Briefly Noted...Some Reviews

1. The latest Disney (gasp) film, Enchanted. This is worth seeing for pure entertainment value. There are some very funny moments, good acting, strong writing, and excellent dance numbers. It is not earth-shattering art, but it is definitely worth the time spent.

2. The New Yorker cartoon issue. Lame. Lame. Lame. There is one almost-funny by R. and Aline Crumb, and a couple of other mildly amusing drawings (the two pages on where cartoonists get their ideas is good), but for the most part it is stale and misses the mark. The fiction is mind-dumbingly dull.

3. William Trevor's After Rain. Yawn. A few of the short stories are sort of good, but for the most part, this book can be safely ignored.

4. Washington Square by Henry James. Yawn. It makes you appreciate Jane Austen, who could write circles on the same sort of tedious subject matter around James.

5. Pinks All Out. OK. Drag racing isn't everyone's cup of tea, and the behind the scenes stuff about matching which car with which car and the constant worry about sandbagging gets dull, but this is pure balls-out auto racing where the races are about 10 seconds long. Much better than watching the high-speed traffic jam that is NASCAR. Yeah, put the pedal to the metal and turn left...whoopie. This is put the pedal to the metal and before you are worrying about a yellow flag on the penultimate lap, it is over, and one guy is happy and the other guy is putting on a great show of being a good sport. Some money changes hands. Also, the very serious starter fellow is sort of amusing.

6. Hairspray. I watched about fifteen minutes of it and got bored. Travolta has never looked better. In fact, while watching this I had to wonder if he isn't the tragic result of a cross breeding program between apes and men. I shouldn't pick on the mentally challenged, but if I never saw his dopey dianetics-tinged mug in another film, it would be just fine with me.

7. Animal Planet's Animal Cops. Look. I understand, sort of, loving animals. It is a manifestation of a sick society. If you want to see what happens when you give these dim bulbs the weight of law behind them, packaged in an infomercial for the SPCA, then this is your show. I still say that sending Michael Vick to prison is a collosal waste of resources.

8. The Macy's Parade. Parades are fun to be in and fun to be at. I like them. This is the mothership of all parades. The commentators are annoying, but that is the price you pay for not flying out to New York to watch the thing in person.

That is it for now. More later.

We are Back

We are back. Normal blogging (OK, Keilholtz, what, exactly, is normal blogging?) shall resume. Thank you for your patience.

We are back...sort of.

First, please pray for the repose of the soul of Melanie's grandmother, Helen Buckingham, who passed away Friday night.

As you can imagine we are a bit preoccupied over here. We just got back to town today, and we will be heading back to Redding for the funeral on Tuesday. Blogging will probably be slow until we return.

Happy Thanksgiving

Well, I was tired when I got back from my catering gig, and had a busy day, so no pictures were downloaded. They will have to wait, as we are out of town already.

Have a good weekend, be safe, etc.

Cooking and so forth

Pardon the silence, but I have a cooking gig Monday night, so postings will be nonexistant through the day.

Afterwards, we will be heading off to family, but I will try to post some pictures, as the blog has been mighty un-visual recently. Melanie took a particularly striking photo of a jewelled sunflower in our backyard, and I would like to post it. I would do it now, but I have to first load the pictures from the camera to the computer, and that takes time, which, as I have mentioned, I don't have in surplus right now.

The food I am working on is all Greek. Greek cooking is a lot of fun. Philo dough is amazing stuff. Olives taste good.

But I am just jabbering right now. I am inventing something in the Greek style. I will post a recipe for it later.

Book in Progress

For some reason I normally don't comment on the books I am reading, nor do I generally post reviews. Perhaps a small "go read this book" sort of thing, but I don't like writing longer reviews unless money is involved. I like writing anything if money is involved.

For one thing, if you are writing about a book, you should be thoughtful about it in two ways: the first is the way one ought to be thoughtful about reading in general. No problem there. The second one, however, requires much more time and energy, and that is the way of being thoughtful in writing about writing. You have to be much more organized in how you present things, and, if you are good, you then get a conversation going. These things, of course, take time, and I don't have a lot of time. Or, the time I have free, I would much rather spend reading than in writing about writing. Unless you were to pay me.

But, setting aside my usual policy (really more habit than policy), I am currently reading and enjoying Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon. If you are looking for an interesting book that touches on several topics, and is focused on one of the greatest, most beautiful cities in the world, then pick this one up. I am a little over half way through, and when I finish I will report on it. There are a couple of things that are really thought-provoking, not so much about Paris as about America, since Gopnik uses his Parisian time to reflect on things back home as much as on Paris (for instance, he comes to the realization that Bill Clinton is Barney for grownup liberals).

Not only a Commie, but a Teenager...

It shouldn't surprise me that that Commie turd Chavez now wants to "review" relations with Spain in light of His Most Catholic Majesty's comment the other day. I cannot think of any other world leader, besides Kim Jong-Il who would blatantly base foreign policy on their reaction to a personal insult. OK, Castro probably would, as would Ortega. Nothing like Marx to turn grownups into snot-nosed teenagers.

The prosecutor should be facing charges...

Here we have a story of a man on trial for killing a cat. He did not slowly torture the thing to death, nor was he out luring neighbors' cats into traps. No, he shot a cat that was stalking endangered birds. OK, it is probably overkill, but the fellow is an ornithological sort.

Now he is facing criminal charges. The prosecutors are using all of the rhetoric of a real crime: cold-blooded. lingered. suffered.

Shooting a feral cat with a rifle to protect endangered species is a crime now? For the same reason we can hold up the building of schools, cost public and private sectors millions in one fell swoop, but we cannot shoot a cat? We can murder humans in their own wombs, but the life of a feral cat is protected by the might of law?

I am curious...are we exporting these great values to Iraq and the other places that we are bringing democracy, capitalism and the American Way?

My Inner European...

I might be half-Kraut, but I am all Italian:

Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful. You show the world what culture really is.

A rare show of Cojones...

Wow! His Most Catholic Majesty shows a little bit of what was to be his destiny, before he went all girlie. Perhaps all hope is not lost.

Also, note that Chavez was helped by his good buddy Danny Ortega, who was supposed to have turned over a new leaf. Har har har.

San Francisco Franco y Bahamonde, Pray for us!

The Ups and Downs of HomeSchooling

When we started this crazy adventure in homeschooling (reluctantly - it was our third choice), I was afraid of the wide open day in front of us. I decided the best thing to do was to hit the ground running, no, sprinting. I bought text books that matched the state and national standards and we pushed into them at as high a rate as Amalia seemed able to do.

A month went by and we were so outlandishly ahead of any normal standards, that I realized it wouldn't hurt to ease up a little bit. To keep Amalia from getting bored (hah), we added some other goodies into the academic mix. I still have to think about the possibility of algebra by third grade, but I realize that we can certainly take some subjects with a more relaxed pace and can carve out some time for other things.

For instance, today we start a two day exploration of Southern culture. We will focus the lesson around The Hee Haw Collection, Vol. 3 (you could see that coming, no?), which features Geroge Jones and Merle Haggard. We will talk about the roots of the Texas style (taking a look at Bob Wills, of course), and using it as an excuse to talk about the dustbowl, Californian immigration (which might explain to her why some folks still talk kinda funny in the Central Valley), Dorothea Lange, Bakersfield, and how music can move with migrating populations and can change with those populations as they travel. And we can sing along (yes, Amalia has just about perfected "pffft! You were gone")!

Obviously norteno music (with Les Blank's Chulas Fronteras as the centerpiece), Roma music (Latcho Drom perhaps?), and the blues would be follow ups on this sort of multi-disciplinary approach.

Now, this is the fun side (along with the fact that we are now part of a home school/classroom hybrid charter school, which gives us the best of both worlds), but there are those days...

As a parent volunteer at Amalia's old school, I know that those days can happen and do happen in classrooms as well. And if it is bad when one child cannot focus beyond five minutes, it is dreadful when 18 of them have minds wandering off in different directions.

It is just that the whole thing is more acute when we are able to zip through material with amazing speed and thoroughness, and then, the next day we are having to go over the same stuff six times, because we found five different things to distract us in the middle of the same passage.

Cold, damp, gray.

We are sitting in fog. Thick, pea soup stuff. Last week there was a nasty 100 car pileup in the Central Valley. I grew up in the Central Valley and remember how awful the fog can be. It hangs on the ground and never seems to leave. Sometimes you wonder if you are ever going to see the sun again. Of course it is great if you are into the Gothic/Romantic aesthetic: stark branches lost in a wash of gray, with the only birds visible on the branches the crows and ravens.

Of course the solution to the fog is to stay indoors, but that is not always possible. You have to go out for this or for that, and when you come back in you are ready for something to take the chill out.

Now, fortunately for you, Erik's Rants and Recipes has two entries that will help tremendously in this department. Not only will they help, but they are two of the three most commonly viewed of all my entries:

1. This one on grappa

AND

2. This one on oxtail soup

Both things will warm the body and spirit.

Also, Nouveau Beaujolais is only a week away, so you might want to dust off your cassoulet recipe. I recommend the recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I know some people who sniff at nouveay beaujolais, but I don't. It has its place in the world of wine.

If I think of other really good cold weather recipes, I will let you know.

Volcano Alert!

In case you are not following the latest in seismic/volcanic news, Indonesia's Mt. Kelud is threatening to blow up. It's last major eruption was in the 1990's, and there were considerable fatalities. Unfortunately villagers in the impact zone are ignoring warnings to leave, so there is a strong chance that this could be a disaster, too.

At what point do you stop feeling sorry for someone who is the victim of a natural disaster?

Don't build in an area that floods every year. Don't build a city below sea level in hurricane country. Don't build on the side of a recently active volcano.

But if you do any of these things, fine, there is something to be said for maximizing resources, even the ones that are temporary. However, when the warnings for evacuation come, and one doesn't evacuate in a timely manner, you just have to scratch your head.

I read about a young man who was not going to leave his new house in the face of Southern California's firestorm. His girlfriend was not going to leave him. The police were to busy to enforce mandatory evacuation rules. I don't know what happened to them. I am sure that since the house was new, and, according to the article, financed, that it was insured. This was not some peasant who had to stay on the land or face starvation, nor was this some old person who was determined to die in his house of several decades, but a young couple in a typical modern development sort of house.

I just don't get it. When the authorities tell me that the fire is on the way, we are going to go. Sure we might pack some photos or even a few books or that sort of thing, but there will be no delays from us.

But, enough of that. My main interest in volcanoes is geological, and, even though this eruption could run towards tragedy, the geological phenomena should still be quite interesting.

Speaking of things seismic, the other night the house shook. Our house is a two story house with a fir frame, so when someone walks down the stairs,one can generally feel it. But this was something bigger, but it was still basically a one-bump and then stop sort of deal. Melanie commented that Amalia must have jumped off something and landed in just the right spot to make the house shake.

Later that night we found out that it was a 5.8 earthquake. There are benefits to living on a stone plug. In some parts of the Bay Area people thought that it was what we so ominously call The Big One. We mistook it for the typical energy of a six year old.

Anyway, earthquakes were a normal part of life in Santa Cruz after the Loma Prieta earthquake. I can't say that you really get used to them, but they do lose their edge after awhile. I suppose they must, or no one would live in Hollister.

My worst personal experience with an earthquake was a few years ago in Redding. An earthquake hit on Thanksgiving when we were up visiting my inlaws. It hit while I was in the shower. I think the last thing you want to be when a major earthquake comes is naked, wet, and soapy. Fortunately the shaking stopped even before I had to deal with being in the aforementioned state, and so I did not actually get to scamble into my clothes so that I wouldn't be naked when the rescue workers dug me out. There is something extra pathetic about a naked corpse in the wake of a natural disaster.

Anyway, I will post more updates on the volcano as I get them.

Happy Feast of All Saints

I hope that you all have a great feast day. I will be cooking for an All Saint's Day Party, and will not be blogging much at all today.

Something to recommend, however: bake some biscotti (Chez Panisse desserts has an excellent traditional recipe). Home baked biscotti are fantastic, and the smell of the anise in the air, especially as the weather cools off, is fantastic.

Anyway, the kitchen calls.