Melanie Speaks!

The other night we were listening to some international children's album and on comes "Waltzing Matilda." Melanie looks at Amalia and says, "Amalia, this is 'Waltzing Matilda', which is Australian for 'Sweet Home Alabama.""

The joys of being a restaurant reviewer

One of the perks of being a newspaper restaurant reviewer is, of course, all the food. One of the strangest aspects of the food is the stream of comps that come my way from restaurant PR firms. I suppose it makes sense, as it is always good for the critics to know your restaurant, but in a way it does not make sense, because I am rather impaired in reviewing a place where the servers and general manager know who I am.

So, they comp me and my guest a meal, but I can't write about it, because they know who I am, which means that what I get is an example of what they can do, not necessarily (often, but not always) what they usually do. Of course I can certainly generate buzz for the restaurant, particularly by recommending that one of our other reviewers take the place for an assignment, but it is kind of a shame, since it would really have been fun to review the place I just went to.

Since I will probably not review the place (they just got too good a look at me), I will do two things. First, I am going to highly suggest that the editor send another reviewer there. Second, I am going to tell you about it:

The restaurant in question is Fringale, a wonderful French Basque restaurant in San Francisco (4th Street). I have eaten there a few years ago, but it was under a different head chef. I loved it then and was not disappointed this time. Chef Marc Rasic, although from Luxembourg, clearly understands the food of the Pyranees.

If anyone wants details of what we ate, I will be happy to add that, but in the interest of brevity, let me just say this: frisee salad with warm bacon dressing, poached egg and toasted levain, beef carpaccio with arugula pesto and parmesan (Amalia devoured almost all of this), duck leg confitand carrot hachis parmentier (triple yum - there were two reasons that Amalia did not eat all of the carpaccio - this was one of them), Berkshire pork shoulder confit with cabbage and apples, soft chestnut flour polenta with olives, sun dried tomatoes and parmesan, some of the best pommes frites in the area, a peach tarte built on an absolutely incredible puff pastry crust, and berries and beaujolais compote with fromage blanc sorbet.

Couple this food with immaculate service and a pleasant, inviting atmosphere, and you have one more reason to visit the great city of San Francisco (or if you are already in San Francisco, another reason to brave ballpark traffic to get to that side of town).

The Princess Speaks!

Amália (sitting on the couch, holding a slinky up to her eyes): Look! I have knock ears!
Erik: Knock ears?
Amália: No, mu-knock-u-ears.
Erik: Ah, binoculars!
Amália (looking at me like I’m from outer space): yeah, mu-knock-u-ears.

Then, there was the other night, when we were teaching Amália some anatomy terms.

Melanie: This is the gluteus maximus. Can you say “gluteus?”
Amália: Gluteus
Melanie: Maximus
Amália: Masochist
Melanie: Hmmm. Gluteus Masochist. Must be the Stairmaster from hell.

And, finally, along the same lines:

Erik: Anterior
Amália: Anteater

Prayer Requests

First, please pray for the repose of the soul of an old and dear family friend, Lorraine Long. She grew up with my mother's generation of cousins and has always been part of the family. She was a sweet woman whose presence always graced our family get togethers. We have a family reunion coming up next month, and her absence will be felt greatly.

Second, an opportunity for my family has come up that is borderline out of our reach to take advantage of. It will take direction, hard work, and probably a miracle still, so if y'all could send some prayers out for us (St. Joseph would be perfect), I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

Third, prayers would be in order for an old friend who is getting married this weekend. She could use any prayers you can send.

Swimming in Quicksand

So far this week I have the feeling that every hour of work that I do actually sets me two hours behind. One problem solved begets two new problems and so forth, and then a whole new set of things gets plopped on my desk. The good part is that the work I have is pretty fun and yields a real feeling of accomplishment when it is finished, so I really can't complain, but it still seems like I am never going to be done with a couple of projects.

One of the problems I am now tackling is one of perspective, or how to violate the laws of perspective in an aesthetically pleasing manner. I was just in the studio playing with different tricks and I think I may have come closer to resolving it. Once again I owe thanks to recent works of Wayne Thiebaud for pointing the direction out. Now it should be just a matter of fine tuning and I will be able to mail off this sketch! Yippeeee! Once the sketch is approved, the actual painting will be fairly easy, as the nightmare has been in integrating the figure into a particularly difficult landscape (a river, a levee, and a field, with the figure standing on the river side of the levee. The trick is to lift the viewpoint up so that the field may be seen, but not so much as to force the rather strange downward view of the figure (although Chris Brown would have done it that way, and pulled it off, too), or to force the field into the foreground (that is the real trick, and I may have to achieve what I am trying to do by way of color, which rubs me slightly the wrong way)).

I also have a sneaking suspicion that my new editor at the paper is going to drop an unexpected review on me. Just a sneaking suspicion, but enough to make me nervous.

Anyway, blogging might be sparse, or it might be heavy. I don't know.

Your Weekend Market Watch

I really need to get to bed, but here it is:

Farmers' Market Report for the Bay Area and southern Superior California:

1. Tomatoes are great looking. Saw some beautiful brandywines and German stiples, as well as plenty of lovely orange cherries. If you are dilligent, you should find good, organic heirlooms for $1 a pound. If you are less ambitious in your bargain seeking, then expect to pay $2, maybe $3 for really spectacular ones. If you pay more than $3 a pound, you are getting ripped off. For cooking, don't overlook the Romas, which are good right now (not quite peak, though), and dropping in price.

2. Stone fruit: still good nectarines and peaches. I bought our first batch of pluots this weekend ($1.50 a pound for organic, from Reedly in the central valley). Good flavor and balance between tartness and sweetness.

3. Zucchini: good and cheap. Keep your eyes open for zucchini blossoms. The best are grown in the Vacaville hills.

4. Table grapes: found some sweet, yet one dimensional red flames. Amalia liked them.

5. Eggplant and capsicum: these are finally getting to their season. Lovely eggplant, and the varieties of capsicum are beginning to come out. It is a little early for chocolates (my favorite), but the purple ones are ready, as well as the Hungarians and Italians.

6. Basil: yowza! Every winter I forget what a punch this herb packs. Good prices ($1 for huge, organic, roots-attached bunches), although I planted a good amount, so I am still harvesting my own.

7. Melons: one word in the melon department: ambrosia. Buy one and your call will smell of melon by the time you get home.

8. Corn: Still plagued by breeding problems (and will be for a long time). Corn is just too sweet and not corny enough. Stick with yellow corn from Brentwood. Price is still a bit high (3 ears for $1), but that should come down in a few weeks.

9. Apples: avoid like the plague. What are they doing trying to pass off stored winter apples at those prices? At this point they are only good for cooking. The farmers ought to be unloading them cheap. On a similar note, expect fresh apple juice to be fairly bitter and too earthy tasting.

10. Blackberries. There is no excuse besides convenience to pay for blackberries. Get off your lazy duff and pick your own. Sheesh.

Scottish cuisine!

In keeping with the accusation that I am a closet Scotsman, let me say that nothing is as satisfying as picking blackberries from a shady canyon in a city park, EXCEPT seeing poorer quality blackberries on sale for $2 for a little basket. Needless to say, our hands and tongues were quite purple this weekend. I think that Amalia and I will return to the berry patch Wednesday afternoon, as I keep having olfactory hallucinations of blackberry galette, which will not go away until I have one in front of me, preferably served warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

I also discovered a beautiful nettle patch. It is too late for these plants, but come winter, when the new shoots are up, I plan on being there with gloves and a sack.

They don't make 'em like this anymore...

Everyone has hopefully heard the good news that the Spanish have decided to leave the statue of Santiago Matamoros in its rightful place in Campostela.

Fr. Tucker points out an article on the issue (which can be found here) that includes this passage:

On Sunday, in a ceremony that will resound with ancient symbolism, King Juan Carlos will pay homage to the Moor Slayer on his saint day by making the annual National Offering at Santiago.

The dictator Gen Francisco Franco once sent his only Moroccan general, Mohamed ben Miziam del Qasim, to make the offering. Sensitive officials covered the base of the statue with cloth to hide the decapitated heads of his compatriots.

There is nothing that makes my admiration for Gen. Franco (pray for his canonization!) grow than reading anecdotes like this. I can think of no gesture more Spanish than sending his one Moroccan general to this duty. In this one act is the bullfight, the conquest of the Aztecs, the music of Padre Soler, the building of El Escorial, the flamenco, the commissioning of Admiral Colombus all rolled together in one act of Hispanismo.

I am not Spanish by family, but was born in New Spain (Alta California), in the city named for the Holy Sacraments. If I were to look towards a restoration of monarchy, it would not be towards heretic German princelings on a remote and barbaric island off the coast of France, or even to the good, Catholic True King of said remote and barbaric island, rather to the one leader who shows Imperial mettle: King Juan Carlos Borbon y Borbon. I may not agree with everything he has done (you all may be surprised, but I completely support his stance in the coup - Phalangism was great for Spain, and will be great for the other nations that need it, but it had done what it needed to do, and it was time for Spain to move to the next stage), but I respect him considerably. The late great Gen. Francisco Franco y Bahamonde did the right thing by seeing Juan Carlos to the throne.

Tomorrow!

Are you going to be hiding in the oven tomorrow?

Levitating to the rafters of the church?

All to avoid the stench of human sin and corruption?

If so, you must be observing the feast of Christina the Astonishing!

Thanks to Don for pointing out her feast day! While you are at it, be sure to check out Nick Cave's song about her.

Friday Five

1. What is the first painting that you remember seeing (I am talking about originals only, and they neither have to be famous nor painted by someone famous, although in my own answers I will exclude children's art as well as any of my own or Melanie's pieces that are around the house or studio. Feel free to make your own exclusions)?

2. What is the last painting that you saw?

3. What is the next painting that you expect to see?

4. What painting have you not seen that you would really like to see?

5. Describe a notable time when a painting did not make such a big impression on you when you saw it, but continued to come back to your active memory and thus engaged your thoughts.

I have to run right now (we have a tour of an ice cream factory to get to), but I will post my answers in the Extended Entry section this afternoon.

UPDATE: I posted my answers in the Extended Entry section, as promised.

1. This is a hard question for me, since my parents have been taking me to museums since I was born, as we do with Amalia. I sat down and thought back to the first painting I remember, and I think that it was a Miro. I have many memories of Miro from way back, because my father is a big Miro fan, and was always hunting down Miro paintings when we were in a town with a decent museum. What I remember, though, is a generic Miro painting, rather than a particular Miro painting, so I am not counting it.

I also have many early memories of Clyfford Still paintings, mostly because SFMOMA has a good collection of them, and they are always in their own room (those who understand the situation with Still will take this as a given: Still, you see, was such an egotist that he gave many canvases to museums with the stipulation that they must be in their own room or section. If the museum in any way fails to meet his terms, the paintings go to his heirs. Since the paintings are worth a lot of money, the heirs have pretty good cause to strictly enforce Still's will), although my early memories are fuzzy as to which one first stood out as distinct from the others.

So, even though I have earlier memories of Miro and Still, I will have to point to Sunday Morning in the Mines by Charles Christian Nahl as the first painting that I really remember as a painting. It hangs in Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum, and is a really exciting example of mid to late 19th century (1872 to be precise) California Art.

2. I am not counting any painting in my house or my parents' house, so it would have to be Mike Henderson's North Beach (oil on canvas. 1989), hanging in the Oakland Museum of California.

3. Let's see. I probably will next see a painting at mass, and I think I will be going to mass at the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi in San Francisco, so probably the murals in the front of the church. They date from the 1920's. are rather mediocre, although they do what they are supposed to do, and I cannot remember the name of the artist. It is entirely possible that I will see the North Beach mural at the corner of Columbus and Broadway or the various murals on City Lights Bookstore or Caffe Vesuvio before getting to the church. If I end up going to mass at St. Margaret Mary's in Oakland, I am not sure. We might even make it to SFMOMA tomorrow, in which case I really don't know.

4. I am going to count a painting that I saw but was too young to remember, and that is Matisse's dancers in the Hermitage. I was two years old and may have been asleep. I do not remember the Hermitage, although I have a few memories of Eastern Europe from that age. At that age all the gold leaf at the summer palace and the "snail shells" (that's what I thought of - sea snail shells) of St. Basil's fascinated me more than any painting.

5. During the Robert Ryman retrospective at SFMOMA back in 1992 or thereabouts, I was impressed with his work, but did not realize quite the impact that it made on me. There was one piece in particular, that was basically small staccato zinc white strokes on a well-oxidized iron ground that at first I saw as a good, tightly rendered minimalist/expressionist painting, but somehow really lodged in my head, as I can almost trace each of those strokes.

When SFMOMA moved into its new digs on 3rd Street, they had a room specifically dedicated to Robert Ryman's work (which they changed into something else a few years back). When I first walked in there in 1995 or whenever it was that the new museum opened, I was overjoyed to find that little painting hanging there. When I was able to get to SFMOMA on at least a weekly basis, I went back to that painting each time and just soaked it in. I never expected to like it that much when I first saw it at the retrospective.

MT-Blacklist is Great!

133 spam comments vanished and it took me under a minute! Bravo MT-Blacklist! Now if only I had a realtime version that would simply block out comments from certain people who use certain phrases in real life.

"Will you sign my petition to..." ZAP. Comment rendered inaudible.

Although that would end my joy of arguing with the PIRG folks (not to mention animal rights weenies).

Last time I had an argument with a petition gatherer (legalize marijuana), we actually had a good conversation. He was able to articulate points, he considered mine, did a good job of addressing them, etc. I was not convinced (I am mixed on the legalization of marijuana, but his petition was to put it on the front burner at the local level, and Oakland has far more important things to do than to lead a battle through the courts to establish case law for this - not to mention the fact that he had not thought through the other ramifications of the precedents that would be set if they won. Why not let Santa Monica lead this one? They have the money to burn. Oakland needs to spend its resources elsewhere), but we had a good and respectful argument.

However, most of the petition gatherers are a bunch of Naderites who are incapable of listening to any conflicting view. They are followers of a cult, and will not question the supreme leader. I wouldn't mind if some chip somewhere rendered them mute.

Very funny animation short

I highly recommend this parody of Woody Guthrie's This Land. The whole thing is very well done.

Need a Medical Term Please

What exactly do you call the condition that impels people over the age of 30 to listen to hip hop, particularly at deafening volume? There should be some sort of foundation to help these people.

Speaking of Pop culture as medical case studies, the phrase "to rock," meaning to get into rock and roll music, has always struck me as a description of a symptom of some severe mental illness: one that has discrete stages, starting at Soft Rock, then moving to Hard Rock. However, it would seem that it typically goes the other way. As youth fades, the hard rock becomes soft rock. It still brings images of poor souls in institutions, locked into some rhythmic motions ad infinitum.

I was recently at a place where there was one of these "soft rock" stations on. What a bunch of pabulum! Boring harmonies, undeveloped melodies, strained vocals, inane lyrics. These fellows, Hall and Oates, seem to be about the worst of the bunch, but I did not hear one song that was remotely interesting. Soft Rock is where the musical brain, having been fed the pseudo-stimulation of hard rock and not the real meat of the matter, goes to slumber forever.

Of course Soft Rock is not nearly as wretched as "Smooth Jazz," which is not jazz at all (and not all that smooth when played by the intonationally-challenged Kenny G). Who listens to this stuff? Why does Kenny G sell records (assuming that he does anymore. Of course no one sells records these days, the result of too many years of dull music being hyped to the public).

New Rules By and For the Blogduce!

1. Do not go out to review a French restaurant when you are in the early stages of fighting a sinus infection.

2. If you do violate rule 1, have red wine anyway, if it goes with your meal.

3. Prepare to pay the consequences.

4. Drink a lot of water to mitigate said consequences.

5. Avoid the espresso, since the French have no idea how to brew a good coffee of any sort, and you will need a good espresso to fight the sinus infection. Go home to have it. Also it gets tedious having to pan awful restaurant-made espressi all the time (why, oh why don't they just take the time to learn to make it? Those machines are so expensive, there is no reason to not learn how to use them).

But for the French, forget it. You see, the French were anxious to use up their awful West African beans from their own colonies, so they invented the "technique" of incinerating them (they call it "French Roast" but it really means charred). The stuff that was even too awful to foist on the French palate was shipped to New Orleans, where they found roasted chicory root to make it a little more drinkable (and cheaper, to boot).

I don't understand why it is still so, however. The French have access to good beans, they have a vital cafe culture, and even the Englisch are starting to learn how to cook. So why don't the French learn to make coffee? Fer cryin' out loud the Krauts make good coffee (or at least as good as drip coffee can be)!

Anyway, the restaurant was good, Amalia ate escargots for the first time (with a Pernod/garlic/herb butter). She said it was too spicy (!?!), but had seconds anyway. The waiter was most accomodating when she wanted ketchup to go with her pommes frites. It arrived in a lovely crystal serving dish. Major Points! Almost makes up for the fact that the tomato salad was served too cold.

Of course they were good pommes frites and did not really need ketchup (although a dip in the beurre rouge of my steak was mighty nice).

Next time I have to review a restaurant when I am sick, it will be a pho place!

The Sundial Bridge

Of course the first art-related question that a visitor to Redding must answer is, "what do you think of the Sundial Bridge?"

Since we are in Redding with some frequency we have been watching the bridge go up from the plans to the final product, which has been exciting. The finished bridge is stunning: elegant forms that provide multiple vantage points emphasizing different curves, different angles and different materials.

I will not go into too much detail on Calatrava's work, as I have not seen that much of it first hand, and the actual structures are always more interesting in real life than from even the best photographs (although this bridge is very photogenic - wish I had brought my camera). What really struck me was the tile work on the tower. I had read that he was influenced by Gaudi, but did not see it until I saw that tile work, which looked a bit like something that Gaudi and Robert Ryman could have collaborated on: monochromatic white, where the texture is composed solely by the variety of tile sizes.

When you approach the tower, it is nothing but a dazzling white form, elegantly sloping away from the Sacramento River. As you get closer, you see that the white surface is actually a mosaic.

My one criticism of the bridge is that dazzling white can be overwealming in Redding. This is a town where the summer temperature is regularly over 100 degrees. In Sacramento we used to always say, "well, it could be worse, you could be in Redding or Red Bluff." So, as you cross the bridge on a hot day, the brightness of it is almost blinding.

However, all of that bright hot light forces you to look at the river and the trees, so the bridge brilliantly throws the focus from itself to the lovely scenery not by understatement, but by outlandish overstatement. Then, once you reach the shade of the tower, you can focus on the structure itself, which rewards with some of the loveliest angles that were not painted by Richard Diebenkorn.

The Sundial Bridge is part of the Turtle Bay Exploration Park, which is Redding's answer to the Oakland Museum of California, but with a local focus instead of a statewide focus. It combines the various civic museums of Redding: art, history and natural science under one roof.

For a veteran of history museums, I am used to the standard cant of the liberal academics who run these places. They show some artifact of human history, like logging, and basically say, "Ah, you thought that logging was good. Well, it isn't. It's BAAAAAAAAAAAAD."

It's usually a little more subtle than that, but not much:

"While popular publications glorified the settlers, we now appreciate the devastation that they brought upon the land, the indigenous people, and even their own women, as they established systems that forced ethnic minorities, women and animals into conditions that amounted to slavery. Two four six eight, Race! Class! Gender!"

The Turtle Bay Exploration Park, being in Redding, has to play it a little more cautious. As a result they actually achieve the detached, fairly objective view of things that the others pretend to by indulging in Commie Agitprop.

DIGRESSION:
Melanie: Amalia, here is a pretty, clean cup for you.
Erik: Actually it is a very clean cup that happens to be pretty.
Melanie: What did I say?
Erik: "Here is a pretty, clean cup for you." I just wasn't able to see the comma from where I am sitting.
Melanie: Amalia, he might be sick, but he is still a pain.
DIGRESSION OVER

For instance, the current exhibit about infrastructure shows the hidden water, energy, and landfill costs of building things (cities, subdivisions, etc.), but also amply shows the benefits to these things. The exhibit is also well designed, attractive, interesting, and full of great historical photos.

Bravo to Turtle Bay! If you are in Redding, definitely check them out (they also have a five foot long white sturgeon in their very cool Sacramento River tank).

No! Not this week!

Melanie and Amalia picked up some bug last week. It seems to be basically a sinus infection (headache, eyeache, lightheadedness, etc.), but with the added benefit of making the host feel beat up.

I just assumed that it was another example of the supremacy of my regimin. After all, I only get sick a fourth of the time the rest of the members of the household, and since I am the only one to drink 8 to 12 shots of ristretto espresso a day, obviously everyone should drink 8 to 12 shots of ristretto espresso too.

I am six feet tall. Baby giraffes are six feet tall. I am a baby giraffe. Don't tell me that I don't understand logic.

What I don't understand are the strange symptoms this thing has. I woke up feeling like I have been someone's punching bag all night. Then the eye ache (what am I doing at the computer, you might ask?), headache, and dizziness. I don't think I have the horrid fever, yet. I just felt my head and it did not seem too hot. What? Logic train leaving the station again? Curses!

Anyway, that feeling of dread and optimism that I had last night, facing the mountain of work I have, has changed into mostly just dread.

The worst of it is that I have a restaurant review that needs to happen tomorrow. If my nose plugs up, I am going to go crazy (ier).

I still will get everything done, as I am a newspaper man (why are there two superheroes who work in the newspaper business, but only use it as a ruse to look humble and ordinary? Aren't we known for our bulging muscles, our quick wits, our prodigious consumption of whisky? Oh, yeah, that), but I might need the ICU by next week.

However, the bad news is that I probably will use the old blog to take breaks (unless the breaks require drugs and sleeping and nasty hot medicinal herbal teas and all that keee-rap), so if you are one of the poor hooked folks who read this blog with the feeling of horror and excitement that a junkie looks at the needle with, I am sorry. You might just overdose.

Meanwhile, for those hoping to go to Gustine tonight for the bulls, I was pretty sure that I was not going to go anyway, but this caps it. It should be fun, although the cartel is pretty standard. So, if you have an inkling, then go and report. I am always interested in how Cesar Castaneda does, because he is an interesting case in the world of bulls.

I will probably be away from the bulls until August (most of the corridas are too far away), so there will be no bullfight reports until then.

Just Got Back

We just returned from Redding, where we explored caves, hiked around waterfalls, visited with family, and so on. I am facing a heap of work, so will have to just post this quick "hello", but will try for something a little more substantial tomorrow night.

Head for the Hills! Heatwave Coming!

Sensible people leave hot places for milder climes when faces with impending heatwaves. Not us. We leave the Bay Area for Redding, which is basically an out of the air-conditioned arm chair and into the furnace sort of proposition.

I will try to post interesting things from Redding (and a report on the new bridge, which we last saw almost finished), but posting might be spotty until Sunday (we get back Saturday night).

Pablo Neruda

One hundred years ago today, Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto was born in Chile. Something happened to him fairly early on in life: in his own words, poetry arrived (read his poem about it below). He is better known by his pen name, which he later legally adopted, Pablo Neruda. He was a doctrinaire Communist, fought for the side of evil in the Spanish Civil War, received the Stalin Prize, and wrote some awful Commie doggerel here and there.

However, when he was good, he was very good. He could write poetry that sliced straight to the heart of the matter. His use of imagery can be startling, lyrical and chilling all at the same time. His poetry can be translated, although it does lose something when it is not in Spanish. Neruda is one of those artists, like Picasso, like David whose work and artistry transcends the artists’ reptilian philosophy. That is the crucial difference between Neruda and Paul Robeson: while Neruda still could tap into the Good, the True and the Beautiful, Robeson was nothing more than a bitter, nasty, ham actor and overblown minstrel singer. Even though both celebrated and loved Joseph Stalin, I can celebrate Neruda with a clear conscience.

Neruda also looked a lot like Philippe Noiret, one of my all time favorite actors, who played Neruda in Il Postino. Since Neruda was older, I suppose it is more correct to say that Noiret looks a lot like Neruda, but the resemblance is uncanny. The only closer resemblance I have seen in a biopic was Ed Harris as Jackson Pollock.

I found this translation of one of his poems on the Internet:

POETRY

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

SFMOMA

I just scanned Anna Conti's Site and was reminded that there is new stuff at SFMOMA. It looks like I need to make a trip. I missed the members' preview, because those things are not fun with a toddler. We need to go in the morning on a Tuesday or the paintings are lost in a sea of big people (imagine the view from a two-year old's perspective).

We did make a quick trip this afternoon to the Oakland Museum of California, where Amalia has a piece on display (a tile, to be precise. She was there with Melanie on a family craft day, and this was our first time to see it after firing. Lots of purple with some interesting sgraffito, all of which is symbolic in Amalia's highly personalized language: a squiggle for Mamma, a squiggle for Babbo, a squiggle for Nonna, a squiggle for Granddad, a squiggle that was created for Lorenzo (neighbor), but Amalia now denies. Mamma was there and heard it all, though. Let's not tell Lorenzo that Amalia changed her mind).

After viewing the tile, Amalia wanted to talk to the deer in the natural history section, so they went off there, and I went up to the art section. Got to spend some quality time in front of Diebenkorn's Ocean Park #107. I like just about all of the Ocean Park paintings, but this is one of my all time favorites, probably because I know it better than all the others, but also because it really is a superb painting.

I also spent some time looking at William Keith's middle period and the Society of Six. There was a contemporary art show and some of the pieces were moderately interesting, but only a few, and none were that interesting.

The Oakland Museum still has horrid lighting. If you have millions of dollars sitting around looking for a good home, they could use an updated lighting system (not to mention a whole bunch of other things - the history section could use a dusting off and updating, too).

The last big show I went to and did not blog about was the Art Deco show at the California Legion of Honor. It was good, although terrible crowded, and did not go into art deco architecture enough. It was a good reminder that the ideas of art deco were great in design but fairly lame in easel painting. If I felt more like writing about a design period that I am not too excited about, I would post a full review, but I don't, so I won't (I did mention being up until 3am, didn't I?).

So, if you are interested, go read Anna Conti's review of SFMOMA (she also links to the insipid Ken Baker, who I stopped reading years ago, but might be worth checking out for this one). I have read neither review so far, because I want to see it first, but I will read them and will review the thing myself after I see what they have done.

I have also resolved to make the rounds at the commercial galleries this summer. I have not done that for a long time, but it is worth doing. It at least gives me something to rant about.

Party post mortem

Last night was my Annual Fiesta de San Fermin, where I cook food from all over the taurine universe. Here is the menu (with a few recipes: if you want more, then holler):

1. Tapas: Spanish chorizo, anchovy stuffed olives, French green olives with herbs, French oil cured olives.

2. Boef Gardienne de la Comargue:

Brown beef stew meat (preferably from a bull) in butter, olive oil, lard or goose fat (I use goose fat, because I always have a huge supply of the stuff).

Saute a few cloves of garlic, a diced onion and add the browned beef. Add a can of ground or chopped tomatoes (I used 6 in 1 from Escalon, California), a generous splash (well, a cup or two) of wine or dry vermouth, the juice of a few oranges, the slivered zest of said oranges, a good dash of lavendar salt, and let simmer.

When the meat is done, add black oil cured olives. Serve over rice.

3. Basque chicken with cabbage:

Saute strips of chicken meat. Add ribbons of cabbage and garlic and cumin seeds and a can of tomatoes. Cook over low heat until the chicken is done. Season to taste. Serve.

4. Gazpacho. Long recipe. If you want it, search the site, as I may have posted it, otherwise holler and I will post it.

5. Grilled linguica and bifanas: The linguica is self-explanatory, bifanas are pork steaks marinated in Portuguese marinade (I buy mine, but you can make your own with red wine vinegar, pimenton, garlic, bay, oregano and salt) for 12 hours, drained and dried, then barbecued. I also grilled a couple of tri-tips in the marinade.

6. Carnitas: search the site, I am pretty sure I have posted this recipe before.

7. sangria: jug red wine, sugar, orange juice, orange slices, apple slices, vodka. Warn guests about the vodka, as it goes down easily, as do guests who have consumed too much.

8. Papas bravas: use red potatoes or Yukon golds: cut into cubes or chunks, fry in olive oil or goose fat with generous dusting of pimenton and salt. Drizzle with

9. Paella. Shell shrimp. Use shells to make shrimp stock. In olive oil, saute garlic, onion, bell pepper, shrimp, then toast rice. Add broth, saffron peas. When rice is about halfway cooked, add more stock, imbed clams and mussels in attractive pattern. Put the pan in oven. When the rice is done, and a crust is formed, remove, adjust for salt, and serve.

Anything else? Probably. It was a long night. I didn't get to bed until 3am. I was head usher at mass today. It was a lot of fun, the kitchen was a mess by the end, and the conversation was great. There were a lot of children running around and no injuries. No one was too sangria-ed to drive safely.

Oh yeah, on Friday I gave myself a haircut. It was the first time I have ever cut my own hair. Melanie fixed the back. It still looks homemade, but it was free. Overall it was a fun experience. You ought to try it sometime.

The Great Stockpot

Certainly everyone knows that the foundation to good cooking is in a good stock. I absolutely recommend learning to make and taking the time to make a brown veal stock, a brown chicken stock (or use turkey necks, which are great), a white veal stock, a white chicken stock, and a fish stock. It is really easy, yields a product far superior to anything you can buy, and makes your food much better.

One thing that I have gradually started to do is to make stocks with unusual bones and odds and ends. For example: last week I barbecued Portuguese pork steaks, chicken, and lamb. All of the bones from these went into the stock pot. The stock stays in the refrigerator for a week and whatever is not drawn for use is used in the next week's stock, which becomes a double extraction stock (very yummy). So this week I added some lamb and beef bones.

Stock lasts forever, provided that it is brought to a simmer or boil and held there for a minute or two. That kind of heat kills anything. What it won't do is bring a spoiled stock back to life. Once it stinks or has even a hint of stink, throw it out and start over. Also (now this might gross some of you out), because of the high heat, I will sometimes use bones from plates, so long as they weren't slobbered on or gnawed on in such a way as to put an unpleasant image in my head.

I have a friend who insists that Keilholtz is a Scottish name, mostly because I find it almost physically painful to pay for parking, but also because I can't bear to throw anything away that I can's still extract some good flavor from.

Anyway, this melange stock is not good for some dishes that require a specific meat flavor, but for general risotto use or to add oomph to a ragu, it is perfect. If you do not want to have to boil it every four days, you can reduce it to a syrup and freeze it. But I do recommend that the next time you have a barbecue, save the bones for the stock pot. The smoky flavor is quite interesting, and goes quite will in rich, meaty risotti.

A New Rule for the Keilholtz Household

Once a week, more or less, we go to the Little Studio at MOChA (Museum of Children's Art), where Amalia gets to paint and make sculptures, and do all sorts of fun projects. Unfortunately she has decided that colored glue is about the coolest thing in the world, so she has been making pieces with great piles of colored glue, which are nowhere near drying by the time we have to go. Today marks the last day that I attempt to bring home artwork that features more than a superthin layer of colored glue.

Today we had the sort of breeze that one appreciates on a hot day, except when carrying four pieces or artwork, each made with lots of colored glue, each still wet, walking with a tired toddler and two sacks full of pork products (the Oakland Housewives Marketplace is in the same building as MOChA). I was able to keep the glue off of my clothing (miracle), the interior of the car (another miracle), but three of the artworks are now one artwork. Let's call it a triptych.

Fortunately Amalia is still at the stage where the joy of art is in the doing, and she rarely gets attached to a finished piece. In fact, the last time she had unlimited access to her scissors (and the reason that that was the last), she cut up one of my drawings into small pieces. I suppose she was trying to teach me some lesson about attachment. More likely, she saw it all as a great work in progress, and a lot of fun to be able to work with me on an art project. Or it was just another piece of paper dying to be turned into confetti.

But it is good that she does not get too attached to any piece of her work, as we will be leaving all of the great glue creations at MOChA.

Now, speaking of great glue creations, if you have toddlers you might want to know about the great goo one can make with white glue, water, borax and food coloring. We had a lot of fun with that stuff at MOChA today, and when I dig the recipe out of the bag, I will post it.

Some Notes

An old friend of mine sent me some comments on the blog. They are interesting, so I am posting them (without permission or credit - although if he wants his name attached, I will be happy to do so). His comments are in italics

1. Bush will not win. Kerry-Edwards will win. You are wrong.

Bush will win. Kerry is too much of a doofus. All the dweebiness of Bush without the common man schtick.

2. If Bush wins, he will be Impeached.

Not going to happen. The Dems did not show enough of a unified block against this Iraqi adventure. Their hands are too dirty. Besides, their constant harping that Bush is a dim bulb has set him up for a plausible deniability defense when it comes out that the WMD angle was a sham. For the Dems to try impeachment and fail, which they certainly would, would guarantee the death of the Democratic party, because there is no way to spin it as anything but a.) a vindictive move to avenge Clinton and b.)a futile way to try a final recount.

3. The top priority of the world today is not to fight those who wish to ordain women. It is to get people to again congregate on their front porch.

They are related issues. The fight for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful must aim for the heart of the evil, and the move to ordain women is at the very heart. I agree with you that suburban tracts, WalMarts and the like are abominable, but to fight the symptoms of bad ideology and to ignore the central thrust of the Evil One's artillery is daft.

4. Joseph Correia's bulls may have been bad, but so was Joseph Correia. He was drunk.

Ouch! You mean the contorted face and the mini tantrum and giving up on all three (!) of his bulls was not rational, honorable behavior from someone who is a professional bullfighter? Drinking? Perhaps. I know that you went and looked over the back of the ring. Did you see something back there?

5. Your Budweiser challenge proves the veracity of point
number 1 above.

We will discuss this when you have certified that you have actually done the critical tasting required. I know that it is quite fashionable to hate Budweiser, but it is not just. Perhaps people have something against the company, or against the adverts or whatnot, but speaking about the beer itself, it is really good.

6. Appreciate your tips about tomatoes, nectarines, and garlic.
Please, more fresh fruit and vegetable alerts.

No problem. Blueberries are still outstanding, as are apricots and nectarines. Brandywine tomatoes are really showing nicely right now. As for garlic, I am currently using some outstanding stuff, although we are beyond the point of the wet garlic (boo hoo). I think it is from Napa, although I can't remember where this farmer grows.

Give blackberries another week or two. And could someone please tell me why there is a market for them? Is there any part of the country, urban or rural where they don't grow wild? I can understand wanting some right away (and for commercial use), but that would account for a farmer having a few baskets in addition to other stuff. A whole stand devoted to blackberries, though? Are people that lazy?

We have also been getting great Englisch peas. Really sweet and plump. Yum!

Art pour l'art

Last night we dug into canti 10,11, and 12 of the Purgatorio. The topic of the artists and the arts came up, as it inevitably will when you encounter the Trajan's column of Humility. The notion of Art for the sake of Art (capital Art, to make is sound more Important) came up.

There was a day when I firmly upheld the notion of Art for the sake of Art, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am of even what it means. It sounds more and more like a slogan, and less and less like a tenable position.

Do we have cooking for the sake of cooking? Sorry, Cooking for the sake of Cooking? What would it be? We cook inedible food simply as homage to our techniques?

"Chef, this sauteed tire certainly shows off your skills on the line, and the knife work on the piece of oak is truly stunning, but what is for dinner?"

Art, if it is at all worth anything, must be towards some ends other than itself. Art for the purpose of resonating deep aesthetic realities is for the sake of that resonance within the human soul. It is not for the sake of the art itself.

Ulitmately I am more and more inclined to see visual arts as part of the realm of music than in the realm of rhetoric. One cannot persuade by art, and we should worry if one could.

At its most utilitarian political art is preaching to the choir or inflaming the enemy. It simply does not bring people around to the other side. I have never heard of someone seeing a painting, slapping his head and saying, "oh, I had it all wrong. David is right! Down with the King!"

At best, political art stands as art in spite of the political content. That way the Good, the True, and the Beautiful can be found in David or Mayakovski, in spite of their reprehensible positions on revolution.

It is perhaps the greatest slap in the face an artist has ever received from his own art that Bert Brecht's plays have become part of the canon of establishment theater, to be viewed by the wealthy without inciting them to revolution.

Soccer Eagle Lotto

I have been getting a lot of google hits on the Soccer Eagle Lotto post below. Many folks have received the exact same email with the exact same numbers, and they want to know if it is legit.

It most certainly is not legit.

Even though it is listed as being out of the Netherlands, my guess is that the real brains behind the outfit are in Lagos, Nigeria, and that this is a standard issue 419 scam. So far no one has gotten back to me, but what generally happens is that they keep coming up with "complications" that require you to wire money for fees, bribes, taxes, etc.

Do a google search for "419 Nigerian Fraud" and you will get a plethora of sites, including one from the US Secret Service, warning you of this. It goes back to the 1920's and was originally done with letters, then with faxes, then with email. I have received various 419 scam solicitations from Nigeria, South Africa, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, as well as a few from Great Britain and other Western European countries. Depending on which source you go by, 419 scamming is between the fifth and the third largest industry in Nigeria. It often involves government officials, so the phone numbers might actually be to government ministries.

If you think our government is bad, just think about that for a minute.

By all means, have fun with them. You can have some rather memorable and bloggable exchanges with them (although these jerks still owe me a repsonse, although my name might be on some "do not bother" list by now), but DO NOT send them money, DO NOT call them (especially not Caribbean phone numbers), and DO NOT go over to Africa when they suggest that you need to be there in person. You will basically be kidnapped, and I know of at least one confirmed case where someone was killed.

If you do not mind being called at all hours of the night, it is OK to give them your phone number. You can really have fun with them, but they seem to have no concept of time zones, so the phone will ring at 3am. My friend gave them my phone number once as a practical joke, so I returned the favor, and we eventually called a truce. It is kind of funny gettting some Nigerian to call you in the middle of the night claiming to be Mrs. Abacha's lawyer.

The benefit of playing these games with these criminals is that you will get some of the funniest reading matter you have ever had. They combine the pompous with the ignorant, and come up with some rather funny phrases.

As a side note, my friend actually convinced one of them to send him a $50 bill as a token of trust. It was far more work than any $50 he ever earned. Someone else told me that he got $100 the same way, but as far as I can tell, those are the only two cases where any money flowed to the victims.

For Your Reading Enjoyment...

I have been exceedingly busy recently, which you probably wouldn't guess from the long-winded posts, but you have to understand that long-winded posts tend to happen when I need a break from lengthy stints at writing PR materials.

When I am up to my ears in honing taglines, I turn to the blog and rant, pretty much without editing.

However, there are times when I am too busy even to do this. I have a restaurant review due today as well as a rough draft of a marketing piece for a client. I also owe Amalia a trip to the park and some reading time.

So, I offer you this guide to San Fermin in Pamplona as something to read until I can come back and amuse you with more recipes and rants.

Cannibals!

Reading this post got me thinking about this.

When my friend and I were baiting 419 scammers on a nearly daily basis, one of my standard characters was a midwestern businessman who was deathly afraid of cannibals. Whenever the exchange got to the point of the Nigerian scammer wanting me to actually go to Nigeria, I would start expressing reservations about going "so deep in the jungle to be at the mercy of cannibals." I would further bait them with things like, "well, Mrs. Abacha, you seem like a nice lady, but how do I know that your family aren't all cannibals?"

The 419ers would be try to go head over heels to prove that their country was free of cannibals. Naturally, the more they tried to prove it, the stranger, more xenophobic and hostile my character became. Eventually I was demanding PROOF! that my contact had never eaten a human being: "Can you provide me a certified psiloscopic resonant image of your intestine so that I can be absolutely sure that you do not have human tissue in there?"

Eventually most of them gave up, although a few kept at it, even as I was degenerating into spewing random bits culled from Mickey Spillane books.

Let's face it. Cannibals are fascinating. All it takes to get me hooked on an episode of Nova is for it to investigate ancient cannibals. It is all very disordered business, this munching on fellow human beings.

Now there was a time in my life when I was a rather doctrinaire relativist: a Marxist CAPITALIST atheist (which is a position I am frankly surprised hasn't caught on: you believe in dialectical materialism and class warfare, but see no reason to go to war for the enemy). It took Thomas Aquinas, Plato, avant-garde music (particularly Stockhausen), abstract expressionism, and Pope John Paul II to get me out of that, but that is a much longer story, best saved for later, over Scotch and cigars, perhaps while sitting under a Pollock and listening to Stockhausen's Hymnen.

Anyway, when I was a doctrinaire relativist (which they all are), I would have maintained that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with cannibalism, and not even anything that dangerous about it, provided it was only done on outside tribes. Obviously once you start eating your own neighbors, it all hits the fan, but eating the losers in warfare could be seen as nothing more than part of the spoils of war.

Anyway, as I said before, I started seeing some holes in this world view, and came to realize that there were a few things that were absolutely right and wrong, not just socially constructed behaviors that could be changed if we had the wrong people in power (next time you think Derrida is bad, just realize how insufferable he would be if he were the champion of the Overdog. Of course he is, but at least he pretends not to be. Must be his social construction). Of course it starts with basics like social order, some respect for life, then along comes the impossible (condensed version): this Aquinas fellow is making a whole lot of sense, much more than Marx or Mohammed (I had already jettisoned any interest in paganism or the various Eastern world-views - I may have been a relativist, but I never liked Wiccans, and my serious interest in Buddhism was short-lived). So, next thing you know, you follow this stuff and find that you are going to mass every Sunday, going to confession, singing in the choir, and all that.

But you still have this little notion that somehow someone could be wrong, but just misguided, that, since you can think of some outlandish instance where it is difficult to discern wrong from right, then one can hedge on the absoluteness of it all, etc. So, you can congratulate a homosexual couple (you still call them "gay") when they fake a marriage, etc. But you are knowing more and more that something rings hollow. Your intellect is finding its own, but your sentiments are still hopelessly modern American.

Now, when I first encountered the life of Tobias Schneebaum (in Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale), I was already a confirmed anti-relativist, but still mostly on the intellectual level, not deep down: "oh, you know that Hitler, bad news certainly, but I would still loved to have sat down and had a discussion with him. He is still human after all. Love the sinner and all that." Here on the screen I was confronted with this toad of a man, this worm who only once (at least in the documentary) had a little sign of remorse that he had partaken of human flesh (and you got the feeling that a little blast of self-esteem talk and he would be doing another book tour touting the glories of cannibalism).

In this film you got 93 minutes of the glory of homosexuality, of how wonderful relativism is, how nifty it is to be so cosmopolitan and superior to these poor dupes who think that there is such a thing as savagery and civilization, with any dissenting view portrayed as nothing but laughable. It pushed me over the top. Love the sinner, sure, see him as a fallen creature made in the image of God and even still liable to be redeemed, yes, but if you ever wanted a picture of Hate the Sin at the same time, here it was.

Watching this cannibal glow with nostalgia over his sexual escapades in the backwaters and then sniff in a superior way over normal civilized folks is one of those moments where you really have to, at all levels, decide where you stand. I know that from the day I saw that film I became a much less accepting, less affirming, even less tolerant person than I was before, and I contend that I am that much better off for it.

Anyway, thanks to Zorak for making me think of Schneebaum!

It's Tomato Grappatini Time!

The other day I was sipping a Rear Admiral Joseph's martini (I have perfected it - a little more vermouth than usual and a splash of ice water from the iced martini glass, and it is a very good martini) while making ensalata caprese and I realized that I should be drinking tomato grappatinis! Remember the experiments from last summer?

A refresher:

White tomato juice: juice your absolutely top notch heirloom tomato and allow the juice to settle. All you want to use is the clear fluid (use the solids in your homemade ketchup). You may want to filter it, because the clearer the juice, the better the grappatini.

Grappa: it really does not matter which one. I would not use one of my expensive grappe, though. Rue flavored grappa might be nice. 2 shots.

Vermouth: To taste. I would use Punt e Mes or Antica Formula or even extra dry Cinzano with a drop of cynar. I use just a touch, though.

Dash of bitters.

In shaker, muddle fresh basil in grappa, add the other ingredients with ice, and strain into chilled martini glasses. Garnish with a green zebra grape tomato, an orange cherry tomato and a chunk of fresh mozzarella.

It's like an Italian V-8, but a lot better!

I suppose one could add a little pastis or something like that. I will have to experiment some more.

John Edwards

I somewhat expected Kerry to pick Edwards, but I was not sure. I have to admit that I liked Edwards a bit more than Kerry, but I liked almost any of the field better than Kerry. That is probably why I am not a Democrat.

I have voted for a Democrat here and there, but only for local level things. I am not sure that I would any more (except for Willie Brown, who is one of my favorite politicians of all time, or maybe Jerry Brown, who has done a great job as mayor of Oakland).

So, here is my prediction: another close race, but Bush wins. Kerry/Edwards is destined to be a losing ticket. They have a slim chance, but the economy and the perception that the war is dragging will make Bush have to work hard for it, and he will have to pull a couple of rabbits out of the hat.

What Bush needs to do is to cooperate with the Governator in Sacramento. Bush needs to drop some spectacular pork on California and offer Ah-nuld a cabinet position. That way Governator delivers votes, Bush takes California, and he does not have to worry about unemployed blue collars in rust belt swing states.

They Were not Pilgrims!

This really gets me whenever I hear one of the Protestant Patriotic Hymns, especially when one is inserted into the Liturgy of the Catholic Church:

The Mayflower folks were not Pilgrims. They were dangerous, revolutionary heretics who were escaping duty, law and Truth, in order to establish a demented little utopia where they could be free to burn witches and hang priests (I have no objection to the burning of witches - as I have said before, I think the Pope should apologize to the world for dropping the ball on this and should thank our separated brethren for their work in stamping out witchcraft). Our nation and the world would have been better off if these rascals foundered on the rocks and drowned in the frigid Atlantic, or had been forced to land in New Spain where they would have been treated properly by the Holy Office.

The celebration of victory over the Protestant usurper in England should be completely distinct from the survival of these Puritan wretches. There is some beautiful writing on the Natural Law found in the Declaration of Independence. We should examine that and celebrate that.

There is nothing Catholic about the evil of Puritanism. We should no more call these people pilgrims than we would the damned souls being carried to their everlasting place of suffering.

Labels and Priestesses

I don't trust people who make a big deal of not liking labels. You know the type:

"Oh, I don't like labels, it just simplifies what I believe, etc., etc."

In the matter of how one lives one's faith, a professed avoidance of labels invariably means that the label-hater is a heretic.

"Oh, I would never call myself orthodox or obedient or blah blah blah woof woof woof woof...[discourse on how labels stamp out nuance, so forth and so on]" generally can be translated into "well, I am uncomfortable with being lumped into the category of Cafeteria Catholic, but really I am one."

I recall reading one well-loved and generally orthodox writer (who objects to labels) say that while she upheld the teachings on ordaining women, she could still see some sort of future where the church did ordain women. I suppose when she looks at her radical feminist crystal ball she can also see a future when billy goats give birth to whales, too.

I have a good label for this person: heretic. If the pointy hat fits...

If one is too cowardly to wear the label orthodox, faithful, etc., then let him wear his sanbenito.

Of course the whole reason that I got to thinking about labels and heretics was thinking about the evil of ordaining women. I have decided that of all the evils in the world, none is so great as the movement to ordain women.

All the holocausts, genocides, abortions, sodomy, Communisms, and New Left folk anthems are really the sort of evil that one must assume, given man's fallen nature. They really are straightforward sorts of evil: one succumbs to pride, envy, etc. to the point that it consumes the person, and then one does gravely evil things to bring about some sort of crude remedy.

There is a cure for all of this, although it is lengthy and designed to work with our Free Will, with the full understanding that our free will has some nasty habits. The cure is Grace, which finds its way to us through the sacraments.

Now, the evil of going out and killing a people because of their eye color is bad. No one but a lunatic will defend this sort of business. But it is pretty much a straightforward sort of evil: A kills B and B's folks kill A and A's folks... and so on. Rage, revenge, human, all too human. The cycle can be broken by the Gospel and a life lived in the Sacraments.

So, what better way to perpetuate all the evils of the world than to attack the heart of the sacraments: namely the sacramental priesthood. Of course, following the human, all too human way, Pride, Envy, Greed, all of the Seven figure in. First the priesthood is seen strictly in terms of Power, thus Envy gets a foot in the door. Then comes Pride, as seen in the PBS documentary on the Holy Father, where some woman was in tears talking about her unfulfilled vocation. On and on.

But the real danger is that striking at the priesthood strikes at all the sacraments.

Of course Protestantism struck at the priesthood, but by openly wanting to abolish it and the sacraments, it became very clear what the agenda was. It is really pretty straightforward: Satan uses Pride to strike at God's Church through the tool of the Protestant revolutionaries. But you know who is on whose side. After a few natterings to the contrary, it was quite clear that the heresiarch Luther was not interested in changing the Catholic Church, so much as he was in changing the Scripture and starting his own church.

No one can seriously claim that Henry VIII had any interest in reforming the Roman Curia. Rather, like a proto-Andrew Sullivan, Hank Tudor was all about service to his sex-life (imagine the father of the church of Gene Robinson!), masked in his concern for a male heir.

However, the suburban liberals who want to see women in alb and stole are not claiming to want to start a new church (although it sure would be easier if these persistant heretics just went off and joined a heretic church), but want to strike at the heart of the Catholic Church, the only Church that contains the totality of Truth.

As such these people must be resisted with every ounce of our energy. I would go so far as to say that fighting those who wish to ordain women is the top priority in the world today. And we must start by calling heretics heretics, even if they "object to labels!"

Weee! I am going to be rich!

[Read the Extended Entry for my reply]

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Brief Bullfight Report

Last night in Thornton was a mixed bag. It was a festival style bullfight, which is a more informal style: for instance, the performers wore traje corto instead of trajes de luces. Sario Cabral and Eduardo Costa were good, but poor Joseph Correia has had better nights. His two assigned bulls were terrible, and the third bull he had was equally awful. I will post a bull-by-bull report later, but not tonight. Probably Monday, as tomorrow is a full day of festivities.

We had a good time, the weather was great, and the small crowd was full of aficionados, which is a pleasant thing. Most of the California bullfights are full of folks who really don't know what they are looking at, so it was a pleasant change to have the spectators really know something.

Friday Five

Since bullfights are traditionally on Sundays, except in California, where they are on Mondays (has to do with the dairy farmers' schedules, or so I am told), in honor of the Friday bullfight in Thornton today, I am posting bullfight related questions:

1. Where did you see your first bullfight?
2. How old were you?
3. Did you like it?
4. Who was on the cartel?
5. If you were to see one particular bull all over again, which would it be, and why?

I will put my answers on the Extended Entry section, but feel free to put your answers on your own blog or in my comments' box.

1. Madrid
2. 12
3. Yes, but not as much as my second bullfight in Barcelona (third if you count the one on television I saw in Valencia), which really got me hooked.
4. I don't remember the Madrid cartel. Barcelona was Paco Ojeda, Emilio Munoz, and Espartaco.
5. I would see the second bull that Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza fought in October 15, 2000 in Tijuana. I actually have a video of that, and it takes my breath away every time I see it. I would love to be back there. It was a great day and a great bullfight. It gave me a whole new appreciation of rejoneo.

If we restrict this question to matadores, then the first bull that Espartaco took on that Barcelona bullfight. I have seen plenty of stuff that has been great, but I would love to go back to see that one, since it is why I ended up hooked.

Toiros!

Friday, July 2nd is a 7 bull corrida in Thornton, one of the little delta towns. It is an all local cartel, with Joe Correia, Eddie Costa, Sario Cabral and his brother, whose name escapes me. The forcados will be from Artesia. Other than the proximity to the train tracks, the Thornton bullring is fantastic. The bullfight starts at 8pm. If you are in Northern California, I recommend making the trip. I will be leaving Oakland with a group at 5pm. I hope we get there in time for the first bull, as traffic was a nightmare tonight already. We will be meeting a fellow St. Blogger, so look for us around the food and beer area before or during intermission. I am six feet, have a red beard, a really beat up leather bomber jacket, and will probably be in some tropical shirt. Or you can ask the trumpet player (I think David Costa is going to be playing for the Presidencia - he knows me). Or, if you want to go, email me and I will tell you exactly what I will wear and where I will try to sit.