 
Pure Old Apple Vodka, homemade by yours truly, gets decanted tonight after three weeks of infusing (750ml of SKYY vodka and 3 sliced apples; two Granny Smith, one Golden Delicious) and three weeks of mellowing. I'm going to shake it with ice and maybe a few dashes of Aromatic Cocktail Bitters No. 2, then serve it up in a cocktail glass, perhaps garnished with an apple slice on the rim. I'm excited. I'm thinking that this is something I'm always going to want to have in my bar. Only real "apple Martinis" at my place! (Of course, if I'm going to call it a Martini in front of Wes, I'll have to put in at least a drop of vermouth.) I hope I can use this elixir to convert at least a few folks away from that vile "sour pucker" stuff. The taste of real, crisp, sweet and tart apples as opposed to Borg-green artificially flavored Jolly Rancher candy with grain alcohol in it? Yes, please. To crown it all, my very generous and talented friend Ted "Dr. Cocktail" Haigh was kind enough to make me a gorgeous label for my bottle:
Beautiful! (He's a marvelously talented graphic designer. Hire him for your next major motion picture! I'll put you in touch.) Hmm ... "Chas." I rather like the sound of that. My grandfather used to abbreviate his name that way. Next project rolling. I might want to start another batch of apple vodka soon, as I suspect this batch won't last long (particularly if we serve it at a cocktail party). There's already been a new project steeping for the last week, though. Five days ago, three pints of deep red, beautiful, fragrant strawberries near the height of the picking season went into a 2-liter jar and were subsequently submerged in a fifth of Sauza Hornitos reposado tequila. Coming for the Fourth of July ... Tequila por mi Amante. Stay tuned. Movin' on up ... to the Eastsiiiide ... Congratulations to Kevin on a new domain of his very own, www.ghostinthemachine.net. I'm always happy to see someone liberated from the slums of Geocities (although his abode was certainly one of the spiffiest in that particular slum). "S-E-P-A-R-A-T-E." That's the word that knocked me out of a spelling bee in fourth grade, making me the runner-up rather than the winner. (The old "seperate" bugaboo; I have never once misspelled that word since.) It's a commonly used word, one I should have known. However, I'm not too sure how many people use the word "prospicience" on a daily basis. Or "kakemono" (Should this even count? This is not an English-language word per se, but a direct import of Japanese), or "caulicolous," or "stultiloquence" (one which I rather like, actually), or "culgee" ("A jewelled plume surmounting the sirpesh or aigrette upon the turban"), or "hermeneutics," or "soavemente," or "toreutics," or "throstle," or "roriferous," or "tiralee," or "objicient," or "icteric," few of which are in my Webster's Collegiate and many of which aren't even in my Unabridged. Sheesh. My favorite word in English, by the way, is "defenestrate".
"Gibt es Schwarze in Brasilien?" Dubya's latest amusing gaffe doesn't appear to be getting any coverage in the American press (because if the American media report it, the terrorists have won). German news magazine Der Spiegel reports on a meeting between Bush and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the President of Brazil. Our fearless leader astonished the Brazilian president by asking him, "Do you have blacks in Brazil?" (Here's an English translation of the article.) I'm glad to know his foreign policy is fueled by such a keen awareness of other nations and cultures. (One reader has written in and claimed that this is false, indeed defamation, and that the German reporter made it up. Any substantiations? Given the editorial prestige of Der Spiegel, it would seem to be a rough equivalent of TIME or Newsweek making up such a story.) Zooba zabba. The Onion A.V. Club currently features an interesting and entertaining interview with Tom Waits. 10th Grade, Four Courses and Dessert. Apparently high school kids are no slouches in the cooking and entertaining department these days.
D'oh, I missed Eurosong! That's what happens when I don't pay attention and stack up a busy holiday weekend with other plans. The Eurovision Song Contest was held on Saturday. I missed it. Turns out Latvia won. Damn. I was rooting for Ireland. "My Lovely Horse" got robbed!
Cocktail of the day. It's the most popular cocktail in Bakersfield, California. Why, you may ask? I did, and looked it up -- it 's the "national drink" of the Basque people, and there are lots of Euskadi folk and Basque restaurants in B'field (known otherwise only for Buck Owens' place and for being the hometown of a lot of people I know who couldn't wait to move to L.A.) What is it? It's the Picon Punch, and it seems that Bakersfield is the place to go to get 'em 'round these parts. It's based on a bitter orange spirit called Amer Picon, which itself is based on bitter oranges, gentian and cinchona. It was invented by a Frenchman named Gaëtan Picon in 1837, and the drink evolved from a French aperitif and stomachic on its own through the hands of the Italians and apparently into the hands of the Euskadi, who revere it. The thing about Amer Picon is that it's almost impossible to get in the States these days, unfortunately. Even worse, about 20 years ago the manufacturers of Picon lowered the proof almost by half! It went from 78 proof to 39; one can imagine how that probably affected the flavor. Fortunately, since the late 1940s the Torani syrup company has come to the rescue. They're the same folks that make all those Italian syrups in myriad flavors for sodas, coffee, cocktails, etc. Oddly enough, they don't seem to publicize this stuff, nor sell it or even refer to it on their website. Fortunately, an online spirits house called Beverages and More sells it via their site for $12.99 a bottle, with great service and fast shipping (mine got to me in about three days). Ths version of Amer Picon, called Torani Amer in its new incarnation, has the same flavor as the original spirit and most importantly the same proof. It's delightfully bitter and bracing; if you like Campari you'll probably like this too. Sweetened in the punch and lightened by the soda, it's an absolutely yummy concoction that'll stimulate your appetite, settle your stomach afterward, and will be an enjoyable and relatively unusual addition to your pantheon of cocktails.
Picon PunchToast to your and your friends' health, and learn to say something in Euskara, the language of the Basques. Start with "Topa!", which is "Cheers!", or "Kaixo!" (kai-SHO), which is a greeting. You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant. This month the Online Chef site features an interview with Chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, one of the birthplaces of "California cuisine" in the 1970s, which emphasized the best and freshest local ingredients, obtained seasonally. (Hey, don't forget that if you go to Chez Panisse on a Monday, it's $30 cheaper for the prix fixe than on the weekend!) What they're doing in Fargo these days. Intense research on defartifying beans, apparently. What greater boon to mankind could there be than this?
Tonight on "Down Home". Featuring a brand-new release of Paul Brady's monumental July 1978 Dublin concert, when he was at the height of his traditional music career and the recordings of which were lost until this year, featuring performances and accompaniments by the incredible lineup of Andy Irvine, Donal Lunny, Liam O'Flynn, "Matt Molloy and Noel Hill. (!!!) Also, new music from Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, plus new and vintage blues from Corey Harris and Victoria Spivey. Tune in at 88.5 FM, or via our webcast at www.kcsn.org.
This is addressed to the guy I almost killed while driving to work this morning, and all his ilk. Listen, you pedaling fuckwad ... perhaps you're too stupid and careless to worry about your own apparently worthless life, but I don't particularly care to bear the lifelong burden of guilt for killing you just because you can't be bothered to stop at a stop sign like everybody else. But I don't suppose you give a crap about others if you don't give a crap about yourself. While we're at it, all you bicyclists need to teach this to your children as well. This is the second time in as many months I've nearly hit someone who ran a stop sign on a bike, and last time it was a little girl who looked about seven or eight. What I wouldn't give to at least once see a cop pull over a bicyclist for this, and write him or her a nice, big fat ticket with the same fine I'd have to pay if I had done that with my car. Jesus. Update, 1:51pm: Whew. I was hopping mad this morning when I wrote that entry, first thing upon getting to work. I've since calmed down and turn it into a plea -- if you ride a bike, be EXTRA careful, particularly in a huge, trafficky city like Los Angeles. I'm guessing you don't want to die, and you an be assured that I don't want to kill you. Eric kindly wrote in with a great story; just because you think it's safe and/or legal to run that stop sign, it ain't necessarily so:
First off, let me say I'm a biking advocate who stresses the importance of following the rules of the road.I'm sure Eric's days of being a bike scofflaw are long over. As much as I want to laugh at the last comment, I've heard of people being seriously injured or worse after getting plammed by some drunken or reckless bike rider. Let's be careful out there. Sealed with a twist. "Dat dere fancy wine, wit da screw top" was how Archie Bunker used to described his favorite cheap jug wine, and screw tops seem to have become synonymous with cheaper wines in recent times. No longer. More and more high-end wines are beginning to use screw tops, for one good reason -- to protect the fine wine inside. (Registration required; userid annoying, password annoying) According to the article, "3% to 5% of all cork-finished wines are compromised by the cork... [and] a badly corked wine smells like a wet dog." Time to stop being snobbish about screw tops, I guess. Perhaps a compromise can be made for tradition's sake; I do recall at least one or two northern California wineries that use a soft, expandable plastic material for their corks, easily removable with a corkscrew and unlikely to introduce off-aromas and bad flavors into the wine. "See how they massacred my boy!" An excellent article on the special effects of the "Godfather" movies. Ever wonder how they managed to shoot Moe Greene in the eye?
Notes for a Foxtrot. Michael Schiavo offers an excellent article on the new Wilco album, along with James Baumann's reviews of both the record and a recent concert, via Swizzle-Stick.com:
What Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is, like Berryman's The Dream Songs or Whitman's Leaves of Grass, is something purely, utterly American. And not in the Appalachian-fiddle-Texas-highway-at-sunset-back-alleys-of-Chicago sense. Tweedy has taken the genetic sound of America and introduced to it what some believe to be an apocryphal, exotic aspect of our country: middle-class intellectualism. But the suburbs are not foreign or sinister; it's time to realize this: they're as native as a coalmine.Save the record industry! Lobby your Congressperson NOW! As we all know, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes illegal any technology that can be used to circumvent copy protection. You must immediately phone, e-mail or telegram your Congressional representatives to have them ban Magic Markers immediately! Why, this Magic Marker technology could mean the death of the record industry! It must be banned! Speaking of copyright... Turner Broadcasting CEO Jamie Kellner says it's "theft" to skip over ads when you're watching commercial television ... *giggle*. Well, throw me in jail for taking a leak or making a cocktail during the commercials, pal. Funny, funny, funny. Yale's LawMeme responds with a Lettermanesque rapier, in the form of their list of Top Ten New Copyright Crimes; here's the shortlist, but read the whole article for the annotations, commentary and all those delicious Kellner quotes.
10. Watching PBS without making a donation.Did you ever wonder what'd it look like to pop a water balloon in zero gravity? Wonder no more. (Neat!) Nice assets. While Enron struggles to keep themselves from being obliterated by a huge lightning bolt from the Cosmos, and while poor weepy Mrs. Kenneth Lay opened a thrift store to sell all her luxury crap, five former Enron employees are converting their assets into cash, courtesy of Playgirl magazine.
The five were picked from dozens of Enron ex-employees earlier this year, and are being paid an undisclosed sum - reportedly more than the $5,600 severance pay offered by the company.You go, boys.
Whew. The Librarian of Congress has rejected the proposed new royalty rates for Internet webcasters. These exhorbitant rates, retroactive for three years and with mind-boggling documentation required, would have put most small non-commercial webcasters like KCSN out of business on the web. I'm glad somebody in Washington is using his head these days. I'll have the monkfish instead, please. Seven hundred chefs across the United States have signed a pledge to stop serving Chilean sea bass, which is in great danger of extinction from overfishing. (Shades of redfish during the 1980s "Cajun food craze".) White wine! Good for your lungs! Red wine! Good for your heart! Cocktails! Good for your health in general! May I pour you something? I'd buy that for a dollar! (Har har har!) Although I do confess that there are a bunch of shows I watch regularly, I'd have to say that somethng like this is a really good argument for killing your television.
That's Incredible: The ReunionRead a book instead.
Quote of the day.
"I must say that I find television very
educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read
a book." If nothing else, it's hideously ugly. The featherless chicken, that is; bred for chicken farmers in hotter countries, where the beady-eyed fowl don't have to expend so much energy trying to keep cool (and their farmers don't have to expend so much dough on air conditioning). Would I wanna eat one? Well, does it taste good? Is it good for you? If so, I'll give it a shot. (Um, the skin isn't that pink by the time it's ready for the broiler, is it?) The Cheez Whizzes. "CheezMuzik", the venerable, long-running (since my early high school days at least) and kinda weird radio show on WTUL in New Orleans (the second-best radio station in the city) rated a recent mention in the hometown rag. The show, one shift of which is programmed and hosted by my old high school classmate Lenny Bertrand, is ... uh, well, it's kind of ... well, mellow, but much more than just that. I used to enjoy listening to it on Sunday mornings way back when. Read about it, and maybe you can catch their webcasts if you decide you need a little Cheeze in your life. Geer shenius. Um, I mean, sheer ... you know. What? Shotglass Chess, that's what! Brilliant idea whose time has come, despite the fact that these guys stole the idea from a "M*A*S*H" episode from 30 years ago, with Hawkeye and Trapper actually playing shot glass checkers. (Purloined from Brad.)
Uhhhrrrmmm ... food hangover. I'm a little groggy this morning. We actually ate too well last night -- amazing barbecued baby back ribs (South Carolina/Georgia style, with a tangy, mustardy barbecue sauce), my aunt's fabulous baked beans with the addition of a cinnamon stick and some chipotle Tabasco, Maytag blue cheese cole slaw, cheddar biscuits, sinfully good custardy creamy chocolate brownies, and fruit salad with Angostura bitters. *bloat* Then, off to the final "X-Files" gathering ... December 22, 2012. Speaking of which ... it actually wasn't bad at all. I rather liked it. (Too bad I wanted to slap a few people amongst our viewing audience, the ones who couldn't stop flapping their yaps for the entire two hours.) They seem to have set it up beautifully for the next "X-Files" movie, and a potentially big movie at that. Go ahead and encourage them, why don't you? Government representatives seem to be falling over themselves this weekend declaring that further terrorist attacks in this country are "almost certain", with the FBI director giving the bad guys ideas by saying it was "inevitable" that we'll eventually see pedestrian suicide bombers. The "Morning Fix" commentary on the issue amuses, yet gives one pause:
More thin-lipped prognostications of doomThe best way to prevent any further terrorist attacks is to quietly beef up intelligence gathering and behind-the-scenes efforts as much as humanly possible -- just do the job. All this hot air-blowing in the media seems to have little purpose other than to further the air-blowers' political agenda. Speaking of which... Matt Deatherage articulates the above GOP hypocrisy with regards to the above rather well. (Via Damien)
Now that the Bush administration has revealed it had specific warning in August 2001 that Al-Qaida wanted to hijack one or more US airplanes, after eight months of saying there was no warning at all, Bush says criticism has a "whiff of politics." The Florida Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee says that criticizing Bush is morally wrong: "The only thing that this uproad does is give aid and comfort to the enemy."To suggest that the government is above any kind of criticism, that it's anti-American to criticize the government for anything right now, seems rather anti-American itself, doesn't it?
"Your stolen art? I threw it away, dear." Stéphane Breitwieser had spent years going around Europe, stealing near-priceless works of art from poorly guarded museums, and building up his own private stash at his mother's house. After he was finally arrested, his mother (presumably to eliminate evidence) cut up and destroyed 60 paintings and 112 objets d'art, the estimated value of which was US$1.4 billion. *boggle* Yeah you rite. Gambit profiles consummate New Orleanian writer/cartoonist Bunny Matthews, whose cartoons were among the things that kept me from being fatally homesick when I first moved away from New Orleans. Quotes of the day. My, how times and tunes change. And such sour grapes, too. Truth be told, RealNames was really pretty useless.
"We're condemning the court's decision as
well as the government's prosecution. We're 3 years old, and Microsoft was
prepared to give us the trust of owning a core part of the browser. That
doesn't seem the behavior of a monopolist."
"Microsoft seems to be playing the role of
the referee who decides whether any innovations succeed." The Friday Five. A complete trifle, but amusing. It's a site that asks five questions of you at the end of each workweek. Question #4 reminded me of one of my recent favorite movies, and question #5 sent me into a delightfully traumatic flashback mode, so ... why not?
1. What shampoo do you use? Whatever's cheapest and has the least offensive smell. (I hate perfumes.) Usually it's Suave Balsam and Protein, which has almost no aroma at all, but this time it's White Rain Coconut. I do like things that smell like food.
KCSN Spring Pledge Drive! It's been going on since last Friday, in fact, and tonight's my turn. If you're a listener to either the broadcast or webcast versions, please become a member of KCSN and support us with your dollars. We offer the most diverse musical programming of any radio station in the city -- classical, opera, jazz, swing, early R&B, Americana, bluegrass, world music, country, folk/roots and traditional music, surf, lounge, Broadway, an all-Beatles show with NO commericals, German music and news, Grateful Dead, New Age, Western, children's music, old-time radio drama, twangin' rockabilly, music of the African diaspora ... plus our award-winning student-produced news program "Evening Update", the Overnight Jukebox and more! No other radio station in Los Angeles offers this kind of diversity, no matter how "hand-picked" their music is. But wait, there's more! If you pledge online, KCSN's fabulous Anonymous Benefactor will match your pledge 2:1! That's right, your $10 a month will be worth $30, etc. Triple your power! A regular membership is just $10 a month on your credit card (about 33¢ a day -- and less than four days' worth of morning lattes from large corporate coffee chains!), and for your membership at that level we'd be pleased to offer you one of the following gifts as our thanks (or, for a pledge of $65, choose one gift CD from these or any others we may offer on our website):
The "Down Home" Five-Pack:There are so many great things to come from KCSN, and a very successful pledge drive this time around will help propel us further. Do your part and pledge! You'll get our undying thanks, and lots of great, diverse radio, 24 hours a day. Senator Springsteen? Apparently not. (Thank Gawd. I think he does more good for humanity making rock 'n roll.) Eek. It looks like The Oxford American, "The Southern Magazine of Good Writing" and a favorite of mine, may be teetering on the verge of financial collapse. This would be bad. Not only do I enjoy the writing, but their annual music issue (focusing on Southern and roots artists) has become indispensible. I hope they make it. Sometimes a topiary is just a topiary. And some people really should have better things to worry about.
The Death of Evangelism? Matthew Sturges wrote an excellent article on how he feels evangelism is the worst way for Christians to "spread the Word", and compares such methods (and the distrustful reaction many have to them) to telemarketing. He says, and I agree, that the best way to spread the word is not by proselytizing (something I dislike intensely), but by example, by simply living your life. I especially like his summary of his main points:
To all the Christians out there, I say the following:Amen, Matt. I have to say, though, that this probably represents the way he'd like things to be, rather than the way things are. The huge growth in evangelical churches in the South, as pointed out in this MeFi thread, means that somebody's listening to the proselytization, and getting something from it. If this huge growth represents fundamentalist viewpoints as well, then it worries me; I suspect that not a whole lot of those folks listen to point three, for starters. The idea of a neo-fundamentalist majority happening in this country one day leaves me with a more-than-vague uneasiness. (It scares the crap out of me, frankly. Imagine President Ashcroft. Brrrr.) Open minds certainly help. If you can make the effort to read it, Alan Wolfe writes in The Atlantic about "The Opening of the Evangelical Mind":
Of all America's religious traditions, evangelical Protestantism, at least in the twentieth-century conservative forms, has long ranked "dead last in intellectual stature." Now evangelical thinkers are trying to revitalize their tradition. Can they turn an intellectual backwater into an intellectual beacon?I hate to keep skipping to the endings, but I liked his conclusions as well:
Fundamentalist Christians did neither themselves nor America a favor by fencing themselves off from the rest of the country. Withdrawal encouraged fanaticism and paranoia in them and confirmed to others a sense that if this was religion, they were better off without it. Evangelical Christians who take ideas seriously can combat both tendencies. One need not agree with their view of the role that religion ought to play in the public square to consider it a credible, even necessary, view for Americans to ponder. And they bring to their advocacy an enthusiasm for ideas, and a commitment to debating them, that belies any stereotypes of sectarian fanaticism. To succeed in the university and therefore in America, evangelicals will have to put their defensiveness to one side. They will also have to learn to practice their faith as they see best while treating people of other faiths -- and, indeed, people of no faith -- with respect.Live your life as an example, and respect the beliefs of others? What a concept. Plasticize yourself! No, I don't mean what that wacky German doctor does to you after you die. I mean ... well, haven't you always wondered what you'd look like as a Lego figurine? I sure have. Now, I no longer have to wonder. I look like this:
(Wow. It's just occurred to me that this is my first ever self-portrait.) Not a bad likeness, actually. Of course, this is a pretty representational view of myself. One needn't be so representational when visualizing oneself ... go wild! Peeve of the day: When someone's making change for you, and you hold your hand out for the change ... and he or she ignores that and puts your change down on the counter right next to your outstretched and upraised palm. I hate that. Dude, I told you to pay that bill. An Oakland, California musician who grew marijuana in his basement was killed by his roommate, was was angered by a $1,000 utility bill for the home they shared. I never had this problem. When I was in gradual school, my roommate grew this sad, pathetic little pot plant in the closet, with only one growlight. He stripped it of leaves, and then one day I came home to find him breaking off pieces of twigs and lining the little sticks up in his pipe. That was the end of the pot plant. As for my roommate ... fortunately, I never had to shoot him. Fox presents "Canada's Worst Animal Maulings". Well, not yet anyway, but I'm sure the network wishes they had cameras with this one. We hear of wild animal problems in the Great White North, like rampaging polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba. However, such attacks pale in comparison to the mad feline of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. A vicious, marauding Siamese named ... Cocoa Puff.
"We fled the house," [the cat's owner] said. "We all ran for our lives."Polar bears, shmolar bears.
Quote of the day.
"It's like my sister, who called me this
morning at 7am. I picked up the phone and she said, 'Hi, no one died,
you got a great review in the Times.' I wonder if non-Jews do this." (Yes they do, Amy. Incidentally, if anyone ever calls me at 7am, they must start off by saying "no one died.")
Caviar and white chocolate (and other upsetting notions). Perhaps the weirdest dessert I've ever had was at one of my very favorite Thai restaurants, Saladang Song in Pasadena. I've adored every single dish on their menu ... except this one. Asian cultures tend to have a vastly different concept of dessert from Westerners; they tend to be not as sweet, and that's just for starters. This particular dessert was called "Saladang 'Underground'", described on the menu as "Mixed sweet tubers in syrup, served warm and topped with coconut cream". Tubers? Potatoes? Well, maybe yams. That sounded good. I love coconut cream! Except this ... was a salty coconut cream! The tubers were less along the lines of yams and more along the lines of yuca -- non-sweet, extremely starchy and a flavor best described as "pasty". Next time I'll just get the ice cream. Asian cultures certainly don't have a monopoly on this kind of stuff. The Guardian sings the praises of some very odd desserts, including those that are salty, plus combinations like the aforementioned caviar and white chocolate, beetroot and green peppercorn jelly, and mango with pine. (Erm.) "P.P.S. She's a Baptist, so don't tell her you're gay." Esquire graces us with a new piece by David Sedaris. I also came across a pretty good interview with him in the Onion A. V. Club, where he talks about "his fans, his desire to exaggerate, and the rudeness of the French." Videodiscus linearicus! zzzzzap! Hmm. My magic isn't quite up to snuff. I seem to have ended up in the middle of an explosion, with my face smeared with soot like poor Neville Longbottom. I'm a Harry Potter fan, and I'm looking forward to the DVD release. Flawed as the film was, it was still a good deal of fun, and was a definite "yes" for the collection. Unfortunately, from what I've read on DVD File about its menu system that's more like a puzzle than a DVD menu, I'm gonna want to get my wand and try to transmogrify it into an easily navigable menu. Who has time to deal with a puzzle every time you want to access an extra feature?
Most frustrating is the fact that just about all of the best features on the disc cannot be accessed without picking up clues, completing tasks, and solving puzzles in all of the other sections. There is simply no way to access the extras on this disc in a traditional, linear way. While I'm all for a cool interactive experience for tots, I'm baffled as to why a simple page has not been included that lists all the main video-based supplemental features. Alas, it takes a lot of work to get to most of this stuff, which is bound to disappoint those who are not fans of menu clicking and taking notes while they use a DVD.Professor McGonnagall may flunk me for saying so, but this'll be annoying. If I wanted to solve puzzles I'd have bought the video game.
Quote of the day.
"Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It
prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."
The crustacean cure, a perfect panacea. (Redundancy in the furtherance of alliteration is no vice.) Okay, getting to the point ... one sure-fire way to alleviate homesick depression is to go out and eat a lot of lobster. Butter sauce. Steamed clams in broth. Wine. Ocean, and the crisp salty air. Mmmmmmm. New Jay due. Former Uncle Tupelo and on-hiatus Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar will be releasing a 5-song ep, "ThirdShiftGrottoSlack", featuring four songs from the Sebastopol sessions that were previously unreleased. I've already heard some of them, and I'm glad they're getting a release. My god ... it didn't suck. After seeing the previews last week, I was about to despair, and was getting myself into MST3K mode for last night's "X-Files". To everyone's surprise, though ... it was pretty good. Touching, but not overly sentimental, and not silly. Nice job for your last episode, Mr. Gilligan. I have slightly higher hopes for the series finale now.
Reilly redux! Last night was the opening night of the return engagement of Charles Nelson Reilly's fabulous autobiographical one-man show, "Save It For the Stage: The Life of Reilly". It's at the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills, running Tuesdays to Sundays until June 16. Although we agreed with the relatively minor criticisms of the show being a bit too long, we nevertheless loved it. It's consistently hilarious and often touching, and never fails to remind us that this man is an Actor who trained with Stella Adler and won a Tony in his Broadway career, and is a longtime opera and theatre director ... as well as being That Guy on "Match Game". Last night was the premiere, and at KCSN there was an opening night extravaganza on "The David and Peter Show with Miriam", the fabulous Broadway music show which comes on right after mine. Miriam and Peter were there, and called in with live interviews with many of the celebs who were in attendance. Last night's broadcast also featured lots of recordings from Reilly's Broadway shows, plus snippets of a recent interview that was so funny I nearly wrecked the car on the way home. Laughing hysterically and wiping tears from one's eyes while trying to negotiate a fast-moving freeway interchage can be a little dangerous. If you're local, call the Canon Theatre at (310) 859-2830 and book tickets for a show; Tuesdays to Saturdays are 8pm, Sunday matinée is 3pm. You'll thank me later.
Quote of the day.
"Hi sweetie! How's the show so far? ...
*gasp* ... Shut up! You are not sitting next to Angie
Dickinson!" As the anthrax goes rolling along... The DNA sequence of the anthrax sent through the US Mail in 2001 has been revealed and confirms suspicious that the bacteria originally came from a US military laboratory. Taggart's Aromatic Cocktail Bitters No. 3. Oh, how haughty and pretentious-sounding. Please, get over yourself. It was just an experiment in home bitters-making, based on a recipe by Robert Hess that he called "House Bitters No. 1" that was in turn inspired by the five ingredients that were listed on the bottle of Abbott's Bitters (defunct since the late 1940s) as well as Gary Regan's "Orange Bitters No. 4" (reformulated and soon to be made and sold by the Sazerac Company as "Regan's Orange Bitters No. 6"). I added a bit to it, based on what I and others had reported tasting in Abbott's Bitters, and spent a month making an experimental batch of homebrewed aromatic cocktail bitters. We had an Official Tasting last week, and ... well ... the consensus was that for being bitters, they weren't terribly bitter. They weren't bad, though -- not by a long shot. They were very aromatic (during stage 2, when the ingredients were simmering on the stove, the fabulous smells that filled my house were dizzying), very spicy, and a good seasoning for a cocktail. Just not terribly concentrated, not terribly mellowed (Abbott's Bitters were barrel-aged, probably for at least a year) and, unfortunately, relatively un-bitter. Even though I have enough of No. 2 Bitters to last me for a while, I'm going to start a new batch. At least I'll run out of the first batch fairly quickly; you need two to three times as much to get the flavors going. Eventually I hope to arrive at a formula I like so much it'll get me to invest in an oak barrel. One gallon sized oak barrels are available from wine supply stores (at a cost of $89, yikes!); I'll char the inside with a propane torch and age that sucker all year. Good things'll come to those who wait, eh? Okay, here's what's going into the big Mason jar for the next batch. We need to up the bitterness, so I'm using roughly the same amount of gentian that the French use when they make homemade vin de gentiane aperitif, plus a little of the cinchona and quassia that made my homemade batch of Regan's No. 4 delightfully bitter:
Taggart's Aromatic Cocktail Bitters No. 3It's not Abbott's Bitters, not even close; it's not even an imitation thereof ... let's say it's inspired by what I tasted in Abbott's Bitters. In any case, it's a fun project, and it's nice to have alternatives to Angostura around the house for Old Fashioneds, Manhattans and Pink Gins. Plus, it's cool to serve a drink to your guests and casually boast, "By the way, I made those bitters, y'know."
Cheese, cheese and more cheese! Okay, we've had a sufficient rest since my week's worth of babbling about Clementine last week ... now there's more. Meredith Brody reviews them in the New Times Los Angeles, musing on the poetry of the grilled cheese sandwich. We get a list of all the sandwiches that they're gonna add to the menu, too ... whoo! Tonight on "Down Home". Some Jazzfest spillover, featuring a bunch of artists we didn't get around to last week -- traditional jazz from Kermit Ruffins, new and traditional Cajun from Kevin Naquin & the Ossun Playboys, New Orleans piano from Marcia Ball, Fish Head Music from The Radiators; plus old-time fiddle from Jake Krack, new music from dobroist Jerry Douglas, and some zydeco and bluegrass for Mom. Tune in locally in Los Angeles at 88.5 FM from 7pm to 9pm, or listen anywhere at www.kcsn.org. Will there be no escaping it? It made its insidious inroads in the early 1990s. It began to supplant The Real McCoy not long after. It spread and spread, much to my extreme annoyance. And now we're led to understand that all the way in February of 2152, the captain of the first starship Enterprise will be serving an esteemed Vulcan ambassador ... a glass of feckin' passionfruit iced tea?! Outrageous!! If you can't get real iced tea on a starship, pal ... you can forget about me ever signing up for Starfleet. Smile, Father! You're on Candid Camera! The Smoking Gun's pointed caption to a recent photograph by New Orleans photographer Kerri McCafferty is priceless.
Memo to Catholic priests everywhere: If you plan on attending a future Mardi Gras, try not to be photographed shirtless next to a drag queen and some chiseled guys in biker shorts. Because that photo op just cost Rev. Thomas Bouterie his pastor's post at a church outside of New Orleans.While it's a shame that this guy can't have fun at Mardi Gras without hurting anybody or doing anything illegal without losing his job for it, ya gotta think that given his job (and primarily, the attitudes of his employer), this was probably a wee bit, ah, indiscreet of him. Oh well, I guess he figured that New Orleans was a long way from Houma. (Gawd, to be a closeted gay priest in Houma, Louisiana ... how's that for hell on Earth?) Angostura: not just for cocktails. The Massachusetts Beverage Business Site has a fascinating article on the history and use of that ubiquitous-yet-nearly-forgotten bar item, Angostura Bitters. At the very least they're an absolutely essential part of any bar, and an absolutely essential ingredient in several classic cocktails. My eyes bugged out when the bartender at Traxx claimed that "nobody wants bitters anymore" when leaving them out of my Manhattan; in Trinidad, she probably would have been deported on the very next boat to leave port. In the unlikely event you've actually read the label of a bottle of Angostura, you see the various things that Trinidadian and other Caribbean folk use these bitters for, including "soups, salads, vegetables, gravies, fish, meat, fruit juices, grapefruit, mixed cut fruits, stewed prunes, stewed figs, preserved fruits, jellies, sherbets, water ices, ice cream, sauces for puddings, hard sauces, plum puddings, mince and fruit pies, apple sauce and all similar desserts, regulating the quantity according to taste."
* Several dashes on vanilla (but not chocolate) ice cream makes it into a truly exotic treat.The Trinidadian sky (and your imagination) is the limit.
Lies! Damned lies! My friend Mary, who went to Jazzfest (and I didn't ... did I mention that I didn't feckin' go?) and yesterday sent out a spew of thoroughly obscene food porn after returning this week, also (bless her) tried to soothe the feelings of those of us who weren't able to attend:
And now, a special word for Chuck, Wesly, John and Fiona, who skipped Fest this year, and Robin and Diana who left before the second weekend; darn good thing you guys didn't come this year, because it was perfectly dreadful, especially second weekend, when the twin horrors of ghastly food and weather, combined with the cancellation of all acts not involving members of the Grateful Dead or Jimmy Buffett, gave the millions who attended a glimpse of hell, thus causing mass conversions and avowals to lead good and virtuous lives henceforth. Bad, it was, I'm telling you, so very very bad, and your decisions not to attend/stay on longer were well made indeed. You can go now and read other emails. Move along, I say, nothing else to read here.I think I'll just go to Total Recall and have my memory partially wiped. Jazzfest? What's that? I do have to share her and Steve's experiences at Peristyle, though ... one of New Orleans' (and America's) truly great restaurants and one of my all-time favorite places anywhere.
At Peristyle I had arugula and fennel salad with aged chêvre and a grilled filet of cobia over a griddled potato cake, topped with asparagus, red onions, crabmeat and an asparagus vinegrette, while Steve had frisée and watercress "lovingly tossed" with jambon de Paris, topped with warm Camembert and a honey and herb marinated duck breast on basmati pilaf, with a dried peach-flecked poultry reduction. For dessert, we split a chocolate cake with chocolate and coffee mousse, topped with ganache, and limoncello-doused ladyfingers layered with lemon mascarpone mousse, with fresh raspberries. Everything was perfect.I have no doubt.
Quote of the day.
"I insist you try my balls. I have them
available just so I can say that." Drink! Drink! Comedian Kevin Gildea writes in The Irish Times about the legendary Irish madness for drink; "it's a way of pretending to be who we really are", says he, with some choice observations:
It's no wonder people drink too much -- there's too much to drink. There's a new drink everyday. Red Bull and Vodka -- what mad eejit thought of that drink? A drink that knocks you out and wakes you up at the same time. It's no wonder people are going around shouting their heads off (their upper bodies wildly alive) while they simultaneously fall down (their legs asleep).(Mmmmmmm, alcoholic sausages...) Egyptian burritos? Calvin Trillin in The New Yorker on a the hidden life and times of a colorful Greenwich Village restaurant that is loyal to their regulars, but probably no one else (via Jason):
[T]here are a lot of regulars, and they seem more at home than they might at a conventional restaurant. "You're really not allowed to be anonymous here," [the restaurant's owner] Kenny [Shopsin] has said. "You have to be willing to be who you really are. And that scares a lot of people."Apparently I'm cooler than I am uncool. Well, according to Rolling Stone, anyway. That's a magazine I used to read a lot when I was younger, but it ceased being relevant for me many years ago (the bulk of my music periodicals these days are things like OffBeat, Dirty Linen, Folk Roots, et al.) I recently found some links to RS for some lists they've done that I found amusing -- The 50 Coolest Records Ever, and The 50 Uncoolest Records Ever. I own six of the former and two of the latter (actually, to be specific, the latter list is "the uncoolest records we recommend you go out and buy immediately").
My "cool" records:Come again? The Proclaimers, uncool? Okay, they look like a coupla four-eyed geeks, but The Proclaimers are awesome. Sunshine was one of my favorite albums of 1989, and these guys'll put on one of the best and most energetic live shows you'll ever see. I guess the lack of Rolling Stone's relevance in my life is demonstrated by the fact that other than the former six, I've got about 5,000 other records in my collection that I think are pretty damned cool. Is the Pope Catholic? A harsh criticism of Karol Wojtyla from Bill Keller in the New York Times (via Medley): he compares this pope and his actions to those of the Communists:
The pope lamented last week that the child abuse scandal is eroding trust in the church. But that is rather backward. American Catholics have reacted so explosively to this sordid affair precisely because they felt so little trust to begin with. The distrust is the legacy of Pope John Paul II.
Wilco's Three-Act Greek Tragedy Salon writes about Sam Jones' upcoming film about Wilco, entitled "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart".
Jones recognized a classic structure. "It fell together pretty naturally," he says, "into three almost Greek parts. The first part is all about creation and the joy of creating. The second part, which is conflict, is about the conflict with Jay [guitarist Bennett] and the record company and some of the mixing with Jim O'Rourke, and then the third act is redemption and Wilco came out smelling like roses with a better record deal and a band Jeff is happy with. The story line's one that's been told thousands of times. Our hero goes through major conflict and comes out on the other side a winner."Apparently Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is "a surprise hit", debuting in the Top 20 at No. 13 this week in the midst of widespread critical acclaim and almost zero commercial radio airplay. Pretty cool. Down with Verisign/Network Solutions. For the last month or so it's been widely reported in the weblogging community and beyond that Leslie Harpold had her domain name hoopla.com stolen from her. It was registered with Verisign, formerly the only domain name registrar and now merely the absolute worst among many. In their most recent outrage a forged fax was sent to them to transfer hoopla.com to someone else, without even checking with Leslie to authenticate. Now they're admitting it's their fault, but they're refusing to do anything about it. Basta. Just say no more. If you have a domain name registered with Verisign, transfer it elsewhere at once. Don't take the chance that you can lose your domain just because some crook wants it and can easily get Verisign to give it to them. I recommend GANDI.net in Paris, France, or the more expensive but ever-reliable register.com. Good news, too -- Hoopla is back, although thanks to Verisign at a different URL. Enron's smoking gun. The Los Angeles Times is reporting this morning that company internal memos show that "the company sought to manipulate power prices in California, creating artificial shortages through the use of aggressive trading tactics during the energy crisis." They created an energy crisis when there was none, and drove up prices (login "annoying", password "annoying"). Let the indictments begin. Why don't we bring the tar and feathers while we're at it?
Leaping to the Valley. Saturday's fun was heading over to my favorite sf bookstore, Dangerous Visions (uh, actually the only one in the city that I know of) for an appearance and signing by one of my favorite sf writers, David Gerrold. Of course, I saw "The Trouble With Tribbles" when I was 8, got When HARLIE Was One when I was 12 and The Man Who Folded Himself, one of my all-time favorite novels, a year later (and it really fecked with my head; that was one I definitely had to re-read when I was older). I've been a fan for years. His newest is Leaping to the Stars, the final installment in his trilogy about the Dingillian family and their journey from a tube-house in El Paso up the equatorial elevator, off to the Lunar colony and out on a starship. They're favorably compared to the best of Heinlein's "young adult" sf (although from what I understand with much better characterization; Gerrold really makes you feel for his characters), and they explore some familiar themes in his work -- journeys of discovery, growth and self-realization and the nature of consciousness, to name but a few. He also takes particular aim at self-righteous religious fundamentalists in this one, but for the most part doesn't dehumanize them. These books are really good for bright kids, and I recommend them for adults as well. Enjoyable, thought-provoking reads. I was very proud of myself for not asking him, "So David, when the hell is the next Chtorr book coming out, anyway?!" Why we probably won't go see big movies on opening night ever again. We went to the Pacific Theatres' Hastings cinema in Pasadena to see "Spider-Man" Friday night, and enjoyed the movie ... well, at least as best as we could. The actual moviegoing experience as provided by the Pacific Hastings was so wretched that it damn near ruined the evening.
1. - Starting time was at least 10 minutes late, no doubt due to the huge crowd, but when you have a 960-seat theatre you really ought to learn about handling crowds efficiently.I really love the experience of seeing films on a big screen -- it's part of the thrill of going to the movies. But if I can't go to the movies anymore without having to deal with crappy projection, an unprofessional and indifferent staff and a bunch of goddamned Neanderthals who think they're at home in their caves instead of in a public place where they're expected to have some common feckin' courtesy -- and a $9 - 10.50 ticket price on top of that -- well, the home theatre experience is looking better and better. I really hope it doesn't come to that as our only option for being able to appreciate movies. At least we were with good friends and had had a good meal beforehand. Maria's Italian Kitchen is a nice little family-owned group of restaurants with seven locations on the outskirts of the L.A. area. Maria grew up in Hoboken, down the street from Sinatra's house, and she knows food. The pasta and fish dishes were excellent and very inexpensive, and I thoroughly enjoyed the two Negronis I had. I was startled, though, by the garnish in the drink. Traditionally it's an orange wheel, cut in half and perched on the rim of the glass, but this one was garnished with something that looked like a fat green grape, spiked on a cocktail pick. I had my mouth all prepped for a grape, and when I bit into it ... well, let's just say I was freaked out a bit. Imagine someone handing you a vanilla ice cream cone and reinforcing your expectations by saying, "This is a delicious, creamy, cold vanilla ice cream cone." You've got your mouth all prepped for it, taste buds all ready to receive the perfume of the vanilla, the rich mouthfeel of the cream, the sensation of the icy temperature. You take a big lick ... and it turns out to be hot horseradish mashed potatoes. Now, I love hot horseradish mashed potatoes, but in this case I probably would have been so startled that I'd have spat them out. This was kinda like that. It was most definitely not a grape. I was so discombobulated that I couldn't quite tell what it was, except that it was a not-grape. The waitress inquired for me, and it turned out to be a pickled baby green tomato. Apparently it was this bartender's own weird idea. Two points for creativity, pal ... but, um, how 'bout an orange slice next time? Le phew; Chirac elected, bien sur. We knew he would, and over 80% of the French electorate turned out to do what was important -- vote for the crook, à la Edwin Edwards. Compare this to the average turnout for an American federal election -- a pathetic 37%. Tom Tomorrow (yes, one of my favorite cartoonists has ane excellent weblog as well) pointed out something that made my eyes light up ... yes!
The French election didn't prove that third (and fourth and fifth) parties can never be anything but spoilers. The French election proved the wisdom of a system of run-off voting, which would have certainly been a cleaner way to deal with the last American presidential election, and perhaps ultimately more indicitive of the will of the voters. But August already beat me to this one, and I agr |
