s Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child”:

 

 

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you,

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! As the heart grows older

It shall come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow’s springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, nor no mind, expressed,

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

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Older and wiser

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 When I was a kid, I had no idea what the adults were talking about most of the time.  I wanted desperately to figure out what was going on.

 

 

In high school, and in college, I realized that – inside – I did not feel like a grownup.  I was faking it.  I monitored everything: what I said, what I did.  And I fell short.

 

 

Graduate school: even worse.  I felt like a terrible poser, and completely inept as a human being.

 

 

Then working in a real job, and then in the Peace Corps, and then working again.  Inside, I still felt five years old.  I managed to fake it once in a while, but I still felt like a kid.

 

 

However:

 

 

Recently I took a friend to lunch, and she told me, in her funny rushing confidential way, the very sad story of her mother's recent passing.  And I commiserated with her. 

 

 

And I realized, about halfway through, that I didn't need to worry about acting like a grownup anymore. 

 

 

For one thing, I'm just too old to worry about it anymore.  And that's one of the secrets I didn't know: you don't learn it.  It just happens, with age and experience.

 

 

And for another thing, we were talking about deaths in the family, and cleaning the house and throwing things away and dealing with grief and guilt. These are things I know first-hand.  No problem.

 

 

So, at last, I find I can talk and act like a grownup.

 

 

And all I really want to do is be a kid again.

 

 

Go figure.

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For a departed friend

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A few months ago, a friend, someone I’d known for almost twenty-five years, suddenly passed away. 

 

 

Friend?  No, it was a far more complex relationship than that.  We were co-workers first; we shared an office back in the late 1980s; there was a big partition between our desks, but we both smoked, so we could each see the smoke rising from the other side of the office, and we could listen to one another’s completely fascinating telephone conversations.

 

 

Then, for about two years, I actually worked for her.  She was irritable and finicky, but we actually got along pretty well; once, however, she refused to speak to me for three days because she thought I’d neglected to say “good morning” to her. 

 

 

It was one of those relationships.

 

 

After that, we were just friends.  We always talked in the hallway.  I used to run into her in the market frequently; her stories were endless, but I enjoyed them anyway.  She was smart, and extremely opinionated, and completely fearless about telling you what she thought.  (My new boss told me several times that he’d like to be rid of her.  I never had the nerve to say it out loud, but I always thought: Good luck.  You will never be rid of her. And good for her.)

 

 

Partner knew her too, because we ran into her in the local grocery store with some regularity.  Sometimes she’d stop and give me a ride, especially in the wintertime. 

 

 

She was intelligent, and very sure of herself, and very stubborn.

 

 

And now she’s gone.

 

 

As always, when someone I care about passes away, I keep wanting it to be a mistake or a joke.  I think: It’s not real.  She’s still around somewhere.  She’ll walk through the door in a moment, and we’ll have a good laugh about all of this.

 

 

(Now, a few months later, I keep seeing her in the street, or going in the door ahead of me.  Naturally it’s just my failing eyesight.  But I think my brain wants it to be her.)

 

 

Hey, you, upstairs, whoever’s in charge of this stuff: this has got to stop.  This has gone a little bit beyond a joke.

 

 

Stop killing off my friends and family.

 

 

I rely on them for so much.

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The Liebster Award

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I was surprised and flattered on Monday morning to receive a note from the talented Melissa Hassard, who edits and contributes to the poetry / prose / photography collective “20 Lines A Day,” telling me that she’d nominated me for something called the Liebster Award.  This is a nice little accolade given to bloggers, recognizing them for their contributions. 

 

 

It comes with a couple of rules:

 

 

-        You must thank your nominator in your blog, and link back to his/her blog.

-        You must display the award itself (see above).

-        You must pass the award on to five other blogs (preferably those with small numbers of readers), and notify them of their award.

 

 

Well, thanks to Melissa for the award.  And do check out “20 Lines A Day”; you’ll find some excellent stuff (including Melissa’s poetry, which was the first thing there to catch my eye.)

 

 

The nicest thing about the Liebster is that it needs to be passed along.

 

 

(I think a lot of us began this thinking it was only a matter of time before we became a combination of the Huffington Post and Martha Stewart Omnimedia.  We have learned.  But we have also had a wonderful time.

 

 

(And now, here we are winning awards!)

 

 

Here are my five nominees:

 

 

-        Topsytasty.  This is a very well-written little series of articles, mostly about food, but also about the author’s early life in Rhode Island and his current adventures in the Pacific Northwest.  The author is also the younger son of my frenemy Apollonia, and he shares her wit and eye for detail.

-        Going Dutch.  This is mostly photography, with food and anecdotes thrown in; the author / photographer is originally from the Philippines, and now lives with her family in the Netherlands.  She takes wonderful scenery / flower photographs – just the kind I try to take, except that mine never turn out right.  Hers are always beautiful.

-        Well, That’s Just Great / Well, That’s Just Ducky.  This is a twofer!  The former is written by Anthony Giffen, a very clever Floridian who always gives me a laugh (you might say he’s like Dave Barry, but funny); the latter is written by Anthony’s dog Ducky, who speaks very movingly about how much he likes to chew things up. 

-        Tangly Cottage Journal.  I have a lot of childhood memories invested in the Pacific coast of Washington state, where we used to take our seaside vacations.  This blog, by a couple of professional gardeners living in the small fishing town of Ilwaco, is a combination of prose and photos, very casual, but charming (and, like “Going Dutch,” with lots of good flower photography).  Even if you’ve never visited Ilwaco, this blog will remind you of your own favorite little beach town.

-        Crypt of Wrestling.  Well, you knew I had unusual tastes, didn’t you?  This blog covers the waterfront of lowbrow 1960s/1970s culture: comic-book advertisements, movie posters, Rat Fink memorabilia, album covers.  It gives me an adrenaline injection of Early Space Age nostalgia every time I look at it. 

 

 

And hundreds of others.

 

 

You know who you are. 

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Movie review: "21 Jump Street"

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Partner and I, for various reasons, were feeling in need of a nice entertaining movie on Sunday.  The big movie of the weekend, of course, was “The Hunger Games,” which involves lots of nice fresh-faced teenagers killing one another, so we didn’t think that would quite entertain us in the right way.  And none of the movies we’re really looking forward to (“The Three Stooges” with Sean Hayes and Will Sasso!  “Wrath of the Titans” with Liam Neeson!  “The Avengers” with everybody under the sun!) has come out quite yet.

 

 

So we took a chance on “21 Jump Street,” with Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill.

 

 

We snorted with laughter through the whole thing.

 

 

This is comedy done right.  It’s hugely over-the-top: Channing, as the muscular cute dumb guy, is too dumb for words; Jonah, as the plump sensitive smart guy, is much too delighted with himself when he finally gets some recognition.  The original 1980s TV show (which, I have to admit, I didn’t really watch) was afterschool-special serious: overage actors infiltrating high schools to uncover plots dealing with drugs, guns, crime.  This movie makes glorious fun of this conceit.  Channing Tatum is gigantic and obviously much too old to be in high school; no one takes him seriously for a moment. 

 

 

Which brings us to the crux of the matter: Channing Tatum.

 

 

You know that I subscribe to the “Libby Gelman-Waxner Rule” concerning movies and actors.  Libby, a movie reviewer for “Premiere” magazine back in the 1990s (who was actually Paul Rudnick writing under a pseudonym) was responding to a reader’s letter.  “Libby,” the writer said, “you seem to like or dislike movies depending on whether or not you think the leading actor is attractive.  Libby, that’s not what movies are all about.”  To which Libby responded, simply: “Oh yes they are.”

 

 

This is one of the most enlightened comments anyone has ever made about the movie industry.  You could also call it the “Hugh Jackman rule” or the “Daniel Craig rule,” but let’s call it “Libby’s rule” for the sake of historicity.

 

 

Anyway: Channing Tatum is fabulous in this movie.  We first see him as a jerky 2005 high-school kid with long stringy hair, smirking at Jonah Hill’s failed attempt to ask a pretty girl to the prom; then as a police-academy trainee who can wrestle any perp to the ground in three seconds or less, but who can’t memorize the Miranda rights; then as a cop, partnered with his old enemy Jonah Hill.  He is carefree and goofy and very sexy.  (While he’s undercover in high school, his chemistry teacher is hypnotized by him.  “No!” she shrieks.  “Don’t look at me!  Look at me!  No, don’t look at me!”)

 

 

If you saw him a few months ago on Saturday Night Live, you’ll know what I mean.  He has a nonchalance and charm that some of the other meaty cuties of the day – Sam Worthington, Tom Hardy – just don’t have.  (You know he was a stripper, right?  I have a feeling he learned it there.  He’s unashamed of his body, and very sure of himself, and he likes being admired.)

 

 

But enough about Channing.  Heaven knows I could talk about him all day long.

 

 

The movie is very cute.  We laughed a lot, actually.  The MacGuffin that pushes the plot forward is a drug called HFC, which makes people do very peculiar things.  (The drug and its effects are key in a couple of very funny scenes.)  There are lots of good actors in small roles: Chris Parnell from “SNL” / “30 Rock”, Nick Offerman from “Parks and Recreation,” Ice Cube as an angry police captain, even a couple of cameos (I won’t tell you!) from the TV version of “21 Jump Street.”

 

 

And Channing Tatum wrestling with Jonah Hill.  Channing Tatum clobbering Jonah Hill over the head with a big stuffed giraffe.  Channing Tatum straddling a perp at the beginning of the movie . . .

 

 

Ah.

 

 

I give this movie my very highest recommendation.

 

 

Go see it.

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For Sunday: "The Spring," sung by Anna Russell

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Yes, I know, I missed the Vernal Equinox the other day.  Don’t freak out!  Today (March 25) is the traditional New Year’s Day in England and Wales (until 1751, anyway).  And you Tolkien fans know that a certain hobbit and a certain Gollum were struggling on a precipice within the vaults of Mount Doom on March 25 too.  (Why do you think Tolkien chose that particular date? Duh!)

 

 

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Anna Russell.  She was a perfectly wonderful comedienne (she passed away, sadly, in 2006), a trained singer who did hysterical routines in which she sang and played the piano and commented on art and politics and society in this wonderful Margaret Dumont country-club voice. 

 

 

Here is one of her imitation-English folk songs: “Oh How I Love The Spring.”

 

 

Enjoy it.

 

04_I_Love_the_Spring_for_voice_&_piano_[Live].mp3 Listen on Posterous

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Rick Santorum, the false prophet

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I have begun sketching out little pieces about Rick Santorum several times over the past few weeks.  Every time, I work myself into such a blinding fury, I short-circuit myself and go back to square one.

 

 

So I will now try again.

 

 

Rick Santorum is a Catholic politician from Pennsylvania.  I say “Catholic” because it is important in his case.  I would not, for example, say “Mitt Romney is a Mormon who used to be governor of Massachusetts”; it would really be irrelevant and borderline offensive (although I don’t have much respect for Willard M. Romney).  Santorum makes a big deal of his religion.  He is intensely anti-abortion.  No, check that; he’s intensely anti-birth control.  Birth control is, after all, against the will of God.

 

 

Hello, Mahmoud Ahmedinedjad!

 

 

Presidents have to be religious.  If they’re not, no one would vote for them.  Someone recently retold the story of Eisenhower joining the Presbyterian church shortly before the campaign season in 1952, so that no one could accuse him of being irreligious. 

 

 

But Santorum is insisting on his religion.  He intends to run the country based on his religious principles.

 

 

Does this make you break out in a cold sweat?  It does me.

 

 

Let’s face it: lots of Americans are irreligious.  I grew up in a non-churchgoing family, in a Western state to boot.  We were not unusual.   Going down the list:

 

 

-        Dad never seemed interested in religion.

-        Mom was baptized Catholic, but never really practiced it.  She talked about it a lot in her later years, but never acted on it.

-        Eldest brother was married in a church, but has never (so far as I know) practiced any religion.

-        Eldest sister was proudly non-religious to the day she died.

-        Younger sister married a moderately devout Seventh-Day Adventist and became observant.  She told me, very seriously, several months before her death in 1995, about things she planned to do in heaven.  I told her, with similar seriousness, that she would have to look for me and Mom in Hell, because that’d be where she would find us.  We both laughed over this.

-        I went to a Catholic college, (predictably) converted to Catholicism, practiced it on and off for some decades, and have as of this date sworn off it.

 

 

Here, Rick Santorum, is the typical American family.  How many potential votes do you count there? 

 

 

One.  Out of six people.

 

 

And she’s dead.

 

 

And I would like to think that my sister Susan would be smart enough not to vote for a preening phony like you.

 

 

So that makes zero.

 

 

So huh.

 

 

The cigarette lady

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I was waiting for the University shuttle the other day when a tough-looking broad approached me.  “HEY!” she said, a little too loudly.  “YOU GOTTA CIGARETTE?”  She moved her hand in front of her face in a smokey-smokey gesture.

 

 

“No,” I murmured demurely.

 

 

“I’LL PAY YOU!” she blared.

 

 

I shook my head.

 

 

She shrugged and turned away.  There was a guy parked across the street with his window rolled down; she bulldozered over to him and gave him the same line (I could hear the same dialogue, and his muttered reply).  She tilted back her head and bellowed: “DOESN’T ANYBODY SMOKE CIGARETTES ANYMORE?”

 

 

She stomped back across the street.  As she reached the sidewalk, I saw her look down.  She paused, and reached down into the gutter –

 

 

Please, god, I prayed to whatever god I pray to.  Let her be picking up a quarter.

 

 

Nope.  It was a cigarette butt.  She held it up and triumphantly displayed it to someone back inside the building she’d come from.  Hobo’s delight!

 

 

Hey, listen.  I used to smoke.  I remember waking up and realizing that I’d forgotten to buy cigarettes, and gone through the ashtrays to find some nice juicy butts.  Late nights, no cigarettes, same thing. 

 

 

Addiction is a terrible thing, kids.  It makes us do grimy horrible things.

 

 

I’m not hooked on cigarettes anymore.

 

 

I am probably blind to my real addictions.

 

 

I wonder what my real addictions are?

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The worst (and best) places to visit

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Partner and I argue over places to vacation and places to retire. Partner likes warmth and comfort (Key West, Palm Springs, the south of France); I like oddball places (Timbuktu, Nouakchott, Ouagadougou).

 

 

Where will we end up?  I’m sure we’ll compromise.  But in the meantime, here (from the Huffington Post’s travel section) is a list of the worst places to go.  And how to get there. (I’m sort of relieved that my three destinations of choice above aren’t among them.) 

 

 

Goodbye, Harare, Kinshasa, Port Moresby, Mogadishu.

 

 

But I have been to places like El Jadida, and Sliema, and Sfax.  None sounded very promising.  All of them were very nice.  Cheap, too, actually.

 

 

Sometimes you want a vacation a la Disney, with no problems and everything taken care of, nicey-nice. 

 

 

Sometimes you want something interesting.

 

 

I still want to see Nouakchott and Timbuktu.  A friend of mine in Tunisia said Nouakchott was the worst place she’d ever been.  Someone else said the same of Timbuktu.

 

 

Listen: I spent a couple of days in Settat, Morocco, back in the 1980s, during my Peace Corps training.  They sent me there just to see if I could handle it.  I handled it just fine.  The hotel doors didn’t have locks, so I just piled a bunch of stuff against the door.  And the café down the street had something called “ckae” on the menu; it was supposed to be “cake,” but evidently no one noticed the error. 

 

 

And I still had a good time.  

 

 

Of course, you have to worry about cholera and typhus and things like that. 

 

 

But at least I was seeing the world.

 

 

And it was glorious.

 

 

So let’s go to Timbuktu!  I can handle it.

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Corned beef brisket and champ

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Partner and I are always both very hungry when we get home from work, and neither of us wants to spend an hour making something fancy.  Or even half an hour.  This means we eat lots of soup, lots of pasta, lots of frozen / defrostable things.

 

 

But then came the slow cooker.

 

 

We bought one in December, and we use it about once a week.  We fill it with meat and vegetables and broth in the morning, or the night before, and we turn it on before leaving for work.  It produces about as much heat as an Easy-Bake Oven, but it’s steady and relentless.  Within a few hours there’s a little simmer going on; by afternoon it’s bubbling steadily.  Meat becomes incredibly tender and juicy; vegetables are rendered completely helpless.  (Onions are pretty much liquefied.)  We bought a big cooker, about the size of a standard bathtub, so we tend to cook three or four pounds of meat at a time, and I invariably double the amount of vegetables called for in any given recipe. 

 

 

On Friday, in honor of the St. Patrick’s Day season, I did a corned beef brisket.  The recipe called for all kinds of interesting seasonings: Worcestershire sauce, mustard, balsamic vinegar, garlic, allspice, brown sugar, tomato sauce.  Also green peppers and onions.  (No cabbage. Not very Irish, I know, but cabbage really stinks up the house, so that was probably for the best.)

 

 

The end result was very nice.  The brisket was fall-apart tender; the onions and peppers were succulent.  I made some gravy out of the broth and a little cornstarch, and it was nice too.  (A local Irish pub has introduced us to “champ,” which is just mashed potatoes with chopped spring onions; I’ve started using cream instead of milk in my mashed potatoes, because it makes a real difference, and hey, you only live once.  Anyway, I made a side dish of champ.  Also very nice.

 

 

From Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”: “The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come on time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them, -- that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.”

 

 

(Most people, when they write about food, describe elegant recipes and elaborate techniques and exotic ingredients.)

 

 

(I write about slow cookers and Jell-O and fishsticks.)

 

 

(I’m a natural for the Food Network, aren’t I?)

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All the pretty little flowers!

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The weather this week has been unbelievably warm for Rhode Island in March.  Monday, the last day of winter, was mid-70s and balmy; I walked to the downtown library at lunchtime and had to take off my Mister Rogers sweater when I got back to the office.

 

 

(I say not a word about climate change.  Not a word. I said to Partner the other evening: It’s done.  There’s nothing that can be done at this point, nothing more to be said.  The climate’s changing.  We may as well use up all the fossil fuels as fast as we can, because it won’t make a bit of difference. Oh kids. I hope we’ve got a couple of decades left before we all go phffft.)

 

 

The vegetation hereabouts – I can’t even tell you.  It’s in total confusion.  I think the snowdrops committed suicide, I never saw them bloom.  The big witch-hazel tree on the corner of East Manning and Ives is still squeezing out red/yellow blossoms, even though it usually blooms in the January snow.  The crocus (croci?) are on fast-forward: the leaves came up, then the buds swelled and bloomed in a day or two, and now they’re drooping in the heat.  Daffodils realized that it must be spring and bloomed almost literally overnight.  Tulips are leaping up a month early.  Vinca is already blooming (doesn’t it usually wait until May?).  The magnolias on the Brown campus are blooming here and there.  Forsythia is coming out.  The violets in the lawn outside aren’t blooming yet, but the leaves are turning peculiar colors.

 

 

(But most of the trees aren’t budding yet.  It’s a strange combination: sunny warm balmy weather, flowers in the grass, and no leaves on the trees.)

 

 

(And I see on Facebook from my friends in the Northwest that it’s snowing.  In mid-March!  In the warm sweet welcoming Northwest!)

 

 

Everyone’s predicting a hot humid summer.  I don’t know.  I’m picturing one of those stormy summers, with a thunderstorm every evening and lots of hurricanes gestating in the Caribbean.

 

 

But who knows?

 

 

Enjoy the pretty flowers, kids.  Enjoy the pretty flowers.

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Saint Joseph's Day in Providence

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Today is Saint Joseph’s Day.  Yes, Saint Patrick was two days ago, we know, believe me; there are lots of Irish-Americans in Rhode Island / Massachusetts.  But Italians revere Saint Joseph, and today – March 19 – is a special day here.  Mostly you celebrate by eating sweet Italian cream puffs called zeppole (which can be translated as “little Joes”).  In my office (under the auspices of the almighty Apollonia), we celebrate Patrick and Joseph together, with a buffet of Irish soda bread and zeppole from a reputable local Italian bakery.

 

 

Rhode Island has a proud and richly diverse Italian-American community.  I’m only a quarter-Italian myself, but I speak the language – badly, nowadays – and that’s the magic key into any ethnic community.

 

 

My Sicilian-American boss back in the 1980s had six sisters; he was the only boy.  I was adopted into the family, as I had no local family (which is automatically grounds for being adopted into a traditional Italian family).  Also, since I spoke Italian, I could converse with Mamma (then in her nineties), and was often seated next to her at family events.

 

 

This was a big mistake.

 

 

She used the opportunity for all it was worth.  “All those little girls,” she told me in trembling old-lady Italian.  “And finally I had my little boy, my Severinuccio.  He is my jewel.  He still is.”

 

 

I look up at the family sitting around the table – mind you, these are people in their fifties and sixties and seventies – and the girls, Annunziata and Costantina and Preziosa, are all praying that I’m not understanding what Mamma is saying.  And Severino, my boss, is glowing, knowing (one more time) that he’s his mother’s jewel.

 

 

Then Mamma begins with the torture. 

 

 

“That one,” she says (in Italian), pointing to Costantina, a dignified retired schoolteacher, “peed her pants all the time.  And that one - ” (this time pointing at Preziosa) “ – wouldn’t go to school.  I had to beat her.”  (Preziosa had recently retired from a teaching post at a local university.)

 

 

On and on it went.  Mamma was enjoying this: it was her revenge on her daughters, for whatever reason.  Horribly enough, my boss, Severino, didn’t seem to notice that his sisters were made uncomfortable by this.  After all, he knew that he was his mother’s jewel.

 

 

One sister never appeared at these dinners: Susanna.  Finally one of the sisters told me: “Her husband’s on the lam.  They have to lay low.  Besides, you’d be shocked by Susanna. She’s very vulgar.”

 

 

Susanna (AKA Susie) showed up at Easter one year, and I finally met her.  She was draped in a fur coat, and she was wonderful.  She told me dirty jokes all night, and I told her a few, and we had a wonderful time. 

 

 

And the family was scandalized by both of us.

 

 

(This was many years ago.  I’ve fallen out of touch with the family.  I’m sure Mamma has left us.  Probably some of the sisters too.)

 

 

(But what a wonderful family.)

 

 

Now: zeppole for everybody!

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For Sunday: "Burning Down the House," by Talking Heads

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Talking Heads had just gotten famous when I got to Providence.  They were students at the Rhode Island School of Design, and naturally I just missed them; they used to perform all over the place just before I got here in 1978.  All I got was a bunch of wannabe cover bands singing “Psycho Killer.”

 

 

Here is a nice video of a live 1983 performance of one of their iconic songs: “Burning Down the House.”  It is electric.

 

 

Enjoy.

 

 

 

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For Saint Patrick’s Day: Irish soda bread, my way

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I started making this a few years ago.  I’m not Irish, but Partner is one-half Irish, and he and I have been to the Auld Sod together, and we had a wonderful time there. 

 

 

I try to be a good wife, and it’s a traditional recipe, so –

 

 

But the original recipe is dry and uninteresting.  So I livened it up.  (Speaking of lively: you should hear my friends Apollonia and Cathleen go at it over whether or not to include caraway seeds.)

 

 

The result: Partner’s godmother’s sister, a full-blooded Irish-American, judged my version “the best Irish soda bread she’d ever tasted.”

 

 

(I’ve changed the recipe so much, it barely resembles the original.  But at least it still has some baking soda in it.)

 

 

**

 

For one loaf (recipe can easily be doubled and divided into two loaves):

-        Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

-        Sift together two cups flour, ½ tablespoon baking soda, a pinch of salt, and six tablespoons of sugar. 

-        Add 1/3 cup shortening (or a bit more) to the flour mixture and blend with a fork until thoroughly mixed (it should look mealy and grainy when it’s ready).

-        Add at least 2/3 cup raisins, or golden raisins, or dried cranberries, or even chopped prunes, along with ½ cup cold milk and a teaspoon of caraway seeds.  (I like them; some people don’t.  See the above comment re Apollonia and Cathleen.)

-        Mix, but don’t overdo it, or the dough will toughen.

-        Roll out on a floured surface into a round loaf.  Make a big X on top of the loaf with a sharp knife, and sprinkle the top heavily with sugar.  (You might even want to drizzle some honey on top.  Not too much.)

-        Bake on a parchment-paper lined sheet for 20-25 minutes, until it’s lightly browned and sounds hollow when you tap on it.

-        Wrap in a tea towel when you take it out of the oven. (I don’t know why, but my original recipe calls for this, and I always do it, and I think it’s cute.)

-        Cool before serving.

 

 

 

And think of me as you enjoy it.

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I am an amazing person

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We are often told that self-esteem is important.  In the words of my spiritual master RuPaul: “If you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

 

 

I sense, however, that the modern American capacity for self-esteem has gone hog wild.

 

 

Some years ago, my boss (this was several bosses ago) completed her MBA over a period of two years or so, studying on nights and weekends.  This is a very worthy things to do, and I congratulated her when she got her degree.  She smiled humbly.  “Thanks,” she said.  “It really is an amazing accomplishment.”

 

 

Ding! Self-esteem activated!

 

 

Here’s another one: a few years ago, I was having a brief orientation meeting with a new employee.  I noted the long list of publications and other accomplishments that accompanied his resume.  “That’s very impressive,” I said.

 

 

He smiled.  “Thank you,” he said.  “I know.”

 

 

Ding ding!

 

 

And, finally, this, from just a few days ago:

 

 

I was on the University shuttle.  Two medical students were sitting behind me, chatting noisily.  One had been, in his undergraduate days, a football player for a large school in the Pacific Northwest.  “People ask you for autographs all the time when you’re a college football player,” he told his companion, who was apparently really eating this stuff up.  “You know.  In restaurants and everything.  Some of the guys are really stuck up about it, they don’t like people talking to them.  I thought it was great.”

 

 

Later, the conversation turned to The Game Itself.  “There’s a lot more to playing football than people think,” Football Hero said.  “It’s complicated.  The playbook was like this – “ (He must had demonstrated how big it was with his hands; I wanted to look, but had no excuse for twisting around in my seat.)  “And you have to memorize the whole thing.”

 

 

“Wow!” his companion breathed.  “How long did it take you to memorize it?”

 

 

Football Hero mused for a moment.  “About a month,” he said finally.  “It takes normal people about a year.”

 

 

Ding ding ding ding ding!

 

 

I nearly blacked out.

 

 

Well, that’s all for today. 

 

 

(And, if I do say so myself, this is an astoundingly well-written blog entry.)

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Jell-O

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Back in January, I shared my New Year’s resolution to follow in Vanna White’s footsteps and try at least one new recipe a week. 


I managed it, for a while.  Then I got a little lazy, and made something I’d made before, and decided to rephrase the resolution as follows: “I will make at least one recipe (from scratch) every week – preferably something I’ve never made before – but an old and well-loved recipe is okay too.”


Now we are into March, which is the month in which moribund New Year’s resolutions generally die and are forgotten.


I made Jell-O last week.


Yes, I know.  Little box, boiling water, cold water, put it in the fridge.  But let me ask you: when’s the last time you made Jell-O?  (I’m lying, actually; it wasn’t Jell-O, it was Great Value Lime Gelatin Dessert, which I bought at Walmart for fifty-five cents.)


We were in Walmart – I needed black socks, and a picture frame, and isopropyl alcohol.  And Partner said: “What about groceries?”


I never think of grocery shopping in Walmart, but I began looking down the grocery aisles, and my goodness how cheap everything was!  We did pretty much our entire weekend grocery shopping right there, plus lots of impulse items.  The gelatin was one of these; I was darting down the aisle and saw those demure little boxes there, and I had a quick flashback to my childhood, and they were fifty-five cents!, and –


Well.  Naturally I made it with mini-marshmallows.  (These were ancient, and hard as rocks, but I put them in the microwave for a few seconds and they puffed up and became young and soft and fresh again.)  My mother used to put mandarin oranges in her Jell-O; I only wish I had some.  I need to stock up.


And I’d forgotten the wonderful smell that rises out of the bowl when you pour the boiling water over the gelatin powder: sweet and fruity, really heavenly.  Then you stir it slowly, and it seems to thicken before your eyes.


The instructions on the box told me to stir for two minutes.  I did, while meditating.  I thought about a story one of my college professors told: gelatin, while mostly protein, is not a “complete protein,” in that it doesn’t contain all of the amino acids human beings require in their diet.  This was not known until after the First World War.  Sadly, many WWI refugees were given a diet high in gelatin, because it was known to be protein; many became very malnourished, and some died.


Also: you know what they make gelatin from, right?  Hides. Hooves.  Yum!


(I ate it on Sunday evening.  It was very refreshing.)


(I also accidentally spilled some on the rug. I tried to clean it up, but I missed one blob, and Partner stepped right on it, and shrieked. You can only imagine what it feels like to step on a blob of cold Jell-O.)


I still maintain that I’m keeping my New Year’s resolution.


Next week maybe I’ll make Gorton’s Fishsticks.

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I am a sentimental old fool

---

I think most of my friends and coworkers (and family too) think I’m pretty chilly.  I can be very snide.  I am unmoved by most sob stories.  Disasters make me shrug.

 

 

But small silly things make me tear up.

 

 

One of my coworkers has lots of her kid’s drawings pinned up on her office wall.  I noticed one with a big bright drawing that said, in crayon, at the bottom: LADYBUGS ARE PRETTY LIKE YOU, MAMMA.

 

 

I teared up.

 

 

Other waterworks moments:

 

 

-        The (protracted) ending of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” as the huge bright alien ship descends.  I saw in at the end of my first trip abroad, in a theater in Copenhagen, and I was probably homesick, and I cried like a baby.

-        The children’s story “The Cat Who Went To Heaven,” by Elizabeth Coatsworth.  Every time I describe the story to someone, I choke up.  I can’t even reread it now, because I’m afraid I’ll start bawling.

-        The ending of the movie version of “Slaughterhouse-Five.”  Valerie Perrine is giving birth to Michael Sacks’s baby on an alien planet, and fireworks are going off, and the (invisible aliens) are cheering, and the soundtrack is Glenn Gould playing Bach.  It gets me every time.

-        (This one is unbearably highbrow:) The entry of the chorus, ppp, in the finale of Mahler’s "Resurrection" Symphony.  Also the whole twenty-minute first movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony; I can’t even listen to it anymore, it breaks me up too much.

 

 

So I am human, perhaps, after all.

 

 

(One afterword: I told my coworker how moved I was by her kid’s drawing of the ladybug.  She guffawed. “Oh, that’s a good one,” she said.  “He drew that because he wanted to butter me up to ask for something.”)

 

 

Apollonia is right.  I’m a chump.

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That virus that's been going around

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I had a nice bout of something viral and unpleasant last October.  Then I managed to catch a cold in December which lasted maybe two weeks.  Then I got sick again about six weeks ago, and Partner caught it from me, and we are still both hacking and coughing like madmen.

 

 

This is a bad cold season.

 

 

At least we don’t have the flu.  We were both vaccinated as soon as we could get the shots – in October, I think.   These latest maladies of ours are just miserable versions of the rhinovirus, or one of its relatives.

 

 

We have lots of mucus.  We cough a lot.  We are generally miserable and irritable and tired. I wash out my sinuses with a neti pot every night, and (very seriously) I have not had a sinus infection since doing this.  To be fair, I also use Flonase every day, which I’m sure also helps.

 

 

But Partner uses at least three times the medications I do, and he sounds much worse.

 

 

This is the way it goes: I almost always get sick first, and I bring it home, and naturally Partner catches it from me.  I hate being Typhoid Mary, but that’s the way it seems to go in our family.

 

My office is like a TB ward.  People are coughing and choking in all directions.  There’s not enough hand sanitizer to go around.  I hear horror stories about pneumonia and infections.  Our UPS driver, a bouncy musclebound guy with a shiny shaven head, was out for ten days.  “Prednisone!” he told me tremblingly.  “They put me on prednisone!  It was horrible!  I had nightmares every night!  I couldn’t even sleep, because the dreams were so bad!”  (I had always assumed – incorrectly – that prednisone was a female hormone.)  He was back for a few days, but now he’s out sick again.  Considering that most of the time he is the mostly overpoweringly healthy person I see in a given day, this is sort of terrifying.

 

 

Ah well.  It could be worse.  It might be H1N1 flu, and we could all be dead.

 

 

Now pardon me.  I need to gag for a while.

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Obsessed with Robert Pattinson

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There was a picture of Robert Pattinson in the Financial Times the other day.  It was from his newly-released movie “Bel Ami"; he was looking louche and European, wearing period costume.  How did the article put it?: “Here is his ‘Twilight’ impassivity – weird, lucent-eyed, fixed of stare, sullenly magnetic . . .”

 

 

Naturally I brought it to lunch to show Apollonia and Cathleen.  “I have something for you,” I said casually to Apollonia, and slid the newspaper into her hands . . .

 

 

Such a desperate erotically-charged whinny you have never heard.  She leapt to her feet, moved backward slowly until her shoulders met the refrigerator, and slowly slid downward until she was sitting on the filthy kitchen floor, the paper clutched in her hands, staring at the picture of her dream/demon lover.  “He’s perfect,” she cooed.  “Look at him.  Just look at him.”

 

 

Cathleen had no idea what Apollonia was looking at.  “What did you do to her?” she shrieked at me.  “You’ve finally driven her over the edge.”

 

“Pattinson,” I said.

 

 

“Oh,” Cathleen said.  “Patterson.”  (It amuses her – and me too – to call Robert Pattinson by the wrong name, because she knows it irks Apollonia deeply.)  “Give me that.”  She ripped the paper from Apollonia’s trembling hands.  “Oh Jesus,” Cathleen moaned, inspecting the photo.  “He’s hideous.”

 

 

Apollonia recovered slightly and went over to the cafeteria sink to rinse her plates.  “I don’t care what either of you thinks,” she said dreamily.  “This movie is going to be a masterpiece.  It’s been in the can for a while, you know.  They’re only just releasing it now.”

 

 

“By ‘can,’ I assume you mean ‘toilet,’” I said, and Cathleen and I snickered.

 

 

“Huh huh,” Apollonia said.  “Laugh away.  I’m glad I amuse you both.  You have no idea.”

 

 

“No, we don’t,” Cathleen said.

 

 

“We really really don’t,” I added.

 

 

Ah: poor Apollonia.  The heart has its reasons, whereof reason itself knows nothing.

 

 

But oh dear.  Robert Pattinson. 

 

 

Now leave me in peace with my Chris Evans posters.

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Music video: Balkan Beat Box sings "Move It"

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This video took me by surprise.  If you’ve never heard of the group, well, neither had I.  Here’s part of their Wikipedia entry: “Co-founders Ori Kaplan and Tamir Muskat met in Brooklyn as teenagers. Both had grown up with music and Kaplan had been a klezmer clarinetist, while Muskat was a drummer in a punk rockband. They began playing together but had trouble finding a style that they felt represented themselves, so they decided to create one. They established their own unique sound by fusing the musical styles of Mediterranean and Balkan traditions with hip hop and dancehall beats. The group was extremely influenced by Jamaican dub, another influence visible in their hybrid musical form.”

 

 

To paraphrase the Stones: it’s only klezmer punk Balkan dub hip-hop, but I like it.

 

 

 

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The reception after the memorial

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I went to a memorial service a few months ago, for a person I’d known pretty well for over twenty years.  It was solemn, mostly, though there were a few moments of levity.


Then there was a reception afterward.


It’s nice to see people you haven’t seen for a while; the mood is always lighter at these things, and people always seem to be laughing.  It’s probably just relief after the sobriety of the service.


But now and then you get this soaring sense of vertigo: you know who would have really enjoyed this?  The deceased.  She really would have liked this.


And then you wonder what kind of reception you’ll get when your time comes.  And then you think about people laughing and eating, and beginning the long road toward forgetting you.


Now how do you feel?


Creepy, that’s how. 


I made my excuses and left.


Rest in peace, dear heart.  You have my love.  I’ll keep your birthday on my calendar.  Your family will remember you, and your friends, and I am proud to call myself one of your friends.  


And we will all miss you.

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Goodbye, New York Times

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The only newspaper to which I subscribe – in the sense that there’s actually an ink-and-newsprint newspaper outside my door in the morning – is the Financial Times.  I began buying it some years ago because I liked the crossword puzzle.  Then, gradually, I found its dry British take on world politics far more appealing than the MacWorld version offered by American news sources, and its business coverage was intricate and mysterious.  I don’t know much about economics, but I have always been intrigued by the subject, and I always feel, when I read FT articles about the future of the Euro or the BRICs or Emerging Markets or black swans that I am trembling on the edge of recognition and understanding. 

 

 

Also, I like the salmon-tinted paper it’s printed on.  (Somebody on the bus asked me once: “What’s the matter with your newspaper, mister?  It’s a funny color.”)

 

 

Then, of course, there is the New York Times. 

 

 

I have been a faithful follower of the NYT (both print and online) for many years.  It has nourished me in many ways.  I like its rhythm: world news, national news, local (meaning New York City) news, op-ed, culture.  It’s unabashedly liberal, and I welcome its confirmation of my beliefs and prejudices (as do we all).  And the writing is generally excellent.

 

 

A little less than a year ago, the NYT announced that its website would no longer be free.  For full access, you have to cough up fifteen bucks a month.  (That’s just digital access, mind you.  A lot of porn sites cost less than that.  Don’t ask me how I know.)  You can still read twenty articles a month for free; you can also access the Times through search engines, etc.  But if you want to romp around on their websites – culture, videos, travel, food, movies, editorials, all the things they do so well – you have to pay.

 

 

Hm, I thought back in February 2011, and prepared to do without.

 

 

Then, for no apparent reason, the Cadillac division of General Motors (with which I have no real connection) gifted me via email with a nine months’ online subscription.

 

 

It expired on December 31.

 

 

Goodbye, Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins, both of whom I read consistently, and often laughed aloud as I did so, and quoted their nastier/funnier lines to my friends.  If I were a conservative (shiver!), I would probably find them strident and silly, kind of like the way I actually feel about Rush Limbaugh.  But I agree with them.  So nyah nyah!

 

 

Goodbye, David Brooks and Ross Douthat.  The former is a cheesy social critic who plays Edmund Burke, but not very well; the latter is the token-conservative editorialist, who takes a topic – like, let’s say, Ron Paul – and finds something to like in him after all.  Also, Ross is Catholic (but then again, in his columns, he almost always reminds you of that). 

 

 

Goodbye, Bill Cunningham, bicycling around New York and taking photos of people and their outfits.  May you live forever.

 

 

Goodbye, Mark Bittman.  You got a little Hollywood over the past few years, but your writing is excellent and your recipes are very good. 

 

 

Goodbye, Frank Bruni.  He used to do restaurant reviews; now he does general (and often political) commentary, and does it very well. 

 

 

Goodbye, Seth Kugel, the Frugal Traveler, so much better and more entertaining than the guy who was the Frugal Traveler before him.

 

 

Goodbye Nick Kristof and Paul Krugman, for cheerfully leading me into the coming political / economic apocalypse.  You’ve both been right consistently.  Keep at it.

 

 

And all the rest.

 

 

I’ll still be checking in, maybe twenty times a month, or maybe more.

 

 

(Is $15/month too much to pay?  Maybe.  We’ll see.  I may start jonesing for Gail and Maureen and Paul and Frank in a few months and give in.)

 

 

But for now: goodbye, my dear and lovely friends, goodbye.

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Birds at the window

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The people in my family are maybe a little psychic.  Mom generally knew when I was sick, even when I was far away.  At the moment my father died, I felt an odd jolt, even though I was about 250 miles away.  Partner and I also share a psychic link; it mostly involves food, however.  I suggested pancakes for breakfast, and he gaped at me: “Oh my god!” he said.  “I was just thinking of that!” 

 

 

If only we could make money with this.

 

 

Here’s another odd thing: birds come to our house when people die.

 

 

A few days after Dad died in 1976, at the old Venersborg house, there was a bird at my window.  It was banging its head against my bedroom window like mad, trying to get my attention.  I mentioned it to Mom and she looked somber.  “I know,” she said.  “It’s been at every window in the house. It’s as if it’s trying to get in.”

 

 

Fast-forward to late November 1999, when Mom died, all the way over on the West Coast.  A cardinal was pecking at my apartment windows for almost a week after that happened.

 

 

I don’t know where this comes from, but I’ve heard and read other references to it.  Birds just seem to be attracted to houses in which there’s been a death, one way or another.  They’re not attracted to the deceased, mind you; they’re attracted to the bereaved.

 

 

Strange.

 

 

I remember a reference to this kind of thing on a TV show some years ago, but I don’t remember the show, so I can’t look it up.  I tried a Google search, and found things like this.  It’s not unknown; it’s butterflies, and animals in general.  This website makes it clear that the deceased is trying to communicate with the living through animals.

 

 

I want to believe this, but I think this is wishful thinking.  I have no trouble believing that birds might sense some kind of disturbance in the house, but I don’t think the dead are guiding them.

 

 

But if only.  It would be lovely to see some of my departed relatives and friends again. 

 

 

But I don’t think I ever will.

 

 

Ah. This whole death thing sucks.

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