Girl Detective

#40 in my movie challenge for the year was the original The Producers movie, directed by Mel Brooks, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. It is easy to envision this as a stage play, harder to imagine the recent film remake as an improvement, save perhaps for Will Farrell, who probably did wonderful things with the playwright role. Very funny, it has aged rather well. Wilder at times reminded me of my toddler, Drake: “I’m wet, I’m wet, I’m in pain!” Except that Drake doesn’t carry a blankie.

If you live in the Twin Cities and shop in one of the many grocery cooperatives, you’ve likely purchased and enjoyed some of the excellent produce from local farmers Atina and Martin Diffley of Gardens of Eagan. My favorites are corn in summer, squash in fall, and dinosaur (lacinato) kale in winter. This local, organic farm is in danger because of a proposed oil pipeline. While the pipeline is supposed to bring cleaner and more efficient energy, Gardens of Eagan is not able to be moved or replaced. Please help support Gardens of Eagan. Follow either of the links for more information, and where to write a letter asking that a different route be used for the pipeline.

I am Wile E. Coyote. And my metaphorical Roadrunner is the self-tanner. Two years ago, I tried Clarins and Sally Hansen Airbrush Legs. The former smelled, while the latter made a huge mess of my tub; both turned my skin orange. Last summer I resisted the siren call because I felt so nauseated in my first trimester carrying Guppy. This year, though, I succumbed. I tried Dove Energy Glow Daily Moisturizer with Self-Tanners, seduced by its Campaign for Real Beauty ad and model, and its claims of subtle change. But the song remains the same. In spite of exfoliation, shaving, and a preventive sheen of moisturizer over knees and ankles, my legs have weird, orange-y streaks and overly pigmented knees and ankles. My arms don’t look bad, though, and it hardly smells at all, even to my sensitive schnoz. But I have to stop doing this to myself every year. IT’S JUST NOT WORTH IT.

I’ve turned off the comment feature. I was getting hundreds of spam emails a day. Additionally, this recent article, via Arts and Letters Daily, reminded me that good online discussions rarely happen organically in the comments section. Any comments can still be emailed to me. I love to hear from you, even if I am tardy to respond. (How long do you think I can use the new-baby excuse? He’s five months, now.) They stand a much greater chance of a reply, and I will post interesting follow-up discussions that arise out of email.

#36 in my book challenge for the year, and #12 in my summer reading challenge was Tam Lin by Pamela Dean. I started it once before, but had to put it down because some other book had to play through for a book group. Tam Lin is worth reading and I’m glad I did, but I think its problematic parts outweigh its praiseworthy ones.

What’s Good: This is an engaging girl’s college novel about Janet, the daughter of an English prof and an English major at Blackstock College, based on Minnesota’s Carleton College. My edition has a gorgeous cover, though the upcoming edition does not. The details of college life are well-drawn and frequently amusing. Janet’s insights into many and various works of English and classical literature are interesting, erudite, and might provoke me into expanding my reading list. Shakespeare fans especially will find much to savor. There are refreshingly realistic discussions of teen sexuality in several places that were not graphic. Also, the story of the campus ghost and the odd behavior of Classics majors and professors were intriguing, and kept me reading till the end to find out how the Tam Lin ballad would play out.

What’s Not So Good: This novel, at 468 pages, is about twice as long as it needs to be. Pacing and proportion are serious problems that negatively impacted the almost non-existent plot. Set from the fall of Janet’s first year to Halloween of her fourth, the book spends far too long on freshman year–sophomore year doesn’t start till page 318! The overlong descriptions and analyses of the plays Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and The Revenger’s Tragedy could have been cut with no deleterious effects. The latter especially, though it featured prominently in the story, was more annoying and unbelievable than not. Janet is the best-drawn character. While the others aren’t so flat to be two-dimensional, many don’t quite achieve a credible complexity. There are also rather too many significant looks and stifled comments since the reveal takes so long to arrive. While the threads of the Tam Lin story are spun from the beginning, they grow so thin from being drawn out that the end of the book is rushed, and most of the relevant, ballad-related action and information takes place in the last fifty pages. This made for a less than satisfying conclusion, and left me with many unanswered questions about this book’s take on the faerie folk and the humans who attend them.

The thought of a hot oven and heavy food is as oppressive as the heat and humidity. I’ve been relying much on salads, since the local, organic lettuces are so fine.

Last night was Firecracker Chicken Salad from Cook’s Country (new website when I checked today), with leftover chicken tenders and romaine tossed with a spicy dressing, chow mein noodles, and mandarin oranges.

I’ve searched the web, and have not been able to find a menu that includes, or a recipe for, Houston’s Club Salad, which was a favorite of mine in college. From other descriptions, and memory, I’m going to try a salad of romaine, chicken tenders, avocado, hard-boiled egg, crumbled bacon, and honey mustard dressing. I’ll post a recipe if I succeed.

If I can find some promising looking steak this weekend, we’ll have steak with arugula and parmesan. This recipe came from an email solicitation for The Quick Recipe; it convinced me to buy the book. I’ve probably used this single recipe, though, more times than I’ve used the entire book.

Tuscan-Style Steak with Arugula and Parmesan
Serves 4
Time: 30 minutes

For the best results, use high-quality extra-virgin olive oil and genuine Parmesan cheese. The greens may be washed and dried up to a day ahead of time, but the vinaigrette should be made the same day for the best flavor. If the arugula is very mature, tear the leaves into 2 or 3 pieces. Serve a crusty loaf of bread alongside to soak up any remaining vinaigrette and juices from the steak.

5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon juice from 1 lemon
2 medium cloves garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press
(about 2 teaspoons)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano leaves
Salt and coarsely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
4 boneless strip steaks, 1 to 1 1/4 inches thick (8 to 10 ounces each),
trimmed of exterior gristle and patted dried with paper towels
8 cups loosely packed arugula
3 ounces Parmesan cheese, cut into thin shavings

1. Whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, oregano, and a pinch each of salt and pepper in a small bowl until smooth.

2. Heat the vegetable oil in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat until smoking. Meanwhile, season the steaks liberally with salt and pepper. Lay the steaks in the pan and cook, without moving, until a well-browned crust forms, about 5 to 6 minutes. Using tongs, flip the steaks. Reduce the heat to medium. Cook 3 to 4 minutes more for rare (120 degrees on an instant-read thermometer) or 5 to 6 minutes for medium-rare (125 degrees). Transfer the steaks to a cutting board, tent with aluminum foil, and let rest for 5 minutes.

3. Divide the arugula evenly among 4 individual plates. Cut each steak crosswise into thin strips and arrange the steak over the arugula. Drizzle any juices that collected from the meat over the greens. Rewhisk the dressing and drizzle it over the steak and greens. Sprinkle with the Parmesan and serve immediately.

After a string of disappointing movies, #39 in my movie challenge, Last Holiday, was a sweet little gem. Queen Latifah is told she has three weeks to live, so cashes in her savings and departs for the European luxury resort of her dreams. It’s utterly predictable, with a few eye-rolling scenes, and overlong at almost 2 hours. Yet it is mostly directed with a light touch, and features such charming actors (Latifah foremost among them), that the end result is winning. This is what a holiday movie should be–life affirming–not ham-handedly dreadful like The Family Stone.

Even in my small, local grocery co-op, shopping can be difficult, especially if I take both Drake and Guppy with me. By the time I get to the end, I feel the need for a sustaining treat to get me through checkout, bagging and the ride home. Cannily, my store stocks individual cans and bottles of Izze sparkling juice and the non-guilt-inducing sized bars of Dagoba organic chocolate before the register lines, just where my spirit usually flags. I’ve made a sort of game, pairing complementary flavors of soda and chocolate. Here are my favorites, thus far.

Pomegranate Izze/Lime Dagoba chocolate bar
Blueberry Izze/Lavender Dagoba chocolate bar
Clementine Izze/Lime or Dark Dagoba chocolate bar
Grapefruit Izze/Mon Cherri Dagoba chocolate bar
Pear Izze/Dark Dagoba chocolate bar

I grew up in central Ohio, moved away at 19, and have lived elsewhere ever since. Since family is still there, though, I visit a couple times a year. An ongoing frustration for me is getting food of similar quality to what I’ve come to appreciate in Minnesota, which has both a good restaurant culture as well as an emphasis on local, organic foods.

The first meal I made when we returned from our recent trip to Ohio was Mediterranean chicken, with local chicken and zucchini, and organic cherry tomatoes. Next, I made a roasted red onion and pear dinner salad, with a mix of local Lolla Rossa and red leaf lettuces instead of those called for in the recipe. The night after that was pan-seared local pork chops with parsley-olive relish, and brown sugar shortcakes with local red and black raspberries and heavy cream for dessert.

All recipes are from Cook’s Country, which has become my first stop for cooking ideas. The recipes are well-tested, so they work. They are seasonal, so they include ingredients that are not only readily available, but that are often locally grown. I have drastically cut spending in almost every area of life except on groceries. Not only does local, sustainably farmed food taste better to me, but my money goes to local farmers and local food cooperatives, so it stays in the community.

I’m back after a trip to my hometown for my 20th high school reunion. I flew out with both Guppy (4+ months) and Drake (nearly 3 years) by myself, then my husband G. Grod flew in for the weekend, and we four flew back together. Ironically, the flight out was tough, and the return was a breeze.

Outbound, we got permission for G. Grod to accompany us to the gate; we arrived just in time to board early. I asked the high-school-aged girl sitting behind me to hold Guppy while I installed Drake’s car seat, then I strapped Drake in and put Guppy in the Maya Wrap sling, where he proceeded to scream for quite some time, perhaps because we sat for 45 sweaty minutes past takeoff time without air. Everyone around me was carefully looking everywhere but at us. The man on the other side of me asked if the girl behind me was my daughter (OK, while she technically COULD be my daughter, and some of my classmates have kids her age, I still did not appreciate the confirmation that I look my age.), perhaps looking to switch out of our row. I said she was a stranger who helped me. He expressed surprise, and I wondered to myself what kind of person would NOT volunteer to help a mom traveling with 2 kids and needing an extra hand? Drake was mostly good, but kept insisting that he wanted another lollipop, which I had trouble extracting from my bag while also trying to juggle Guppy, whose screams were not only disturbing in general, but also because they were so uncharacteristic. He is normally a placid little buddha.

My stash of Dum-Dum lollipops, a new Matchbox toy, the Consumer Reports annual auto issue, and several paperback books ensured that Drake continued to be mostly good for the 2-hour flight. The monkey backpack/leash worked great once we got off the plane. As usual, we received lots of admiring looks and comments on the wheels for Drake’s car seat.

Drake missed his nap, then had a nuclear meltdown at bedtime, which I thought was due to the nap, but had to reasses when he woke an hour later, having spiked a high fever. Boy, did I feel competent for having bought and packed children’s Tylenol. Drake’s fever rose as high as 104 over the next few days, then passed. Guppy continued to fuss and sleep badly throughout our trip, though he did also occasionally show his cute, smiley side in public and at my reunion events. And if compliments are to be believed, then I don’t look as if I haven’t slept well since I got pregnant with Guppy, so I suppose that’s something.

Once home, I diagnosed Guppy with reflux from trying to lengthen the intervals between feedings, since every 2 hours during the day is exhausting to me, and both my pediatrician and my pediatric-trained dad told me I was feeding him more often than necessary. Now I’m back to feeding him more frequently, and hope that brings back a long interval at night, once the irritation dies down. Last night, though, I was up at 11, 2, 4, and 6. Guess he showed them. And me.

#35 in my book challenge for the year, and #11 in my summer reading challenge was The Finishing School by Muriel Spark. Disappointing, and overlong even at just 180 some pages. I much preferred the other Spark books I’ve read. The Finishing School wasn’t quite funny or dark enough to be compelling. Instead, I found it boring.

#34 in my book challenge for the year, and #10 in my summer reading challenge was I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier. One of the classics of the YA genre, this novel reminded me that really good YA should be a good read at any age. This was a great mystery novel, skillfully written. It had three main narrative threads: a story told in first person, present tense; transcripts of interviews from an unspecified time; and interspersed narratives to flesh out the interviews, told in third person past tense. These three weave together until they finally meet up (or do they?) at the end. The ending gives credit to the reader by leaving the interpretation open. My sister Sydney told me that when she read the book for a class in grade school, she’d called the phone number that’s listed toward the end of the book; it was Cormier’s own. She got to discuss the book and its ending with the author himself.

#33 in my book challenge for the year, and #9 in my summer book challenge, was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, currently being discussed by the Slaves of Golconda at Metaxucafe. Like the other Spark novels I’ve read, The Driver’s Seat and The Abbess of Crewe, the story begins toward the end, loops back, then moves forward and back, until myriad facts accumulate that illuminate the entire story. It’s an impressive way to tell a story, and Spark once again does so flawlessly. The tale of a charismatic teacher and her select students, the novel is at times dark, funny, and poignant. Brodie is one of the more complex characters I’ve read.

#32 in my book challenge for the year, and #8 in my summer challenge, was The Prop by Pete Hautman. This is a rock solid mystery novel about poker. The plot, the characters, the setting, and the mystery all unfolded seamlessly. I attended a reading at which Hautman said he wrote the book to see if he could write from the point of view of a middle-aged woman. I found Peeky Kane not only believable, but utterly likeable. I stayed up way too late to finish it, and sleep is so precious of late that this is a high compliment.

#38 in my movie challenge for the year was last year’s The Family Stone. Poorly written and directed, it was saved by the performance of Craig T. Nelson, in perhaps the film’s only likable role. The story and the characters were wildly uneven. At times it seemed to want to be a old-fashioned romantic comedy, but then it whipped into a scene invested with ham-handed attempts at drama. I didn’t hate this movie, but I came awfully close. It should have been a drama with gentle humor, or a comedy without maudlin attempts at realism. I found the mix of extremes often painful to watch.

#31 in my book challenge for the year, and #7 in my summer reading challenge was The Abbess of Crewe, a satire of Watergate. There will be an online discussion of Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and other works at the end of the month, at Metaxucafe.

Abbess is dated, both by its subject and the electronic equipment it references. Spark nevertheless makes her story timeless by setting the power struggle in the removed culture of an Abbey. It has snarky one liners, and a deluded Abbess who is so funny that she is hard to dislike, even as she runs roughshod over the rights of the rest of those poor nuns.

Such a scandal could never arise in the United States of America. They have a sense of proportion and they understand Human Nature over there; it’s the secret of their success. A realistic race, even if they do eat asparagus the wrong way.

A friend asked me recently why I chose to write a young adult novel. I responded that I’d always been a fan of the genre, and that my story centered on a high school girl, so that usually made for a YA book. When I gave it more thought, though, I realized that my answer wasn’t entirely accurate. In my very first draft of the novel, the main character was a woman in her twenties. I wrote the backstory of a relationship she’d had in high school. The backstory got very long. As I kept writing, I found I didn’t want to return to the original story. The backstory turned into the main story, and because it was set in high school, the novel became for young adults. Realization one was that my novel had NOT always been YA, rather that’s what it turned into during the writing of it.

Once I realized my faulty memory about that, I also recalled I had not “always” been a fan of the genre. I read some YA when I was a young adult, and some YA much later, like Francesca Lia Block’s books. I liked children’s literature long beyond when I was technically a child, and I oversaw the children’s section for the year I worked in a used bookstore. But “always” was an overstatement that brought me to realization two: I became a fan and reader of YA because I was working on a YA manuscript, which has only been since November of 2002. I’m not obsessive or completist about it. I occasionally visit the Young Adult Library Services Association home page; it has good book lists. I also read Avenging Sybil, a weblog about young adult novels, and more specifically about portrayals of female sexuality in YA.

It was interesting that my brain had created this revisionist history. Perhaps it is my age, coupled with the fatigue of caring for an infant. Or perhaps, like so many things in my life now, my manuscript and my affection for YA novels have become so important to me that I have a hard time remembering life before them.

#37 in my movie challenge for the year was Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility. I was hoping that the condensing of Austen’s overlong narrative would be a good thing, but the movie disappointed me, as had the book. Perhaps the film hasn’t aged well, or perhaps I’m a curmudgeon, since I am at odds with ALL the critics. I didn’t think it as good as either the A & E or the more recent movie of Pride and Prejudice. The characters aren’t as likeable, and the production values aren’t as good. There was a shot in this movie where I became aware of the camera, and Marianne’s tearful repeated calls of Willoughby from the hill in the rain had me rolling my eyes. Hugh Grant could have chewed up the screen as Willoughby, but instead was a mumbling, shrinking presence as Edward. Rickman talked as if he had a mouthful of marbles. Hugh Laurie’s few lines had me wishing for so much more from his minor character. I know the male leads aren’t supposed to be dashing manly men, but both in the book and in the movie they are hardly compelling. It was a long 136 minutes.

#s 28, 29, and 30 in my book challenge for the year, and 4, 5, and 6 of my summer reading challenges were the three Scott Pilgrim volumes. I read and reviewed #s 1 and 2 last year, and re-read them before #3 because I couldn’t remember who was who. The Scott Pilgrim stories are young adult graphic novels that reference music, magic, and video games. While manga is the obvious influence, I was more than once strongly reminded of Trudeau’s Doonesbury.

Scott is an amiable goofball who has a way with the ladies. He is still traumatized by his breakup with Envy Adams, he did a bad job of breaking up with his high school girlfriend Knives Chau, and he is trying to date the mysterious Ramona Flowers, but he must first defeat the league of her seven evil ex-boyfriends. The graphic novels are all fast reads, and I still highly recommend 1 and 2. I laughed out loud during both several times, and read bits aloud to my husband.

From Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life (Vol. 1)

“It’s…It’s her shoes. She was wearing these shoes. These HAUNTING SHOES.”

“What’d they look like?”

“They looked…really…uncomfortable.”

From Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Vol. 2)

“What kind of idiot would knowingly date a girl named Knives?”

From Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness (Vol. 3)

“N…No way! Bionic arm?! Knives…!Oh my God, Knives! Your hair! She punched the highlights out of your hair!”

#3 tells the backstory of Scott’s ex, Envy Adams. I didn’t think it was as great as 1 and 2. The back and forth between present and past was jarring. Envy wasn’t at all likeable, as is Knives Chau–seventeen years old–Scott’s more recent ex. It is funny, especially some bits about Envy’s boyfriend (and Ramona’s evil ex #3) Todd’s veganism. I found it more sad than funny, though. Perhaps I should have expected that, given the subtitle.

While I was less enamored of #3, I still like the books and these characters, and I want to know what happens. What is in Ramona’s past? Who is Gideon? What’s going to happen with that guy who kidnapped Kim when she and Scott were in high school, and who shows up at the end of #3? What’s the deal with Kim–will this cool drummer chick be more than just an ex of Scott’s?

If Scott has to defeat one evil ex-boyfriend in each volume, and if each volume comes out once a year, there’s four more years till the end of the story. Perhaps author Bryan Lee O’Malley can put two boyfriends in each of the next two volumes, because four years is too long to wait.

#27 in my book challenge for the year, and #3 in my summer reading challenge, I feel abashed that I couldn’t finish Catcher in the Rye over the weekend for a 48 hour reading challenge, but I did finish it Monday. I wanted to read it prior to reading King Dork, but the library due date for KD made that inadvisable. I definitely recommend reading both, with Catcher first.

First, I am not a member of the Catcher cult, as it’s called in KD. I wasn’t forced to read Catcher in high school. Whether this says something good or bad about my high school English education is debateable, but I think it was bad. Over four years, the required reading list was short–probably what I’d go through in a month or two nowadays. Instead of entire novels, I remember reading a lot of excerpts from big hardback textbooks with shiny pages. I read Catcher on my own at some point as part of my self-education (or autodidacticism, as it’s called at Mental Multivitamin) to compensate for deficiencies in my schooling.

Catcher, like KD, does a good job portraying what a social horror high school is, and how difficult it is to survive. Catcher is also historically important, not just as a good novel, but because it helped to establish the Young Adult novel paradigm–it gave a distinct voice to a teenaged character who told the story in first person, and sometimes in present tense. It also proved to publishers that teenagers were legitimate members of a critical reading audience.

Because I have affection for the YA niche, I thought I would love Catcher. Perhaps I was negatively influenced by the de-pedestalizing of Catcher in KD, but I finished Catcher feeling profoundly ambivalent. I started the book annoyed at Holden and his affected voice. I then realized it was bluster, not unlike Gatsby’s, and that it hid a character who seemed to have a good head and a good heart. As the story wore on, though, I began to sense the presence of the writer showing off by creating a singular character, and having him repeat, ad nauseum, some suspiciously Salinger-esque negative opinions of phony people, Hollywood, and society in general. What bothered me most, though, was Holden’s repeated idealization of childhood. This novel is supposed to be about the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood, but I found Holden’s view of childhood at least obsessive, if not fetishistic.

Catcher in the Rye deserves to be a classic. It’s well written and historically important. It does not deserve to be uncritically lauded as an every-person’s book, though. There is some creepy, disturbing stuff in there, and I don’t think all of it was intentional.