Friday Five

I haven't done one of these for awhile. You can answer in the combox or on your own blog. My answers are in the Extended Entry section.

Five Seasonal Questions

Imagine you are in one of these hot places, where the mercury hits 100+, as this is the underlying assumption behind all of the questions.

1. What is your favorite way to beat the heat?

2. What is your favorite hot weather dish?

3. What is your ideal hot weather music?

4. What smells do you associate with hot weather?

5. OK. Enough is enough. If time and money were no object, where would you go to escape this infernal heat?

1. Swimming.

2. Tomato and bread salad (chunks of organic, heirloom tomatoes, homemade croutons, balsamic vinegar, fresh thyme, extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of salt and a dash of fresh cracked pepper).

3. 1960's Jamaican ska.

4. Coffee roasting and cigarette smoke, the result of driving by Sacramento's Java City with the windows down. It is a great smell.

5. Lake Garda in the Dolomites.

Friday Feast (a day late)

Friday's Feast

From The Summamamas via Sotto, sotto, from Friday's Feast website!

Appetizer - Where do you go when you want to relax?

Caffe Greco in North Beach.

Soup - Tell about something that made you laugh this week.

There were these three guys who walked into a bar... and the many other jokes told by my friends late Wednesday night at Ocean Beach as we watched the storm waves crashing into the sand.

Salad - What is your favorite texture?

Right now it is meat.

Main Course - If you were to publish your autobiography, what would the first sentence be?

I never write the first sentence first. The lede must be the last thing I write, even after the first few edits.

Dessert - Do you celebrate St. Patrick's Day? If so, how?

Sort of. I drink Irish stout, eat corned beef and cabbage, listen to the Pogues, avoid overcrowded Irish pubs like the plague.

Friday Five

List five foods that remind you of home or your childhood (from Happy Catholic):

1. As we approach my birthday, I have to start thinking of my favorite birthday treat: Fondue!

2. Gringo Tacos

3. Fresh pasta with homemade pesto

4. Boef bourguignon.

5. Rigatoni alla bolognese

Sort of like the Friday Fives...

From TSO

Name THREE of your...

1. Pet Peeves: Sideways baseball hats, conversational writing, animal rights activists
2. Favorite Sounds: the wind in aspens, the fog horn in San Francisco in the middle of the night, the harpsichord.
3. Biggest Fears: being attacked by a shark (a crazy fear that never hits me in the ocean, only in swimming pools, even though I know the impossibility - something that goes back to my competitive swimming days), Kenny G, Canada.
4. Biggest Challenges: remembering the essential humanity of animal rights activists, drawing hands well, doing laundry without complaining.
5. Favorite Department Stores: Harrod's, Nordstrom, that's about it.
6. Most Used Words: dirty, commie, rat.
7. Favorite Pizza Toppings: pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms.
8. Favorite Cartoon Characters: I am changing this one to comic strip characters: Krazy Kat, the Katzenjammer Kids, Pogo.
9. Movies Recently Watched: The Triplets of Belleville, 8 1/2, Gaslight.
10. Favorite Fruits & Vegetables: cardoni, Bartlett pears, cavolo nero.

Friday Five

While I work up the Julia Child Tribute Menu (so far I have 12 courses), I will offer a Julia Child-inspired Friday Five.

1. Tell us about the first time you tried a recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

2. What was the most recent thing you cooked from one of Julia Child's cookbooks?

3. Can you do a fair Julia Child impersonation?

4. What is your all-time favorite Julia Child recipe?

5. What page does your copy of Mastering the Art of French cooking fall open to on its own? Describe the bits of stuff that have become part of that page.

My own answers are in the extended entry section

1. I was 13 and started to get intrigued by French cooking, particularly the difficult stuff. One weekend I was left on my own and decided to make croissants from scratch for brunch when my parents returned on Sunday. I used a different book for that, but they were beautiful, so I decided that I needed to do something else. I thumbed through MTAOFC and kept going back to cheese souffle. It came out exactly as it was supposed to.

2. I used her recipe for roasted chicken (with a cognac pan reduction sauce) on Monday night.

3. Yes, but cleaning the kitchen afterwards is a bit of a chore.

4. Pate de canard en croute (boned stuffed duck baked in a pastry crust). MTAOFC, Vol 1, page 571.

5. Volume 1: Page 402/403 (Cassoulet). There is considerable moisture damage, and brownish stains that are probably meat-related. On the reverse side are what look like blood stains. There is a bit of crusty stuff that is probably bean residue. I use this recipe once a year for my Nouveau Beaujolais party.
Volume 2: Page 62/63 or 64/65 (French bread), due to thick crust of flour in the binding. We use this recipe once a year, for Christmas, when the bakeries are closed and we absolutely must have proper French bread to go with our Christmas dinner.

Clinton and Kerry

You know, it is probably a symptom of my general disdain for democracy, but I really could never get that worked up over Bill Clinton. He just was too much of an oaf for me to get angry at. It was when he played the sax on television that I realized what a complete loser he was, just another boomer parent trying to look cool and hang out with the kids. Ick.

You never hear about Fed Chairman Greenspan's reed career. He could actually play. When he wasn't playing professionally he was hanging out with abstract expressionist painters and Ayn Rand. Yet Jay Leno never had him play on his show. It's too bad, since he can probably really blow. Well, maybe not now, but in his day.

Instead, we get Clinton honking his tenor. Cripes. He was worse than Kenny G.

But I never had a deep down loathing for the man the way a lot of conservatives did, even though he is such an awful musician, yet had the gall to play on national television. Observing the Clinton years was like watching a baby boomer dance. You might feel a little embarrassment for the boomer, you might find it funny, you certainly find it hideous, but you don't hate the poor guy for it. After all, he has to wake up in the morning and still be him.

In fact, when it came down to it, the reaction he got from Republicans amused me even more. "Vincent Foster!" Wait. Let me get my tinfoil hat on. OK. Tell me about how Clinton ordered Vincent Foster's death. Tee hee hee. It must be this modern age, but the Republicans seem to be smoking some powerful stuff. And inhaling, to boot.

Mrs. William Clinton, well, she is another story. Bad, bad news. Bill was just a goober made good. Mrs. William Clinton was more like an alien who comandeered a human body. She wants to be President, but she will never be my president (OK, revelation: no woman who is neither a Hapsburg nor a Mussolini will ever be the head of any state that I pledge fidelity to. I remain an entrenched sexist). She has vacant eyes, even though they dart around.

Now this Kerry fellow seems much more like Mrs. William Clinton. I can get into voting against him. I am even remaining true to my lukewarm endorsement of the Protestant Bush, simply because of my view of Kerry. I never voted for Clinton, but I also never voted for Bush Sr., nor for Bobdole (very senior). Instead I voted for Libertarians and the like.

I had a similar loathing of Gore, and voted for little Bush. Every time I have a slight feeling of regret, I think of Al Gore and feel proud to have voted for Bush. So proud that when I look at Kerry, I want to do it all over again.

So, here we are, getting closer and closer. I still do not like Bush (it's that "you see" stuff that drives me batty) and still avoid voting for Protestants on general principles (which leaves Kerry out in the cold, too), but I am still endorsing Bush. I listened to snippets from both candidates today. Bush almost lost me with his "ya see..." and then a bunch of sap about looove. Kerry lost me the minute I heard that grating voice.

In fact, when I hear Kerry or a Kennedy, I am forced to recall Abraham's words to God about Sodom. We need to find 10 good men in Massachussetts. We have Mark, there are the Mello Brothers, who make those great linguicas, and, uh, well...

So, here is the belated Friday One Hundred/Fifty?/Howabout Five?

1. List in the comments' boxes seven people who should be held up to God as reasons not to smite Massachussetts.

2. Help! Harvard lost some of the biggest fruitcakes on its faculty to Princeton. In honor of the occasion, create some sort of award for Cornel West.

3. Write an all-rhymed acceptance speech for Professor West.

4. Earn a chance at being a sportscaster for a day! California and Massachussetts seem locked in a fanatical battle to lead the world into complete moral decay. In your best adrenaline-charged voice, narrate events. C'mon. Give it your all! Give it all you've got! Give 110% and don't forget the basic fundamentals. Remember the goal of this football game is to get the football, to move the football over the goal line, and then to kick it between goal posts. It all boils down to the team that does this the most, wins the game. Any comment, Pat?

5. Describe an experience you had with Moxie or fiddlehead ferns.

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.

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.

Wednesday One

When I suggested reviving the Friday Five, I was suggesting that others take up the torch and offer questions as well. I simply don't have time to do it every week, but if no one else does, I will do it when I feel the urge, but not as a regular thing.

Meanwhile I thought of a good one, but it is just one question, so I will post it today as the Wednesday One:

Is there a book that makes you want to strangle the author? I am not just talking about being a bit peeved, but having to deal with the temptations of deep-down, homicidal impulses. If so, please explain. Be honest.

Friday Five

Here is a new Friday Five. Please answer in the comments box or on your own blog.

1. If you could hire any architect from any era to design your ideal house, who would it be and why?

2. If you had to eat exclusively from one cuisine for the rest of your life, which would it be?

3. If you could commission any artist, living or dead, to paint your portrait, who would you choose and why?

4. Tomorrow one tune will be stuck in your head. You will not be able to escape it from waking up to going to bed. You get to pick the tune. Which one would it be?

5. If you were going to be put under house arrest, but were allowed to pick the place (this is a house arrest where you could travel five miles in any direction, but beyond that your radio collar will trigger the men in black to round you up, rough you up and take you back home), where would you pick?