Lil squidie foodgie things.

1. The ending preposition "off" has infiltrated the language of home-cooking for good, it seems--from the restaurant world. Hear it all the time now. "Bake these off"--"sear these off." "Make them ahead, then cook them off at the last minute." Repercussions?

2. I am willing to bet a very large amount of money that increased rates of diabetes in this country can in many cases be traced directly back to the "low-fat" craze of the 90s. When processed food was de-fatted, enormous amounts of sugar were added to compensate.

3. Banquet "Crock Pot Classics": isn't this an awfully defeatist product? Meat and veggies that have been processed to cook faster so that...they can be cooked slowly in a crock pot? Dehydrating to reconstitute? Raw to cooked to raw to cooked? Seems redundant. Futile. Wouldn't you rather put a carrot in a crock pot than a pre-cooked carrot in a crock pot?

4. The Recipe Book of the Mustard Club that I recently got (penned by Dorothy L. Sayers and allegedly also her husband; maybe some others at Benson's advert agency) turns out to be more than just a Sayers curiosity: it's a decent little cookbook! Has a lot of sound ideas and methods. Granted, it also has lots of anachronistic dishes like Jugged Hare, Roast Bacon, Bread Sauce and Alderman's Walk (I'm loving this stuff), but in general it's a solid little book. The real testament to this: Rather than filing it with other Sayers books, I'm actually going to keep it in the kitchen with the COOKBOOKS. The recipe for Welsh Rabbit is kind of genius. And I really want to try "Ham in Hades"; the receet ends: "If he doesn't like it--get a divorce."

5. A lovely, fiscally manageable indulgence: good butter. I've been living with a lil block of Lurpak Danish butter the last couple of weeks, and it is great with pasta, toast, eggs, whatever. DEElish. It makes me remember the best butter I ever had, which was at one of the Bartolotta restaurants in Milwaukee, at a wedding, and it was astonishing what an effect it had (gastronomically and otherwise!). Unbelievable! One of those Things.

And just to prove that I don't love quite *everything* MFK Fisher (wait--did you ask?) I am going to post my recipe for Oeufs Brouillés à la mode de Non, um, Pêcheuse. Good Butter is key here, as is borrowing from the style of/ her prose directly ("lump of butter"--hello).

THE BEST WAY TO COOK SCRAMBLED EGGS
In Me 'Umble O.
(The Anti-Fisher Egg)

Begin by beating 2/3 eggs in a bowl with some salt and pepper with a fork. You want to work thoroughly and carefully, breaking the yolks, incorporating as you go, working and flicking the wrist so as to rise to the challenge--never, however, racing through the process and creating excess foam. Incorporating whites and yolks is not an automatic process; they don't want to naturally emulsify. You must work and work and build and gradually get them really well-incorporated, evenly-colored, changing your angle of attack so that you're not sending the same unincorporated whites around and around in a path through the yolks. I add a little water to the bowl, maybe a Tbsp. or two. The salt in the S&P also helps break down the eggs (try salting a raw egg yolk sometime with a salt shaker that has an unsafely attached top--you'll see). You will probably need a bigger bowl for this than you think.

In the interim--more or less once you've started beating the eggs, but not rushing it--heat a clean big pan very hot. I like to use my copper fish pan and my gas burner on furnace blast. As the pan is heated (again, very hot, but not too hot), add a lump of butter and swirl it around as it sizzles and melts. I like salted butter.

As soon as the butter has stopped sizzling, at that very identifiable moment--that sudden silence, the caesura, before it gets geared up to start browning, but don't you let it--give the eggs which you've been keeping mixed with fitful stirs of the fork a final flick and pour them in. That is the moment to do it. The noise will start again. Sizzle sizzle. Immediately begin pulling down the cooked egg from the sides and bottom of the pan with a spatula or some implement, incorporating the curds with the uncooked egg.

Work fast but not frantically, keeping pace with the rapidly cooking egg. In less than 30 seconds you will be done--perfect Eggs à la Liz are done in enough time for the pan handle to not even get too hot to touch. Keep stirring up the eggs, working to that moment where the eggs are ALMOST all coming together. At that point turn off the heat with a sassy twist of the wrist, and let the residual heat of the pan do that last bit of cooking as you stir, to that exact moment just on the other side of liquid--when there is no runniness in the egg, just soft, perfectly cooked curds.

This technique is guaranteed to result in very fluffy, hot, flavorful, not in any way nastily over- or undercooked eggs, the kinds with either too nutty, cooked-smelling brown bits (blech) or runny gross melty eggy liquid (blech). They are perfect with piping hot buttered toast (or on it), or with a salad. Also good with a little Parmesan folded in, or herbs. Somehow I like them plain best of all, though.

As with all good recipes, this has converted a few people. Can't guarantee it, though.

~ fin ~

~ hic ~

p.s. These scrambled eggs take about 28-1/2 minutes fewer than Fisher's.

GGirls p.s. + North Dakota + props

* It was Logan's *right* paw that seemed to be doing odd things below the surface of the desk, not his left one (it was "stage left"). Either something really weird was going on there, there were technological problems, or I'm the perv with the most lurid imagination in the history of TV.

* I don't feel like I explained this well, but the biggest soap-opera style jerryrigging *was* the total abandonment of the Lorelai & Luke connection...but it still works.

* Shall I gather up all my idiotic Gilmore Girls ramblings into a beautiful handsewn book called Pensées, printed just for friends and family, like ladies of leisure in the 19th cent? Hah! I'm a little tired of hearing myself talk about it. But I guess we all have to have an outlet, and I have only an abstract appreciation at the moment for the Tigers.

- - -

I sometimes think I'm missing something by not moving *to* North Dakota, taking advantage of the population drain to mercenarily buy up land/invest in the future. Give it 200-300 years...you know it'll be worth something. Okay, that's one dumb reaction to that situation. Another is total amazement at the wild sort of gothick state of affairs in an emptying state like that--a few weeks ago I heard some stories from an ND friend whose family is still hanging on there and they were really fascinating. Another reaction is: maybe THIS is where I can finally build the folly I've been waiting my whole life to indulge in. Forget the Hudson Valley--who could afford that. Although, the cold. The cold... The wind would rip my hand-glued shells and fancy paint off the house so fast... In any case, you just *know* that things will flip around for that state. Eventually. This world is too crowded for it not to. And as always gets pointed out--the per capita political power is heady.

- - -

Remember the name Kirsten Major. Just saying. You should!

I want one.

Usual mishmosh.

Okay, I'm sorry, I'm beating the deadest hiphop horse ever, but part of what I like about that Big Daddy Kane tribute is the sight of LL Cool J and Melle Mel singing along like total fanboys. TOTAL fanboys. Chairdancing, rapping along, comin in hard on the most famous bits. Hilarious and sweet. Okay, thank you. I could possibly be done talking about this (one year later), although I did watch it four more times at work today. Insane. Ah...what did I do before YooToob?!?!?!? Must go watch the sleeping kitten. AWWSLEEPINGKITTEN!

Can we (related) predict when the flat top/fade is gonna come back? Equation: 5-6 more years for distancing (long enough for Arsenio to acquire a new context), using the every-20-years model for recycling of styles + 2 more years for irony + a few more years to allow white folk to indulge in some similar hair-dos minus a few years for the increasing speed at which we re-embrace fashions of the past....say, December 15, 2014. Gonna be so cool.

How did somebody as fundamentally mediocre as Donald Trump become the icon for all that it is extreme (big rich ya!) in this country? He ain't actually the richest guy in the country, even in NY; he has a horrible speaking voice; no charisma; the worst cotton candy hair ever; an inabilty to look directly in the camera--just the most kindasorta blippity-blah enh heh yuck so-so yenh na-ja so-so comme ci-comme ca dude ever. His commercials for this big increase-the-wealth seminar he's part of are hilarious! He sounds like a used-car salesman. Which is what he sounds like to me when he's showing someone around Mar-A-Lago too, frankly. Just don't get it. Maybe I'm just tired of the enormous monument to his dick-or-lack-of that is constantly blocking traffic in my neighborhood. (WHY oh why do we need that thing here in Chicago??? I am appalled, as an archiChicachauvanist. Between that and the Macy's-ing of Marshall Field's I may never go near the south bend of the river or the Loop ever again. WRAWR!)

More littry nibbles: I was thinking...maybe next time I go to the UK I will get to go to a E.F. Benson event of some variety in Rye. And maybe Tom Holt will be there! Okay, I've never read any of his Lucia books--it's not fair, but I lump them in with other the-author's-dead-but-let's-keep-the-franchise-going books like Mrs. DeWinter (GAWD!) or Scarlett (BLASPHEMY!)--but I bet it would be interesting. And I could ask him all about his mother, who happened to be B. Pym's literary executor and biographer (and an author herself)--in fact, there's a very poignant journal entry toward the end of BPym's life describing when she gave a college-age Tom Holt an idea for a story to write (which he did). Then I could daisy-chain from author to author, compare the food the Janeites serve to the atmosphere at the D.L. Sayers confab to the accommodations at the Forster conference...

I MUST see the parade of the fairy penguins on Phillip Island, Australia before I get too much older. Must! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins! Fairy penguins.

My endless fascination with ethnicities and the ways actors play with them came to a head today with: Sam Waterston! I had always thought of him as a superWASP, but then I heard more than a few people say he was Jewish. I was thinking...is he so WASPy he's a Jew? Like John Waters describes some women as being so straight they're drag queens? No, turns out he's a superWASP after all, one of God's frozen people (although his character in Killing Fields was Jewish?). Anyhow. I always find it kind of fascinating, what at its most contemporary extreme Vincent Canby called "ethnic makebelieve"--in that case about Alec Guiness' role in A Passage to India which was kinda the last of those artistically well-intentioned but almost 'black-face' roles...they've now been subsumed into a slightly different formula. Toned-down, but still about passing and not passing on some level. I guess I'm always fascinated at who admits to being something and who doesn't. Maybe *personal armchair psych* it's because I am 1/4 Jewish to 3/4 WASP, which I didn't really know about it until I was in my college years (resulting in a lifetime of fascination and celebrity nosiness?). My grandfather was in some ways the classic second-generation immigrant trying to Pass (converted, married a shiksa goddess, Naval Academy, full catastrophe). It's not that I fault him for it exactly--I just never got to really ask him about this enormous thing.

- - - -

Okay, Gilmore Girls was on tonight. A new one. I'M SORRY I GOTTA GET IT OUT, YO.

Well, it was done at the expense of the suspension of disbelief and with a major dip into gravity-free, soap opera-style willy-nilly time-telescoping plot/character/emphasis overhaul (among other breathtaking changes: Emily and Richard for now just jolly pills in the background), just to restart the engine, but the show finally got some juice going. Like...what's gonna happen next? I actually wanted to know. I also thought:

* Man, Lauren Graham and Scot Patterson look just thrilled to be released from having to pretend they like each other. He was SMILING. She was pretending to be ATTRACTED to somebody. Could that be the MAIN reason for the malaise of last season? Rather than just a contributing one?

* It took me 6 or 7 tries to actually watch this damn episode because of the opening riff on Snakes on a Plane. It added to the excruciating quality that this kinda GG chatter has that they took on a phenom with such a short lifespan...just couldn't bear to listen to it. Kept stopping the tape! (Related query: Do you think they showed Funny Face--without Audrey dancing in her peglegs--as a slap at the new dumb Audrey Hepburn commercials? Or just 'cause? And WHO STOPPED/STARTED the projector? Do they know it takes a person to do that? Not to mention I'd think that'd be at least a couple reels...somebody would have to change them. *NERDY FILM GAFFE HONK*)

* Er, what was Logan doin with his left hand while he was on the phone?

* Rory kinda boring as hell and blandums. Not sure about these new arty friends. But I liked that writers made Paris a campus-legend type--that was right. And at least they're *trying*.

Warm it up, Scoob'!

1. Can't. Stop. Watching. Big. Daddy. Kane! Really love the way the energy builds in that 5 minutes. TI to Black Thought to Common to BDK! *nerdy honk* I've said it before but WHY does that man wear shades now? (in addition to the I've-gained-weight schmatte?) Why why why? He has the eyes of a Byron.

2. CRANK-EE FOOD/MEDIA RANT:

I spent a lot of the weekend fighting the work-is-a-petrie-dish cold (victory: maybe? armies of Zicam and Emergen-C deployed), so I don't have anything intelligent to say about anything except that I finally read the Bill Buford article about the Food Network in The New Yorker and it was the usual mix of interesting, thought-provoking, and my least favorite flavor, the snooty clueless media Hmmm...I've never heard of this fascinating new thing called ________ [rap, iPods, hiphop, country music, Skittles, Coca-Cola, whatever--something popular] and I have every right to write long and not educate myself first. That pop kulture thing. In this case it was: Hmmm...wot is this Food Network? I would have found it much more interesting if he had talked to people who watch it 5 hours a day and worship Rachael Ray than departed programming execs. Duh.

Also: I do NOT entirely buy the idea--and I should, theoretically--that it's sad to see Mario Batali and Sara Moulton's contracts not renewed. Both of those people never got less annoying on their shows. Sara Moulton got somewhat less nervous, but she was still nervy and especially so if there was anybody on screen with her, hustling them along, interrupting them, getting freaked about coming in on time. I liked the information she had to impart, more than many, but I felt like she never got enough levels above nervous wreck for me to sink into her show. And Molto Mario, with what was possibly the most annoying grating screeching theme song ever (played in and out of EVERY interstitial, too), was totalment annoying too. He talked at 120 mph, gave slippery Italian pronunciations to things that were unintelligible, and was generally kind of off-puttingly pedantic and over-fast, not in a fascinating way. I didn't feel like he had much rapport with anybody other than himself (I liked his Ciao America show, though--other people talked). Note: this all has nothing to do with my feelings about offal. I applaud his work in the weird little animal bits department.

I *don't* like the Food Network's move towards infotainment--it's boring and repetitive and dumbed-down. (The actual cooking being done has less and less connection to any particular cuisine, as well--I could go for a rigorously French or Thai or something show.) I'm actually starting to watch America's Kitchen with christoherkimball and his Sub-Deb Kitchen Bitches. It's gotten looser and more interesting. I'll even watch New Scandinavian Cooking, with Andreas Viestad and his hilariously halting English pulled out of him in repetitive blurts that is usually so offputting I can't watch it despite my total fascination. In short: I watch the Food Network less and less. I *do* want to see chefs, more than amateur-types, amateur-chefs or Emerils. I really like learning something, however I do so. But Mario and Sara never had a lock-down birthright on being the chefs in question, if you ask me. It's still only a little over 10 years since the network was launched: I'm not ready to weep for the passing of the old guard yet.

GG p.s.

Mom noticed that David Sutcliffe (Christopher) called Lauren Graham "Lauren" instead of "Lorelai" in his big speech on Tuesday night! (This is on Gilmore Girls.) Wahoo! I checked--she was totally right. Too interestin--

Robin Williams makes too many movies.

Ooh, ahh, nah-nah-nah.

I don't want to sound like one of those women with a Magnum, P.I. poster in her cubicle who spends all her weekends gettin down on Diet 7-Up and vodkas at Chippendale's, but please swit Jesus keep Gilmore Girls on the air so we can continue to see Logan Huntsberger I mean Matt Czuchry rollin around in bed without his shirt. Good golly. We waited way too long for that. I can't find an image of the scene at the moment, so I'm not even gonna besmirch its memory with a clothed shot.

Two-fers.

I am out of the habit of Bloggin'; a function of being out sick from work for over two weeks and unhooking from--I feel the urge to inaccurately call it the glass teat, but that's not it--it's more of an email waterfall, an informational waterfall, the deluge, the constant pellet-reward system that is command-M, more more more click point click point total overload it's like a jungle sometimes. This is another way of saying: I've had about 14,000 transitory bloggin' thoughts without the habit of documenting them (other than me new books) in the last few weeks. But I can say this:

Rice News:
1. Do not microwave organic EnviroKidz crispy rice bars--they become as mortar and meld with the plate.
2. Lundberg's Wild Blend Country Brown rice blend RAWKS. Rilly good.

Architecture News:
1. Sleeping With the Enemy: modern architecture is bad.
2. North by Northwest: modern architecture is in the midwest.

The trailer for Marie Antoinette:
1. announces that it's based on a true story. This is funny (oh THAT Marie Antoinette).
2. is pritty and makes me think that SC owes a lot to the DP on this AND Lost in Translation (Lance Acord).

Housekeeping is about the art of:
1. throwing things away and
2. very little else, really.

Because I have been home sick, I can now comment on the Rachael Ray talk show. Yes. There are two things you need to know:
1. Her wardrobe designers have decided to give her a waist (belts now around middle, not low on hips).
2. RR still does not know she doesn't have to YELL to be heard in millions of American homes. It's hugely wearing.

Steve Perry:
1. is Portugese-American (who knew)
2. was a constant source of amusement to my in my snotty teens, but I am now all-a-thwilled when I hear his voice (in songs I like). It is still a little excruciating in songs I hate.

Music you wouldn't think would make you tear up (but it did me recently):
1. Der Hölle Rache from Zauberflöte
2. something fairly embarrassing.

I kinda forgot, when I commented on Nigella Lawson before, that I was already acquainted with the UK Print Media Nigella (many words spilled) vs the TV temptress version, I think because the two versions are so *separate*. In England, where she is a constant tabloid fixture, there are endless articles and interviews dissecting the difference between the interviewee/journalist NL vs. the semi-seriously-goofy NL persona she unwittingly projects on TV from under her eyelids. I wish (random thought) she'd talk more about the Lyons Corner Houses (never seen an article where they got into that), but what I can say about her new show now, having seen it, is:
1. Her tongue-tyin' foodie-luv is a little precious
2. but I've also never heard anybody use the word "deliquescent" on TV (describing stinky cheese) and it was fine.

The Humboldt penguin is disappearing because people harvest the penguin guano they use to build their nests. I have this image of a pissed-off queeny penguin with its flipper on its hip, rolling its eyes and saying, "Can't they leave ANYTHING alone..." Poor pengies. Two things to know:
1. You can't tell what gender a penguin is from just looking at it. That's kinda fun.
2. George Bush sucks.

Love,
Camille Charlotte Beachaump Vale Livingston Jaquith Durrance (Mrs. Jerome)

More gambolings.

I'm so thwilled! I just got all three of the Keith Preston books I ordered and they're just gorgeous. More than that, they're brill on the inside too--I'm so excited to own these (The Top o' the Column, Pot Shots From Pegasus and Types of Pan). Need to get the other two (two?) someday. I remember visiting copies in the top floor of the Harold Washington Library ten years ago when I first got obsessed with Preston, which, like many, started when I read the famous lil poem "The Liberators":

Among our literary scenes,
Saddest this sight to me,
The graves of little magazines
That died to make verse free

...and, like many, used it for a frontispiece quote (this case in my zine). That was before the days of crazydelicious antiquarian booksellin' on the web. Never thought I'd actually own some Prestons. Whee! He really is wonderful--and contemporary. Not to mention (see, it all relates)--Pascal Covici/Covici Friede published two of these books, Donald Friede being, of course, MFKF's third husband. Always been kind of fascinated with Pat Covici, and not really for the Steinbeck angle.

Anyhow, how fun. My copy of The Top o' the Column has got fountain pen-ed comments from a student from 1926. Here's one ("Pop Criticism"):

Of books how few
We find just right;
Some are too-too
And some not quite.

Literary gambolings*

I all of a sudden became consumed with curiosity about the origins of the foreword to the 1977 edition of E.F. Benson's Mapp & Lucia series the other day. I had always idly wondered, but all of a sudden I wondered. This is the one with the particularly horrid, off-base cover. (Lots of those with Benson--ridick.)

The foreword is by Anne Parrish--less ubiquitous and well-known than the Nancy Mitford introduction which followed the reissues into the 1980s. The point being: Anne Parrish--who Anne Parish? At first I thought it might be the American novelist who was the sister of Dillwyn Parrish, MFK Fisher's second husband, both of them distant cousins of Maxfield P. I remembered that passage from MFKF's journal (Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me) about Benson, which was written while she was married to DP: "...today I slew a literary god--or demigod. I perceived at last that E.M. Forster . . . is but an intellectual E.F. Benson. That is praise--but for what Forster once meant to me, it means damnation indeed."

But I finally did a little more research into A. Parrish, and discovered she died in 1957 (note: AP, like many players in MFKF's life, not really given full shrift in the context of her world, at least in the telling). And given the language of the foreword, it seems really unlikely that it's the same A. Parrish, although she talks about meeting him, experiencing the famous "I am Miss Mapp" comment in his garden room at Rye, and Benson died in 1940.

So I don't know! I've posited the question to the listserv--we'll see what the answer is. Funny literary linkings. I also-renoticed that "The Male Impersonator" story that's usually included in Make Way for Lucia these days was done so at the instigation of Edward Gorey. He once said in an interview that he couldn't really reread the Mapp & Lucia books one more time--he had just gobbled them to bits from overuse. I often feel like that, but find that leaving them alone for a while usually works pretty well--they recharge (as Armistead Maupin noted about porn!). I am in the middle of Mapp and Lucia and it's so delicious I can't stand it.

Unrelated: I've been getting my Dorothy Sayers society literature and am getting more excited about next year's conference. But I'm worried: I don't care about Dante and am not sure how much I'll have to be into this to have fun. We'll see!

*Gambolings...very E.F. Benson. I think Piggy and Goosie gambol.

Videos I watch over and over (the internet is great)

Things that make me happy. Candy.

- The trailer for Roll Bounce; specifically, the teaser trailer that opens and closes with Bill Withers' "Lovely Day" and has no voiceover
- The video of Mo'nique's "Crazy in Love" dance that opens the 2004 BET Awards
- Barack Obama's keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
- Bill Clinton's recent excoriation of Chris Wallace
- The tribute to Big Daddy Kane on the most recent Hip-Hop Honors

Lots of little lists.

* I just took a long nap with the TV on and during it "watched" The Third Man (on in the background). I was hearing tinny accordion music and seeing things on a 33 degree angle in my dreams. And I kept thinking harry lime harry lime...

* Well, the recent paucity of postings (whee!) is the result of a major medical crisis. Suffice it to say, in this conscribed (topically) space that 1) I shan't be anthropomorphizing drugs anymore; their side effects are too lethal 2) sometimes you do things you thought you could never do and 3) call me a naif, but the world of medical alert jewelry is much tackier and more complicated than I expected. And spendy. A lot of it is very...wiseguy. Not to mention that some of it, when too much like regular (ugly) jewelry, defeats the "alert" part of the equation.

* Hermione now appears to think (hilarious) that I bought the big new laundry basket so she has a ginormous, moveable cat throne that can be conveniently padded with dirty clothes for her comfort and where she can recline like a pasha out of the reach of Ursula (too chubby to leap into it without an assist). She's starting to look really annoyed if I need to, you know, use it for any reason. Very funny to watch. I'm expecting her to clap her paws together and ask for more Iams in a moment. She also these days climbs up and sits around my right hand while I'm on the computer so I'm forced to mouse through her legs. Cats, man.

* Let's get some obvious things out of the way. That have to be said. For no real reason except they do. Really obvious. 1) Is not "Claire de Lune" the most beautiful melancholy excruciating piece of music? Where lodged in the universe did that come from to arrive at Debussy's pen? SSoderbergh was kind of genius to use it the way he did because of the strong feel of coda--ending--denouement--finishing, elegiac something or other it has. Golly. It's weird and daring too. I love it. 2) Raoul Bova is so gorgeous. He's certainly pretty to look at in still photography, but he's much gorgeous-er in motion: that's where his real beauty lies, in his moving, expressive self. Good GOLLY. What a smile. 3) I love bagpipe music and, frankly, I never hear enough of it because you rarely hear a whole *song* ever--it's hinted at in movies, marches by you in parades. I adore its directly sad quality. It's this funny powerful thing and some people hate it, which I don't get. Okay, thank you, now I'm done. Love, Mistress of the Obvious.

* Maria Shriver has THE most alarming jawline. Concave in spots and in ways that make her look at first glance cadaverous and sick. Her jawline is especially distressing when it's moving around articulating things like, "I struggle with weight problems like all American women," which makes you realize that you've always wondered how the hell her kids might be surviving with Kennedy woman body issues on one side and Schwarzenegger body-building and childhood-fitness-crusading issues on the other. It feels kind of mean to say this about her--genetics are genetics and her very unfortunate mandibular construction is not her doing--but it's hard not to comment on when she's playing governor's wife about body issues. Her face feels like a very extreme version of the way women's faces are aging these days--ruthless. Hollowed.

* Let's talk about Luther Vandross: 1) I am tired of people singing "A House Is Not a Home" who aren't Luther. More specifically, singing it the *way* he did, rather than going back to the original song. He made that song his own with his particular interpretation, and it's tedious to hear bad versions of his superior version. 2) Having said that, I think it's interesting how good, and how long-lasting the Lalah Hathaway version of "Forever, for Always, for Love" is. It's wonderful. Quiet. Beautifully, almost masterfully sung. And it's in almost constant rotation--still--on V103 here. It came out of the same batch of kinda tedious Luther Tribute stuff in 2004 but just won't go away. Very cool.

* Also: I think I have to get the Anthony Hamilton album. I can never get "Can't Get Let Go" out of my head, and how can you not love a man who pens a song like "Sista Big Bones"? (too fab) And puts Monique in the video? (Note: yuck to see Angie Stone, about whom I think the song was written, on "Celebrity Fit Club" or whatever that show's called. Hate that show.)

* Sabrina is the most *lugubrious* movie, as is Random Hearts. Is there a particular chemical reaction that occurs twixt Harrison Ford & Sydney Pollack that causes this? It just doesn't work! And I like them both.

* Morgan Freeman was on oPraH yesterday and it was really satisfying to hear him answer "Fast Black" (from Street Smart) when Oprah asked him what his favorite role had been. Her face kinda fell and it was clear she wanted to hear him describe something uplifting and O magazine--she said a few seconds later, "but what about Shawshank Redemption?" I love MF in noble amazing roles, although I think he might take too many of them these days if I could ever watch any of those scary movies with Ashley Judd, but he's also fantastic when oozing cool menace, and I think it should be tapped into more. Like Fast Black. Oprah can be so...Obvious.

* It's partly the constant repetition, but the promo for the new Nigella show is starting to make her look like a dope with parodically posh accent. So obnoxious. Coy glances, teasy camera-work. They better get that show on TV soon.

* One gets the faint, but very constant feeling watching Tyler Florence on "Food 911" that he is a kind of Tom Jones, that he is, um, servicing these women in more ways than one. Traveling the country takin' care of the ladies. It's impossible to ignore, despite the boyfriends and husbands often in the background. It's like...they don't understand you, baby, I'm gonna rework your recipe and make you feel like a new woman.

* Okay, now here's what we really need to talk about. Ross Hunter. I'm suddenly obsessed with Ross Hunter. I've known who he is for a long time, of course, as befits a Doris Day fan (who can ever forget his epic line, "Doris, you have the wildest ass in Hollywood"), but I never really *explored* just who this guy was. Now I'm totally fascinated. I can't think of anyone else like him, especially in the time when he was working--he was a gay man, with an intense camp sensibility, who wasn't just an appreciator of things, didn't just worship Lana and Doris, but he MADE MOVIES for them. He created movie thrones for these women to occupy, influenced style and perception. I mean, I think the man was wielding irony--*then*. Not just in retrospect. And not irony *only*, because he's more sincere than that, he'd have to be. But. Who knows how he contributed to the hopelessly gay undertone of things like Pillow Talk? I'm starting to think the really naked (not even)sub-text of that movie might have his pawprint on it, that he might be winking at us. And seeing the potential in Doris' ass takes a certain kind of vision! That sounds incredibly inane, but I don't know how else to explain it except that he seems somewhat ahead of his time, despite the turgid dated qualities of his weepy films. And he had a long Hollywood marriage with an art director. He just seems really fascinating to me all of a sudden--I want to find out more about him. How can you not wonder about the man that remade Madame X? Just insane. That photo is him (on the right) with Doris and her no-goodnik mooching third husband. I wonder how much all this has been explored?? Oh the biographies I want to write!

I have to say, I'm unsurprised to hear that Forest Whitaker is so good as Idi Amin; I think he's a much better actor than director. And the first half of The Crying Game, in which he was so heartbreaking, is the best part. Anyhow, rather exciting.

Another little prediction: I think Marc Antony/*shh* Jennifer Lopez's husband is going to be proved a good actor, quite good. Better than ye'd think. How odd. It's kind of impossible for him not to, with all that melancholy.

A wish: People who were average-sized would call themselves that. Body dysmorphia is so rampant that you have to navigate an ocean of hyperbole and exaggeration in everyday life, and I find it wearing. Boring. And frustrating, in my nerddom and fatness, but mostly in my nerddom. It's ever-so-interesting that you think you're enormous as a size 14, but please--take responsibility for a little measured (hah) examination of the world around you. Call things what they are. And if people could only differentiate body type from body size...

Anthropomorphizing medicines is fun.

Okay, so Yasmin has left me; now my constant nauseating companion is, well, Lois. Lois is, of course, the secretary at the local high school. She sighs unthinkingly a lot in a way that sounds angry, wears the classic Embarrassed double-knit fat lady top-and-pants outfits of my yoot (RIP), has a too-short older-straight-lady dyke hairdo that's always a little sweaty at the back and wears glasses on a chain around her neck. Only maybe it's not Lois who's making me sick...maybe it's the conflict of her and CeeCee, drug #2. Yes, that's it. CeeCee, who is younger, transferred from another high school where she worked and now she and Lois are deadlocked in a battle of the embittered martyred employee. A battle of whispered angry conferences in the hallway, teary-eyed lunches in the break room, partisan birthday card passing, when all the time their real enemies are the awful students. I hope they resolve their difficulties soon.

* The current E coli outbreak in commercial spinach production is making for some hilarious visuals on TV news. They have to have imagery to fill in during voiceovers, of course, and what they end up with is a lot of...spinach. Very passive spinach. Lying in piles, sitting in bags, being sprayed with water, perhaps being hesitantly fluffed by anonymous human hands. In a bowl. On a plate. It can make for a long 30 seconds.

* Newsflash: Kim has just informed me that Cole Porter's hometown is pronounced Pee-roo. I had implied that it was Pair-oo in my last post, by my fondness for orthographic spelling in all sorts of inappropriate contexts. Pee-roo. PEE-roo.

* What book has had the most effect on my life at the moment, do you ask? Why, High Heels for Jennifer, of course. Arguably the least great of the Jennifer books by Eunice Young Smith, but one with an enormously valuable life lesson: how to deal when something you've created and care desperately about is destroyed. How to do it over. Suck it up and do it over. Keep doing. My mercurial web browser just ate in an instant 1,500 of the most carefree happy words I ever threw together for this blog with all the benefit of backed-up energy and it felt like somebody stabbed me through the heart. You know the kind of prose where you're not looking right at it, but just leaning back and tapping effortlessly into a deep, free-flowing vein of exuberant expression--more importantly, with content and form in place too? Rare. Non-reproducable. Devastating. But you know what, you gotta keep doing. And doing over, which is the same as just keeping going. Plod back into it. The kicker: you never know, it may be better the next time around (not in this case; I'm catatonic. But still.). And it's my damn fault for doing it on the web and not in a text edit prog.

It's like Dog comma the Bounty Hunter--you know? You gotta follow the rules. I can't fundamentally fault him for going after Andrew Luster, but if Luster goes free because he took matters into his own hands, nobody knows better than Dog that you gotta follow the rules. What if he barged into innocent people's houses in Mexico and extradited them? Many years of Sunday School makes it clear that that kind of gesture--Dog's--can't be free of ego. However, there's morality and then there's morality--I'm glad Luster's in jail good god, what evil.

* Jon Stewart recently identified something that has always bothered the crap out of me about Fox News and their "headlines"--bottom-of-screen text. They use the most partisan, lurid, BAITING rhetoric, but try to make it look thoughtful or even vaguely journalistic or just let themselves off the hook by putting a question mark at the end of it. He totally nailed them for it. Very satisfying. Some of the things they say are so far-out I wonder if I'm remembering them right--a very Fox phenomenon, that. (Clinton: Skirt-Chasing Sinner? We Want Iran So Bad We Can Taste It...Can We Take It, Can We?) I think sometimes that's why I can't watch Jon Stewart, as delicious as his show is, esp. when I'm unwinding from work--it's almost TOO delicious. And on the spot, which puts you--well, me--in touch with this enormous well of frustration and nondirected energy that the last six years has brought, even though it scratches an itch.

* To wit (today's political thought Better Expressed Elsewhere But I Don't Kare): I am thinking more and more these days about the enormous, looming similarities between the Christian right and the Christian left, as far apart as they are. How the ends of that circle dangle open. How when you hear a fundie preacher and your basic heathen Episcopalian talk about the need for less commercialism, more personal responsibility, less sex selling product and compromising people, more QUIET...all the ways in which they echo each other stand out more and more. It's hard to imagine those ends ever knitting together, but still. What if?

This is exactly what watching Joyce Meyer is like--watching the ends of that circle dangle open. She says things I don't agree with, and things I do agree with, but they're all right there in that area. Her latest outfit, by the way? Almost Kenny Kingston-like. Hilar. Well, okay, not that extreme, but with a stand-up collar and brocade embroidery. It made me want to call her Marchelin, for some reason. I really must find somebody to share this Joyce Meyer obsession with, somebody who can be both dead serious about and totally amused by her at the same time. Ali? You want to start a club?

* I doubt I'm the only one who can't take the word "zesty" very seriously because of over-exposure to Bloom County in their formative years, right? Hehe. Zesty.

* Note to self: once I finish the dissertations I wanna write on period films, friendships in threes onscreen and the evolution of language in cooking shows, I would like to write one about the imagery of women escaping from life in ads for "treat"-like foods. I will call it: Cal-GONE, Man. And then because this is academe and there has to be a colon, I will call it: Cal-GONE, Man: A Feminist Look at Imagery of Snacky Snack Fuds in TV Commercials.

* There's something so moderne sometimes about early music, isn't there? I listened to Couperin's La Menetou today (really cool) and it was just serious HARPSICHORD BOMBARDMENT. Highly structured, but bashing. Very satisfying.

* I know I'm a horrid crank, but I finally identified something, an obvious something, that had been plaguing me in all this Croc Hunter coverage: why the noun adjunct? Why Australia Zoo, the two words just sitting there next to each other, hoping to rub off on each other but too lazy for one to take an adjectival form? Why not Australian Zoo? The Zoo of Australia? Australia's Zoo? Is this why Australia was a penal colony--grammar issues?

* A truly grotesque episode of Fast Food My Way with Jacques Pepin this week in which Jacques, bless his heart, killed a worried, claw-waving lobster by severing his spinal cord, then cut him up into pieces and made a fricassee. He did it with phlegmatic French calm, for, as he said, whether fishmonger or restaurant or cook, "SOME-bodee [has to] keell the lobstuhr." And he's right, it was just horribly nasty to watch. He proceeded to disembowel the thing into all its slimy parts after killing it, and I kept wondering why it was okay to show this and not a cow being cut up. Seemed arbitrary, like permitting cussing in foreign languages but not your own. Still totally disgusting, even if I admire JP, and I do, for knowing how to do things like this and not flinching from them. Man, I hate shellfish. It's just too insecty.

* I have finally learned to like Michael Chiarello's cooking show. His manner, not his food, had always put me off--it felt pushy and cheffyego-ish--but having watched it a bit it seems more like innate enthusiasm. The man talks a lot with his hands. It's almost like those old fake "3D" shows on SCTV, waving things at the camera all the time. But he's a good cook. The other day he made cappellini in brodo, one of my fav dishes, and it was more like a Vietnamese pho than the way I've seen the dish usually prepared--interesting. Boy, did it look wonderful. He also made a polenta pound cake with berries I coulda dived into.

* I have been craving for months foods that I finally have decided to call ur-fuds, for lack of a better term. Foods as I first had them, learned to like them, first ate as a child. Not, necessarily, foods that I had often; I might have, but sometimes we're talking about foods I had only a few times. The first foods. It's partly a result of being so sick to my stomach recently and not having satisfying food experiences as a result, whether from too little/too much hunger, hunger that is going to be hard to satisfy regardless. Ur-fuds...strong clean flavors I can taste easily in my mind.

So recently I've started to crave: Real Texas chili, no beans, no onions, just lots of tender chuck in a sweet spicy ancho chili/cumin/oregano sauce base. Preferably served with basmati rice. Also tabouli, made the way I first had it, by the Palestinian husband of my mom's best friend from high school: NO tomatoes, just a very dark parsley/mint salad with lots of bulgur and lemon juice/olive oil. Maybe a little very thinly sliced scallion. Also on the hit parade: hush puppies (onion powder, please) and fried flounder, sausage gravy and biscuits, peppery grits, really lean, non-gristle-y and juicy ECarolina BBQ with slaw on a squishy bun. And aioli. Craving aioli. And hummus made with cannellini beans. Oh well, we'll see what Lois can do for me.

* Turf wars: Hermione, who of course in the last few days had found a way to get in the new laundry basket and was enjoying its protection and comfort, has been usurped by Ursula, who thugged her chubby way in with the help of an ottoman nearby. She's now lying in it, licking her paws, and Hermione is sitting on the ottoman plotting her next move.

* From a voiceover for an ad for a Julio Iglesias album: "One of the most iconic voices of our time." This made me feel bad about overusing the world myself! It just doesn't sound right...it's 3rd/4th word definition correct, but Wrong. One of the most melodic painters of our time.

* More than a lil MFK Fisher in this entry. Sometimes you just gotta. To wit: I *must* press on with this gastronomy/taxonomy article, if nothing else because I have discovered in the research process that calling Spain is expensive and I'd like to make that worth my while. Also: hang tight for a flurry of Keith Preston appreciation to be showing up soon. Due to the joy of online second-hand book sellers, I am going to indulge in some KP ownership for the first time. Can't wait. Little pet obsession flowering.

* One of my favorite quotes, speakin of favoritin' quotin' authorin', has floated to the front of and been firmly lodged in my brain the last few weeks, due to its relentless and growing relevance in the life of a woman. It's from a film by Eric Rohmer and I'm grateful every day I thought to write it down when I first saw it. It's the way of perceiving it describes that I find so dead-on, as well as, secondarily, the maturity of the attitude expressed: Now, when I see a woman, I'm no longer so quick to classify her as one of the elect or one of the damned. . . In their most mundane tasks, I grant them that mystery I used to deny them.

The Pride of Per-oo

It turns out there's a perfect place for The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter: the *shh* bathroom. Perfect spot for that kinda leisurely perusal, although it's not good for the book, which was already hurtin (curled covers, cracked spine). Plus it weighs about 15 pounds. But still-- fun. And I finally looked up where Peru, Indiana actually is. It really is kind of in the middle of nowhereindiana. So far my faves:

from "Si vous aimex les poitrines" (from Nymph Errant, 1933)

Si vous aimez les poi-trines
come to Gay Paree
si leur beaute vous a-nime
come and call on me.
I will show you how di-veene
Parisiennes poi-trines really are,
If you promise me, you naughty boy,
not to go too far.
Si vous voulez d'la ten-dresse
et d'la volupte,
let me give you my ad-dresse
for a rainy day.
And when zat feeling comes a-stealing
you know what I mean?
Mais oui, monsieur,
come and play wiz me in Gay Paree,
si vous aimex les poitrines.

(What is it with gay men and the belle poitrines? I wonder if Patrick Dennis knew that lyric)

And for Hanne (this is the first verse):

"Cleveland"

Listen, my dearie,
out on Lake Erie
I know the grandest town,
Cleveland, Ohio,
Oh me oh my-oh
a place of great renown.
Cleveland--that's the title of my ditty.
Cleveland--it's the famous Forest City,
Cleveland--where they have the ammunition,
Cleveland--to prohibit Prohibition.
Cleveland--praise the Lord and sing Hosannah.
Cleveland--it's the home of Hoyt and Hanna.
Cleveland, Cleveland, Cleveland, Cleveland, Cleveland!

Yes, sigh, kindofasucky week. I am in the middle of donning my 1-2x/yr Stressy AllergyCold/Sinus Infection, which proceeds in such a speedy fashion that I have problems explaining it in a belevable way to others. I'm literally in stage 3 after about 8 hours (congestion and drip, after runny nose and sore throat). I am living in a fountain of flying kleenex like a hamster. I knew it was coming, unfortunately, for a few days in its low-simmering pre-game state--no Emergen-C stemmed the tide. I've learned not to fuck around with this illness, whatever it is, because it has a bad habit of turning into bronchitis at the same frightening speed as the rest of the process and at that point there's just no way I can not talk about the astonishing, claustrophic quality of the phlegm I experience, and who needs to hear that. Needless to say, this illness has arrived at the worst possible moment, days before my first vacation in months if not years, when I have tons of stuff to do to get ready, and no ability to take time off from work as needed. I'm lookin at my face in the mirror and I think I literally have no melanin. It's just gray. Yes, sigh.

Okay, so it was a nassy week and to top it all off the Esquire Theater is closing. It was multiplexed a decade ago and has not been taking care of very well in recent years, but it also has one of the most beautiful Art Moderne facades in the world and I worry for its existence. It's *daring*. It has very strong architectural gestures--grand expanses and smaller bits--the kind of space-wasting nobody has time for on a street full of primo real estate like Oak St. (Real estate...what fucking bubble? The value of real estate seems to be driving so many horrid business decisions these days. Would the Berghoff have closed if not for that? Even a constantly-packed restaurant doesn't pay off in comparison.) This city talks a good talk about architectural heritage, but in reality nothing's changed since the days of the Fire. Slash and burn, slash and burn.

So I am going to try to note some good things.

1) I got some nice little opera swag at work, a few things I actually wanted. That was lovely and hadn't happened before, I don't think.

2) There was a prize-winning Pomeranian on TV tonight that thrilled me to the gills and made me squeal. I think his name was Tyler. It's the way they WALK. Furry nubs twinkling as they float along and the goofy look on their face. I often think I might get one if my life becomes dog friendly and I have a yard. I was not built to pick dog poop off the concrete three times a day. God bless those who do, but hain't for me. I'm still dreaming of the perfect hands-free affordable self-cleaning cat litter box, as it is I feel like their litter bitch most of the time. I wonder: do you have to spend 20 hours a day brushing your Pomeranian to get them to look like that?

3) I have finally achieved something I need in the area of Laundry. It took money, of course. I've tried a bizillion carts and carriers over the years that don't work, fell apart, were hard to maneuver, you name it, but I finally bit the bullet and bought an industrial strength, jumbo-size laundry cart from an industrial laundry supply co. The kind of cart laundromats have, only even bigger and sturdier. It arrived in reassuringly heavy boxes, has huge solid wheels, is big and well-made enough to resist Cat encroachment, and didn't take that long to put together. Although that part was satisfying. I LOVE my Ryobi cordless drill. It just is so well-made and handy--I love doing stuff with it. The cart is damn BIG. It even has the ugly but useful rubber protector around the top. This is great. Now I can fling my laundry therein and fling it back in once it's done and not have to do any silly packing and hoisting to make things fit or worry about what's wet.

Since I started writing this I have literally progressed a stage with my sinus infection--more congestion, no sense of smell. I am going to embrace pharmacology without my usual trepidation and hope it saves me.

(p.s. Is the world ready for the Rachael Ray show? The Megan Mullally show? Must they alliterate?)
(p.s.s. Love to you, Skip, in tha Midwest.)

I really like my silly ride to work. It's about 5 minutes long, and in it I pass the deep, water-bed roots of the city. I go through the "lower" part--the streets below the false bottoms of Michigan Ave. and Wacker Drive, where the tall buildings are really anchored. So I see the real bottom of the Wrigley Building, the Tribune Building--all these buildings that you think you're seeing all of when you're above ground. I go by loading docks and employee entrances and boat-boarding spots along the river, past smoking hotel employees and TV interns and people in hair nets sitting on crates. I go by the city impound lot, by the Billy Goat, by media vans, down unusually twisty streets that hug the river and its banks. And every single day, except in winter, I hear the squawk and tweet of some renegade group of parrots (I guess?) who live under Michigan Avenue and whose calls echo weirdly throughout all the rivets and steel. I emerge in natural light at Wabash, in the cluster of valet parkers.

This has been a rough week. Monday morning started early with the lugubriousness and unavoidable pain of 9/11, as of this weekend Marshall Field's is no more, Ann Richards just died, Iran's looking inevitable, I worry stupidly about Iraq from all sides all the time... Not to mention, a former coworker who never looked anyone I knew in the eye except those he found worthy of starfucking has written a tell-all with (as I am told) annoying innacuracies, and that didn't help either. A few things he said sound just Incorrect and worthy of correction, but I suppose it's also that *I* wanted the last word.

TV was just *dangerous* on Monday. I try hard to avoid the images of the towers--it's like watching somebody being beheaded--but it was just...unavoidable. Very slippery slope. It's a terrible thing that TV has enough imagery and hoo-ha to fill that many rehashed hours of straight horror and sadness without having to stretch very hard (either way it's awful). After 20 minutes or so, I decided that I needed to shut it off in a big way. So I listened to all of Ravel's Bolero, which had just started. I figured--this will take me somewhere.

The key art for The Black Dahlia is really effective, clever and just YUCKY! Which is the point.

Hermione and Ursula alas!

The cats who are currently parked inconveniently near my computer and ogling my dinner while they shed and give each other the stinkeye have namesakes. They are named after the "two plain strapping sisters (Hermione and Ursula alas!)" of the hopelessly femme, self-styled super-annuated jeune premier of the Mapp & Lucia novels by E.F. Benson, George Pillson. Hermy and Ursy show up in the first book and terrorize poor needlepoint-doing Georgie, an incredibly good sport, with their brusque, hearty, otter-hunting ways: make fun of his toupee; play golf; beat him at bridge; unmask his yoga guru as a line cook from an Indian restaurant in London; then take off again. "Usually this month when Hermy and Ursy were with him was very fatiguing," Georgie says. Right.

Ursula and Hermione turn out to be pretty good names for me cats. I named Ursula first because she looked so much like a little bear cub (she still does sometimes) and then burdened poor Hermy with her pretentious name when I got her later--having a matched set just was too delicious to pass up. (Luckily the Harry Potter books mean that people usually know how to pronounce her name). My cats are incredibly fatiguing sometimes--they are in constant, gyroscopey motion, in tandem with each other, the world of sounds around them, me, dust bunnies, whatever, despite sleeping 23 hours a day (how do they do that?). Hermione, the one in the photo above, is older and theoretically more mature, but she's the one who is into heights, knocks books off my shelves (she is super-duper polydactyl and able to thwack things with big paddle paws) and the one who can't stay off my computer keyboard. Ursula is a baby thug. Her middle name is Entropinator, because she just can't bear the slow rate at which things disintegrate--she has to hustle it along by spilling, biting, tearing. Scratching. Tipping things over. Whatever it takes.

They get along, they are sisters, but in addition to sitting companionably and looking out the window this means that they constantly chase each other around, groom each other until the process disintegrates into hissing fights, indulge in what looks like kitty Greco-Roman wrestling, roll around rabbit-kicking. I've been very aware of one dynamic between them driving all this recently, the fighting and the non-fighting both. That is, despite the window-sitting, when they're just hanging around they rarely just are together, in any companionable, equitable way. Literally. Somebody is always higher, somebody lower. Somebody is always closer to the fud dish, somebody is farther. One is always closer to the big cat (that's me), one is farther. If I blink slowly it's a series of constantly changing tableaux: cat up, cat down. Cat down, cat up. Hermy is on a shelf, Ursula is higher. Ursy's higher, Hermy's lower. Always a power struggle. They are constantly colonizing any cardboard box I bring into the house for this reason. I'm higher. No, I'M higher. NO, I'm closer. No, I'M-- It's like a living binary code.

Today it refused to stop reminding me of an exercise in a modern dance class I took in college. (Suddenly in my minds eye, despite the fact that we are talking about the mid-1980s, it seems as far-off and sweetly innocent and palmy as The Group or a Victorian photo of punters at Oxford or something--the little dance studio at the back of the 60s? "women's" gym, surrounded as I remember it, with incredibly lush greenery all around through the glass windows, all of us young and earnest and unaware of cell phones and compact disc players and worshipping our charismatic long-limbed dance teacher.) Anyhow, the exercise in this class was that there was one person who was leader and the rest who had to follow her doing The Opposite--if she raised herself up, we crouched down--and vice versa. When you really get going with it, it's tricky and fun, not knowing which way to go and moving all around while you do it.

That's what my cats do---together they are a constantly morphing organism that is balanced only in the presence of both. My cats do, as I say, sometimes just sit with each other. But it's not when I'm not here--when I walk in the door they usually emerge from different spots in the apartment. What they do, I think, is be together when I'm around but they think I'm not looking. Sometimes in the middle of the night I'll wake and they'll be curled together in (as B.Pym described sleeping cats) a great "clot" of minky fur and whiskers. One time I swear they were stretched out next to each other like two kidney beans, holding paws. This evening when I woke up from a nap, they were both (an unheard-of level of accord) parked on their new favorite cardboard box that hitherto Ursy had appropriated with much hissing and fistfights. I keep thinking--am I dreaming this? Is that really both cats? Do they know what they're doing? Why aren't they hissing? It doesn't last long, in any case--once they know I'm paying attention, then it's back on the gyroscope. One of them got booted off the box (can't remember which).

All this is one reason why living with cats is not the purely decorative activity that it appears in an Ikea catalog. Cats look like they are just sitting there, but in reality you are living in the middle of constant, complicated series of movements and counter-movements, a nest of sometimes invisibly articulated challenges and nose-thumbings and power struggles. And since you are one of the planets around which these little satellites orbit and change, it's not that relaxing. Sometimes you wanna say--can't you just sit there?

5,001 Nights at the Remote.

* I just finished reading BBC Good Food cover to cover. It's an interesting magazine; I can't quite figure out where it falls in the socio-economic/periodical/foodie hierarchy on the newsstand. It's definitely not as posh as Gourmet, but doesn't seem Woman's Day either. Maybe more like Bon Appetit? (The cover to the left is not the one I just read but very similar--crowded, not elegant and spare.) I guess the point is that there isn't a definite US comparison, since it's nicely subsidized and there aren't as many ads as in other magazines. Much nicer.

I drew a few conclusions from reading it: 1) British food photography has not reached the same feverishly glossy spritzed fluffed quality as American. This is probably not quite true--I'm probably comparing it to the wrong things--but it still seems different somehow. They let things look simpler (plain white noodles?) and just kinda lie there, not so spectacularly lit or lacquered or whatever, compared to an American magazine. Maybe. 2) I really want to try salt marsh lamb. 3) There wasn't one chocolate-based desert in the whole thing, I think--everything was seasonal, down to the bizillions of berry-based desserts. It felt a little more genuinely tied to nature's ebbs and flows and unprocessed food. 4) I saw very little fear of carbs--whether covert or manifest in the recipe design, however: 5) They seem just as concerned with healtheee-Eeeeeting, but in different ways than us. For instance, there was one raspberry tart for which you crumbled up shortbread WITH butter (shortbread already being 99-44/100% butter) to make the crust. Go Old Blighty! (It looked fantastic--their soft summer fruit there really is epic.) 6) Delia Smith is really England's Food Queen. There was a contest for what basically an Audience with her at her Food Centre. Hilarious. She has to be popular/powerful to bend other people's interests to hers (football, the Catholic church)--I mean, I wonder how many of these folks care about football to begin with?

* This weekend on Food Network they're airing a special about Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken called "The Chef and the Architect," in the promos for which they are heavily leaning on the whole "I Married My Partner's Ex!!!" True Hollywood Story angle. Wha? I didn't know for sure that MS had married S's ex until I read Juliette Rossant's Super Chefs, and even then I would argue it was fairly softpetaled. In general I don't think it was ever a secret, but it doesn't seem like they advertised it either. Either way, the point being that it's Old News, yo. But now...hmm! Salacious! The show, according to FN website, is about Mary Sue and Josh building their dream kitchen...wonder what happened to their old LA home? That was such a cool building, the one that was in AD or whatever. Goss goss. Pardon while too much curious goss spills out the edges.

* Junk food roundup. Um, well, news isn't the right word, but I'm excited.

1) I can't find grape Laffy Taffy anywhere, so I finally just bought a box of individually wrapped from a candy wholesaler. Cool! The web rocks! I adore grape Laffy Taffy. What IS it, you say. Well, it's, um...squishy. Loud, really. Tangy. Chewy! Artificially all of the above, really. But good.

2) Totino's makes these cheap pizzas called Party Pizzas that I love. They used to be $.99 ea, but now they're more, although you can still usually get them on sale for a dollar. They are really good in a really bad/good way. To make the circle fit in your (rectangular) toaster oven, you crack the pizza in half and fit the sliding halves off-set together inside, crank the heat up to 400something and in 12 minutes--blam. Very crispily-crusted, not too cheesy pizza. Don't get me wrong--it's not artisinally thin Neapolitan pizza or something, but in its fakeness it's closer to good pizza than those enormous Tombstone cheese weights.

all mooseeck

* I watched some parts of the 2-hr American Masters program about Leonard Bernstein tonight. (Wished I had known it was on earlier--I dislike when post-work open-mouthed torpor keeps me stuck on semi-crappy stuff when there's something substantive on I would prefer to watch, had I just a little more energy to go a-cruising on the remote!) Managed to miss entirely the segments about West Side Story and Mass, his pieces that had the biggest place in my childhood (I have the sense that I'm supposed to say it's Candide or Kaddish or the Chichester Psalms, but I've never really considered WSS second-rate or semi-classical or whatever--think it's astonishing music--plus those were the LPs that got worn out in my parent's living room in my youth) but managed to bawl all the way through it anyhow.

[Now that I'm feeling a little less bawl-ly, I'd like to note that that man was photographed more often than any celebrity I can think of; not only that, the photographs of him--and there were many tiers/kinds, including the super iconic face-with-two-hands-the-rest-mostly-black Conducting photos, and the sweaty intense before/after photos, the smoking/composing ones, the face-on/thoughtful/craggy-faced ones with that face that always remind me of my grandfather with that big nose and white hair, the Social photos--are unusually crucial to our experience of him as a celebrity. All that still photography is a larger-than-normal aspect of how his personality was communicated to the public, which is interesting since his fame was--somewhere, fundamentally--about sound, not visuals, not to mention all the years of moving pitchers on TV (that I never saw). But still. I find it impossible to think of him without simultaneously seeing those photos...]

There's a lot to bawl about watching the program. Apart from my personal and family feelings are all the obvious ones: his childhood, his joy, his intensity, his amazing gifts, his precociousness, his aging, the scenes of him in Israel, his sense that he didn't use his talent completely, all the agonies of being gifted, the well-worn story of his last performance at Tanglewood (I had only read it, not heard it told out loud by a participant--it was very moving plus good GOLLY do I love Beethoven's 7th), his connections with people, the fact that all the music on the program was either composed or conducted by him, when he lived and how he handled it, the overall *largeness* of his life. Anyhow, they're repeating the show and I'm going to tape it. It was hard not to yearn for a big enormous existence watching that program--I know he suffered from many demons, but he bit off such big hunks of life... Makes you want to live differently.

* So, the Met announced yesterday that it will be simulcasting operas in movie theaters next year! I think this is a pretty great idea--*I'll* go, shoot. Chairs will be more comfortable, I bet. Their choices are quite interesting--they're opening with an English-language (bleh) adaptation of Magic Flute, the Julie Taymor production. I can see why they'd choose it, but all I can think of is what a *long* movie that made when I saw the Ingmar Bergman version as I a kid and my poor sister got sick to her stomach, but we'll see. Then I Puritani (!), the premiere of Tan Dun's The First Emperor, and how fucking COOL is Placido D. for continuing to expand his repertoire...I really love him for that, Eugene Onegin (!!) with Renee Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky--I actually saw them both in Onegin at the Lyric--v. pretty, The Barber of Seville (!!!) and Il Trittico (!!!!). Good golly. I wonder how casual the environment will be? It will be cool to be able to snack during the program! Whee! The Met's also doing podcasts and all sorts of stuff--I think it's a highly sensible way to push on, and doesn't seem like it's as horrid as some of the compromises opera has to make these days, like parking a Lexus in the lobby or cutting experimental works to throw in another ABC opera.

* I just received a second-hand book I ordered: The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter. What a great thing this seems to be to have. I very much hope that I get lackadaisical face time with it--it feels like the kind of book that's just begging for you to spend two-three lazy/wandering but completely nutritious hours with it on the couch, soaking it up. So cool! And God bless second-hand--would have been $60-some without it.

Cute drug names.

Newest ridiculousness: Yasmin, which is maybe supposed to make you think of jasmine rice, or pretty Arab women, or that Disney princess in Aladdin or something. Yasmin is, in fact, drospirenone and ethinyl estradiol from Berlex Laboratories, and it has been making me constantly sick (in a variety of ways) for almost three months now, this weekend in fact, being the apex and pinnacle of terribleness. Here's to a new drug, that will come, I'm sure, with a new strangely anthropomorphized quality that pisses me off, but maybe it won't have me illin'. BLECH. Stupid Yasmin.

This weekend has been all about Ketcheeng Up. From a long overextended week, with sleep and psychic energy. And feeling sick to my tum. So I write about: booze and aminals.

1. My favorite liquor is always Pimm's. It's the only bottle I ever have to buy a new one of for my liquor cabinet (except maybe occasionally gin or Maker's if I have a party)--the dusty bottle of rum never runs out. Sometimes I'll go for months without drinking it, like now, 'cause I don't like to drink alone, but it's definitely My Drink. I like it with tonic water (it goes all fuzzy) and citrus; I like the classic British Cup with lemonade and ginger ale; it's great w/ juice; I just like it. It's not really ass-kicking; I think the alcohol content is lower than some booze, but it's the greatest. I am very much looking forward to building a house, garden, veranda and spouse around civilized evening cocktails and my Pimm's bottle someday.

I found out this weekend that Pimm's--technically Pimm's No.1--actually had/have siblings, Nos. 2-6, based on different alcohol bases than No. 1, which is based on gin. They still make in addition to No. 1, Nos. 3 & 6 (brandy, vodka)-- No. 3 is "Pimm's Winter," as a marketing technique, since most Brits drink Pimm's in the summer, as in at Wimbledon, when they sell tons of it. (It is really a hot weather drink.) Who knew! Who knew. I can't find anywhere in US to get these variations. I'm not sure I'd want them anyhow, but I'm curious to taste. And see.

I also saw that in England that they've started selling pre-mixed lemonade and Pimm's in some packaging that I'm not quite convinced about. The can's okay, but the shrink-wrapped bottles look cheesy and Arbor Misty. Plus their website is just AWFUL. I don't hold that the English are okay only if they're all quaint and old-fashioned, but I'm just not feeling this whole "British BBQ" thing. Pliz. Too tacky. And unconvincing.

2. I saw some amazing animal footage this weekend that is still ringing in my head and I don't know how to explain well in its marvelousness. Just amazing. It sparked a whole spasm of internet animal festivities, including the black-footed ferret cam (is there ANYTHING as cool as the curve of their head? And their ears? It's unholy), Tai Shan checks, otter cams, fairy penguin sites...chaos. Porn. Polar bears. Baby cheetos.

Anyhow, the footage was of 1) a baby meerkat and 2) a colony (a group? a pride? a whisk? a wafer? a wince? a wince - that's good) of ring-tailed lemurs. In both cases they were both interacting with humans, and it was just bizarre since they're both vaguely bi-pedal. These tiny little humans around these bigger humans. Especially the meerkat...who was constantly vocalizing and scampering around a living room floor like a tiny housecleaner, and then had to be washed because apparently meerkats are very stinky (?). His *eyes* were a fuckin trip--downright human, almost. The lemurs were just as amazing, with their steady gazes and people-y paws and throne-like haunches and...they climbed all over the zoo-keeper but then sometimes collected at his feet in a Lilliputian way.

I guess all I'm trying to say on some level is that they are cute, but they are also just astonishing. I don't think I breathed watching them!

I never saw the Crocodile Hunter show. Frankly I thought he was annoying, and that was because he was. And I think that he took more than normal chances--he showboated, and baited the animals, as far as I could tell. But he was also incredibly enthusiastic and kept people from big game hunting in Oz, which is good. But good golly.

hope tempered with world-weary caution and Teen Beat lust

Looking up in an open-mouthed haze, I admit that I just dipped my toe, oh-so-carefully at first, into spoilers for the upcoming Gilmore Girls season after determinedly looking in the other direction for months, now. Gobbled them up greedily until I am exhausted and lost. What's my name again? Where am I? Is this the televisional equivalent of sneaking down to your parents' liquor cabinet in the middle of the night?

Ohrrrr...I did care. I did care, I did. I still DO! Shit. Everything that's happened recently has conspired to kill my love, but yet it will not die! What if...what if next season is good? May I hope? Is it wrong to hope?

And I just don't think we're done seeing Scott Patterson without his shirt yet. There's got to be an erudite, well-written, witty way to make that happen, yes? More than once a season?

I think I'm going to be hungover tomorrow.