All posts by eachnee

Xmas Weekend

food, the day lee, things i worry about, why artists need math

as a child my family never really celebrated Xmas, though we did send cards (ideally without any mention of God or Jesus) and my Mom sewed some velvet stockings with our names on them for our white brick fireplace, and they occasionally grew fat with things like staple removers, pocket calculators, and… Hanukkah chocolate money (i didn’t realize how funny this was until a few years ago—child-appropriate and shiny representations of money—a great hit with the Chinese). i do have memories of a fake tree with a red metal stand and nice glass globe decorations but presents were optional, especially since my dad (starting on the day after Thanksgiving) stormed about the house ranting on how if everyone agreed to buy presents after December 25th then everyone would save a shitload of money.

over the years my Dad has had a lot of ideas of “getting a pact together,” and though they all have good intentions, they somehow don’t resonate well in a world where not everyone (thank God) thinks like him: in Los Alamos where i grew up in there was only one supermarket, and one day he found green plums for sale, his favorite, a total rarity in that town. he bought several bags worth and then came home and called all his friends to go get them, in order to send a message to the manager that there was great demand for these plums. instead what happened was that after a few days the store ran out of green plums. more often than not his call to arms are political, usually to “clobber” the Republicans, teach the Communist pigs a lesson, or elevate the political power of Chinese Americans (the majority of which—to his dismay—tend to be in the Republican camp).

this year my Xmas weekend started with a bang and ended with a whimper. Mid-morning Xmas Eve i got a call from a client and after a few comments about the holiday and the weather, he asked if “we” had an offsite backup of his computer files. i asked if this was a “if someone were to firebomb the office” type of question and he responded, “actually, more like if the Feds come and raid the office.” he was serious, by the way.

the whimper came Xmas day just as the sun was setting and we were lounging on the deck. Something scrambled up a tree which startled both dogs and even Bing-Bing the cat, otherwise known as Bing-Bing the Brave, who had ventured on the deck to view the farolito lighting,

stepping outside for only the second time since her accidental procedure several years ago which turned her into a Manx, despite knowing that one dog is convinced she morphs from “tolerable roommate” to “prey” the second she crosses the threshold. anyway, if you were a small thing, say a baby possum, and you were in a tree, and down below were two dogs with four front paws on the trunk and it was dang close to dinnertime you wouldn’t go DOWN the tree, would you? would you?

a little about our client. i don’t know what happened and apparently it’s an innocent mistake, (not like the two-year sting operation on rawesome, who did have their computers confiscated) and i certainly hope so. these people are the coolest people on the planet. they have their holiday dinners at places with this kind of art on the wall (faces blackened to protect the innocent, but gawd that world map! that flag! those paintings! and the photos aren’t showing the bowl full of non-dairy creamer, the Sutter Home red or white option, or the other carafe filled with what tasted like bong water)

but i wouldn’t miss their holiday party for ANYTHING in the world. and i am dead serious. if you know me, that means a hell of a lot. plus, how can the Feds bust a company where the Office Manager has to remove this from under her desk, in order to stash things, like…

dead body parts?

in-between dealing with the off-site backup system, i went on a good hike, ate a bucket of latkes with lox and homemade applesauce, became addicted to a fudge called Fungus Amongus, converted a Scotch naysayer into an Islay lover, painted bookshelves, talked to both parents, one of which couldn’t believe you could just email some blogger to ask him what Chinese writing software he used (“i DON’T know him personally!”) and the other said “Guess where i am calling from?” before revealing that she was sitting at L’Atelier at the MGM about to eat a soufflé with a scoop of pistachio ice cream dropped in the middle (“It’s falling into the center of the Earth”), pulled weeds (while on the phone), brined a pheasant, took a recipe for butterscotch budino seriously when it said to finish everything within three days, figured out our New Year’s card (late this year – holler, or rather, send us your address, if you want one), and best of all, got to see the Star of Beeflehem.

Scotchaphilia

food, the day lee, why artists need math

when you have a Scottish dog, it’s easy to—say—get into drinking Scotch, speaking “Come by” as if you’ve swallowed a golf ball, and over-romanticizing fog. but to really get it right, you’d have to eat Steak n’ Kidney pie, and when your Scottish dog comes by way of Texas, you have to add that extra Texas oomph.

and what exactly is that Lone Star pizzazz?
well, along with the meat there’s BACON that’s browned to a crisp, a token carrot or two, and the while thing is stewed in broth and red wine. But you must have peas in order to get that authentic dump truck green.

then, before you seal it up with the top crust you pile on a LOAD of buttery mashed potatoes. YES INDEED.

then and only then do you get to simulate a Neil Jenney painting.

and here’s the really insulting part. i just couldn’t cram all those mashed potatoes into the pie. i just couldn’t do it. gratuitous leftover mash.

excessive scandinavians

food, the day lee, things i worry about

i’m sorry to lump the Swedes and the Norwegians into the same lump but they share the same chunk of land, have similar languages (if you know one, it’s a snap to learn the other), and are home to cows that produce horribly delicious butter and cream. turns out in Norway this year the unmentionable, the ungodly, the total apocalypse has happened: BUTTER SHORTAGE! apparently a fad diet is the culprit, turning normal citizens away from carbs and onto large wads of fat.

well that’s the way the cookie crumbles. i’ve always thought the Scandinavians to be a one-extreme-to-the-other lot, and i’d always figured it was because they have all-sun part of the year, and no-sun part of the year, but then i met a bunch of really intense-all-the-time Russians from St. Petersberg and that blew my theory out of the water.

many years ago i visited a friend who lived in Stockholm and we decided to have a dinner party (“can you cook Chinese food?”) while i was there. my friend was at work but he gave me directions to get to the wine shop, which, by the way, was government controlled (heavily taxed), and they kept a detailed list on who buys what and have quotas to cut people off. i asked him how many bottles to get and he replied “two each,” meaning two bottles for each of us, which meant four bottles total. in addition to my friend having a really funny Swedish accent he liked to exaggerate it, so what i heard instead of “two each” was “twelve.” so off i went to the store, worrying more about my name being on some list then how i was going to drag a case of wine home by myself.

i managed to get it all back to the apartment, and my friend was plenty surprised to see so many buddies waiting for him when he got home, but he was even more glad when he realized the name on file for all this booze was mine and not his. turns out these Swedes liked vodka before dinner, and dinner involved pork dumplings (skins made from scratch – come on, i’m in Stockholm) and cutting up a whole chicken and so on, so by the time dinner was actually served the crowd was rowdy and drunk as hell. i actually have no memory of whether or not we managed to open even one bottle of wine, but it’s been so many years since that trip i think my quota must be refreshed by now.

all creatures drunk and sober

the day lee, things i worry about, why artists need math

it’s said you can learn a lot from animals, but you can also learn a lot from animal shows, especially if they’re produced by the BBC.

it’s been a flu and cough ridden season so far at our house, so we’ve been streaming endless episodes of All Creatures Great and Small, full of great animals, lots of practical jokes and “lashings” of scones, tea, bacon and whisky. (and please – Tintin fans: Captain Haddock’s favorite brown drink was Loch Lomond, which is Scotch, which lacks the “e,” as in “whisky,” Steven Spielberg couldn’t even get that right. so sad.)
anyway, ACG&S is set just before WWII and features James Herriot, the veterinarian who wrote the original books (amazing) and his co-vets, Siegfried and Tristan. on this episode, oh, the best out of the lot! we meet Roddy, a hobo with longish Occupy LA hair, who roams the shire with his dog and a pram, does odd jobs and moves as the wind blows. both James and Siegfried romanticize this life, and they ask him how nice it must be to be without a care in the world, and Roddy always answers with an “Aye,” and says that it’s just him and Jake, the dog. Roddy helps James innoculate a bunch of sheep and when James offers to buy Roddy a drink he says he never touches the stuff. James decides then that he’s going to live the life of Roddy and decides to refrain from drinking. Siegfried and Tristan support his decision with a toast.

the next day Siegfried and James are invited to a fellow vet’s house for lunch. the vet is a big drinker and in trying to be polite James takes a drink and he gets full on loaded. blitzed! they try driving to a restaurant for lunch and end up not being able to leave the driveway. oh the expanse of the English countryside! they have gin and tonics, then champagne cocktails, then beers, and James is so drunk he goes home and almost pukes in the dinner Tristan has made, a stew made mistakenly out of dog food, and passes out, while Siegfried has to perform an emergency surgery on Roddy’s dog who has a pebble lodged in his esophagus.

this is crazy. and this would never have been made in the US. basically there’s an overromaticization of the hobo life, and an attempt to equate a free-willed life with a non-alcoholic one, and then they make fun of drinking, and then they make fun of not drinking, then the guy who doesn’t want to drink gets drunk out of his mind, only to miss being able to help out the man without a care in the world as he swallows his hobo pride to accept the services of the man who would never give up drinking to save his actual one care in the world.

it’s just so awesome. it’s all about not allowing something negative to have power over you. this is a weak paraphrasing of something a wise man named Cormel West said, and, skeptical as i am usually of these guys with two first names: Bryan Adams, Bruce Wayne, etc. Cornel West isn’t so much two first names as it’s two geographical points/directions, so he’s well worth listening to. anyway, he says to be careful giving something negative too much power and control over one’s life. like some people who decide not to drink, or some Chinese people’s over-obsession with not buying Japanese cars and cameras. OK, so don’t buy one, but don’t covet a Lexus and then feel ashamed at wanting one and then deny that you’re coveting one and then falsely feel good about denying yourself of something you want but know you shouldn’t have and so on. this negativity will own you, and pretty much eat you alive. you are giving it exactly what it feeds off of: attention, negativity, power.

please don’t get me wrong, i’m not talking about alcoholism and other serious issues of wanting what you can’t have. i’m talking about people who make a private lifestyle decision but make it everybody’s business. they don’t give it a rest. it’s the people who go to restaurants and insist—since you do drink—that you order a drink. oh, but no, not for them. no no no, they don’t drink. but they will pore over the wine list or say specifically that this restaurant has a great bar, and so on. i’m talking mental health here. them basically forcing you to order a drink is pretty much denying you of your choice as to whether you actually want a freaking drink or not. it’s like, they have to see you drink in order to feel satisfied. on top of that it’s annoying as hell.

the same story goes for a friend of ours who thought she would apply for citizenship in Europe and leave the US rather than pay her student loans back. we told her she was letting her student loans determine where she was going to live, which was giving the idea of money an awful lot of power over her life. needless to say she exited the house and has never spoken with us again. (but wait – blog post on dinner parties, narcissus, psychosis and Puer Aeternus (Latin for Eternal Boy) due to be posted any day)

somehow this applies to the Occupy Movement. for example, i feel if they get too focused on the police, or the beatings, or rioting or fight over a tent stake, then they are letting the negative have power. it’s a tight spot they’re in, and endlessly fascinating. since on one hand if they do come up with specific demands, chances are those ideas will be nicely appropriated and pick up some sort of corporate sponsorship, and on the other side is obsessing over concrete, negative things. staying in the abstract is very hard indeed.

post waylaid

canine sherman centerfolds, the day lee, things i worry about,

on the day after Thanksgiving i wrote a post about our dinner (crispy skin duck, brussels sprouts, sour cream apple pie, bottle of Chinon) and a highly intellectual conversation regarding narcissism, psychosis, and the Peter Pan Complex, or Puer Aeternus in Latin (meaning Eternal Boy). unfortunately our guest asked me to please refrain from posting it until after Friday the 2nd, and now that date has been pushed back further, so in lieu of narcissism, psychosis and Puer Aeternus in Latin, i bring you more Canine Sherman!

müsic + loud = Mould

the day lee, why artists need math, ,

last night i went to see a tribute to Bob Mould at, of all places, the Walt Disney Hall. ahem. that would be a celebration of Hüsker Dü’s main man, at the venue where an usher wearing a forest green blazer and gold vest + lapel pin will tsk you for snapping gum too loud. to show just how weird that choice of venue was, i wanted to take a picture of the stage, with the illustrious organ in the background. instead, my camera was switched on video, so here’s me getting busted by Philharmonic staff. ” Ohhhh…”

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to be totally honest i was not a huge Hüsker Dü fan, perhaps because they broke up too early, or maybe because they were slightly too hard core, and if i just waited it out a few years (like some dog owners do), age will do its thing and create a perfect companion called Sugar.

i was a little sad Best Coast did a no show, because the Bobb with two B’s is to be seen at ANY venue, but it might have been for the best. in events like these where there’s one master and many followers and the master is scheduled to play the second half (with the freaking drummer from Nirvana), you know the first half is going to be only slightly tolerable, and then the master will come and show there’s really none other. (ok it’s not fair, but i guess in my opinion if you do a cover, you have to do it a different way, not the same old way, because then you’re sunk. and even Bob Mould doing a cover of his own song is genius)

a good twelve hours later, i am still disturbed by the venue. as we arrived, the ushers greeted us with a “good evening” and handed me a program with, you guessed it, Salonen on the cover. during the concert they crossed their arms and stood in front of the doors with the same blasé look they have waiting for a Messiaen piece to wind down. at intermission the crowd traipsed over the carpet (a orange-brown floral pattern designed to please Mrs. Disney, who apparently didn’t like the building’s exterior, said “she didn’t get it.”) as the ushers looked eager as ever to point the blue hairs to the bathroom. i refrained, for some odd reason, from stealing my usual cup of really bad coffee, and just watched everyone, a lot of BM lookalikes, actually, as they stood in pristine lines waiting for pay top dollar for their drinks.

thank god the two guys sitting next to me were boozed up, which made our row smell like The Smell*, and they had some good pre-concert banter regarding how many times they saw Bob, and how many times in a row they saw him, and how many times at the Roxie they saw him. they also head-banged in good way, although because this is the Concert Hall, the seats are all conjoined so the rocking was almost strong enough to knock the chest cold out of David’s nose. it was only when they pulled out their phones and started tweeting that i was really ready to start a mosh pit fight.

one thing i will say about the Concert Hall is that the acoustics are tremendous. the noise was noise, the howling was howling, and every single note engineered to perfection. plus Bob Mould + Dave Grohl + Jon Wurster is to die for. plus Bob was wearing a sticker that first appeared on his pants, then moved to his shirt, making me think it was the play list. this guy’s old for god’s sake. made me think of the Steve Reich tribute for his 70th birthday at this same wonderful venue, where some concertgoers walked out on his new piece. walked out. 70th birthday. classical music. how avant-garde can you be on your 70th birthday? avant-garde enough i suppose.

*i wanted to link to the The Smell, pretty much the last place i saw a non classical music concert, but i’ll post the google page instead. The Smell is in true form as always.

surgery

canine sherman centerfolds, coffee sameness, the day lee, why artists need math,

Canine Sherman’s fentanyl patch…

this week surgery is definitely in the air. the coffee grinder needed fixing…

the WOPR got checked out, and i swapped out my laptop’s old hard drive for a new crazy fast solid state drive. wowee! it’s like driving a Prius. no moving parts. silent. the only thing i will miss is being able to iron the placemats at the same time as using the computer on the dining room table, since the new drives run a lot cooler than the old ones.

as expected, it’s really lovely inside a mac… plus notice how nice and smooth the placemat is.

the screws are really small though…and you need a good goose to keep them all corralled.

but there’s always the Apple to let you know everything is back to normal!

next up, putting this piggie back together.