Time for a rousing speech...

Our fight is a crusade in which Europe's fate is at stake. That is why since the beginning Russia has taken her place unconditionally on the side of the Spanish Republic by sending tanks and a thousand war-planes, and by mobilizing the undesirables of all Europe to fight for the Red Army. Our triumph is immense, in spite of the difficulties of the enterprise. No difficulties have prevented the rescue of over three million Spaniards from Red barbarism during the second triumphal year.

I beg your affectionate remembrance of our brothers who are suffering from the effects of lawlessness in the Red zone, and your prayers for the martyrs of our cause. I pay tribute to those who have fallen far from their own countries - the natives, the volunteers, the legionaries who left their home to enrol in the forces of the crusade and to demonstrate in Spain the fullness of their countries' identification with the cause of firmness and friendship professed by them towards Spain.

The Reds assassinated over 70,000 in Madrid, 20,000 in Valencia, 54,000 in Barcelona. Such crimes are the work of the Comintern and its agents Rosenberg, Marti, Negrin, Del Vayo - all servants of Soviet Russia.

Spaniards have a duty to remember that Christian charity is boundless for the deluded and the repentant but they must observe the dictates of prudence and not allow the infiltration of the recalcitrant enemies of Spain. Those proceeding from a politically infested area must undergo quarantine to avoid the contamination of the community.

I denounce the new Red campaigns of those posing as defenders of Spanish independence against foreign invasion. The foreign invasion came through the Catalan frontier, whence entered the undesirables who sacked and destroyed Spanish towns and villages, looted banks, destroyed homes, and stole our patrimony of art.

The Reds who pursued these treacherous tactics in the Nationalist rear, in attempting to destroy our unity, will continue these tactics after the war, when our vigilance and our care for the purity of our creed must increase. The Nationalist movement has ousted the old political intrigues and is guiding the nation to greatness and prosperity.

Spain was great when she had a State Executive with a missionary character. Her ideals decayed when a serious leader was replaced by assemblies of irresponsible men, adopting foreign thought and manners. The nation needs unity to face modem problems, particularly in Spain after the severest trial of her history.

Separatism and class war must be abolished and justice and education must be imposed. The new leaders must be characterized by austerity, morality, and industry.

Spaniards must adopt the military and religious virtues of discipline and austerity. All elements of discord must be removed.

Francisco Franco, statement (18th July, 1938)

The Dead, Redux

I generally maintain a somewhat, kind of, almost policy of not speaking ill of the recent dead, mainly because there are those who might legitimately still mourn their passing. Even for people like my evil, long-lost twin Richard Nixon, who was a CREEP (natch), but you had to figure that there were some folks who called him Uncle Dicky or whatever his clan called him, and it might make them a little sadder than they ought to be to overhear someone say, "well, I guess we won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more." Also, as I have said before, if I were in politics I would strive for Franco, but would probably wind up Nixon. Got Bugs?

But then you encounter people whose life work has been nothing but a litany of bad: Derrida comes to mind. You pray that they saw the error of their ways in the end, but you find that it is hard to put your own heart into it. You don't want to hear yourself saying, "welcome to Hell, creep" but once in awhile you catch a little echo or two of something along those lines.

There was a death recently that falls into this second category. A death of someone whose influence on art, culture and architecture has been nothing but unfortunate. A person whose philosophy may have sometimes hidden under a cloak of fake irony, but was rotten and evil to the core.

Phillip Johnson passed away in his nineties. Let's pray for his soul and that his work perishes with his body. I always imagined him as a blank-eyed zombie, constantly on the hunt for ways to spread a blanket of doom and despair. He took the worst from every artist, philosopher and architect he studied and rolled it into a big bundle of hideousness.

But he did it with charm and the sort of charisma that appeals to pimps and petty criminals and obviously a lot of East Coast high society. As a result his work was given far too much attention, had far too much influence, and all for evil ends.

If you want to engage in pious hand-wringing about the dead, save it for Carson, who may have been an ephemeral period piece (and he was), but he was good ephemera whose work (overlooking for now his golfing tendencies) was decent and more on the side of good than bad. There is no harm in exagerating the good of a decent, though flawed man. There is great harm in continuing the legacy of Phillip Johnson.

Thanks, Secret Agent Man

I found an email telling me that Secret Agent Man had mentioned my blog. I was not prepared for this, so all I can say is "thanks!" Now I have to live up to his description.

For those of you who are visiting for the first time, Welcome. I should warn you that you will probably be disappointed, because if you come for food, the next thing you know I will be ranting about Abstract Expressionism (fer, by the way) or harpsichords (doubly fer) or disco (agin. agin. agin.), and you will wonder, "but he was supposed to talk about food!"

Just think of the poor folks who come here hoping to learn about the art scene in the Bay Area, only to find that I rarely make it to first thursdays and all that.

On this blog, I does what I likes and I likes what I do, but hopefully not in Mr. Van Dyke's wretched Cockney accent.

The best way to steer me to whatever topic you are interested in is to prod me with an email or a comment. I can't guarantee anything, but it is the best way. Then again, beware what you ask for. You might want to know what I think of Domenico Scarlatti and I might just tell you (so fer that I can't express it in words). A month later I might still be nattering on about it.

As I have mentioned in the past, long posts happen when I am pressed for time. When I am at the rough draft stage, I have Kerouacitis. I type fast and edit little. When I have time, I edit and re-edit and re-edit and so forth. I can't say that all the editing improves anything, but it's what I do. Right now I have a pressing newspaper deadline, so this little forray into blogdom will be long. Feel free to skip whole paragraphs (or grafs as newspapermen like to call them).

The funny thing about writing is that I used to really want to be a professional writer. When I was in high school I took over the Creative Writing and Fine Arts Club and installed myself as dictator. On a lark, I said that I would give up my power when Alfredo Stroessner was out of power. The SOB was tossed out in a coup about a month later. So I relinquished my post to one friend, took it back, give it to another friend, took it back, and then gave it up on graduation. But I really wanted to be a professional writer.

The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to be a professional writer. In fact, I began to think that there should not be professional writers, that writing should be something reserved for the leisure classes, etc. I particularly took a disdain to newspaper writing.

Now I write for newspapers.

Does it live up to my high school expectations? Well, yes and no. In many ways it is exciting. I get invited to all sorts of fun stuff, I see my bylines posted in the windows of restaurants (although not in the windows of restaurants that really should post my reviews, as a warning to potential victims, I mean, customers). I have become a better speller (which should tell you how bad I used to be).

What is it like to get checks in the mail for stuff I write? Well, it is better than not getting checks in the mail. And I am a bit of a whore: the bigger the check, the happier I am with the piece written, although I still keep up with the relatively low-paying newspaper work, because it is fun to have my writing turn up in that many households. A marketing research report might pay as much as a year of newspaper writing, but it ends up getting read by maybe a dozen people, and what fun is there in that?

What would be my ideal writing gig? Besides writing compulsory broadsides to be read over loudspeakers during compulsory morning calisthenics, or at Friday Afternoon Sessions in which folks are required to come to the local piazza and drink their Cinzano or Cynar while listening to my little sermons, it would probably be something like Herb Caen's column, but with more of a food focus, and an absolute banishment on calling any vodka-based concoction a martini (the last time I had a vodkatini was at Mr. Caen's memorial service. I did it in his nonor and have not forced myself to abandon my beloved gin since).

What would be the worst writing gig? Movie critic. If it were all about writing on 8 1/2, Wings of Desire or Singing in the Rain, fine, but to have to actually sit through and then write about the latest summer blockbuster would just be too much. I would rather cover school board meetings.

Of course in high school I wanted to make a living writing poetry. I was also a Marxist, so you have to understand that reality and I were on very casual terms at the time.

I rarely write poetry anymore, because it takes its energy from the same part of my brain that I use to paint, and that is the priority. Once in awhile I start a poem, but then the images take over and I end up painting the thing. The ideal poem does the same thing as a Diebenkorn Ocean Park painting, and, since I am a much better painter than poet, I cut to the chase.

So the poor blog gets the brunt of my ramblings. It is my little fiefdom, my Legoland (to use the words of a friend of mine who has a sentimental attachment to democracy and seems to think that he would end up in a re-education camp in the Keilholtz Dictatorship), the Keilholtz Star Times and Register Undemocrat.

Even though the aesthetic of the blog is influenced by the Fiesta Brava (many thanks to my fantastic webdesigner), what I have in mind is more like the Teletubbies or The Prisoner. When you read this, picture the baby in the sun with my grinning mug and the little bronze speakers that pop up from the flowers as my official mouthpieces. When you have read enough and should be getting ready for bed, it is my voice that says, "time for Tubby bye-bye!"

The irony is that I am the only one in the family who likes the Teletubbies. The family toddler finds them boring (or too close to home), so I have to watch them late at night, when everyone sane is in bed. So I watch and scheme and watch and design uniforms for my elite guardsmen and watch and write way too much in the blog...

Anyway, for those of you who are looking for food, let me offer this fast and yummy recipe:

Boached Fish

Boaching is a hybrid of poaching and baking. Basically it is poaching with less liquid, or humid baking with white wine.

You take filet of ling cod or other such fish. You salt and pepper it and coat it in Extra Virgin Olive Oil and pat it with chopped winter savory. In your pan you sprinkle diced shallot, then place your fish on it, sprinkle more shalllot, a crumbled bay leaf, thinly sliced garlic, and thin slices of lemon. Give it a light drizzling of dry white wine or dry white vermouth. Bring it to a simmer on the stove and transfer it to a preheated 350 degree oven. Cook until it is done. Serve with a salad and a chilled Mateus.

The Alchemist is In!

Today we were hiking up in the Berkeley Hills and I noticed, to my great delight, that the California Bay Laurels are starting to bloom. It seems that some monks in Italy have been making a laurel liqueur for years, using the Mediterranean bay laurel. The California bay laurel is a much stronger flavor, and is not often recommended for kitchen use, but I think that it might make a fine libation. So, if you happen to see me wandering around the woods this week picking tiny flowers off of trees, you will know what I am up to.

I am also working on a vermouth formula. I don't want to simply imitate one of the commercially available varieties, as the stuff is so cheap that there is no point to it. The goal is a good pre-prandial sip, with ample herbal notes in a simple wine base. I am shooting for a fairly low alcohol content, at least in comparison with other vermouths, but I want a little more bitterness as well. Or maybe not, as Melanie is not a big fan of bitter liqueurs like Campari and Cynar. So far I am looking at French rue, chamomile, angelica root, wormwood, anise, lovage, rosemary, orange zest, lavender, nettles, blackberry leaves, lemon balm, winter savory, calamint, and perhaps thyme. I am thinking of making extracts of each and then combining them with the wine base, so that if a formula does not work, I can adjust. Then, if I find something that is right, I will try a batch made with everything together.

The trick is to find a dry, thin white wine without too much fruit. Any suggestions?

Dutch! Not Deutsch!

I was reading Julie D.'s fine food blog and read a comment that corrected her spelling of "Manhatten." She was using a poor authority (yours truly) and thus spelled it that way and not "Manhattan", the correct spelling. As I pointed out in my mea culpa on her blog, I do not speak Dutch. I assumed that it was spelled as it would be in hoch deutsch, at least if it were pronounced the way we pronounce it.

I offer this solution to the problem (and myriad other problems of Germanic dialects): abandon these silly swamp deutsch variants and use proper German! This goes to the islanders as well, although after the thwacking that the Normans gave to Englisch, it probably really should be seen as a distinct language at this point.

In many ways I am grateful that I do not have to write in deutsch all the time. Englisch really has a better structure, although it lacks some of the great sounds of German (the "ch" in "hoch" for example. The "ch" in the Scottish "loch" is good, but is not nearly as poetic as it would be pronounced with the German "ch"). And as far as I am concerned, if no one ever writes another opera in any Germanic tongue, the world will not be any worse off. Italian is meant for singing, neither German nor Englisch (nor French, for that matter) come even close. One time I heard a Swedish opera. It was quite good, but hearing THAT language sung in an operatic context is painful.

So, I'll take Manhattan, then.

Fog

I was composing something in my head about fog as I was driving through downtown Sacramento tonight. Nothing earth-shattering, just thoughts about fog and aquatints and so forth. But such is that nature of fog that after reading and doing some real work, the musing was gone. Well, not completely gone, but, dare we say, foggy?

I like fog. I like coastal fog, the kind that creeps on little cats feet and all that. I like to watch it roll over the hills and engulf San Francisco on a summer afternoon, then shoot across the bay like a lance, to pierce the heart of Berkeley, before splitting in two, continuing its conquest up the Delta and down to Oakland.

Where we live in Oakland the fog is as likely to come from the hills, on the rebound from its collision with Berkeley, as it is to come directly from the Bay. It is also more likely to hit much later in the day than it does in the City, which is a consolation for those of us who, as much as we like fog, are Sacramento boys who want summer to be hot and sunny.

For the night owls, the fog presents an interesting treat in the summer. It goes away briefly in the middle of the night, only to return before dawn. It doesn't do this all the time, but there is something neat about stepping outside at 2am (why would I know anything about that, you ask?) to see the stars, knowing that the blanket will be back when you wake up in the morning. Then it burns off and the afternoon is dazzling blue. Marvelous, really.

Coastal fog is caused by a peculiar weather phenonmenon called the Pacific High, a high pressure zone that settles over the Central Valley. As it bakes in the sun, this high pressure air heats up (and I mean really heats up). As we all know, thanks to M. Montgolffier, hot air ascends. When it rises, it sucks in air from the one natural break in the Coastal Range, which is the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The air that comes in is cool, moisture laden air from the Pacific Ocean, which encounters mist from the breakers of Ocean Beach and precipitates into our fog.

What it all boils down to is God's air conditioning (or God's deep freeze unit, if you are caught poorly dressed in Golden Gate Park). In Sacramento it manifests itself in the nightly Delta Breeze. It usually hits around 8 or 9 in the evening, and turns 100+ into 70-80, making the weather just about perfect.

But the fog tonight is not Coastal Fog. There are no cats feet here. We are talking about Tule Fog, which is the Gothic Romantic fog of the bog, marsh and swamp. You see, once upon a time (about 150 years ago), the Central Valley was a seasonal inland sea, covered in tule rushes. Sure, there was the ocassional patch of high ground with Valley Oaks, and the riparian stands around the water ways, but most of it was a giant swamp. Japanese imigrant farmers, willing to toil for cheap land, the Army Corps of Engineers, willing to toil to make the Central Valley fit for cities and cattle ranches and the like, and a few private landowners (few, because of a quirk in California law that allowed one to claim land adjacent to one's own if it was submerged under navigable water - one winter a certain Henry Miller (not THAT Henry Miller) got out his row boat and braved the floodwaters, with a bunch of surveyor's stakes. Needless to say, Mr. Miller ended up with a lot of land in his name) built levees and drained most of the sea. Once in awhile the sea comes back, but for the most part, we are sitting on millions of acres of terra firma.

Not, however, terra arida. We are still the low part of a ring of impressive mountains. Sure, most of the meltoff and runoff flows through the levees to the ocean, but the ground still gets plenty of moisture.

So, when the dewpoint is right vapors rise from the ground, like so many zombies, intent on blinding and warping and chilling to the bone. Sometimes the fog sits for weeks. Sacramentans, who were only a few months earlier bemoaning the heat, start to wonder if they will ever see the sun again. In August, when I drive from the Bay Area, the thermometer moves faster than the odometer. From Vallejo to Vacaville, the temperature can climb as much as forty degrees (in twenty miles). In the winter it can do the same, but in the other direction. Yesterday it was in the 70's on the coast when it was in the 40's inland.

In Sacramento, most of the oaks are Valley Oaks, which, unlike the Live Oaks, lose their leaves in the winter. So we get this eerie gray fog with skeletal trees. Sometimes the fog will be thin enough for the moon to peek through. Gothic. Romantic. Boeklin and late Franz Liszt and all of that Isle of the Dead stuff comes to mind (when your mind can get off the fact that your body is really cold). You drive and familiar landmarks pass unnoticed. Even big, neon-lit landmarks. There are massive pile-ups on Interstate 5 and Highway 99.

That is the setting that these fog musings came from. I would tell them to you, but they got lost in the fog.

Bah Humbug!

My least favorite NFL teams are the Patriots and the Falcons. I Cyan't stand 'em. OK, the Cowboys are on there, too, but it is the aforementioned teams that are responsible for my grumbling about football this weekend.

What a terrible year for the Bay Area in football, and I suspect that the next season will be just as bad.

Maybe if we are lucky, someone will buy the 49ers and move them to San Jose, so I can root against them with a clear conscience. Even when fronted by that weasel Young, they were still the San Francisco team, and I felt slightly guilty in wanting to see them lose. Now that the team has sunk to its former depths, could it please just go away?

The Raiders, on the other hand, I still like. Maybe I will write in Al Davis for mayor of Oakland. That way he can sign sweetheart deals with himself and skip the middlemen. It is sad to see idiots like Ignatz de la Fuente get completely taken the way they were. With Davis guarding the henhouse, I don't think the city coffers would be in the slightest bit more danger than posting de la Fuente in the role of guardian.

Meanwhile I'll stick to baseball, while we still have a team.

Another literary game

This is from Don at Mixolydian Mode:

We’ve done authors. Now let’s do first lines of poems:

1. Had we but world enough, and time,

2. I never saw a Purple Cow

3. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita (In the middle of the journey of our lives...)

4. Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

5. Do not go gentle into that good night,

6. I saw the best minds of my generation, starving, hysterical, naked

7. How do I love thee, let me count the ways

8. That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

9. Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn

10. ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

If the line is familiar, leave it. Otherwise replace it with the first line of a poem you know and boldface your changes.

Cauliflower Puree

I forgot to post this last night.

Take as much cauliflower as you need. Wash it, trim it and divide it into small florets, in the usual manner. Steam the florets until tender. Transfer the steamed florets into the bowl of your food processor and moisten with cream and, extra virgin olive oil, add some reggiano parmeggiana and fresh cracked pepper and whirl away. If it looks dry, add more olive oil. When it is done, remove to your serving bowl and stir in a large clove of pressed garlic (for some reason garlic can take on a funny taste when subjected to the spinning blades of the food processor - I think it has to do with the heat and friction, but I am not quite sure and have not set up the proper experiment to decide what it is). Since the cream and stirring may have cooled the puree, go ahead and give it a blast in the microwave oven.

Even if you do not like cauliflower, you will probably like this, and it is super easy.

The perils of writing restaurant reviews

People often ask me, "how do you review a restaurant?"

It is really a good question, as a restaurant review is a different animal than a book review. A book review must engage the book in a way that goes deeper than a consumer report. Sure, I want to know if the book sounds like a waste of time and money, but often a book review contributes to my own understanding of a book. There is a little of that in restaurant reviewing, but mostly my readers want to know, "is X place worth the Y amount of money that I will spend there."

The dangerous part is that people look for wildly different things in a restaurant. Some insist on being dazzled by new combinations, new uses of techniques, etc. Others want food just like Mom made it. Still others are just happy to have passable food that someone else cooks and cleans up after.

So I try to offer accurate descriptions, so that the reader has an idea of exactly what to expect.

The hardest type of restaurant review is one of a restaurant that is mixed, food wise, but with excellent service and super friendly waiters. I had one of those to write yesterday. If the food is all bad, then it is easy, but when some dishes are really good and some are mediocre, it gets hard. Writing the descriptions of the dishes is easy, but when it comes to the stars, you think of the super friendly people and you have to balance that with the mixed food and you try to come up with some system.

I have a system, although it is not perfect all the time. Certain kitchen gaffes get automatic knock-downs. Zero stars is reserved for a restaurant with bad food and food poisoning. If a place is on the borderline, then service really comes into play. Even then, there is technically correct service and warmth and friendliness. If a waiter does not know something, makes up an answer, and then gets defensive when mildly corrected, that costs points. Certain things are givens, like clean bathrooms. If a bathroom is dirty, what must the kitchen look like?

One thing that I can ignore if everything else is perfect is when all of the dishes are garnished the same. However, this is one of those items that can cost a restaurant in a borderline case.

The reason I try to have a system is that I review every type of restaurant, from a burger stand to restaurants with international reputations. I have to review them according to their type, but there are those things that must be done right if a place insists on being in the business of selling food.

However, even in those things, there are cultural differences that must be taken into account. Explorateur is objectively better cheese than velveeta, which is barely a cheese at all. But velveeta does have a place in the world, and a critic who complains about Billy Bob's Burgers using velveeta is probably out of his league.

There is a Bay Area food critic who misses this distinction all the time. He does not understand that Italian American food is a related but ultimately different animal than Italian food. Instead of discerning whether or not a red gravy is a good red gravy, he laments that it is not a true bolognese. When this critic is reviewing a four star French restaurant, he is pretty good, but when he jumps into Guido's House of Spaghetti, he misses the point entirely.

On the other hand, when I eat classic standard modern American fare, I often wonder, "what would this be like if it were given the Alice Waters treatment?"

For instance, we all know and love gringo tacos: filling of hamburger meat with taco mix seasoning and tomato paste, iceberg lettuce, cheddar cheese, etc.

Now, what if we were to make top shelf gringo tacos? Would they work? If we were to use organic mixed greens, Englisch farmhouse cheddar, organic dry farmed tomatoes, to mix our beef with a specially prepared seasoning mix and demiglace?

So, at the end of this little musing on the job of restaurant criticism, I give you a new iron chef assignment: create gourmet gringo tacos. Then report back.

Rocco Buttiglione

There are few leaders in recent history who I would have followed without hesitation, by which I mean that if said leader walked into the room and said, "come on, let's go, there is work to do" I would click my heels, salute and follow. Generalissimo Francisco Franco y Bahamonde is one, obviously, as I consider him the greatest statesman of the twentieth century. Antonio Salazar, Engelbert Dolfuss, and Winston Churchill are just about the only other ones (I am probably forgetting someone, though). These are all men who, though I might disagree with a thing here or there, I could trust as leaders not just as politicians.

Most other leaders I would have hesitations and reservations. On the mostly positive side would be Benito Mussolini. If he came in giving orders, my response would be to see what he was up to. In the end I would probably Believe! Obey! Fight! but not without looking to see what was up his sleeve. On the mostly negative side would be someone like Carter or even Bush, who would really have to sell the case to me. So, yes, I do suppose that it means that I would more willingly invade Ethiopia than I would Iraq (it runs in the family, after all. I did have relatives who served in the Abbysinian campaign).

However, until now there has been only one leader who could command a Franquista style obedience from me, only one in the past thirty something years who was a real leader with cojones verdad. Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and Juan Carlos all showed promise, but ended up weak, not able to really lead their nations.

But there was one who sparkled as a leader. That was Nelson Mandela. Like Churchill, I do not see eye to eye with him on all matters, but his integrity and leadership abilities are amazing. Let's put it this way, if I were a black South African living under Apartheid, and had to be told that Boers with their Dutch Reform Church were the master race, as soon as I got the upper hand there would be mounds of dead Boers. I think it is that way with almost all of us. We might say, oh no, I would want to rebuild, calm, rational, blah, blah, blah, but the truth is, we would all have an incredible impulse to roast some wild Boer.

But mounds of dead people who used to talk like the Katzenjammer Kids is not what we had in South Africa. Not even prison camps and land seizures (the latter would probably have been pretty calmly accepted by lots and lots of folks outside South Africa, too). No, Nelson Mandela created Truth Commissions just to bring everything out in the open. Given the justifiable rage of the people and the example set by the folks in Zimbabwe and Angola and Mozambique and... Mandela's achievement was remarkable. His ex-wife, the deranged murderess Winnie Mandela, certainly would not have shown such restraint and leadership. She would have created an amazing boom in the world used-tire market, but South Africa would be much worse off for it.

But other than Nelson Mandela there have been very few leaders that really are leaders. However, Rocco Buttiglione has consistantly shown his colors as a leader. Right now the Ghibilines are in charge, with their EU and laughable smoking restrictions, but a Ghibiline triumph always results in a Guelph rising, and Buttiglione is the man for the job.

If Buttiglione walked in the room today and said, "come on, there is work to do, let's go" I would click my heels, salute (Roman, natch), and say, "Yes, Duce!"

Believe! Obey! Fight!

Bad News

I actually knew about this last night, since the Oakland Tribune was breaking this story this morning, but could not say anything until the paper hit the stands.

For those of you in the Bay Area, go get a copy of the Trib (or San Mateo County Times, Argus, Tri-Valley Herald, etc.). Read it an weep.

Oh well, at least I will have no reason to root for an American League team again.

I also am going to continue my current practice of never stepping foot in Las Vegas. I have not done so, and will extend my ban forever. There are too many interesting places to go to. Why waste time and money on that crap?

The Dry Manhatten

For those of you who do not like sweet cocktails, the dry Manhatten might be the perfect answer. There are some philistines who insist that a dry Manhatten simply has less sweet vermouth in it. They are wrong, and I can pull out a stack of bartenders' manuals from various ages and can prove it. A dry Manhatten is made with dry vermouth:

2 parts bourbon or rye
1 part extra dry vermouth
2 dashes bitters

Shake over ice and serve in chilled glasses. Garnish with an olive OR a twist. Unlike a sweet Manhatten, this one is satisfactory if served on the rocks (oh, I have had plenty of sweet Manhattens on the rocks, but that drink was meant to be served up).

Warning: be careful ordering this one at bars. Many young whippersnapper bartenders will botch this drink.

A sweet Manhatten or a dry Manhatten can be converted into a Rob Roy or a dry Rob Roy by substituting Scotch for the bourbon or rye. This is an abomination. If you are using a single malt you are assaulting and battering a fine whisky. If you are using some rotgut blend, well, why would you want that stuff soiling your bar anyway? I don't get it. Scotch was meant to be drunk with only a splash of spring water and perhaps a single ice cube.

Bourbon, on the other hand, with its inherent sweetness, lends itself much better to mixing.

Another thing that baffles me is the proliferation of pseudo martinis. Folks, if it has fruit juice or chocolate in it, call it something else. For that matter, if it has vodka in it, call it something else, like a vodkatini. A martini should be gin, a splash of water (for the stuff sold in America, which is too high in alcohol), a hint of vermouth (I am not one of these people who waves the gin in the direction of Turin and calls it a dash) and an olive or twist, depending on the gin. If you use cheap gin, add more vermouth. Even Seagrams can make a good martini, but you have to chill it to something approaching absolute zero and will probably be up to three to one for the vermouth.

A sweet martini, with a capful of sweet vermouth added to the gin (and even a dash of bitters), is an interesting change of pace, although once you go there you are approaching the Negroni territory, which is a different cocktail.

About as far as I will allow a drink to get from the martini is the Venetian martini, gin with Antica Formula and sweet vermouth, served with an orange twist.

A dirty martini is wrong. Just wrong. A dirty vodkatini, with plenty of vermouth, on the other hand, can be interesting, on occasion. The last vodkatini I had was at Herb Caen's memorial, but I only had one in his honor and switched to gin for the rest of the evening.

The most interesting variant on a martini that I have had was the mescalini, a drink with mescal (you know the stuff, with the worm at the bottom of the bottle) and lime juice. I liked it, but Melanie found it foul. I think you have to be the sort who likes Islay malts to enjoy this one. It had an almost peaty taste to it, like Laphroiag.

I better stop here, because the next logical step is to discuss pulque, and that is an essay in and of itself. Let me end by saying that I would like to make some pulque, and would appreciate any advice from those who have made it themselves.

The Stars!

As you have probably gathered from the reports of floods and mudslides, we have been under cloud cover for the past few days, until tonight. I had to get something out of my studio and happened to look up as I was unlocking the door.

It was like being in the mountains. I never realized that you could see so many stars in the Bay Area, even on a cloudless night. Little teeny stars that send light from far, far away were visible with a clarity that I only thought was possible at Lake Tahoe. I must make a note to get up to the mountains soon. It might just drive me back to the clutches of astronomy.

Meanwhile, please forgive these eyeglasses posts. I will eventually get used to it and will stop being blown away by every little thing. Until then, did I mention that I can read the spice bottles on the rack accross the kitchen?

Manhatten Recipe

Someone came by here, as often happens, looking for a Manhatten recipe. I could not believe that I do not have one posted, as I am quite proud of my Manhatten. The recipe was from my great uncle, who made a great Manhatten, even though he did not put bitters in his (I found out from another uncle who is also a bartender that bitters and whatnot were ommitted from many recipes in the 1950's when cocktails made a comeback and barkeeps had to save time. No excuse, I say). Bitters are important, and make it a greater Manhatten, although let's not call it that, because people might think we are talking about Staten Island, and we are not talking about Staten Island (which is really greater New Jersey)

2 parts bourbon (or better, rye)
1 part sweet red vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1 dollop of the juice from your cherries (the best are the Italian candied cherries, but you can use standard maraschino cherries, too)

Put all of the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake vigorously until chilled. Serve up in chilled martini glasses and garnish with a cherry (essential) and a slice of orange (optional, but very nice). Drink two before dinner (or one if you are a lightweight). If you drink three, don't come whining to me about the consequences. I warned you.

The Bionic Artist

Now, joining the high-tech stuff that looks like tooth that fills up what were once gleaming pools of mercury and tin and whatnot in my molars, and the patch of nylon and Gore-tex that keeps my innards apart from my outtards (and still hurts once in awhile when I twist this way or that, or when Amalia decides that it is a good thing to jump on me knees first, grrr!), I have joined the ranks of those who use artificial contraptions to view the world with clarity.

My eyesight is really not that bad (my prescription is -0.25 in my right eye and -0.75 in the left), but reading at any distance has been difficult in the last few years. So I bit the bullet and went to the O.D., a nice fellow who explained everything clearly, yea, even as clearly as what I now see.

A friend of mine said, "oh, so now that you can see, are you going to stop that Abstract Expressionism and become a photorealist?"

Har har har. Well, not exactly, but...

I am very excited to draw the clarity that I assumed was naturally lost in distance. When I was walking back from getting my new glasses I passed Oakland's City Hall, a lavishly ornamented (and misproportioned) building. I was stunned with how much more detail I could see in the top of the building. I always could see it, but not quite as clearly. Now that parallel lines are coming back to parallel (it still is a little strange to look at my feet through the spectacles), I am ready to try drawing with the things on.

I am wondering if any of my artist readers got glasses late in life and how it changed (if it did at all) the way they draw or paint. Of course there is the classic gag of giving Monet glasses and having him immediately changing to crisp-focused painting, but I am curious how artists in real life have changed with the addition of spectacles.

Being a bit of a pessimist, my first thought was "ACK! I will never be able to paint again, what with this annoying rim of focus and the little things that hold the glasses on my nose (they look like a fly has perched there, and I must resist slapping myself), not to mention that everything is a bit odd." But now I am adjusting to that, and even find that my peripheral vision is not too horribly ruined.

I have to admit that I am tempted to do some photorealistic sort of things, just because the whole sensation of excruciatingly crisp focus is rather new (not completely new, since I had very good vision as a child - it gradually got worse in high school and college, but not so bad that I could felt compelled to do anything about it for many years) and exciting.

For All Of Your Italian Caribou Needs

Well, if you use quotes I am number one! Yipppeeeee! Without quotes you get Italian restaurants in Caribou, Canada, or WI, or one of those Transsierran sort of places.

What, you might ask, is an Italian Caribou? Funny thing, that Italian Caribou. It spins pizza in the tundra, all the while singing arias about igloos.

If this is making your head spin and you can't figure heads from tails from it, don't worry, it is only a game. Something to do with Irish Elk or Polish Moose or whatever they are.

By the way, Mark, the recipe they would have used is simple. Given the era, they would have preferred the cut known as the Filet Magnon, served with a Chausseur and Gathereur sauce.

More Iron Chef

First, congratulations are in order to Alicia for being the first person to enter an iron chef recipe for black beans.

Second, I have decided to do more of these, where I post an ingredient and you the readers submit recipes or fiddle with the stuff and come up with something or simply discuss the ingredient. You can even wax poetic about an experience you had with the ingredient and how it changed your life. Whatever.

I have created an "iron chef" category for these, for ease of archivability.

Have fun and keep those black bean recipes coming!

Iron Chef

I don't know what to say. I like my readers, I really do. But I am feeling let down. I gave you a challenge and not a one of you gave a recipe or report of a dinner made with:

Lemon and garlic confit.

Sheesh. You would think that I had called for some unusual ingredient. Next thing you know you will be wanting me to tell you how to make lemon and garlic confit and what to do with it.

Thinly slice a Meyer lemon. Lightly pat the slices with lavender salt. Slowly fry in extra virgin olive oil over very low heat with some unpeeled garlic cloves. When the moisture has been replaced with oil, store the slices in a jar with olive oil. Use the confit to garnish baked fish, in gremolata, even chopped in salads. The possibilities are endless. Go crazy!

Your next Iron Chef assignment is:

Black beans

The Biggest Problem...

Have I mentioned before how much I like Fr. Jim Tucker? Other than his weakness for Libertarianism he has some very sound ideas.

Here is an example of one of them.

I have said in the past that the greatest evil facing the Earth is the push to ordain women. I would rather have a toxic waste dump in the middle of my neighborhood, I would rather every meal be Boston Market, I would rather have every painting in every museum be painted by Thomas Kinkade than to see a woman standing at the altar of my parish. Or any parish. All of the evils listed above are the sorts of evils that we can survive. They can be dealt with. Once you start tinkering with the sacrament of ordination, you block all of the other sacraments, and without sacraments, pffft! That's all folks.

I still stand by this, but Don Jim takes it to the root of the problem when he says, "the single biggest problem and the root of countless errors is flawed ecclesiology." We wouldn't even have the strange and hideously evil notion of ordaining women on the table if it weren't for the pioneering work of diabolism by Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, et alia.

Anyway, this is the opening salvo of my Week of Prayer for Christian Unity posts. You will get enough blather on "let us see how we have hurt one another and begin to discuss our commonalities..." in your parish. You will get plenty of talk about dialog and all of that in the bishop's newsletter. And all of that is probably fine and good since we really have been shits at one time or another (while he chose a horribly wrong road, Luther started out with some valid complaints), and will probably continue to be shits.

However, if we really want to help these poor people wandering around in the wilderness, we need to say loud and clear, "lay down your pride, abandon your vile heresy, end your schism and submit to the Roman Pontiff. Or go to Hell." That last sentence is most important. More is at stake than boosting membership in a club. We might be shits, but we are shits with access to the Sacrament of Confession. What is a poor Calvinist sinner to do? Quake and shiver and await Hell or just enjoy life while he can? Ah-hah! Now you might understand why I blame our pornographic culture on the Calvinists!

Ah the smells

Right now I am reducing a double extracted brown stock (veal and chicken) to glace de viande. At the end I will have turned two gallons of stock into a cup of thick jelly. It can be turned back into stock with the addition of water, or it can be added to sauces to give them an incredible flavor boost. It also saves a lot of space in the freezer.

I highly recommend doing this lengthy procedure for a number of reasons:

1. Your kitchen will smell fantastic for a couple of days as you extract, reduce, extract and reduce.

2. When you are rushed for time you can make sauces that taste like you spent hours on them.

3. Often you will make a sauce and find that it lacks something. You will not be sure what, but more times than not a spoonful of glace will turn it into something amazing.

4. It is fun and does not take that much work.

ARRRRRGGGHHH!

I just spent the last twenty minutes typing you up a nice recipe and then hit the wrong button, losing it. Amalia will not have patience for another twenty minutes, so it will have to wait.

Also, I have had three recipe requests via email, combox or other blog that I forgot about. I will get to them soon. This weekend.

So, in the meantime, iron chef it: your ingredient for the day is lemon and garlic confit. Report on the results.

Irish Elk

They were really big deer, and they lived all over Europe, but for some reason they are known as Irish Elk. Usually adding the moniker "Irish" means that the drink was spiked or the children came close together, but I do not know if Irish Elk contained whiskey or had litters (no, not litters, but I cannot remember what it is that you call deer baby congregations) every year.

Anyway, if you want to learn more about Irish Elk you can go barking up the tree of paleozoologists. If you would rather just have a good read about all sorts of things (and must forgive the editor's nostalgia for creepy Democrats of the past), especially traditional jazz, baseball, and some strange game they play on the ice back East, then go to Mark Sullivan's Irish Elk.

Mark will certainly understand what I am doing by linking to him, so perhaps we can see what happens with "Italian Caribou" or maybe "Mongolian Spotted Owls"

Tee hee hee.

Books, books, books

Don has posted a list of books that he got from someone else. The game is to remove authors who you do not have in your library and replace them in bold with ones you do have. Here is mine:

1. Evelyn Waugh
2. Thomas Hardy
3. Graham Greene
4. Jane Austen
5. CS Lewis
6. JRR Tolkien
7. Italo Calvino
8. P.G. Wodehouse
9. Jack London
10. William Shakespeare

Arts Criticism

There is an interesting exchange going on between Tyler Green and Terry Teachout about the merits of specialized versus generalized arts criticism. I definitely have a horse in this race because I never set out to be a harpsichordist or percussionist or to compose electronic music or to study theory or any of that. I went to college figuring that I would be either an art major or a literature major (the former because I have been primarily interested in visual arts for as long as I could remember, the latter because it seemed proper to have an undergraduate degree in some sort of letters).

However, when I got to school the art department was being taken over by flakes and lunatics (a sad thing, seeing as how UCSC had a good art department) and the literature department was already in the grip of flakes and lunatics. After a brief flirtation with astronomy I found myself in Gordon Mumma's History Technology and Literature of Electronic Music class. To make a long story short, I ended up a music major with Gordon Mumma as my advisor, and ended up switching from piano to harpsichord (another long story, but one with a very good ending) and then adding some percussion to the mix.

Certainly all of this music study, especially at a rigorous program like UCSC's, resulted in me knowing a fair bit about music, being able to write about it, to write it, to play it, to edit it, etc., and I even ended up in the music business, but the main influence all of my study of counterpoint, harmony, form, structure, twelve tone matrices, rhythm, texture, and so on, has been on my painting.

For one thing, I don't think that I would have nearly the love of Diebenkorn's work had I not had my background in music (one funny coincidence was that I invented a system of structure based on Stockhausen's Four Criteria of Electronic Music. It resulted in a graphic structure that was based on expanding polyrhythms. Later I looked at one of them and was struck by the similarity it had to one of the Ocean Park series paintings of Diebenkorn. It certainly was not conscious).

Even when I think about the bullfight, I am drawing from concepts in music (usually the relationship of ornament to the written melodies in baroque music, but also in terms of basic structuring of time space, from the division of the whole into parts as well as the specific time and space issues of particular lances and passes).

Obviously it is important for the critic to have a deep specific knowledge of the form he is writing about. If someone is writing about Diebenkorn, I expect them to have a pretty good grasp of painting in general and to have read Nordland, Landauer, Boas and others on twentieth century California painting. And, frankly, I would be more annoyed if this hypothetical critic lacked this specific knowledge than if he lacked the ability to discuss the Ocean Park paintings in the context of musical structures and symbolist poetics. Nothing is worse than the generalist who is ALWAYS out of his depth (for instance that Marin County MD who wrote one of the silliest and shallowest books I have encountered on the relationship between modern art theory and scientific discoveries - lots of superficial appeal and arguments that fell apart as soon as they were looked at too closely. I think the fellow was a surgeon. I hope he knows anatomy better than he knows art or physics).

Now, the thing that is left out of both Teachout and Green is the critic with a scientific background. I remember the first time I read Ruskin and was impressed by how much he knew of matters geological, botanical, etc. I am no scientist (which is defined as one who has a tesla coil in his laboratory and a vaguely mitteleuropaische accent and a nervous giggle), but what I have studied of geology, zoology, anthropology, chemistry, astronomy, etc., has greatly enhanced my ability to think about and comment on art of all sorts, never mind the tremendous fodder that it can be for creating it (I dare you to study the geology of Death Valley and not want to go out and paint or at least to get a glass of water).

So, I will end this with a question for the great generalist Terry Teachout: are you ready to tackle the bullfight yet? Dance, music, drama, it's all there. Ole!

More on SFMOMA

Tyler Green has posted more of his notes on his recent SFMOMA exhibit. I generally agree with him (as I have noted earlier - especially on Thiebaud), but he is understating when he says that SFMOMA is not strong on Picasso. I also must question his take on Deborah Luster. I was underimpressed to say the least.

He is quite correct on praising the Bay Area room with its two Parks, two Diebenkorns and outstanding Joan Brown sculpture. Those who know me know that I think Brown to be one of the most overrated artists in the Bay Area. I thought that she was fine until I saw her monumental retrospective a few years back and realized that in the end she is a minor painter (it is funny how many retrospectives have totally changed my view of painters: Keith Haring is one I thought very little of until I saw his retrospective, ditto David Ireland).

Now, could someone tell me why Jay DeFeo's Incision is up in the Fifth Floor Hall of Silliness instead of down in the Bay Area room?

Susan Sontag, RIP

I normally refrain from ripping into the oevre of the recently dead. Generally it is better form to wait until they have been in the crypt for a few months at least. However, I am not sure how long this will remain up, so read it now.

Hat tip: Mark Sullivan.

Nekkid Venus

Most of you already read The Shrine of the Holy Whapping on a regular basis. If you don't, you should.

However, even if you don't plan on making a habit of it, at least read this great post from Matthew if you have any interest at all in Catholic art and culture.

Happy New Years!

I hope all of my readers had a good New Years Eve. I am not one for making New Years' Resolutions, but here is one:

To paint every day.

I have recently gotten back into a regular painting schedule, and it has been great. Now I have to keep it up, because it is always difficult for me to start a new painting when I finish one. I get this feeling that I have expended all of my ideas on the last one and that I will just end up falling into the formulaic or will find that the well is dry. It is a stupid feeling, but one that I constantly battle. So, I am going to take the advice that I have given to other painter friends and go for quantity over quality. It is too easy to fritter away time fussing over a painting, so I am going to just plow through. Wish me luck!