From Infinite Jest:
Feral hamsters are not pets. They mean business. Wide berth advised. Carry nothing even remotely vegetablish if in the path of a feral herd. If in the path of such a herd, move quickly and calmly in a direction perpendicular to their own.
Every time one of our boys has spun around till he got dizzy and dropped (and that’s a LOT of times) my husband G. Grod said we should watch Parenthood again. We finally did, and he was right. Watching it as a parent is an entirely different experience. It’s full of cliches, yes, but they’re cliches because they’re true, and there are so very many funny/painful moments of recognition.
Interestingly, while the fashions and especially the hairstyles look twenty years ago, the basics haven’t changed–moms and dads worry about money and getting laid off, overzealous parents try to bully their kid into achieving, other parents try to deny their kid needs special ed, ne-er do well brothers show up when they’re not invited, and more.
Steve Martin is funny as the dad, but it’s not surprising to find he didn’t have kids of his own then (not sure if he does, now); he seemed to be straining a bit. But the movie is full of pleasures, like Jason Robards as the patriarch, Mary Steenburgen as Martin’s wife, plus glimpses of the very young and already talented Joaquin (fka Leaf) Phoenix, and Keanu Reeves.
One of the creators’ favorite segments is the roller coaster speech, since they show it several times in the extras, which were entertaining.
[Gil has been complaining about his complicated life; Grandma wanders into the room]
Grandma: You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.
Gil: Oh?
Grandma: Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride!
Gil: What a great story.
Grandma: I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.
The speech is sappy as hell, and I’d dismiss it, as Martin’s Gil does in the movie, but on further reflection, I think it works for me. Parenthood _is_ like a roller coaster–the waiting, the tedium, the long boring parts seem to take forever, and the actual fun stuff happens so fast it’s gone almost before I can enjoy it. Even so, I like roller coasters, and for most parts of the day, I wouldn’t trade in my kids.
(But this morning, when 3yo Guppy was crying, then stopping, then crying, lather, rinse, repeat, for the most ridiculous reasons, I did consider calling the hospital and inquiring whether he was still under warranty.)
Rhett Miller, at Paste, on figuring out what one of his recent songs was about:
I realized, you know, “Oh, my God. I think it might be about DFW.” I started going through the lyrics, and there’s the one, “Same time tomorrow I know where you’ll be / same place as always / right here beside me,” and while I was thinking about it, I looked and over and on my bedside table was my copy of Infinite Jest, which is always right there
I fell in love with the Old 97’s when I saw the only-OK movie Clay Pigeons. Miller’s got some interesting insight into his writing that reminded me why I enjoy his music.
Does the photo of this cake mesmerize you, too? I saw this on the lovely food blog Smitten Kitchen yesterday, and was, indeed, smitten. Thank you Deb, for creating what looks to be a go-to recipe.
I showed it to 5yo Drake, who will be 6 in August. He said he would like it for his birthday cake. Which is good, because I was going to make it anyway.
My CSA is a half box of produce every week. Week four had a lot, and I wasn’t finished when the new box arrived, which left me feeling a little stressed. But with a batch of tabbouleh and some cucumber-yogurt soup, I dispatched the last of the previous week in order to face the new kids:
Cauliflower, scallions, snap peas, cabbage, garlic scapes, broccoli, cucumber, lettuce, green beans, yellow squash, and beets with greens.
First up was Braised Tofu and Peas in Curried Coconut Milk from Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian that used cauliflower, scallions, snap peas, cabbage and garlic scapes. Not only did it use five things, but it was delicious and pretty to look at. And the fry bread we made to go with it was pretty tasty, too. (Added later: Fry bread DOES NOT KEEP. It turns hard and yucky. Eat immediately, then throw out any leftovers. Another lesson learned.)
For the salad mix and cucumber, I went with Food Matter’s Thai beef salad and Super Natural Cooking’s shredded green beans,an easy, different way to prepare that staple.
On Sunday, though, I hit a wall. I couldn’t face making a stir fry using the broccoli, beets and greens. So we went to Black Sheep Coal-Fired Pizza. It was awesome.
That break left me ready for the stir fry. I peeled and grated the beets, so my hands looked like Lady MacBeth’s. The pan was a lovely contrast of red, orange, green and yellow (the latter only because the broccoli was beginning to turn, though)
before the beets turned everything red. Alas, it is their nature. As I expected, the kids wouldn’t touch the veggies (alas, it is their nature), and my husband G. Grod and I ate it because it was good for us and tasted OK. Thankfully there’s not too much left over, unlike last week’s barley with asparagus and green onion sauce, which is the thing that won’t leave.
Tomorrow I’ll make Super Natural Cooking’s Otsu, a soba noodle dish with cucumber and tofu, then that book’s Sushi Bowl to finish out the week and (I hope) this week’s batch before the next arrives on Thursday. I still don’t know what to do with the yellow squash; I’ll probably throw it in the sushi bowl.
My self satisfaction about being a thrifty home-economist locavore is waning, and we’re not even yet at the height of summer. The break for pizza helped, but I’ve got to keep my veggie mojo going or I’m going to be buried in greens.
And because I forgot to post it, here’s a shot of last week’s Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Pesto, from SNC. I know, I need to work on my food photography.
We’d held off on Toy Story 2, saving it, literally, for a rainy day. I hadn’t seen it since it was released, so I was eager to see if it was as good as its reputation–many claim it’s one of the few films sequels better than its predecessor.
After Woody’s arm is ripped, he’s relegated to a high broken-toy shelf with a squeaker-malfunctioning penguin. When the penguin is put in the yard-sale box, Woody tries to rescue him, but is instead “captured” by Al of Al’s Toy Barn. Woody finds he has a past as a television star, and has to figure out where his loyalties lie–with new friends or his old ones.
I’m a big fan of the first Toy Story; it’s stood up to multiple viewings with the kids. So I was suspicious of the sequel’s ability to surpass it. I was pleasantly surprised. The the animation, the music, the voice talent, the layers of story and the many in-jokes (genuinely funny and not just cheap pop culture throwaway gags) made for a lovely afternoon with our little family cuddled on the couch.
I could, of course, have been unfairly influenced because 3yo Guppy let me snuggle with him for nearly the entire movie. But I think my favorite moment was when Al drives from his office to his apartment–catty-corner across the street. 5yo Drake looked indignant. “That’s not far; he should have walked!”
Apparently he DOES listen to me, even if pretends otherwise.
I am nervous, though, about the sequel. Third movies tend to break franchises, not make or better them. There are a few exceptions, though they likely prove the rule. I can think of The Bourne Ultimatum and Harry Potter 3. Others, anyone?
From Infinite Jest, which I’m reading as part of the Infinite Summer challenge, an example of the late David Foster Wallace’s weird, esoteric humor, ongoing sentences, vocabulary gymnastics and unique phrasing:
Wednesday is the U.S.A. weekday on which fresh Toblerone hits Boston, Massachusetts U.S.A.’s Newbury Street’s import-confectioners’ shelves, and the Saudi Minister of Home Entertainment’s inability to control his appetites for Wednesday Toblerone often requires the medical attache to remain in personal attendance all evening on the bulk-rented fourteenth floor of the Back Bay Hilton, juggling tongue-depressors and cotton swabs, nystatin and ibuprofen and stiptics and antibiotic thrush salves, rehabilitating the mucous membranes of the dyspeptic and distressed and often (but not always) penitent and appreciative Saudi Prince Q—. So on 1 April, Y.D.A.U., when the medical attache is (it is alleged) insufficiently deft with a Q-Tip on an ulcerated sinal necrosis and is subjected at just 1800h. to a fit of febrile thrushive pique from the florally imbalanced Minister of Home Entertainment, and is by high-volume fiat replaced at the royal beside by the Prince’s personal physician, who’s summoned by beeper from the Hilton’s sauna, and when the damp personal physician pats the medical attache on the shoulder and tells him to pay the pique no mind, that it’s just the yeast talking, but to just head on home and unwind and for once make a well-deserved early Wednesday evening of it, and but so when the attache does get home, at like 1840h., his spacious Boston apartments are empty… (34-5)
This sentence was preceded and followed by five lines apiece that I haven’t included, and followed by one other sentence in its large paragraph. I’m not sure which part I find most amusing: the Prince’s Wednesday Toblerone binges, the phrase “febrile thrushive pique”, or “it’s just the yeast talking.”
After reading, and being transported by, Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I added David Hajdu’s Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, to my reading list. Even though it was the last of my K & C related reading (and thus a likely candidate to be pushed off the TBR list), I not only read it, but enjoyed it immensely.
Churches and community groups raged and organized campaigns against comic books. Young people acted out mock trials of comics characters. Schools held public burnings of comics, and students threw thousands of the books into the bonfires; at more than one conflagration, children marched around the flames reciting incantations denouncing comics. Headlines in newspapers and magazines around the country warned readers: “Depravity for Children–Ten Cents a Copy!”…The offices of one of the most adventurous and scandalous publishers, EC Comics, were raided by the New York City police. More than a hundred acts of legislation were introduced on the state and municipal levels to ban or limit the sale of comic books…Soon, Congress took action with a set of sensational, televised hearings that nearly destroyed the comic-book business…
Page-one news as it occurred, the story of the comics controversy is a largely forgotten chapter in the history of the culture wars (7)
Hajdu’s coverage of comic-book fear and censorship to the 1940 and 1950’s is well-researched, filled with compelling personal accounts and anecdotes, and eminently readable. For readers who want to explore the history embedded in Chabon’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book, for pop-culture history buffs, for those interested in youth culture and censorship, or just anyone who likes a well-written account of a little-known phenomenon, I highly recommend this book.
I have hit all the page counts thus far reading Infinite Jest for Infinite Summer, and am paused at page 169. I’m flat out loving this book, even while knowing that tons of stuff is sailing over my head. I’m so boggled by all the little things that match up , e.g. Hal’s uncle’s modified tennis academy motto, “The Man Who Knows His Limitations Has None” (81) with the section on Schtitt’s take on tennis play a few pages later (83-4). I’m curious but not (yet) obsessively so about the seemingly (though I seriously doubt it) random divisions marked by an icon of what looks to be a crescent soon after a new moon.
What do I think it’s about, at 169 pages in? Getting out of one’s head and relating to people in person, among other things. And the irony, deliberate I’m sure, of that theme ensconced in a huge book that requires concentration and shutting out of distractions, is not lost on me.
This week’s vocabulary search was much helped by the Infinite Jest glossary, though I did have to use other sources as well. Note to self: looking up words later in a clump? Not helpful. And yet, jumping on the computer each time I don’t recognize a word? Unhelpful in a different way. Reading and ignoring the words I don’t know? Ooh. Crazy.
incunabular, annular, raster, synclinal, uremic, leptosomatic, quincunx, bradykinetic, varicoceles, tympana, aleatory, somatic, pedalferrous, fulvous, halation, ephebes, agnate, erumpent, vade mecum, rutilant
This week, our box of veggies from Foxtail Farm included the following: broccoli, cauliflower, basil, lettuce, garlic scapes, radishes with greens, green onions, cuke, sugar snap peas and a cabbage.
I grilled the broccoli, then sprinkled it with salt, lemon juice and flax meal, from the recipe in Super Natural Cooking. I also made espresso banana muffins from that book. While it didn’t use any CSA ingredients (no local bananas in MN) they were tasty, and photogenic.
I plan to make cauliflower soup with pesto and barley (subbed for farro, which I couldn’t find at my grocery co-op) with green onion sauce and asparagus from this book as well.
From Mark Bittman’s Food Matters, I made a cabbage salad, using several suggested additions and variations: sugar snaps, radishes, garlic scapes with sesame oil and lime juice as dressing. It keeps for days, and has been a great vehicle for leftover grilled chicken.
I’ll also make Bittman’s tabbouleh, since it’s a kind of catch all for leftover garlic scapes, green onions, radishes, greens and the cuke. I’ll also try his yogurt soup with cuke and radish.
And the sugar snaps will go in salad with the lettuce, or raw out of hand, or dipped in a batch of hummus I plan to make. The boys aren’t eating a lot of this, but my husband and I are eating really healthfully lately.
Nemeses: small trees
are volunteers no longer
victims, you are now
This morning and afternoon, I worked on this side bed. I cleared a blanket of weeds and about a dozen volunteer trees, digging out roots from 18″ and 24″ down, then pruned the peony. Archeology: I found three matchbox cars from previous homeowner(s?).
Here’s how we came to watch The Third Man again. First, my husband G. Grod re-read The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. Then we watched the film adaptation of that book by Robert Altman. Then I insisted on watching The Third Man, because I suspected the endings were similar.
Narrator: Oh, I was going to tell you, wait, I was going to tell you about Holly Martins, an American. Came all the way here to visit a friend of his. The name was Lime, Harry Lime. Now Martins was broke and Lime had offered him, some sort, I don’t know, some sort of job. Anyway, there he was, poor chap. Happy as a lark and without a cent.
The pleasures of The Third Man are myriad. There’s Joseph Cotton as the ugly American, Trevor Howard as the constabulary, Alida Valli as the femme fatale, and Orson Welles as the dead friend of Cotton, Harry Lime. Add to those amazing black and white shadowed images, evocative zither music, the cuckoo clock speech, the sewer chase and a bitter coda that is indeed referenced not only in Long Goodbye but in many more films, including one of G. Grod’s favorites, Miller’s Crossing. (Aliens? We just watched that, and I can’t think of the reference. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)
We own the 50th anniversary Criterion Collection edition; it has a lovingly restored print as well as great extras. But in 2007 those double-dipping rat bastages at Criterion put out a two-disc Criterion edition that features a commentary by Steven Soderbergh and Tony Gilroy, screenwriter of the Bourne movies. I think I’m going to need that one, too. Hey, I own six editions of Bronte’s Jane Eyre, why not two of The Third Man?
Robert Altman’s Long Goodbye is one of my favorite films by him, and perhaps one of my favorite movies, full stop. Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe is moved in time to 70’s California, where he drifts about pursued by police and a ruthless gangster while trying to find a missing author and figure out what happened to his friend, Terry Lennox. Elliott Gould is Marlowe, and I can’t imagine another in the role. Everything is “OK with me” to Marlowe, even as jaw-dropping things occur around him, like terrible violence and the yogic contortions of a stoned group of young women who live next to him. Look for a non-speaking, uncredited cameo by the future governor of California, who sports a hilarious-looking mustache.
SPOILER: The film’s ending departs from the book, in what seems to be a conscious homage by Altman to Carol Reed’s Third Man. Other similar elements of the two films include a main character who has trouble navigating a strange culture while defending a dead friend of his to the police, and who is shunned by a cat.
This week’s CSA box was more full than last week’s box, with a greater variety of veggies. I’ve included how I’m using them.
Radishes with greens: sliced with salt and butter on a fresh baguette, in a green salad, on a sandwich with goat cheese and spinach, and in Hijiki and Edamame salad from Super Natural Cooking
Turnips with greens: mashed alongside bratwurst
Kohlrabi with greens: thinly sliced into green salad
Lettuce: green salads, of course!
Broccoli: in Broccoli Pesto & Fusilli from 101 Cookbooks
Cauliflower: steamed and pureed, so I can sneak it into tuna salad for Drake and Espresso Banana muffins, probably not for the kids
Snap peas: raw in green salads
Rainbow chard: chopped and used Mark Bittman’s Pan-Cooked Greens with Tofu from Food Matters, along with the radish, turnip and kohlrabi greens, and as part of the pesto in the Broccoli Pesto & Fusilli
Garlic scapes: Garlic Scape Soup (photo above) from Super Natural Cooking. I learned that chive blossoms make a lovely garnish but while technically edible, taste yucky.
This week I did minimal prep for the veg before putting them in the crisper. I removed the greens from the radishes, turnips and kohlrabi, then wrapped those greens, along with the lettuce and chard, loosely in a towel. I didn’t clean and dry them until ready to use, which is recommended in several places on the web, yet I found it promoted wilting rather than prevented it, so I think I’ll be back to washing, spinning dry and bagging my greens with a paper towel next week.
Thus far, the CSA share means I’m working with a greater variety of vegetables at a time, and it’s made me more motivated and creative in seeking out ways to use them.
I’m the potentially gifted ten-year-old tennis and lexical prodigy whose mom’s a continental mover and shaker in the prescriptive-grammar academic world and whose dad’s a towering figure in optical and avant-garde film circles and single-handedly founded the Enfield Tennis Academy but drinks Wild Turkey at like 5:00 a.m. and pitches over sideways during dawn drills, on the courts, some days, and some days presents with delusions about people’s mouths moving but nothing coming out. (p. 30, Infinite Jest)
I’ve made it to page 63, the first goal for Infinite Summer, and I hope to go all the way. Infinite Jest is challenging, funny, and too heavy to cart around with me, so I may have to get a supplemental book to read when I’m on the go. I was please but unsurprised to find the word “nauseous” used correctly. I’m keeping a list of characters, of year names, and of words to look up. This week, it was “apocope” and “fantods.” Neither, of course, was included in my MMPB dictionary.
Apocope: the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.
Fantods: A state of extreme nervousness or restlessness.
I can review Werner Herzog’s documentary on Antartica, Encounters at the End of the World, in one word: Neat. Extra emphasis on the “n” to denote enthusiasm.
If you’re interested in a bit more information, though, Herzog says in his commentary that he doesn’t set out to make a film about fuzzy penguins. Thank goodness. I hated that movie. There are a few scenes with penguins, but Herzog takes the approach I wished was included in that fuzzy-penguin movie–it focuses on the deviant, weird ones, just as Herzog interviews their human counterparts from McMurdo station. There are scientists who think the Earth is going to regulate humanity right off it, surreal seal sounds, and some brief backstory on Scott and Amundson. But it’s the images, accompanied by Herzog’s inimitable accent, that linger. Good stuff.
Wite-out on the floor
Dries quick, the shape of a fish
Curse you, Guppy boy.
Infinite Summer, here I come, fueled by a blueberry toaster pastry and a double cappuccino.
I wanted to read Ayelet Waldman’s Love and Other Impossible Pursuits for several reasons. One, she’s been the subject of a few online kerfuffles, like saying she liked her husband (author Michael Chabon) to change light bulbs so she didn’t have to, and saying she loved him more than her kids. Two, she’s married to Chabon, and I wondered how their writing styles and subjects would differ. Three, I liked the premise: a young NYC stepmother struggles with a difficult stepson, and her grief over her infant’s death of SIDS.
Like Waldman’s online writing, the book veers between too much information and a refreshingly brutal honesty about things like being mad at children. It’s sometimes irritating, sometimes engaging.
My belief was often strained. Emilia eschewed group therapy in the wake of her daughter’s death, but this didn’t adequately explain why she, her doctor, or others didn’t railroad her into individual therapy, which she clearly needed. Her husband Jack’s ex-wife was too cruel to be believable; I would have welcomed some complexity. Her stepson William is presented as a precocious five-year old, but more than once it notes Phillip Pullman’s Amber Spyglass as his favorite book. Amber Spyglass is a YA book for 12 and up. I’ll allow that a real-life adult MIGHT read this violent, complex, sexual book to a 5yo, but for a fictional preschooler, however precocious, to claim it? No way.
And yet, I enjoyed parts of this book, too. Waldman’s crisp writing kept me reading at a quick clip. Emilia is immature and narcissistic, but she’s also smart and interesting. William, the stepson, was a great character, though I was horrified by many of the things he was subjected to, not just the ones his mother complained that Emilia put him through. The details of Central Park were lovingly drawn, and her ethnography of the NYC mommy/kid/nanny culture was fascinating.
I was reminded strongly of some of Jennifer Weiner’s books. Weiner’s Good in Bed also featured a young Jewish lawyer protagonist who goes through difficulties related to pregnancy. Both books are better written, and tackle darker issues, than the average beach-y chicklit novels they’re often lumped together with.
I wished, though, that Waldman dared venture further into darker territory. As a reader, I felt sorry for Emilia because of her grief, and because the ex-wife was vindictive and the stepson so challenging. But what about the all-too-real possibility of struggling with stepchildren without grief as an excuse for behaving badly? Or, even more transgressive, writing about a parent who dislikes her own biological or adoptive child, as Lionel Shriver did in We Have to Talk about Kevin?
The book had a tidy ending, one I saw far in advance. I think it flinched from some deeper truths. Because of this, I will probably skip Waldman’s latest, the nonfiction Bad Mother, in which she tackles some of the criticisms she’s endured in her volleys with the online public.
My husband G. Grod and I just finished The Wire, Season 1. We’re going to try to watch some movies and tv (Top Chef Masters and Fashion Show) before we start season 2.
My favorite character, of many, I think has to be Omar. Here, then, for others who have or will watch Season 1, are links to Alan Sepinwall’s S1 rewind posts for Wire Newbies, with reader comments:
1. “The Target”
2. “The Detail”
3. “The Buys”
4. “Old Cases”
5. “The Pager”
6. “The Wire”
7. “One Arrest”
8. “Lessons”
9. “Game Day”
10. “The Cost”
11. “The Hunt”
12. “Cleaning Up”
13. “Sentencing”
No spoilers, please. You never know what someone is reading and at what point they’re watching. I can field discussion about S1 details by email, though.