You Get Too Much, You Get Too High
Now Playing: David Bowie--"The Prettiest Star"
Yet another reason to stand firm against my least favorite holiday; I feel better already!!

Throats Ripe For Polishing
Now Playing: Blur--"To The End"
Tuesday afternoon, after a truly appalling day at work, crabby and depressed, and worried that I'd be less than my usually effervescent self at Planned Parenthood Volunteer Night, I returned home to find my latest Netflix delivery in my mailbox...

Sweeney Todd (1936): Clocking in at a glorious hour and seven minutes (about ten of them devoted to a largely pointless little excursion in "darkest Africa" that could have been handled in about a minute of expository dialogue), the original of Stephen Sondheim's blockbuster musical is creaky, creepy fun, and my personal introduction to the "King of Grand Guignol," Mr. Tod Slaughter. Slaughter was known as one of the great horror actors, a peer of Karloff and Laughton who stayed in the U.K. while they went on to Hollywood fame and fortune, and despite the inevitable dating of that sort of acting, there's still something genuinely sinister in his manner, especially when he's accepting a poor oprhan apprentice from the workhouse and stares long and hard at the lad as if the latter's destined to comprise the next evening's dinner. There's a hilarious amount of plot crammed into an hour, most of it revolving around Todd, a London barber who murders people with the complicity of his baker next door neighbor, and steals their money to become wealthy himself. Nobody cackles malevolently and diabolically rubs his hands together quite like Slaughter, who gloriously lumbers around the proto-Victorian scenery like a bloated, demonic Derek Fowlds. I was still in a shitty mood when I started watching, but by the end was cackling right along with Slaughter and probably rubbing my hands together--I guess I was too wrapped up in the story to notice. Should I worry? Nah.

And then, as always, there were flicks from other sources...

Zardoz (1974): "The gun is good. The penis is evil." While an admirable summation of present-day Republican Party policies, it doesn't sound a very useful conceptual framework for a movie. The Thursday after I returned from Louisiana, I went to the Bluish Barn again to watch John Boorman's fabled conversation piece, the first time I'd done so on the relative big screen and among a group of people who I basically didn't know; it would certainly be interesting to see their reactions. These split evenly down the middle between hilarious astonishment that the movie was even made and sneaking awe at its sheer misbegotten grandeur. It's 2273, and the world's descended into an apocalypse of unspecified origin ("The Darkness"). Bands of orange-diapered "Exterminators" roam the countryside on horseback, killing and enslaving shabby hobo-like "Brutals," rounding up tribute and presenting it to their god "Zardoz," a giant stone Greek drama mask that flies leisurely through the sky to the strains of Beethoven's Seventh. The head Brutal, "Zed" (Sean Connery), hides himself in Zardoz' mouth and later emerges, shooting a mysterious figure and then finding himself in "The Vortex," a verdant, force-shielded country estate peopled by the icy, elegant and telepathic "Eternals," led by May (Sara Kestelman) and Consuella (Charlotte Rampling). May decides to keep Zed for "research," to Consuella's--initial--displeasure, and to the amusement of the ostentatiously droll Friend (John Alderton, who rather shockingly runs away with what there is to steal from the movie). Zed's forceful personality proves too hard to break as he begins to unravel the mystery of the Vortex... On so many levels, the movie is a ridiculous mess, a mishmash of hippie philosophy and Arthurian mystical elements, but it's compelling in a number of bizarre ways. For one thing, it's really awesome to think that this was bankrolled by Twentieth Century Fox only a couple of years before Star Wars; it may be insane, but it's certainly original. Seventies sci-fi movies made before Star Wars fascinate me in the same way as pre-Columbian voyages to America (more interesting in many ways than the actual widescale contact), and Zardoz is probably the most interesting example--with Silent Running (1971) being the best. Living in Ann Arbor, regarded both internally and externally (often wrongly, the myriad mistakes chronicled here and here) as some sort of progressive oasis in the traditionalist Michigan pastures, it's hard not to think of the dismissive, self-satisfied attitudes of the Eternals and make comparisons (of course, the Brutals don't hold sway over the country and state, trying to establish quasi-theocratic laws to ruin people's lives, so that comparison only goes so far). Finally, it really is one of the most visually astonishing movies ever made. Filmed in Ireland, among the gorgeous Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin (the same location Boorman would use six years later when making Excalibur), Zardoz benefits tremendously from Geoffrey Unsworth's lush yet gritty photography, giving it that unmistakable early Seventies feel I love so much in my movies. If there was ever a flick one should see at least once in their lives--regardless of actual quality--this is it.

Do The Right Thing (1989): It somehow took me nearly two decades to see this thing, and now that I have, I must agree (astonishingly enough) with Kim Basinger; it's pretty embarrassing that Driving Miss Daisy won the Oscar instead (but, I mean, it's the Oscars--what can you do?). A day in the life of a neighborhood in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant community, Do The Right Thing's a wonderful symbiosis of style and substance; too often movies end up favoring one over the other. The sun bakes the streets and makes the buildings redder, Terence Blanchard's jazzy score provides an ideal soundtrack, and the jagged camera angles provide an offbeat rhythm to the story. Mookie (Spike Lee) works as a delivery man at Sal's Famous Pizzeria, owned by Sal Frangone (Danny Aiello), a commuter from Bensonhurst with two sons, asshole Pino (John Turturro) and likable but dopey Vito (Richard Edson). Mookie's got a son by neglected girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez), as well as friends in a multifarious collection of sidewalk denizens: Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito), Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), and the endearing elder statespair of Mr. Mayor (Ossie Davis) and Mother Sister (Ruby Dee). Most of the film looks at the complicated relations between and among the different ethnic groups--blacks, Italians, Puerto Ricans, and the Korean grocery store owner (much more complex, in other words, than the simple black-white dichotomy preached by so many reviews at the time of release). Davis and Dee are wonderful in an extended shadow courtship that one senses has gone on for about two decades, and Aiello's unexpectedly compelling as a fish out of water whose vaguely colonial relationship with his customers is headed for trouble as he turns a blind eye (Turturro, as the hothead, blatantly racist son, actually sees more clearly than he on that score). Mookie doesn't want his boat rocked, as the black worker at an Italian business, but can't avoid the trouble coming, sparked by Buggin' Out's ire at Sal's Wall of Fame featuring only celebrities of Italian descent. The neighborhood's events get an alternate soundtrack and Greek chorus from the local DJ (Samuel L. Jackson in a fun performance that hints at the snarky coolness to come--and no, I still haven't seen Snakes On A Plane yet). I really enjoyed this--ethnic politics aside, Mookie's a wonderful heroic figure for downtrodden service workers, although it's both disturbing and hilarious that Mookie, working in 1989 New York, actually makes more money than I do in 2007 Ann Arbor. The tangled ethnic relationships lead to an explosive climax and bittersweet conclusion. I seem to remember reading a review by Stanley Crouch in which he took Lee to task for the "black-white" division in the movie, which didn't make much sense from my perspective; it's also interesting that the "riot" consists of the torching of one business (under rather murky circumstances at that), leading me to wonder why all those critics in 1989 were so fucking hysterical. True to the movie's rhythm, Lee doesn't close with the "riot," but lets life on the street work itself out, as it does in real life, with a memorable final scene between Mookie and Sal. This DVD, by the way, needs a rerelease with some serious extras.

Printing Legends
Now Playing: Frank Sinatra--"I've Got You Under My Skin"
My grandfather passed away Sunday at the age of seventy-eight. He died, strangely enough, right as I was watching a BBC John Ford documentary (hosted by the late great Lindsay Anderson, of all people) that was on the DVD set of Young Mr. Lincoln. Grandpa was a huge Ford fan, and I think he would have liked to know that. It honestly didn't come as a great shock; he'd been in ill-health for some while with a variety of ailments. Of all my relatives, Grandpa Jack was probably the one I most enjoyed visiting out of the blue, which I occasionally did when I still lived in Baton Rouge. All the lame pop sociology about "blue states" and "red states" meant little when talking to my grandfather, much more conservative than myself (or his eldest son, or his youngest daughter, or his second-oldest grandson, or, as we recently discovered, one of his granddaughters) but probably a lot more liberal than the rest of the family. hanging out with he and Slater or Dad in his garage, amusingly described by Slater at the funeral as a "Fortress of Manliness," was something of an experience, with college football on TV, beer cold enough to disguise its identity of Coors or Michelob, a complex setup of weightlifting equipment, and what I'm fairly certain was just about every action, or adventure, or Western flick broadcast on TBS during the VCR's twenty-year reign over home video technology, stored and meticulously filed in some of my favorite wood-paneled drawers ever. At least one of those took with me. Those were priceless Saturday afternoons, and will continue forever in my memory. Thanks, Grandpa, and RIP.

Beat Them Gherkins
Now Playing: Kelly Jean Caldwell--"O Do Not Be Afraid!"
New blog name? Maybe. Or "The Gherkins Deal"; there's one that just screams epic scope.

I was mistaken for the member of a company the other day. It was the weirdest thing; La Jefa had sent me to take a delivery over to a downtown office building, a gorgeous old place that used to be the city's main organ factory, and there were still a few well-preserved specimens in the lobby (musical, not biological) that I examined on the way out (like I know shit about organs). The office looked like the popular image of one of those myriad dotcoms that went under in the late 90s, with goateed boy geniuses in toque hats knocking hackysacks around while chatting via mildly primitive cellphones to their brokers on NASDAQ. Or what have you. My customary attire on outdoor excursions is a wool hat, jacket, and scarf, the latter frequently worn over my mouth and nose, as the wind's been especially lacerating recently. Before taking the elevator back down, I put it all on and joined a couple of those "business guys," as Mike Nelson calls them.

"Down?"

I nodded and inserted myself between them as unobtrusively as possible.

"That is a fantastic-looking office," said one.

"Yeah, this place used to be an organ factory." The guy turns to me. "How long have you guys been there?" He obviously hasn't seen the chef pants, although I guess I should be relieved that he hasn't been looking there in the first place.

I raise my hands in a noncommittal shrug.

The other guy shakes his head. "That's not his company, man."

"That's not your company?" the guy asks me in apparent disbelief.

I shake my head. Mind you, it was a cool office.

"You don't work here?"

Again the shake.

"Who the hell are you?" asks the other guy, laughing. "Take off that mask!"

The elevator reaches ground level and we all have a good chuckle.

"It's cold out there," I whimper in partial explanation.

I hope I get sent there more often. I had to go there again that day, and was that time hassled by one of those homeless guys, the one who goes around screaming religious invective in a manner recalling Arsenio Hall's preacher character from Coming To America. La Jefa broke the news of my second traipse in sorrow-laden tones, not realizing that she was just throwing me in the briar patch.

Madisonfest: A Farewell Show (2007): Shawn Wernette's documentary portrait of this, which I was able to see in a rough cut Thursday evening at the Bluish Barn, a very cool little place north of Kerrytown, home to local musician Timothy Mephi and a number of friends. They're showing a different movie every Thursday, and the next few weeks' roster strongly tempts me to become a semi-regular patron. I'd had a number of enjoyable and increasingly intoxicated conversations with Shawn and Ryan Balderas about movies, and was thrilled to find out that he'd finally edited all the footage together and was showing it in Ann Arbor. I'm a little biased, but I think it's wonderful. Some of the performances onscreen maybe last a little long in comparison to others, but that's the only major criticism that sprang to mind. One of the big pleasures was to see performances I'd missed at the time (I tried my damnedest, but even I can't entirely make it through a nearly twelve-hour set of music without a break). Of those, Zach Curd was probably the most impressive, with one foot in folk and another in the kind of quasi-cabaret stuff that worked such wonders for Bowie around the time of Hunky Dory. There were also priceless bits of performances I'd seen but hadn't wholly appreciated--viz. Vince and Matt's facial expressions during the Dabenport set. Glorious. I'd actually expected it to be a straightforward portrayal of the music, and so I was very pleased to find a timely and well-placed selection of interviews in between performances and leading into them, with Ryan, Brandon, Fred Thomas, and Steven from Canada, all of whom put their own contributions into the context of the local music scene, and particularly the opportunities Ann Arbor allows folk musicians, in contrast to garage rock's longtime predominance in Detroit. Brandon waxes particularly eloquent over Great Lakes Myth Society and how they have to deal with the potential trivialization of their subject matter in non-Michigander eyes by artists like Sufjan Stevens. I watched it with an audience that had an often distractingly--but in the end bracingly--critical attitude towards the performances. I won't mention the specific performer, but she was playing with a poor glockenspielerin who got a merciless (though somewhat justified, in my mind) ragging from the peanut gallery in back. "The glockenspiel player doesn't give a fuck!" "She's wearing business casual!!" (the latter hissed in a manner others might reserve for... I don't know, live infant evisceration or something). The film led, as the show did in real life, to Chris Bathgate's supremely evocative performance of "We Die," the final song ever played at the Madison House. The credits played, alongside Adam's photos, to Saturday Looks Good To Me's "When You Got To New York." It's weirdly appropriate in two ways--the last song on the most recent record of probably the best-known Ann Arbor band (2004's Every Night), and a reference to Brandon's present life in Brooklyn. Full disclosure: I'm thanked in the credits; I still have little idea why.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006): A genuine Grimm-style fairy tale modernized (well, 1940s, anyway) and fully realized. Even the interminable commercials through which one must helplessly sit at Showcase Cinemas in Ypsilanti found redemption through the movie's greatness. It was strange, too, as it took me half the movie to warm to it (when I did, though, I did with a vengeance). Many disparate themes come together towards the end in a rewarding and in one case very gutsy manner. Guillermo del Toro's work has somewhat eluded me in the past; I enjoyed Cronos but didn't like The Devil's Backbone as much as I thought I would (probably a case of thinking it was going to be the most awesome movie ever made from the reviews--that's screwed me over more than once). Young Ofelia (the amazing Ivana Baquero) finds herself and her invalid mother saddled with a wicked stepfather who also happens to be a captain in Franco's army. It's 1944 and though the Spanish Civil War has been over for half a decade, there are still isolated pockets of resistance in the northern mountains (the dialogue hints at Aragon). Ofelia quickly discovers the nearby woods to be haunted by ancient spirits, who assign her a quest that will take her away from her wretched mortal existence. After a rocky start, del Toro ably contrasts Ofelia's "fantasy" world with the oppression and degradation of the "real" one, all the while subtly (and sometimes not so much) hinting at similarities between the two. As in all the best horror movies, themes of sacrifice surface in a way that recall some of the best specimens of the genre. All that takes place against a truly gorgeous physical backdrop. The verdant, mountainous countryside is fine enough, but the fantasy scenes make for delicious icing on the cake; the "banqueting hall" is one of the most evocative and well-rendered sets I've ever seen in a movie, period. Sergi Lopez makes a superb villain as the stepfather; the most horrific scenes in the movie are the ones in which he tortures suspects (or, more precisely, is about to torture them). Now I'll have a movie to root for at the Oscars!

Young Mr. Lincoln (1939): In his excellent essay "Hero in Waiting" that accompanies the DVD, film scholar Geoffrey O'Brien makes a case that John Ford's biographical masterpiece was something of an American answer to totalitarian propaganda titans like Triumph of the Will and Alexander Nevsky (and wouldn't you know it, Sergei Eisenstein's 1945 essay "Mr. Lincoln by Mr. Ford" appears right after O'Brien's). There's a definite ambivalence towards "the American way" in this one; as O'Brien observes, Lincoln's relations with the Springfield townspeople epitomize the constant tug-o-war between individual and society. An ostensible account of Lincoln's early Illinois legal career in the 1830s, Young Mr. Lincoln makes its subject (Henry Fonda, whose garish false nose one forgets after about five minutes) human while making the frequent historical foreshadows part of that humanity, instead of turning the man into a statue (which does happen, quite literally, but only at the very end of the movie). There's a dominating plot concerning Lincoln's defense of a pair of brothers accused of murder, but it's the little touches that shine through for me, particularly the appearances of a hilariously smug Stephen Douglas (Milburn Stone)--every time there's a shot of his face while Lincoln's speaking (particularly in medium or long shots), you can just tell he's thinking "hick moron!!!" Along with that comes a plethora of small-town Americana: covered wagons, state fairs, lynch mobs, pie-eating contests, parades... the kind of deceptive and occasionally corny wholesomeness that Ford's genius turns to high drama, and a perfect stage for his subject. Lincoln, the most fascinating of Americans, needed no such transformation, but Ford renders him an American cinema hero for the ages.

Loving Plans, Coming Together
Now Playing: The Stone Roses--"Standing Here"
WARNING: The following post contains mature subject matter. If you can call it that.

This past week saw the thirty-fourth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a landmark achievement in women's--and consequently human--rights in this country. Several blogs and websites encouraged pro-choice bloggers to post on why they're pro-choice. I'm not a woman, but I am human at the very least, and have participated in an active volunteer basis for three years in promoting reproductive rights, and so I should probably say something.

First off, dropping the bomb, I voted for Ralph Nader in the presidential election of 2000, and have heartily repented ever since then (actually more since he refused to endorse Wellstone for the Minnesota Senate race two years later, but you know what I mean). I still have my doubts as to whether he was the proximate cause of Bush's "victory" on historical accuracy grounds, but I'm just as culpable regardless because he could have been. I've considered myself pro-choice ever since I was aware of the reproductive rights struggle, and once took part in a counter-demonstration outside the Delta Women's Clinic in Baton Rouge when Operation Rescue blew through town in the early 90s. I'm hazy these days on the details, but I believe the right to abortion in Louisiana was in one of its periodical legal limbos, with various court decisions challenging and counter-challenging, that opened a window for abortions to be performed despite questionable legality. I think. In any case, I ended up outside said clinic with a couple of friend and a bunch of other counter-demonstrators--some local and some out-of-state--facing a group of Randall Terry's slavering little disciples. I vividly remember one fellow carrying a cross with a papier-mache bleeding Jesus or some such (how's that for a band name?), looking like he was about to speak in tongues, and reminding me of nothing less than a medieval flagellant. In 1992.

Why mention the Nader thing? When the election came around, I associated Gore rather too closely with Clinton (and therefore with an overly precipitate welfare reform, the ruinous and counterproductive
"drug war" at home and abroad, etc.). What essentially happened is that I took abortion rights (and, as it turned out, a great deal else) for granted. Some could plausibly argue that I oculd afford to do so due to my gender and therefore privileged status in American society and culture.* In any event, I harbored a pretty impressive (if I do say so myself) stockpile of guilt over the election, and the abortion thing figured heavily in it.

When I moved to Ann Arbor, I quickly became depressed over my job and how little the city measured up to my initial expectations, and figured a good way to get out of it was to volunteer at... something. I got on an internet volunteer exchange and noticed that the local Planned Parenthood chapter was looking for volunteers. It sounded interesting, and so I got in contact with my now good friend Jessica, the volunteer coordinator. Ann Arbor is in many ways a deceptively liberal town, and so I thought there might be some friction there--I pictured myself getting hassled by wackos or something, occasionally laughing at some fundamentalist preacher holding up a bloody fetus poster outside the offices and asking him if he'd ever seen Poltergeist 2. I began by putting together patient billing statements (a lot of those), other administrative work, and eventually moved to manning booths at popular local events like Art Fair and OutFest. I branched out, through the good offices of Planned Parenthood staffer Meredith, to other volunteer stuff like the WRAP library project. Wednesday I actually got to go to a lunch and was named one of two Volunteers of the Year for 2005. It's been a lot of fun and I hope to continue doing my best at it for as long as I'm here.

So why pro-choice, then? For one thing, the arguments have perennially seemed miles more valid. Birth's always meant "birth" to me; call me old-fashioned. The right-wing caricature of irresponsible whores getting abortions just for the hell of it has no real bssis in fact, and it's primarily a result of sexual asault, lack of birth control aids, or lack of sex education. One effect of working as a volunteer has been to impress on me what an excellent job its staff does at trying to improve women's and men's access to the information they need to lead healthy sex lives and reduce the number of abortions, and how these different issues are interlinked. It's also one of the few issues (gay marriage being another) where the desires of the individual dovetail precisely with the needs of society. On several social issues, like gun ownership and the death penalty, I'm somewhat torn between "liberal" and "conservative" arguments--not so with these. Also, though it seems a little negative, it's instructive to judge the pro-choice cause by its enemies, mostly older men who will never have to worry about the effects of an abortion or the lack of birth control.** What they--and for the last six years the government--have been aiming at is the elimination of the right to abortion, birth control, and sex education (and fellas, if moral arguments don't move you, to paraphrase--maybe quote, I don't remember, Dan Savage--we're next--don't think they'll stop at masturbation's edge). It's effectively the elimination of women's ability to govern their own lives. They're fellow citizens and that ability should belong to every one of us. So there are my reasons.

*I never forget it these days, no matter how down and out I feel. One thing that occasionally dredges up guilt is the way in which I make myself feel better through the misery of others. Whenever my boss becomes too annoying for words, or I realize I can't go out for two weeks, I just tell myself "at least you're not a starving child in Darfur" (or, for that matter, a woman in any number of states who needs an abortion--or someone in Falluja, etc.). I feel good, then I feel bad, and then my head hurts and I tell myself a qualified "life's too short."

**An attitude expressing itself in a particularly grotesque way through the ludicrously unfair practice in many corporations of making Viagra available through health insurance but not birth control. I couldn't have made up that shit while drunk (and I've probably tried).

Carpet of Leeks
Now Playing: Adrian Belew--"Big Blue Sun"
I work, as some of you may have gleaned, in a restaurant in the United States. As such, I see a truly staggering amount of food wasted every day. People are actually better about cleaning their plates in my present workplace than they were at my old job at the high-end Italian place in Akron, where they were a lot more profligate with the kitchen's bounty. One of the factors behind my recent decision to actively pursue a culinary career has been to try and reverse, in however insignificant a fashion, this appalling habit. There's more than one way to go down with a ship. While some might protest, in the manner of one of Dickens' more celebrated characters, that the state of things helps to curb the excess population, their reasoning doesn't quite face up to how many more resources the relatively few well-to-do consume in contrast to the many impoverished.

This isn't a fresh discovery on my part--even while watching the egregious Nickelodeon game show Double Dare (in middle school, I think--such an irresponsible show could only have come about during or after Reagan), where groups of screeching preteens slid along waves of chocolate or whipped cream, I couldn't help thinking "I know all those sweets are horrible for you (not that it'll stop me from eating their ilk) but couldn't something more constructive be done with them?" My present quasi-poverty has made me more personally knowledgeable as to the benefits of food conservation, but even my ill-fated attempt to use egg whites in frying potatoes (I used the yolks to make homemade mayonnaise and didn't know what else to do with the remainder) wasn't enough to deter me from new endeavors in this cause. So I went for Food Gatherers, which I'd been meaning to do for a while.

Food Gatherers is a local organization that takes food from donors, mostly restaurants and grocery stores with product they can't or won't use, and then distributes it to those in need. These latter are a variety of local organizations including the Delonis Community Center Kitchen, where I made a commitment to volunteer for a couple of hours the third Saturday of every month. The kitchen is located in the downtown shelter building, which has a wide array of services for the hard-luck and homeless. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I wanted to use my experience to some good purpose. I'd been able to do so once before, at a Planned Parenthood reception in the house of a wealthy patron, where I was able to use my bussing skills (yes, bussing skills) to smooth things along. This gig promised to be a little more substantial.

I arrived at the kitchen in the wake of a church group who apparently do this every Saturday. Paula, the kitchen manager, promptly assigned us all duties and told us we'd have our orientation after we'd finished. This was actually refreshing, as I got to skip the awkward "sitting around, being the new guy" thing (although it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be; I don't picture people in their underwear--well, some less than others--so much as in Eddie Murphy-style Gumby outfits), and get straight to work. Paula had me unloading the delivery truck, making coffee (odd as I usually don't like it), and then teaming up with John, an avuncular gent in his sixties, to make salads.

The whole ethos of the kitchen is to use what you have. This should hold true of any kitchen, but it's a welcome escape from the tyranny of set recipes and it helped that Paula told us to use our own judgment. Her only contribution was to add corn to the salads, which I'd never have considered, but apparently people seem to like it. I got the tossing into an assembly-line format, with John chopping carrots and I parsley (and ripping romaine leaves to make them more edible for people with severe dental problems) and then back again. It was great fun and I was happy to be doing something useful with my abilities. Afterwards, Paula gave us the orientation session, which amounted to a brief history of the organization and how it worked. I could really get used to the kitchen as a monthly deal; their mission lies in exactly the direction in which I want to fashion my own life.

That night, I made vichysoisse.

Vichysoisse

3 tsp butter
8 leeks
3 medium potatoes
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 cup cream
milk or water to thin

Melt butter in pot. Clean and chop leeks, and add to pot. Stir while cooking for 20 mins. on low heat. Peel, slice, and stir in potatoes, then add stock. Bring to boil and then simmer until potatoes soften, about 30 mins. Puree until smooth. Season with salt to taste and pepper. Add cream. Thin with water and milk if necessary, then serve hot or cold.

This was my first cream-based homemade soup. Those are fraught with danger at my workplace, as our stovetop has two settings--"scald" and "off"--and easily burn. This happens a lot less nowadays, but you never know. I won't lie--vichysoisse was fun to make. I'd already eaten, so there was little rush. Leeks are interesting things--sweeter and milder than onions, and they have an equally lovely smell while cooking, only different. I tried a bit of the chopped raw, and it went down so much better than raw onions; I can definitely see how they would be excellent on salads. Softening and sauteing in the butter, they're a joy, and they reduce really fast--it was like watching a jungle in my soup pot transform into a marsh. I was even able to play with the leeks' texture a little, chopping them into waves and then smoothing them into a carpet.

I'd brought down my stereo to listen to CBC Radio 3--one of the fun things about cooking for me is the music. They did some Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Tom Waits (as well as a lot of obscure Canadian bands, which is really the appeal for me), and then a report from one of the Arcade Fire's "secret shows" from Montreal. I tried to dispel the leeks' aroma, which, while very pleasant, was close to suffocating, and remembering we had a blower atop the oven, I also realized that we had a small kitchen light much dimmer and softer than the main (and very harsh) ceiling light. Turning off the main, I turned on the oven light, and then kitchen was transformed. I was alone in the dim glow, snow all around the house and visible through the window, and stirring a pot. I felt like a wtich, maybe Sleeping Beauty's spurned, malefic would-be godmother plotting mischief aplenty. I doubt she was listening to Wolf Parade (maybe a wolf parade), but then I guess these comparisons only go so far. After stirring in the potatoes (and using the spare simmering time to bake off two spare cod fillets I had in the fridge), I found that the half hour had rendered the soup so soft and tender that I saw little reason to puree anything. Potage parmentier (vichysoisse without the cream) may be one of the basic French soups, but it was my kitchen, dammit. After all, this is presumably how they did it before food processors, and the peasants never needed any of those to go on jacquerie (though invented by a French chef around the turn of the last century, the soup's potato-leek base makes it great peasant food). I added the cream, gave it a stir, and then some milk and just a little water. The soups I make at work are good, but we got panned (if one can call it that) in the local paper (if one can call it that) for our soups being more like stews, velvety (our server's favorite description) and thick. I prefer it thus, but I know many like their soups thin, fluid and reedy (the last makes no sense, but it goes well with the other two in prose, I think), so I tried to overdo it with the water (it didn't "help"). I poured a small bowl, and stuck the rest in the fridge. It was great--stracciatella was okay, but this was so much better. The leeks and cream made it sweet while just a little bit spicy and mysterious.

I felt very satisfied with the day.

Watching Ripples Change Their Size
Now Playing: Vashti Bunyan--"Jog Along Bess"
I've decided not to go to library school. The plan for the past couple of years has been to go to library school, hopefully here, with cooking or culinary school as a backup option. Thing is, though--I love what I'm doing. For a long time, I thought my chosen work would only be worthwhile if done in an academic setting, which I now see to be ludicrous. My boss and the money excepted, I enjoy my coworkers, I enjoy interacting with customers (a colossal turnaround from just about every other restaurant job I've had), and most of all, I love cooking. It's strange to think I barely even knew how before I was twenty-five. I never really cooked before grad school, when I learned to cook a few simple fish and poultry dishes, but now I see doing new recipes as pretty much the highlight of my week. If I'm more interested in the backup option than the main plan anyway, why go through with the latter at all? I moved up to Ann Arbor originally to go to the Michigan School of Information, but shouldn't view my years here as wasted simply because I've changed my mind. Learning is never wasted. In that spirit I offer:

Merluzzo Livornese (serves 4)

1 potato
1 lb. fresh cod fillets
1 1/2 tbsp. corn oil
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tsp chopped fresh parsley
salt and pepper
1/4 tsp dried hot peppers
1 cup tomato sauce

Boil potato, peel, and set aside. Saute both sides of cod in corn oil until brown. Discard oil. In skillet saute garlic and parsley in olive oil until garlic is pale gold. Stir in salt, peppers, and tomato sauce. After 5 mins. add fish. After another 5 mins. add potato. When sauce amalgamated and oily, serve with French or Italian bread.

It turned out great (maybe a little salty), although there was no specification as to how the fish should look, and it eventually separated into chunks while I stirred. Part of the whole point of cooking is to find new ways and new recipes, but I may have inadvertently offended a few coastal Tuscan gourmets. My apologies. I cooked while watching A Hard Day's Night, and, figuring I should watch something Italian, ate wile watching Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow from the same year, the latter a lovely romantic comedy trilogy from Vittorio de Sica starring a ravishing Sophia Loren (who does one of two famous stripteases, if I remember, in the final act), and an endearing Marcello Mastroianni (Aldo Giuffre, so memmorable in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as the drunken Union colonel at the bridge, pops up as their friend in the first act who's faced with a difficult choice). In the first, I find a phenomenon where I always notice something different every time I watch. In this case, shortly after Paul's identified his grandfather (the wonderful Wilfrid Brambell, he of Steptoe and Son, the Jonathan Miller Alice in Wonderland, and the inexplicable Witchfinder General cameo) as a leading source of "breach-of-promise cases," the just as great Norman Rossington, as the boys' manager, takes the old coot away, assuring the lads that everything will be fine: "I'll just bind him to me with promises." Ha!

Jesse's Departure As Metaphor
Now Playing: Ivy--"Ocean City Girl"
Just Deserts: The best band in Michigan has a sweet writeup in the MetroTimes. We got to hear them at the Blind Pig Thursday night in one of the tightest shows they've ever done. Afterwards it was back to the SE house for partying way too late and ending with an eerily cinematic scene at 4:30 a.m. at the corner of State and North University. My thanks to Sara, Margot and Adam for a great time.

Newsflash: On the morning of 9 January, I heard a report from CBC Radio 2 on the completion of Bush's "reshuffling" of Iraq advisors and how the plan for a troop escalation cuts against the wishes of the vast majority of Americans. While warming up some stracciatella for breakfast downstairs, I briefly turned on the TV to find Meredith Vieira grilling Ted Kennedy on the Today show over whether or not we'd "prevail" in Iraq. Prevail. Like it's a medieval tournament. That's the difference between a (relatively) independent media and a gaggle of lackeys. That's why I usually stay away from this stuff; I can get depressed enough on my own.

Brokeback Mountain (2005): There's a scene in The Blue Lagoon (which I saw in college to much hilarity at the end of a garbage-bag sledding session--make of that what you will) where Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields are wrestling around in their unbelievably elaborate lean-to or some such and Brooke runs away with Atkins in the doorway laughing. There's then a moment of silence in which his smile fades and he understandably looks down at his cock (guarded by a conch shell or something else I'd rather not remember). Subtle. The same thought occurred to me several times while watching Brokeback, which had a lot of good things in it but which was so grand and momentous that I suspect the centrifugal forces ripped apart the cohesion of what was, essentially, a short story put on film (and those are, I suspect, harder than they look to begin with). There's a weird disjointedness to this thing that makes it more a collection of okay ingredients rather than an actual movie, a whole much less than the sum of its parts. I've had a soft spot for Michelle Williams for ages, and she's excellent as Alma, Heath Ledger's wife, her incomprehension and feelings of betrayal leading to a kind of silent explosion. I didn't enjoy Anne Hathaway nearly as much (as Jake Gyllenhaal's wife), but she did have a great moment when Ledger calls her asking for him. I've liked Ledger ever since the decidedly underrated A Knight's Tale, but found myself preferring Gyllenhal by the end (there's a great scene where he gains control of a Thanksgiving dinner from his odious father-in-law). The grand treatment mentioned earlier actually works, despite misgivings, with the spectacular scenery and the music, which relies ona pretty simple tune but which gets reinforced throughout until it's slapping me: "This is a big Oscar-worthy movie! Don't give me that look! You know you want it!" etc. etc. I usually resent that kind of thing intensely (John Barry never had to sink to that level, at least before the eighties), but it got me in the end, sure enough. Wish I knew how to quit it, really.

Prey (1977): Speaking of troubled gay relationships... take a huge house somewhere in the English countryside, meld softcore lesbian porn with an alien-infiltration story, and you've got Norman J. Warren's bizarre but not un-entertaining (in a good way, too) thriller. "Anderson" (Barry Stokes) shows up at a secluded mansion tenanted by lovers Jessica (Glory Annan) and Jo (the great Sally Faulkner)--or, as I like to call them, "Anne of Green Gables" (Jessica's Canadian, too) and "Mistress of the Lash." It quickly turns out that none of the characters are quite as they seem, to put it mildly. There's a fair deal of nudity and a little gore (thankfully, the latter is nowhere near the level I expected--I'm a huge fan of bare flesh and consensual sex in movies, but the red stuff's definitely optional). We even get an extended shot of one character nearly drowning in a pond that I found reminiscent (of all things) of Amos Gitai's grueling 2000 film Kippur, the story of a squad of Israeli medics on the Golan Heights during the 1973 war. In Kippur, I'm guessing the effect was to convey the grinding inhumanity of war and how monotonous it can become. In Prey... not sure there was a point, really, beyond getting Annan all nice and wet, but it's a nifty effect all the same. Anderson's enigmatic (his eye-level relationship with Jessica's parrot is hilariously compelling, as is a dance scene with Jo), and Jessica's extremely sweet though mildly dopey, but it's Jo who's alternately annoying and hypnotic, her domineering ways with Jessica and her strange unfolding kinship with Anderson well-communicatied by Faulkner. This is the third performance I've seen from Sally Faulkner, and it's amazing to watch a kind of generational evolution take place--first the vivacious, slightly scatterbrained photographer Isobel Watkins in the 1968 Doctor Who classic "The Invasion," then the warm, earth-mothery artiste Harriet in Jose Larraz' bewitching but appallingly flawed 1974 Vampyres, and now the suspicious, pretentious androphobe Jo. Excepting certain plot details, I can easily imagine all three dramas to be chapters in the life of a single person. All in all, it's an unexpectedly thought-provoking thriller and a refreshingly good example of British horror from the late 1970s.

Inside Man (2005): I haven't seen nearly enough Spike Lee movies--She's Gotta Have It, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Crooklyn, Summer of Sam, and Bamboozled, basically. I'm going to try and get Do The Right Thing out of the way this month, but my housemate checked out Inside Man from the library and I figured I'd take the opportunity. It's apparently his attempt at a blockbuster, and it works great, but with odd little touches and a refreshingly offbeat pace and feel ensuring one that Michael Bay or Tony Scott aren't in charge--Terence Blanchard's jazzy score is a welcome change from the pompous cookie-cutter Hollywood music that generally punches the cards on these flicks. It almost sounds like John Barry mind-melded with Miles Davis. In many ways, Inside Man's a combination of The Negotiator and The Usual Suspects (without Kevin Spacey) with generous helpings of New York flavor. Denzel Washington and Chiwetel Ejiofor (who has a very funny moment in quoting The Godfather--again, the up-and-coming British cult faves with the Godfather quoting--see Tristram Shandy) are detectives who get called in to help another officer (Willem Dafoe) on a robbery / hostage-taking at a downtown bank carried out by Clive Owen. Jodie Foster shows up as a shady high-roller who may know more than she's saying about what's going on inside. I'm no particular friend of the auteur theory (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't) but you know a director's actually in charge on this one, from the unorthodox narrative structure (the interviews with the released hostages are frequently hilarious, giving Washington some particularly good moments--you know, as if he needed them) right down to Lee's trademark bizarro dolly shots. If I knew more Hollywood action movies would be this enjoyable, I might make it out to the theatre more often.

Dwelling On Trivial Skirmishes
Now Playing: Nick Drake--"Poor Boy"
Yes, it's one of those "2006 retrospective arts blog posts with an Italian soup recipe" things.

Stracciatella: 3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
(simmer in medium saucepan)
1 large egg
1 1/2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 tbsp dried breadcrumbs
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 small clove garlic, minced
(stir mixture rapidly into simmering stock and continue until egg sets, 30-60 secs.)
Ground nutmeg or grated lemon zest (for garnish)

Music: My favorite new album of the year was the long-awaited final release of Clouded Staircase by Starling Electric, my favorite local band, who recently toured with Guided By Voices and can hold their own against any other act in the country, especially now that Sleater-Kinney's broken up. That, by the way, was the most unwelcome musical development of the year. I'd found One Beat to be a little shrill, but understandable given the political winds at the time it was released. It took me a little time to get into The Woods, but once I did, I was eager to see what they'd do next ("What's Mine Is Yours," "Modern Girl," and "Rollercoaster" were magnificent). Though they're no more, they left some great memories, and I salute them anew as the best American musical act of the nineties. I thought outside the music box more last year than at any point in the past five. Much of my musical tastes in Akron came from outside influences (with wonderful results; I owe Pere Ubu, Television, Rocket From The Tombs, pretty much all the pre-punk and new wave stuff to Matt Hiner, and the Super Furry Animals to Matthew Keller). Once I'd discovered the local scene in Ann Arbor, I pretty much delved into area music, exploring whatever took my fancy at house shows and other venues, and only really came up for air last summer. Probably my favorite album of any sort I heard besides Clouded Staircase was The Go! Team's mindblowing Thunder, Lightning, Strike. Honorable, less recent mentions go to Bowie's Hunky Dory (I would drunkenly belt out "Life on Mars?" in the company of others at full blast twice before the year's end--oh, and happy 60th, by the way!), Aimee Mann's thirteen-year-old solo debut Whatever, Margot and the Nuclear So-and-So's with The Dust of Retreat, some of which I heard the year before when they played the Blind Pig, and Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) , which, being released in November 1974, actually shares my own age (highlights: "Mother Whale Eyeless," "The Fat Lady of Limburg," and especially "The True Wheel," on which Eno shares guitar with ex-Roxy Music colleague Phil Manzanera).

Cinema: I've been trying to avoid going to the actual movie theatre for both financial and aesthetic reasons. My boss recently came through on my Go!Pass (which allows certain employees of downtown Ann Arbor businesses free travel on city buses to alleviate the parking situation in the "city center"), so getting to the googolplex will be slightly easier. The days are over when I would go see 24 Hour Party People four times (twice at the Michigan and twice at the State). Most of the movies I saw last year were on DVD. The only three I can remember seeing in the theatre last year were The Descent, Borat and Casino Royale. The first two were okay, and I greatly enjoyed the third. I always thought Craig would do fine (he did), but was disappointed in the somewhat lackluster villain and the sheer wastage of Jeffrey Wright (who usually saves otherwise lugubrious movies like Ride With The Devil and Basquiat or just-plain-unfortunate ones like the Shaft remake from being complete timewasters). The greatest movie I probably saw last year was Visconti's forty-three-year-old The Leopard--a huge visual canvas, majestic scenery, towering performances, and a nifty little twist towards the end that (a) works great and (b) isn't absolutely integral to the plot. Spoiler alert: We do not discover that Burt Lancaster's Prince di Salina is an alien intelligence whose ill-health furstrates his plans to conquer Earth. Many directors, Mr. Shyamalan, think that the twist is the whole point of the movie--I occasionally find Mario Bava tiresome as a result--probably because they hear "twist ending" and think "cool! I'll be compared to Hitchcock!" No.

Literature: Reading is pretty much like eating or drinking--actually, more like breathing--to me, and so I don't think I take as much notice of the books I read as of the purely visual or audio media I ingest, which is something I ought to work on. The best novel I read this year? Angela Carter's Wise Children, published right around her death in 1992, a funny and moving saga of two sisters and their adventures on the stage in 20th century Britain and America. Browsing through the Kiwanis bookshelves one Saturday morning brought me into contact with the hilarious Laurie Notaro, whose The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club, based on the author's experiences as a twenty-something ne'er-do-well in Arizona, was one of the best examples of written humor I'd found since Mike Nelson or David Sedaris. I relearned that reading can be addictive after working through Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo historical fiction series (with refreshingly weird, twisted central characters and supporting cast) of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I can't pass this way, of course, without mentioning the stuff on the British Horror Films forum, particularly the work of Neil Christopher, whose novellas "Test of Faith" (post-apocalyptic trial by ordeal) and "Cerberus Rising" (Cold War werewolves) blew most of the rest of us out of the water. Last but not least, I finally knocked out Robert Hughes' superb biography of Goya (my own favorite visual artist of all time)--as the (rightfully) obsequious book jacket put it, "one genius writing at full capacity about another."

Television: I got a DVD player this year, and have been trolling through the ages...I owned a VCR for over a decade, and only began to buy movies five years or so into that time. I've owned the DVD player for a little under a year, and I already own eleven movies, four individual epsiodes of the old Dr. Who, two seasons of Family Guy (thanks, Slater and Kenissa!) and the complete series of Blackadder the Third and Firefly. Our local library has masses of stuff, too. I've made it through the first series of Deadwood and part of Rome ("Brutus, me old cock!") and am really unsure which of those I prefer--the last scenes of the former's final episode were so beautiful to almost wrench tears. They've also all three series of Father Ted, some of them with commentary from Graham Linehan and Ardal O'Hanlon, which is great. I'm planning to watch the entire Wire at some point to see if it's as good as everyone says it is.

And there'll be more, I'm sure. I mean, "I'm afraid."

Resolutions and Revolutions
Now Playing: Brian Eno--"Mother Whale Eyeless"
First, I'd like to apologize--the actor who played Greg Brady is in fact Barry Williams and not Barry McDonald. God knows where that came from; Angelfire's being dicky and won't let me edit my posts.

The title will actually make some sort of sense for a change. One uneventful holiday just over, and another rears its ugly head. I suspect my own New Year's Eve will be rather low-key, much unlike the past two, an idea which rather appeals to me. I got out of the habit of making New Year's resolutions some time ago, but will venture a few this year. Couldn't hurt.

1. Treat other people better.

2. Get other stories published. I had two last year in The First BHF Book of Horror Stories and might have two this year in the Third. There are two others that I'm planning to send to other venues; I just need to get off my ass and do it.

3. Write other stories; I've fallen into a slump over the past couple of months, I fear.

4. Find a job in which I'm not considered retarded and at which I make more money. It's not as important as happiness, obviously, and I'd probably be relatively happy in this job (I like cooking, I like interacting with customers) if my boss wasn't so shallow and manipulative, but those student loans and prospective travel costs won't pay themselves.

5. Try and learn a different recipe each weekend. I'd planned to do this some time back, and can now fix cookies (doesn't sound like much, but I made the dough from scratch and without a scoop), biscones, olliebollen (after a fashion), quiche provencale, tomato and goat cheese quiche (no fancy name of French or Italian geographical derivation, so far as I know), and pan-fried steak. This weekend (hopefully): sirloin in Basque cheese sauce (chuleton al Idiazabal).

6. Get into a library school program at Michigan (or Wayne State) or somewhere that offers a lot of financial aid. If it all falls through, move somewhere else and pursue the cooking. Anywhere, probably a large city in which I don't need to drive (preferably New York or Chicago, but I wouldn't rule out Detroit or Cleveland). It's been a decent past two years, but wanderlust begins to knock again...

7. Exercise more and eat better. This includes drinking more wine instead of beer. Life is too short, but I may as well give it a go.

8. Read all those doorstop novels--Ulysses, Rememberance of Things Past, The Man Without Qualities, A Dance To The Music of Time... I might as well get them out of the way. I will be at death's door, though, before I attempt Finnegan's Wake.

9. Volunteer more. While I'm here (or anywhere) I should do my best to be a good citizen. Having put up the library at WRAP, I'm hardly there anymore. I still potter around Planned Parenthood, but feel conscious of the need for another vol-venue. Sara suggested Food Gatherers a while back. I seem to remember Arbor Brewing does some sort of volunteer thing. I just need to get off my ass and make arrangements. A lot of getting off my ass needs to be done all round. Speaking of which...

10. Spend less time on the internet. It's only about half an hour to an hour a day, all told, but it still feels like too much, and I don't even have access at home. I suspect part of my slight leeriness about the career path I've chosen (and will embark on with a second choice standing tall in the distance) is due to its present reliance on the internet and computer search engines and data collections. All very well, but what happens when the power runs out?

The Cetan Clawson Revolution: The new CCR were an area band who asked me to come to their Blind Pig show Friday night with flattering aggression. I was rather intrigued, largely because I'd be hearing a group with whom I had no personal connection whatsoever. I'd also get to hear Chrome Mali again (hadn't heard them in a while--band member Frank occasionally visits Chateau Fluffy and knows our much-missed business consultant/one-time manager). I dressed down for the occasion (I'm usually ludicrously overdressed, although a friend flatteringly referred to the results as "casual elegance") and hopped on down only to find that the show had been cancelled (God knows why). After a beer at Babs', I drifted into Ashley's on my way home. Ashley's was my bar of choice for about the first year I lived here, and though it's out of favor with some of the local intelligentsia (probably because of all the Michigan students and the meat-market aura it sometimes exudes), their beer selection really is out of this world (and when I was there, they had the friendliest and most attractive staff in town). Brian still works there and it was good to see him again. I also ran into John Fossum at Borders, where we had a chat--probably the most effervescently pleasant person I know in the Ann Arbor music scene (hell, in Ann Arbor period). All in all, despite the disappointing cancellation, Friday night was a happily low-pressure time, when I could flit hither and thither, etc. I do hope, though, to hear the Cetan Clawsons at some point.

Feliz Ano Nuevo!