shadow cuisine
If fusion cuisine is successful, it is due to the inherent integrity of all foods presented, so that poblano chili peppers, say, pop up in a Thai curry. OR, said Thai curry adorns a Baja fish taco. The fish taco may even be filled with Copper River salmon from Alaska, as opposed to the usual cod. It all turns out well, usually.
Until something goes wrong.
Last weekend, due to a series of unfortunate events, I had to bake Rice Crispie Treats. As it is horribly painful to purchase corn-syrup laden foods from the market, it is equally painful to concoct sugary treats in my own kitchen. Knowing that the stuff is sugary, fear-based, carbohydrate-laden, high-glycemic CRAP usually puts me in a bad mood. Having to pour my creative energy into cooking with said CRAP puts me in a horrible mood.
While rooting around in the fridge, I came across a bottle of my favorite brew, Anchor Steam. So I thought this might help. Unfortunately, being horribly empathic, I succumbed to the sugary call of the Rice Crispie mess I had been creating, and actually consumed some of the stuff.
The sugar buzz and the beer buzz was not a “fusion” combination. My engagement in middle-American dessert was also making me feel very, very far from integrity. So I got the rice cooker down, and decided that we were going to have my favorite Pacific Rim snack, California Rolls.
Unfortunately, as the smell of sushi rice began to fill the house, the cloying smell of marshmallow treats quickly became the elephant in the room. The pure spirit of the rice was fuming away, like a young samurai warrior. I could feel its ferocious rice eyebrows glowering at me as I pressed the sticky treats into 8 x 8 pans. IT did not want to be in the room with its bastard hick cousin from America.
By now, I was sick to my stomach, and could barely stomach the combination of seaweed, marshmallows, cucumbers, sushi rice and soy sauce in the air. Unfortunately, I had forgotten the wasabi, which would probably have helped.
All told, it can be certain that fusion cuisine works, only if all the ingredients get along. As for me, I had a rice hangover the next day, and vowed never, ever, to sign up to bring baked treats again.
Dropping Appendages
So, today, on “sick” leave, I took my daughter to see “Roman Art From the Louvre” at SAM. As usual, we managed to completely miss the “concept” and started yawning immediately at the overpowering presence of imperial art. However, at one point, the thing no one was pointing out became perfectly clear. And my ten-year-old daughter wryly pointed it out first:
“All the men are missing something.”
The disease of the missing appendage (and the castration of the imperial Roman Empire) had visited statue after statue. From Nero, to Caligula, to Jupiter, it seemed that no man, and I mean no man, was left intact.
There was no mention of this phenomenon on the little audio headset. None of the docents would divulge anything. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise in the tour group I managed to hijack for about ten minutes. Not even the security guards, usually good for something in a moment of boredom, would condescend to having noticed anything er, missing.
What is the cosmic value of this? When Minerva is missing a forearm, Neptune a nose, and the divine Jupiter a penis? A penis? In the span of history, what’s a penis?
It’s just that when they’re ALL missing one…and Roman art is so…IMPERIAL…and the critics are saying it’s so IMPORTANT…and the penises are all MISSING…well maybe I’m not feeling it. Maybe I’m not mature enough.
I can’t help but picture it: does some art thief have a box of appendages somewhere, in a dusty basement? And what of it? I wonder if, in light of the power of the Roman Empire, the actual size of the human penis seemed insignificant, unable to approach the grandeur of the symbol? The icon not representing reality, as it were? Phallogocentrism, without a center, as it were? Perhaps the Emperor himself dispatched a randy thief to take the penises, and hide them away from public view, lest anyone know the truth…
I’d like to find that box of penises and put it on display somewhere, calling it “The Emperor’s New Clothes: A Study in Retro Symbolism.” I’d mount the missing appendages, next to representations of the approximate size they were believed to be, with metrics relaying the difference.
And there would be sausages for sale at the cafe (snicker).
Tirez Sur le Pianiste
Living in a Material World
These questions come to mind as I take in the latest Christmas season, and, once again, hear well-meaning people sound off with high-minded derision of materialism. They are upset at the hordes who line up at discount stores to pile cheap, unloved goods into their carts to give as gifts. I beg to differ, however, as that kind of thing isn’t truly materialistic. That’s just anxiety. And, pointing fingers at folks who do this isn’t going to help anything. Because, as the saying goes:
“If you see a problem, it’s yours.”
Anxious getting and spending is a bastardized, repressed form of materialism, perhaps. And true materialism is something which is much more enjoyable, if only (oh, if only) we would just admit it, and let ourselves roll around in the idea a bit. I will try to define here what healthy materialism looks like, and I’ll need a little help from my friends.
An Eastern European friend always says to me, “You cannot afford to buy cheaply.” What he means is, unloved goods do nothing to sustain a person. Money is wasted, the gift is forgotten, and the pleasure is cheap.
The real thing is beautiful, and nothing to fear. Richard Rodriguez, put it this way once, in an essay for Newshour:
I remember years ago in London a friend of mine urging me to go into Fortnum and Mason’s, the fancy food store, go in and buy just one piece of chocolate, he said, and think about that chocolate all day, and when you eat it tonight, eat it slowly, very slowly….…To this day I remember the weight and the smells of the first books I ever owned. I can still remember the texture of paper in the first novel I ever got from the library.
I don’t know where we got the idea that this kind of materialism is sinful. What’s so bad about feeling, smelling, holding the pages of a book? It may help to know that astrologically, one twelfth of our human experience is defined by materialism. In our second house, which is the realm of the material, we are to learn to express our spirit’s values and tastes in the physical realm. It’s all very important stuff.
It would explain why that good champagne seems to connect a person with the divine. It is because at some point, a vintner, seized with a passion to express an idea for champagne, produced something. The artisanship is a quality which has now become physical, and you can drink it, and actually imbibe the art.
So, if the cosmos has carved out a little unit of Materialism for us to experience, we ought to abandon any thoughts that materialism might not be blessed by heaven. It’s not true. Just imagine: what if we loved objects again? At least just as wholeheartedly as we seem to enjoy, oh, low self-esteem and the anxiety with which we pile cheap goods into our carts?
Thus, this materialism is most ironically a spiritual pursuit, as loving a piece of chocolate this much can’t help but connect our body to our heart and our mind. A true materialist doesn’t just feed the animal hunger, but connects with the rapture of Creation.
If we shun our material nature in pursuit of high ideals, or, get stuck in our heads, we begin to get sick. Richard Rodriguez:
Americans don’t eat slowly. We taught the world how to eat on their own, and we treasure food, convenience food, that doesn’t take much thinking about, which is why in the end we don’t have very much to say about the smell of the piece of chocolate.
We are alone. With our heads. Our ideals. And it’s a sad place to be.
Why not lose track of time this holiday season. Why not start the new year with a few good chocolates and a bottle of nice champagne. And if you can’t afford a good bottle right now, just wait…it will be worth your while. Mireille Giuliano, author of “French Women Don’t Get Fat,” and CEO of Veuve-Clicquot Ponsardin Champagne, Inc., reminisces that she went to throw a party for her college friends, but was shocked at the price of good champagne. So, she waited to have the party until she could afford to buy enough good champagne. In her case, her materialism turned into a fabulous career.
Delayed gratification, not ascetisism. Timelessness, not instantaneousness. Self-esteem, not self-loathing. Time with friends, not judgement of others. These are only a few of the gifts of materialism.
Traffic Caused by Massive Underwear Shortage
“OK, so I had a little gas…”
…said my husband, as i lowered the window, maneuvering through traffic…
Monday mornings. Seasonal Chaos — the movement from loose summer nights into fall. The first full week back to school. A disarmingly sunny few days, meaning we spent too much time outside. Who knows why, exactly, but this morning was particularly rough getting out of the house. Chez moi, it went something like this:
We were all running about twenty minutes late, with the exception of my husband, who left himself about ten minutes to get dressed and get to his bus (a mere soupcon of moments to transition from sleep to work). Groggily, he wandered through the dining room and asked, “could you drop me off at the bus stop?”
My daughter complained that her nose hurt and her “legs were weak.” I did a quick scan of her energy and concluded that she had probably stayed up too late sneaking Harry Potter by flashlight.
The illogical prognosis: “you’ll feel better when you get dressed.” I don’t know why, but this always works. “OK” she said, “is my my Animal Planet t-shirt clean?”
I felt a sharp shock as I realized that no one had bothered to do much laundry this weekend. Did we have clean underwear? As I lifted a very light-feeling box of Weetabix, I then also realized that we’d blown off the grocery shopping, and it was going to be a mix-and-match cereal day.
As we climbed into the car and wobbled into the glorious, disorienting-to-Seattleites morning sunshine, my daughter exclaimed “I forgot to brush my teeth!”
Prognosis: I handed her a Starbucks napkin and told her to do her best.
Then my husband rubbed his chin, “I forgot to shave!”
Prognosis: for once, there would be at least one man walking around today with a sexy, “oops, I forgot to shave” beard that wasn’t staged. (I often wonder, how does James Denton, who plays Mike Delfino, the world’s sexiest plumber on Desperate Housewives, maintain a consistent 5-o’clock shadow? Every. single. episode?)
I left my disarmingly sexy husband (with actual, unstaged bed-head as well) at the bus stop, and hit the express lanes. I grudgingly contributed to the carbon-emissions which were horribly apparent as a brown ribbon within the clear sunny weather, making the bay sparkle and the mountains stand out like they were blue etchings on the sky.
I felt such a sloppy, chaotic mess on this beautiful planet. Why did we seem so out-of-sync with nature this morning? Which planetary transits might have this chaotic effect which disturbed the small, but important details of our morning routines…?
When I hit the gridlock on I-5, I realized, maybe it wasn’t just me and my family. Maybe a lot of us had gotten up late this morning, played too much in the sun this weekend, stayed up too late reading Harry Potter, forgotten to shave, had critically low clean underwear and breakfast cereal levels…and now we were all piling onto the freeway at the same time.
Or, maybe it was a local phenomenon. In Seattle, it’s still sort of summer about halfway through October. While everyone else is putting on scarves, walking through crunchy leaves, and behaving like a Robert Frost poem, Seattleites are still coming home to a Norman Rockwell summer evening on the porch, the barbecue, kids in the sprinkler.
What was it that caused our chaos, and the resulting traffic…I may never know. What I do know, is thank the goddesses and gods for Mike Delfino and his staged beard, and the new season of Desperate Housewives, the start of which will indicate “Fall is Here” to the West Coast.
Because we need mORe deconstruction
So, I believe deconstruction theory would champion those who lip sync on webcams, like Gary Brolsma and “Numa Numa.” Because taking apart the meaning reveals there is no center. That a lip sync of “Numa Numa” is just as important as the actual band who wrote and performed “Numa Numa.”
It’s why Andy Warhol’s perpetual soup can series is important. A copy of the real thing…because this shows us that there is no Original Campbell’s Tomato Soup as archetype. And thus we are free of all the other signifiers which bind us in False Centers of Meaning. This helps free our minds…(once we get done analyzing WHY).
And outside of the perpetual mirrors of lit crit madness comes Billy Reid with this WONDERFUL deconstruction of the IMPORTANT lip syncers of our time. By lip syncing himself in a self-referential lip sync.
Thank the gods and goddesses. I’m going to LAUGH now and try to get back to doing what I was doing before I thought I had to sound smart…
Lip Syncing To The Song
Death of Marat: Wizardry of Images
(Simon Schama’s Power of Art, PBS, Mondays, 10 p.m.)
“The Power of Art” with Simon Schama was a good diversion into the art history world for a Monday evening. But I take issue (and what else would you expect)…? Yes, I dare criticize the latest PBS art history guru in a way I would never DARE talk back to Sister Wendy.
The first installment in this 8-part series was regarding Jacques-Louis David, the so-called propaganda painter of the French Revolution. Above, his painting of the revolutionary icon and tyrannical figure Marat portrays the subject in Messianic light.
And Schama HATES David for propagandizing. Doesn’t forgive him one bit. One simply can’t use art for that purpose, he states, but why not? I ask. So what if he did, I ask. David was a product of his environment and his own mind, which was horribly scarred and humiliated. Of course he would become a devoted, if terrible, protector of those who would challenge the status quo which disabled him…of course David would paint Marat to look angelic, martyred.
That the image became associated with Revolutionary virtue attests to the mindset of the time, not necessary any artistic villainy. How can we place the artist under the jurisdiction of authenticity — when has art ever been done for art’s sake, purely, and not filtered by the response of the artist’s mind?
Of course it’s despicable. If David had painted Marat as he was: ugly, tyrranical, and plagued with a skin disease instead of milky-white, it would have been a different picture. But that wouldn’t have been true to what was going on in David’s mind, and THAT would have been a breach of art, in my opinion.
I’m guessing Sister Wendy might have something more interesting to say about David. Let’s bring her back, shall we…?
What’s more interesting about all this is the power of image to create reality. The artist, in this case, created an image with resounded with the desires of the French collective in 1789. David’s image of Marat may have been manipulative, but only so far as the collective allowed it.
Which just goes to show: be careful what you wish for…or what you dwell on…the universe may just hand it to you.
Consider how the Gay Pirate has helped YOU: not a review of Stardust
Far away from home, these two: but don’t they look happy, now?
Young, lost, and dewy, in a dorky haircut…and the girl…she’s in a bathrobe. Captain Shakespeare captures, threatens, pretends to kill…then warmly welcomes Tristan and Yvaine aboard his pirate airship, and orders them to immediately get stylish, opening his large closet to their perusal.
When Yvaine protests, Shakespeare says, “dear…you’re wearing a robe.”
Of course, the entire world right now is wearing a bathrobe, and we’re just like the couple: wandering the globe, seeking safety and love and home and…that…it’s TIRING. Enter the respite of cabaret and a walk-in closet stuffed with style, where one can put on a certain happiness, something more than themselves.
But actually, as it turns out, this fabulous play isn’t fictional for the couple. During their sojourn aboard the Caspartine, they begin to know themselves, and touch on something greater than they were before: in the air, the realm of intellect and imagination, a fallen star and a lovesick youth are given a safe space to grow into their best selves.
They don’t just put on new smart outfits and hairdos: they actually grow into their image. Complete with ballroom dancing and fencing lessons. In the air, under the protection of a gay pirate, they find a new sense of home.
The lightning-smuggling airship is a champagne bubble within the goo of life. And who best to captain such a bubble of joy but a gay pirate. I can only say…thank the stars for the gay pirates, stealing a bit of culture out from under the status quo. And bless them for sharing it with us when we’re lost (even if it scares some of us to death, initially).
Alan Rickman Sonnet 130 Recitation
because everyone should see this…and because I screwed up trying to link this in an earlier post…
