All Weeds Subject To Search And Detention
Now Playing: The Faces--"Too Bad"
My friend Sara's bithday was this past weekend, and she decided to invite her friends to spend it weed-pulling, to which we all enthusiastically assented. "Weed-pulling" sounds a little prosaic, I suppose. The actual event involved purging a variety of invasive species from the prairie and trailheads at the Leslie Science Center in northern Ann Arbor. This latter, where I'd never been before, is a very interesting multi-purpose educational facility, with nature walks, community garden plots, and even a disabled raptor care center. Invasive species are a pretty big deal, especially in the Great Lakes region ("taking our jobs and our women, etc.") where they crowd out native plant and animal life (most nastily in the lakes themselves, where the sea lamprey is cutting bloody swathes through the native fish population in general) and negatively impact the local environment. So they gotta go, basically.

The day opened misty, chill and rainy, and I was worried the whole thing might have been called off, but relaxed once the rain passed over and left the cool behind, which in turn made for a climatically gorgeous day. I'd somehow gotten it into my head that the event started at noon when in fact it was at two, and so killed an hour or so wandering the trails through tree-shrouded carpets of wild geraniums and fierce barricades of brambles and prairie grass. It's a great area, one I'll have to check out a lot more often. A healthy knot of people materialized, we all wished Sara a happy birthday, and then, aided by our trusty guides Bill and Billy, set to work. This had apparently been the first time anyone had ever wanted to do this for their birthday...

Our primary target was "dame's rocket", a long, leafy shoot with pleasant pinkish-violet flowers on the end. The course of my life had turned me forever away from flower gardening, and the few times I've ever tried to grow plants have been... unsuccessful, to say the least. Frankly, I'm not all that interested in them unless they're edible. It turned out, however, as Billy told us, that dame's rocket was. I, Laura, and Sara's friend Jen, working with Billy, effectively denuded the prairie of dame's rocket in a couple of hours, save for one stubborn patch protected by impenetrable brambles. Seeing all those plants lying in the back of the truck, however invasive they might have been, made me realize I need to find a way to use them by the next time I do this (which could be soon!). I'd been meaning since I first moved to town to go to the mustard garlic-pulling sessions at the Arb, so I need to do some more research on these and start putting some salads together.

Afterwards, we all did the stuff together I'd done when I first came (but this was with people who knew what they were talking about, which always helps). We did the trails, during which Billy showed us where to find trilliums, wild ginger, jack-in-the-pulpit, and the ever-pervasive geraniums, and Tracey gave me her inimitable take on Inland Empire ("Mary Steenburgen? How can I be afraid of her???"). Then it was over to the raptor area, where we got to see criminally adorable saw-whet and screech owls being fed dead mice, and barred and great horned owls just sort of sitting there like great feathered lumps. They did look a little forlorn, but I expect they probably get their fill of us whenever the kids show up on school trips (as I reckon they do).

By that time, everyone was famished, and I was pleased to find what an honest hunger I'd worked up simply through all that prairie maintenance. Margot and Adam dropped me off at my place so I could give them the quiche provencale I'd baked for Sara and take a badly needed shower. I rushed over to Leopold's, and the next five hours really put the finishing touch on a fantastic day. Beer was knocked back, board games were played, roleplaying games and their devotees were alternately mocked and celebrated, I finally tried the wonderful lime chicken quesadilla, great conversations (of both a comic and serious nature) were had... it was one of my favorite ever days in Ann Arbor (certainly the best one so far this year; I'm starting to collect these, I think, in my mind, so that they'll help me through the rough patches). For a week with so much relative disappointment, it had some fantastic bookends... Chicago, Katie's graduation, the Leslie Science Center, Sara's birthday, and Leopold's. You can maybe beat that, I suppose, but it beats a whole fuck of a lot else.

Thanks Sara, Margot, Adam, Tracey, Dan, Amy, Nicole, Jon, Laura, Dug, Jason, Billy, Bill, Greg, Brooke, Eric, Karen, Karen's Jason, Brian Marcus, David, and Sparky! Full table, that.

Making Lemonade
Now Playing: The Allman Brothers--"Midnight Rider"
I think I'm getting better at looking on the bright side, particularly with the allegedly positive developments in my working life last week. My raise turned out to be a dime*, and the second job doesn't in fact start until the end of August. That last rankled a bit, as I wasn't sent off with "we're having a few issues with our finances, so we can't start you until the end of August" but "see you Wednesday!" A similar issue with my former academic career helped drive me away from Akron. It's probably just as well, as the past week has revealed an unhealthy, semi-incestuous "professional" connection between my current workplace and the prospective other that makes me seriously wonder if I shouldn't look for something else (two something elses, which I'll begin doing Monday).

Happy birthday, Sara. My hands can already feel the invasive species struggling to escape.

*A dime. Don't get me wrong--I find it more hilarious than anything else at this point.

Puttin' on the Wacker
Now Playing: John Lennon and Elton John--"Whatever Gets You Through The Night"
My "relative" (technically speaking, my half-aunt, which actually sounds hilarious) graduated from Garrett Evangelical Seminary at Northwestern with a Master's in Divinity last weekend, and so I decided it was the perfect excuse to visit Chicago for a couple of days, and the announcement of my raise certainly helped me make the decision. As a result, part of this was written at the Harold Washington Library Center on the edge of the Loop.

The train: The train was arguably better that day than the one two years ago that I took partway to Karen's wedding reception in Shelby Township. This time, of course, we were heading west, with a larger load of people. The only time I've ever been west of the Ann Arbor area in Michigan was the Planned Parenthood lobbying day in East Lansing, a couple of years ago, and I wasn't sure what to expect, looking at the map. The route ran along the Huron in one way or another for a good while, letting me see some of the places I intend to find on foot one day. Once it left the river, the countryside started to become more consciously bucolic, with rolling hills, classic-style red barns, pleasantly old-fashioned residential small-town neighborhoods, and little rock-riddled streams, beginning to tend towards disused mills and derelict office buildings on our approach into the rather dingy Jackson. Wondering what was going to happen next, I found it didn't matter much as we ran into a wall of fog just west of Albion, and anything beyond the immediate horizon that wasn't a "repeat-and-alternate" version of what we'd seen before was pretty invisible. Then it lifted, and was an entirely repeat-and-alternate version of what we'd seen before, with a few interesting kinks, most notably the pretty red-brick train stations at some of the smaller stops (Niles' was especially well-kept, an entertaining contrast with Ann Arbor's station) and the existence of "live nude exotic showgirls" in Battle Creek (what kind of movie would that wacky situation make?--and at which point I also remembered I hadn't eaten cereal in something over a year). Passing through Indiana, we started with gorgeous bottomlands along the lake with wild fowl doing their thing among the reeds until we approached Gary, which really fulfilled my mental image of Soviet-era resorts in the Baltic or Caspian: the saurian spectacle of the U.S. Steel mill placed right next to a variety of casinos and marinas was pretty bizarre. Chicago loomed dimly through the fog, and it was exhilarating to arrive at the monumental Union Station and run into the Sears Tower right as I got out.

Hotel Wacker: Probably the cheapest hotel in downtown Chicago, very much akin to the Embassy in Ann Arbor, where I stayed on my first visit to my present home. It's definitely on the sketchy side, but once I got past the flophouse lobby and the mysterious smell in the ancient tenth-floor corridor, my room was rather nice and well-kept. I didn't have any problems and will probably stay there on my next visit.

The Shedd Aquarium: Worth every penny; I hadn't been to an aquarium in ages, and found this one utterly engrossing, not just the headliners, like the beluga whales swimming around in the oceanarium, but the less spectacular specimens also. Maybe it's a result of all the cooking (as well as the PR work done for nature, particularly of the watery variety, by a friend of mine--loved the invasive species exhibit!), but I paid attention to fish and aquatic wildlife I'd never have thought to do a year or so earlier. Best of all, I finally got to see a live octopus up close; it hid out in its "cave" the first time I passed, but spread itself out over the glass the next, and was utterly fascinating to watch. The beluga and the dolphins provided a dependably popular attraction (as did the penguins), but again, the place really did its job in getting me to think about how it all ties together.

The Field Museum: The Field is probably the most famous component of the Chicago "Museum Campus", and was actually something of a letdown. "Sue," the most complete reconstruction of a tyrannosaurus rex, was definitely worth seeing, but most everything else was the kind of thing you could see in a dozen museums across the country (two of the University of Michigan's museums included). The two lions featured in that goofball 1995 epic The Ghost and the Darkness are indeed in the museum, and failed to "still make me afraid," so whatever. Apart from an excellent exhibit on the history of Native Americans through crafts (including an assload of Moche ceramics--the only ceramics I really have any time for) the whole thing was vaguely shabby. It didn't help that the place was (a) getting hit with the same juvenile onslaught as at the Shedd, (b) getting ready in the main hall for some special event that involved a colossal effort of catering setup, and (c) still shackled by some of its 50s-era displays and exhibits, which might have had a funny "meta" effect if it wasn't so obviously unintentional.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra: I had joked to myself that I should go see them when I went, and then realized "why not?" The ticket was relatively cheap and it looked like an interesting program: Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Witold Lutoslawski's 1986 quasi-violin concerto Chain 2, and Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony. Last year, conductor Daniel Barenboim made way for Bernard Haitink, who led the orchestra in this performance. It was a long way from Hill Auditorium, believe me. Orchestra Hall's a lovely old building on Michigan Avenue, right across from the Art Institute, and it was a really thrilling and weird experience being in a music-making venue that's seen so much history. It got rather more thrilling for the wrong reasons once I found out how high and narrow my seat was. Those who have been to the Hill will be able to, if not understand, then picture, my usual stance in the seats, which is pretty much as close as possible to splaying; they really invite this kind of informality. Not so at the CSO, I fear. The audience was an interesting one--a lot of teens, many of whom seemed to be part of some school trip (maybe the same ones who'd been at the Shedd and the Field earlier), and the old orchestral diehards. I wound up between two respective specimens of each. The old lady made a little small talk on learning I lived in Ann Arbor, the kid huffed at the temperature in the Hall and was probably worried that the 20% off keg rental somewhere in central Wisconsin would run out at midnight (too late!), and I steeled myself to avoid looking out over the railing and perhaps accidentally hurling on Maestro Haitink. Once the lights dimmed, it was cool, and the Chicago's really one of the world's great orchestras; the Bruckner almost didn't seem as long as it actually was. Lutoslawski's definitely worth checking out further, as I'm guessing is the Chicago Lyric Opera, which was doing Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Schoenberg's Erwartung on a double bill, the former with Samuel Ramey, who I've heard do the thing on CD (not a huge fan of that particular opera, but it's fun to say, anyhow).

The Art Institute: It should have been a disappointment, as I lost my ticket for both the general collection and the special exhibit--"Picasso to Cezanne", apparently organized around the life of Ambroise Vollard, their agent--and couldn't get in the latter once I was in the former, but there was so much to see that I simply wrote it off as a voluntary contribution (especially as it took me two hours to see the "regular" stuff). The AIC has a fantastic collection, with some of my personal faves very well-represented. I didn't expect to find Goya's "El Mauregato" series of small paintings (concerning a friar's real-life 1806 foiling of a bandit robbery in a tavern), and was impressed with their collection of post-Impressionists and Expressionists (which I usually take to mean any pre-1940s artists--Miro, of course, but also people like Max Beckmann and Pierre Bonnard, my own favorites in the collection). I passed up the ceramics, but then I generally do. The layout is rather confusing, so that I left after two hours, only realizing a few minutes later that I'd completely skipped the American paintings, and therefore Hopper's Nighthawks and Grant Wood's American Gothic. No big deal; just another thing to look forward to on my next trip.

The streets: I intentionally decided not to try and see or do too much, as I wanted to simply wander the streets of a truly big city a bit (and rode the Loop several times just to do so, marveling at the conglomeration of different neighborhoods--what a way to tour a city!), and wound up having lots of time to do so, waking up at 5:30 Friday and 6 Saturday. That Friday, I walked into downtown, along the river, past the Marina City of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot fame, along the beach, and then to Navy Pier, where I got my fill of Lake Michigan-watching. That very moment, the breeze picked up, and what seemed like a balmy late spring day turned into a whirlwind that pretty much lasted the rest of my trip. At the graduation ceremony in Evanston, I found many of my Louisiana relatives laid low by the intensity of the sudden weather. Welcome to spring in the Upper Midwest, I thought.

Thankfully, the trip back was nowhere near as depressing as the last comparable journey I took, flying back to Akron from visiting Karen in Santa Barbara five years ago. Chicago's always loomed large as my next possible move (it's in the right direction and it's a big city) and it was great to get a feel for the place, however fleeting. I'd advise it not to get too comfortable...

Bounder of Adventure
Now Playing: Adam and the Ants--"Xerox"
There was a Tom Tomorrow cartoon that came out (in the 90s, I think), looking at the occupational malaise of that generation born after 1963, in which "gosh darnit, young people can't find jobs they like!" "It's not fair!" whined one youth with the kind of 50s style so beloved of that particular commentator. Every time I get pissed off at work, I try and remember that cartoon, the billions of people around the world with worse problems, and remind myself that I'm not entitled to anything apart from certain fundamental rights, not including a pleasing job. The exercise took on a much more interesting twist in the past couple of days, as I (a) had my hours increased, (b) got a raise--how much I'm not sure yet, but it's something, and (c) was recommended by my boss--who, irritant that she is, can come through for us on rare occasions--to the restaurant next door as a possible prep cook candidate.

In the past week, our dishwasher and line cook both quit, apparently due to some probably groundless scare regarding la imigra.* I'm going to miss them, especially our line cook, who's been with us for over a year, but what's interesting is that the same thing happened next door; the terror cleaned out something over half the restaurant next door and now they're looking for people. I went there this afternoon and spoke to the chef; he's immediately looking for a dishwasher, and I almost just as immediately took that job, so anxious was I for something different, but caught myself just in time and told him I'd get back to him after this weekend. Even keeping my opening statements in mind, I've had enough of those, and I do enough of that already at my present prep job. I mean, this is what I've been looking for--an entry level cooking position at another restaurant (a real restaurant, that serves dinner and alcohol)--and I didn't even have to go searching for it, which is just as well, as if there's one thing in this world I hate almost above all else, it's looking for a job. With my hours increased at work, I just hope I'm able to heft what might be 16-hour days in succession. Of course, so many other people do it that it'd be a shame to wuss out on this, especially as I rather want to do it for a career.

Work today was pretty savage, although I'm starting to regard it as a circus, in which I'm the clown. I'm fine with that, as the ringmasters usually look more ridiculous anyhow. Two of my friends came by and got to enjoy the carnage, a nice way to celebrate what looks like the beginning of summer--we don't do spring anymore, right?

Army of Shadows (1969): Jean-Pierre Melville's moody, contemplative epic looks at the gritty reality behind the glamor of the French Resistance, with Lino Ventura, Jean-Pierre Cassel (just recently deceased, too), and Simone Signoret among others as Resistance fighters who try to maintain their humanity in the midst of anything but. Filmed with a bracing lack of ostentation and a skeptical sort of sympathy towards the characters, it was well worth a look, if the showing hadn't been fraught with so many problems. I went to see it at the Michigan Theater, and only belatedly realized that it was basically just a high-class DVD projection--which would have been fine, really, except that it kept skipping and freezing up, at one point stopping entirely and then replaying the entire previous ten minutes over again. The staff in general seemed to have little idea what was going on, but everything eventually righted itself, and we even got free passes after the show, which was nice of them.

*I'm predictably liberal when it comes to illegal immigration; I think it should be stopped when immediately found, but once people have worked at jobs for a while, I think rigorous enforcement is spiteful and counterproductive, especially as I've gotten to know quite a few of these people over the years (including, it seems, our former line cook and dishwasher, and practically everybody in the kitchen at the Mexican restaurant of my early Ann Arbor days). As for the "taking jobs away from Americans" meme, I'm of two minds. I think it really is true that many of the jobs illegal immigrants work are ones that native-born Americans find beneath them. That is, if they've already worked middle-class jobs or come from a middle-class background. It's an attitude, as I've said, that I constantly have to guard against, both from others and (especially) from myself. I mean, I'm a 32-year-old M.A. working a service sector job for $9.30 an hour (as of last week; not sure how much it is now), and that presumably leads many people to conclude I'm a failure. By certain standards, I am, but I don't think so at heart (though groupthink can be very, very persuasive at times), especially considering such standards are those of a failing society. I do confess to, on occasion, certain unworthy (and probably borderline racist) thoughts along the lines of "I'm too good for this," and I suspect these views to be pretty widespread. For others, though, these jobs are serious business. I remember reading an article, I think it was in The Nation or The American Prospect, about the plight of American service-worker unions and how illegal immigration has cut into their membership and power; people who don't mind doing working-class jobs (which these days can just as easily mean janitorial work as the classical stereotype of skilled mechanical labor) find themselves in competition with undocumented applicants willing to work for less and often without any of that pesky "human rights" stuff. It's a double-edged sword, I suppose, yet another fun thing about post-industrial capitalism.

Happy Trails, then.

Best Stick To Video Games
Now Playing: The Who--"Glow Girl"
I Am Rachel Corrie: Rachel Corrie, an American human rights activist, was killed in March 2003 in the Gaza Strip when an IDF bulldozer, involved in demolishing Palestinian homes, ran her over as she protested the forced removal of the local population. When I first heard about this, shortly after it happened, it was unbelievable in a way that sadly seems all too quaint four years later. Corrie's writings--letters, emails, and journal entries, were eventually collected and edited into a one-woman show by (that) Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner, originated at the Royal Court Theatre in London by Meghan Dodds (I think; best known, perhaps, as Drew Barrymore's hilariously nasty stepsister in Ever After--or as I used to know her, the one who wasn't Melanie Lynskey), and now at the Residential College at the University of Michigan, featuring Anna Rose Kessler Moore and directed by my friend Carol Gray. I was a little nervous going in, a tenth of me worrying that it would be simple agitprop (in the service of ideals with which I mostly agree, but which wouldn't make for very good drama), and was pleasantly surprised. Moore is excellent, but I have to say that due to her very status as a college student, she probably embodies the character better than most "professional" actresses might. Somehow the editing of the occasionally self-absorbed but always searching and curious writing brings out the passion for social justice to which Corrie effectively gave her life. Her progression from a (self-confessedly) privileged middle-class student at a small Washington State college to a committed activist in Rafah, transformed and haunted by what she finds even before her untimely death, mirrors the spectator's (well, my) view of Corrie (and in many ways myself), obsessing with the character over the deceptively trivial mundanity of the personal life and then becoming involved in a larger communal struggle for dignity. Good job, all!

The Ultrasounds: Afterwards, I wound up at the Neutral Zone to hear the Ultrasounds. I'd heard them once before, opening for Starling Electric, and they delighted me with a rather straightforward rock style that I find is a lot rarer these days than people think. So many groups seem to have a dominant schtick that takes over their sound and image; sometimes it's beenficial, but more often it isn't, locking a group into a pre-conceived cage that forces them into playing music with (I suspect) less than their whole hearts. The Ultrasounds (Christopher Smith on bass and vocals, Sara Griffin on drums, and Patrick Conway on lead guitar) play their music and play it well; there was a healthy, stripped-down ambience that evening which played very well with the songs. The latter were a refreshing mix of different styles, something I'd found striking at their last show that I saw. They played a couple of covers--the White Stripes and Kings of Leon--byt the rest ran the gamut, soft and fast numbers, remarkably variant drumming and guitar styles that managed not to veer to wildly from one mood to another.

Down and Dirty Pictures: Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls was, in retrospect, something of a guilty pleasure. The rise and fall of the "New Hollywood" in the 60s and 70s produced some of history's greatest movies, and cinema's most entertaining gossip, but Biskind's telling managed to do it a sort of justice. Pictures covers the rise (and floundering) of independent American film from the 1980s to the present and employs much the same narrative method and structure that he did with Bulls, but with a much narrower focus, concentrating on the Weinstein brothers and Miramax. The latter come in for quite a pasting, to such an extent that it sometimes throws the book off-kilter. The quibbles range from the minor--occasional factual errors (and simple stuff at that; Danny Boyle's zombie epic was 28 Days Later, not 28 Days), Biskind's irritating and borderline insulting insistence on rendering quotes from Billy Bob Thornton and Spike Lee in quasi-Dickensian "Southern" and "black" dialect (British filmmakers Ismail Merchant and James Ivory don't come in for similar treatment)--to the major--the subject matter didn't have as big of an impact as Biskind's earlier purview, the book becomes a lopsided anti-Miramax tract (and God knows they've got their issues)--and easily makes it inferior to Bulls, though no less entertaining.

Terra, Ascolta
Now Playing: Giacomo Puccini--"In questa reggia" from Turandot (Birgit Nilsson)
I decided to spend Earth Day in some style this year, and so walked twenty miles or thereabouts last weekend. Earth Day and I have a somewhat problematic relationship. I'm all for the environment, but my hopes... aren't high, to say the least. I still believe everyone should do what they can, but it's frankly rather hard for me to work up any hope, especially after the general national neglect of the past six years. The Earth Day Festival this year was being held in the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, where I'd never actually been. It didn't look all that far on the map, and as this was one of the first really nice weekends we've had this year, I had an excellent time walking through the Arb and Gallup Park. The latter is always a treat--you walk along the banks of the Huron for some time, preferably very early in the morning, until the river widens past a bridge into a lake containing a number of tiny islands connected by smaller bridges and walkways. It's a popular spot, and I don't blame it. Making my way past U.S. 23, I found that the way to Dixboro Road was open, as it hadn't been before, and strolled through a part of the riverfront I'd never seen before, around the effluence of Fleming Creek, the latter beautifully punctuated by an old cider and grist mill along Geddes Road. After that, I entered what I believed to be the Botanical Gardens, and spent the next half hour or so in what might as well have been a trackless waste. There were trails, to be sure, but there seemed not another soul around, probably for a mile, and it was a very decent and enjoyable time, even following false trails and having to retrace my steps. I eventually found an east-west gravel roadway that led to Dixboro Road, and found from the addresses along the roadside that I was still well short of my destination. Walking along roadsides is always a weird thing, especially in this country. One shouldn't feel strange or ashamed (especially as, given the oil situation, a lot more people will probably have to do this in twenty years), but one does. The actual Botanical Gardens (heaven knows where I'd been wandering around for the past half hour) were very pleasant and attractive but something of an anticlimax after the journey. The Festival itself was more of a "family affair," and as someone on my own, I again felt a little strange. It wasn't much different from the Green festivals they had on Main Street not too long ago, differing only in location. On leaving, the guy waving cars into the parking lot asked me if I'd enjoyed it. My response must have been a little lackluster, as he then asked if I had any ideas on what they could do to improve the thing. Two hours of walking had done their work of rasping me up a little, and I hope my forehead wasn't too clearly stenciled with "you have got to be shitting me." I almost said "everyone should stop driving and flying, 'cause that's probably the only thing that'll help," but he seemed very polite and earnest, and it totally wouldn't have been cool. I wasn't in much shape to take the same way back, and so walked to the farthest stop on the #2 busline, the closest to my position. This walk took me through what seemed like a postapocalyptic landscape of office parks, so in a single day I basically got the whole barrage of different Ann Arbor area landscapes. I also got sunburned for what must have been the first time in years. So it wasn't really a waste, then.

Scribblesex
Now Playing: The Sonics--"Psycho"
I haven't read a novel in perhaps three months. Some time ago, anyone who told me that might be the case one day, I'd have thought insane. I've been reading novels ever since it was possible and still actually have the first prose work I ever read on my own--Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon (New York: Harper and Row, 1955--found it in between E. Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet and T.H. White's The Once and Future King, a much more fitting pair of neighbors than, say, Thomas Disch and Laurie Notaro). Even during grad school (a time in which it's allegedly impossible to read stuff unrelated to one's thesis, a theory I and others constantly disproved), I read novels (and, more scandalously, works of history that had little to do with my area of study). It's not that I've gone off fiction, very much the contrary. I just decided one day that I'd read enough without having written a good deal of my own stuff. It was time to stop amassing "influences" and "inspirations" and time to let them alone to fuck up my subconscious and hopefully produce something worth reading. Eventually, the new process led to a couple of my stories actually being published, in The First BHF Book of Horror Stories.

The Second BHF Book of Horror Stories (Northwich, UK: BHF Books, 2007) is now in existence. It's much bigger than the first, with perhaps twice as many stories, many of which I've read before on the BHF online forum. Webmaster and editor Chris Wood gives another impassioned and witty introduction, much of its self-deprecating content devoted to restoring the (outward) normality of people who enjoy horror fiction. I don't enjoy all that much of the modern stuff, to be honest, but I do enjoy writing it (or what looks a hell of a lot like it, anyway). Fortunately, the work here is hardly stereotypical (whatever that might mean), with familiar horror tropes and themes being stretched and reworked to (in most cases) produce something fresh and engaging. Accentuating the coherent feel of the total work is a series of art pieces--drawings and photos--done once more by Paul Mudie, Paula Fay and Lawrence Bailey (honors going to Paul's undead woman--and frog*--and Paula's simple yet engrossing "Portrait of a Young Woman," accompanying the story of the same name). As for the stories, they're all at least good, many excellent, and a few tremendous. My favorites (shit, this is hard):

Paul Newman's "In The Pipeline": A terrific evocation of the nastier parts of childhood, as well as those beloved neighborhood landmarks, open sewer pipes (there was one in mine).

Gareth Hopkins' "Romero and Juliette": A funny view of the world of the undead; some of the names are rather cutesy and referential (must the main character be named George Romero?) but it's an unusually brisk, funny piece that still manages to bring the terror. It also features a zombie frog, which can only be (and is) awesome.

Matt Finucane's "It Is Written": Possibly the most original piece in the anthology, and a brilliant "be-careful-what-you-wish-for" fable of technological "advancement."

James Stanger's "Jacob Raffles": A rough, weirdly poetic piece about the horror of a post-apocalyptic Britain. Several members have treated the idea with excellent results, but James' stands apart in a way; it's hardly a typical story in plot or voice, and has an almost Biblical force to it.

Christopher Wood's "You Can't Sing, You Can't Dance, You Look Awful. You'll Go A Long Way": Reality show parodies have been a staple of British sci-fi/horror at least since Nigel Kneale's brilliant, gruelingly depressing TV play "The Year of the Sex Olympics" (1968--a good thirty years before the whole grisly, exploitative panoply became ubiquitous on our TV screens), but Chris' knack for creating hilariously unappealing main characters (Terry's awful--basically all our worst impulses made flesh) works great with the idea, and the ending's a beaut.

In toto--Neil Christopher and Franklin Marsh: Neil's probably my favorite writer on the forum; his glorious novella "Test of Faith" marked a definite high point. Here we have the quasi-novella "Cerberus Rising," an exciting, politically savvy werewolf yarn set in Ceaucescu's Romania, and "When Hell Freezes Over," a moody (literal) chiller freighted with guilt and well-observed local details. Franklin's stuff runs the gamut from eerie and terrifying--"The Morris Men"--to funnier pieces like "A (Something) In Wardour Street" (which I've just realized might have influenced something I'm presently writing) to brilliant blends of the two like "The Darklands Hall Legacy."

My favorite, though, was Sam Dawson's "Children of the Summer's End." From the euphonious title to the alternately chilling and exhilarating ending, this one really stuck with me for a while afterward. Perhaps it was the depiction of the need to fit in, the pressure to be cool, that hit a chord, as I suspect it might with anyone who's ever felt alone or apart, and the fear of what might happen if the loneliness ever became permanent. Excellent stuff; I'd never read any of Dawson's work, but I hope we see more of it in future.

*To say nothing of his gorgeous werewolf cover.

No Future For You
Now Playing: Arrah and the Ferns--"Bundle Up"
Gilbert and Sullivan remain something of a mystery to me. By last Satursay, I'd seen a TV production of The Mikado with Eric Idle (and, I think, Frank Thornton as the Grand Poobah) and had greatly enjoyed Topsy-Turvy (2000; the last movie ever seen in our old apartment on Spring Street and what I consider to be one of the best historical movies ever made). My newfound interest in opera encouraged me to go to the U-M Gilbert and Sullivan Society's production of The Grand Duke. I'd already chickened out of going to see the recent show of Smetana's The Bartered Bride, and promised myself I wouldn't pass up the chance to see anything remotely resembling an opera the next time it happened by.

It was a lot of fun. I still don't get the cult thing; Gilbert and Sullivan obsessions have cropepd up in everything from The Hand That Rocks The Cradle to The West Wing. The whole thing reminds me way too much of the godawful Rocky Horror phenomenon, but I come close to slandering Gilbert and Sullivan by placing them in the same category. The show was an agreeably farcical confection--mistaken identities, puns and in-jokes, none of which managed to be all that annoying. A group of actors in a generic German principality conspire, for various reasons, to usurp the throne from the doddering title characvter. A couple of hours later, everyone more or less winds up happier. I could have killed the ticketseller afterward, though. There's an unavoidably dopey tradition of singing "God Save The Queen" at the beginning of every show, and I was naturally placed next to a woman who had probably sung soprano professionally for someone, and dear God, did she belt it out. I sang along, but hated myself in the morning.

The sets were perfect--well-done, but none too convincing, which was just the thing for this fairy-tale bailiwick. The reduced orchestra played with brio, but it was the cast that owned the evening, as it should have been. Everyone was great, particularly Thomas Wolfson as Ludwig, the thespian hero on the make, and David Beaulieu as the hapless theater manager Ernest, who scored points just for resemblnig my old psycho roommate Steve*, but for me, I'm afraid everything paled next to Erica Ruff as temperamental diva Julia Jellicoe (again, in a small German theatrical company--Jellicoe). The last was utterly bewitching in both voice and performance, and it didn't hurt that she was gorgeous (the last shouldn't matter, but it ain't a perfect world, as we all know). Look out for that one, is all I'm saying.

*Steve not only believed FOX NEWS was "fair and balanced", but he also used those exact words completely without irony in an argument concerning said blight on reality. I can't help but mention, really, that he also once referred to a group of undergraduate females as "A-1 material." Kid had issues.

Strangling Tortoises
Now Playing: The Hold Steady--"Hot Soft Light"
Ever since my recent career goal decision, I've been haunting the cookbook aisles of the library (and produce, meat, fish, and poultry sections of the grocery store) seeking to expand my expertise in and knowledge of food. I worked as a busser in several restaurants and as a prep cook in this one, and so I think I have a basic working familiarity with the stuff. Along with that familiarity, though, comes an iron-cast habit of finding the frequent excessive seriousness and pomposity of the culinary universe (in short, "foodies") mildly ridiculous. This skepticism goes, by and large, for any area my interest touches, but it's especailly abhorrent when it comes to food. Historical analysis and research, music, cinema and literature aren't absolutely fundamental to our physical lives--food is, and some of the extremes to which many foodies seem to go give me a little pause. For example, I read the Zingerman's Guide To Good Eating recently, thinking it would provide a lot of valuable information on healthy yet flavorful dishes to enrich someone's recipe repertoire. It was more a guide to the most "authentic" wines, olive oils, and cheeses; sometimes there would be interesting practical issues discussed, such as the ethical and environmental morality of fish farms, but it was basically about what was most real (preferably prohibitively expensive and from some rockcliff village in Tuscany hermetically sealed for a milennium--whenever I think of places like that, I think less of good food than I do of Tombs of the Blind Dead). As any good historian could tell you, "authenticity" of something like "cuisine" or "culture" is largely a crock. Just about any cultural enterprise you care to name--cooking, art, music, literature--arose from a hundred different sources and is constantly influenced by countless more. Nothing exists in a vacuum. I read a few books on the cooking experience recently dreading the primacy of this worldview, and was pleased to find that it was largely frowned upon (in print, though--you'd sometimes see remnants of the attitude poking through).

Ruth Reichl, Garlic and Sapphires: When I first heard about this book a couple of years ago, written by the then food critic for The New York Times, I was outraged (well, as outraged as I could get, anyway). Working as a busser in a multiple-plague-inflicted Mexican restaurant (I may have mentioned it in passing), the idea of a food critic was in itself apalling as my compadres and I figured such a person to be like one of our most obnoxious customers tripled, especially since this one (and I imagine many others) went out of her way to go incognito, and probably kvetched and prima donna'd her way all through the meal, then savaged whatever unlucky place got the "privilege" of being reviewed in some overrated rag (and there are areas, such as the continued employment of David Brooks and Maureen Dowd, in which The New York Times is indeed such a thing). Years later, I'm a lot more understanding, and the face that Reichl employs a variety of entertaining disguises in horrifyingly snooty Manhattan restaurants makes it soooo much different. She focuses on the end product, rather than the service (although that's important), and really, bussers there probably make at least three times what I presently pull down as a prep cook and general dogsbody (see my observation on Mookie in Do The Right Thing several entries back). It's entertaining enough, with some choice ruminations on eating and identity, but tends to become a little name-dropping and mystical towards the end. There are a few pretty cool-looking recipes in there, though, and her assertion that risotto is very hard to make properly inspires me to try it myself (but not right now).

Julie Powell, Julie and Julia: Some of you may have heard about this one, detailing a New York City secretary's decision to blog her way through Julia Child's classic Mastering The Art of French Cooking, doing a recipe a day and chronicling the results online. For some reason, I thought this was going to be terribly cutesy and worshipful, and was wonderfully relieved to find how dead wrong I was. As a cook and blogger of about an age with the author, I found this really hit some wavelength of mine, and enjoyed it tremendously. As Powell confesses, she "swears like a sailor," only making the whole thing seem more immediate and tactile. In many ways, Powell has a life much like one of those overrepresented young women on television: around thirty, white, cute, witty, New York-based, and there the resemblances end. She's married. She lives in Queens, in a tiny apartment (which actually sounds fine to me). She has to worry about money, having a shitty job--as a secretary, but that just made me all the more grateful that my own less-than-stellar culinary work experience makes me enjoy cooking at home more, not less. Electrical breakdowns, marital spats, family visits... all become simply spanners to be wrenched free of the works. The revelation at the end that Julia Child herself finds the whole thing "disrespectful" (it sounds weird, but this actually diminishes my hitherto unblemished respect for the woman), made me love it all the more. My house's stove isn't all that great either (although it's strangely better than the one at work), the kitchen's dingy but lovable, and when I'm doing something like making soup on a Saturday night (sadly no longer listening to CBC 3), I can think of Julie Powell, her bizarre home life and (now former, apparently, bless her) crappy day job, and can relax in an imagined solidarity with thousands of put-upon cooks around the country, Julie Powell first and foremost among them.

Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: It's probably just as well that I read Bourdain and Powell before someone like M.F.K. Fisher, as I might have been frightened away by all the encrusted tradition. Bourdain's experiences went toward creating an unjustly short-lived FOX comedy of the same title as the book, with Bradley Cooper and Frank Langella. As it was the time I began to seriously think about changing career goals, I found its portrayal of life in the restaurant world both pleasantly cathartic and very familiar. Bourdain's a distinguished executive chef and writer in, you guessed it, New York City (you're not the only one who senses a pattern, and their alleged ineptitude at making picante sauce doesn't make me feel one whit better), and has kicked around the darker edges of the culinary world for some time (as well as, eventually, a nasty heroin and cocaine habit)--Kitchen is a mix of helpful tips, life lessons and bizarre misadventures in some classy-looking places (perhaps inevitably, every one of the restaurants he described turned into Piatto once they hit my brain). Bourdain's frequently a man after my own heart, particularly when it comes to celebrity chefs, describing Emeril, for example, as "fuzzy" and "Ewok-like" (after remembering the shitstorm we had to go through when I worked at Barnes and Noble in Baton Rouge the day Emeril came to sign, I'm totally cool with that). He's also apparently trashed Rachel Ray in print (in Food and Wine, I think--I've never seen her show or read her books, but I'm fine with that, too, as she reminds me of my boss). Sometimes he tries a little too hard to be edgy and "dangerous", he (self-confessedly) seems a bit of an asshole, and he even starts to get the foodie shakes a little, but the latter are usually on the side of freshness and simplicity, which isn't usually the case (no garlic presses, homemade sauces, use the freshest ingredients), and which I'm trying to start doing around the house.

Will I become a food snob? I hope not. Eating's way too important to take too seriously, if you get my drift, but it's nice to have the option to go all hoity-toity. At least I'll know how. Besides, while food snobbery can be excessive, so can its mirror-image, a faux-proletarian wallowing in diner food and cheap beers (Stroh's is pretty good, PBR less so, but to ignore all else in favor of those two is sheer lunacy). One of the things I enjoy most is having feet in two worlds, and this seems as good a way as any to do it.

Flyer-Snatch Unveiled
Now Playing: Nellie McKay (no relation)--"Inner Peace"
The other day, I got out of work early and was walking along Liberty Street when I came, wholly unawares, upon a particularly notorious local character whose activities have gone much unremarked upon by his foes: essentially all those with an interest in a vibrant city and a happening nightlife. I speak, of course, of the dreaded Flyer-Snatch, the freeze-dried old jackanapes who thinks that flyers on poles and walls, etc. are visual pollution and an affront to the utopian aesthetics of his beloved, criminally overpriced Treetown, as opposed to a vital way to get the word out on an actual music scene in Ann Arbor. Flyer-Snatch roams the streets, one would hope in his free time, tearing down flyers wherever he finds them, an activity that, one can imagine, greatly perturbed certain friends who put a great deal of time and energy into promoting the music scene that lends the town much of what good it retains. I found this Homeric-scale timewaster on the corner of Liberty and Thompson, seriously going to town on one of the more heavily festooned poles, his skeletal face and grey whiskers harsh and unpleasant beneath the green baseball cap, his bony hands ripping off the paper with claw-like motions that made it look as if he were casting spells. It was cold out, and I had my cap and scarf on, the latter almost totally covering my face. I like to think I looked a suburban Tuareg, or perhaps one of the mysterious ski-masked characters that menace Michael Sacks' Billy Pilgrim through the plane windows in George Roy Hill's underrated 1972 film of Slaughterhouse Five. There was really only one thing to do: stand about seven or eight feet away from him in the chill and sunshine and glare at him silently as he went about his work. Flyer-Snatch looked at me a little strangely once or twice, which nearly led me to speak. Something along the lines of "dude, you're the one spending five to ten minutes on tearing flyers off a fucking telephone pole!!!" I should have just walked on, but he really deserved the admittedly miniscule discomfort, and besides, I was curious to see if he'd "go all the way," as they put it. He finished, leaving the "hard ones" on, which I didn't think spoke well of his dedication. Now that I think of it, I should have clapped sarcastically as he walked off. Maybe I'll get another chance.

St. Patrick's Day? I skipped all the annoying bar parties (and, more to the point, bar partiers), went home after Food Gatherers and fixed Irish stew, which turned out wonderfully--barley is so much more rewarding than rice, so much more flavorful and textured (you can actually chew it, where rice goes straight through). It was a pretty cooking-heavy day; while the stew was cooking in the oven, I went ahead and fixed myself some garlic sauted potatoes for later (increasingly one of my favorite snacks) and would have made lamb stock (I still have the bones from the stuff I used for the stew) if I hadn't accidentally burned the onions--I guess as opposed to purposefully burning the onions; huh? I'd planned on watching How Green Was My Valley (1941; Welsh in subject matter but directed by John Ford), but instead went halfway between Gounod's Faust on CBC Radio 2 (not as lame as I expected) and the Patrick Troughton Doctor Who classic "The Invasion" (1968). In retrospect, it was a pretty fucking sweet day, right up to the end...

Irish Stew
2 tbsp butter
2 medium onions, chopped
3 lbs. boneless lamb stew meat cut into small chunks
3/4 tsp dried thyme
2 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 tsp Worcs sauce
4 medium potatoes, peeled and halved
8 medium carrots, peeled and cut diagonally
1/4 cup pearl barley
1/4 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Saute onions in Dutch oven with butter, eventually stirring in lamb, thyme, and salt and pepper to taste. Add stock and potatoes, stir, and place in oven for 1 hr. Add carrots, cream, and barley, replacing in oven for another hour. When done, season with salt and pepper and serve.

I cut the recipe, made for 4-6 people, by a third and used balsamic vinaigrette instead of Worcs (and a rosemary-basil combo instead of thyme), and drained the fluid left over when it had finished cooking--I think I used a cup too much. It was quite a mouthful anyway, and I have at least half of it left over from dinner, which I did with a Caesar salad and a bottle of Molson, the latter tasting like ambrosia. Why the Molson? Well...

CBC Radio 3 is no more, at least on the regular airwaves in southeast Michigan. Due to a massive reogranization of Radio 2, the Saturday night block of the Canadian public indie pop, rock and hiphop station will no longer run. Hopefully the remix will leave Tom Allen's Music and Company and Howard Dick's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera untouched--the broadcast of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra on the 3rd was awesome. I'd become greatly attached to Radio 2 as an ongoing soundtrack to both lazy stay-at-home Saturday nights and those when, in recent months, I trained myself on new recipes, as well as the best way to keep track of musical developments north of the border (and occasionally here and in Europe--without Radio 3, I'd never have heard of the Go! Team). While last night was bittersweet, my own favorite run was last 3rd (as mentioned before, Radio 2 was on a real roll that weekend), in which Evaporators frontman "Nardwar The Human Serviette" unleashed a recording of a song by the Mynah Birds, the all-but-forgotten 60s folk/R&B outfit that featured both Neil Young and Rick James, the Two Koreas rocked out "U-Boat Commander," and best of all, Vancouver-based DJ Grant Lawrence perfectly showcased the medium's possibilities by encouraging a group of charming teen callers at an outdoor car party on the shores of Cape Breton Island to crank it up, open their doors, and dance to the wistful and whistle-heavy Peter, Bjorn and John instant classic "Young Folks," thus providing a forever indelible image to someone listening to the same song two thousand miles away, and probably thousands more at any number of distances. Nothing really could have topped that, or given such a glorious showcase for what radio can do, and I'd like to thank the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for making it all possible, eh?

Finally, a number of friends have reported problems with the comments, and so I've decided to start moderating; hopefully that might iron out the kinks, whatever they are... *fingers crossed*