Akascribe A personal blog covering all manner of subjects

October 19, 2009

The “Balloon Boy” – Another in a Long Line of Hoaxes

Filed under: General — akascribe @ 5:12 pm

So now the other shoe has dropped.  It seems young Falcon Heene’s parents concocted the whole media event of their 6 year-old son “accidentally” flying across Colorado on a small helium balloon only to “discover” him hiding in the family home.  Local authorities are pressing felony fraud and endangerment charges.  Millions of dollars of search and recovery costs were expended in the rescue effort and there is hell to pay.  All, apparently, because the dad was a “shameless self-promoter” who wanted to get a reality TV gig.  If it weren’t so pathetic it would be amusing, but I bet the rescue workers who raced after the balloon in the mistaken belief a young boy’s life was in peril aren’t laughing.

This is, of course, only the latest in a long line of hoaxes, perpetrated either for personal gain or just for the perverse pleasure of befuddling a gullible public.  They continue to fascinate us and, in the case of the more elaborate and cunning hoaxes, even draw our admiration.  (I don’t count “Balloon Boy” in that company.)

Perhaps the most famous scientific hoax was that of Piltdown Man, which tweaked paleontologists with a faux “missing link” for decades, and for which the perpetrator has never been found (the amateur archeologist who discovered the remains has long been suspected of hatching the scheme).  Other hoaxes that stick out in my mind include: Clifford Irving’s bogus autobiography of Howard Hughes (which was the subject of the 2006 movie, The Hoax, by Lasse Hallström), the crop circles that began appearing in Britain during the 1970s, and the fake finish of the 1980 Boston Marathon by Rosie Ruiz.

What are we to make of all of these?  Other than the obvious:  some people will go to great lengths to perpetuate a lie.

I think they say more about the mark, in the parlance of confidence tricksters, than the con man himself.  Namely, that people want to believe in the ingenious concoctions that these hucksters dream up.  And have a healthy dose of the same human flaws as the perpetrators, such as greed, vanity and a general lack of a moral compass.  If we were all cynical pragmatists, then hoaxes would not find a receptive audience.  But who would want to live in a world populated entirely by cynical pragmatists?

October 2, 2009

Shake, Rattle and Roll

Filed under: General — akascribe @ 4:56 pm

As a native Californian, I’ve lived through a fair number of earthquakes, including the 1989 Loma Prieta that literally knocked me on my ass in my old condo in San Francisco.  As the 20th anniversary of that quake approaches, I got to thinking about that event and what it means to live on terra infirma.

For anyone who hasn’t had the experience, it’s hard to describe what it’s like to have the ground literally go to pieces.  When the rumbling starts, your reptilian brain tries in vain to figure out what’s going on.  Then it slowly dawns on you – oh yeah, an earthquake!  But by that time (if you’re lucky) the quake has passed.

Sometimes, however, the rumbling continues.  That probably means a bigger one.  The ground or whatever you’re in that is perched on the ground is now moving.  Side to side.  Up and down.  The noise is considerable, a combination of the deep basso profundo of the tectonic plates rubbing up against each other, the alto of windows rattling and perhaps even the soprano of plates shattering.  In a really sizeable one – anything over 6.0 on the Richter scale – you frantically seek cover (under a solid table is a good place) or plot a mad dash for open ground.  Then, eventually, it all goes quiet.

If you experience enough of them you develop an inner seismograph, especially with the aftershocks that generally follow a major quake.  Mine has become remarkably accurate.  A temblor will roll through for a few seconds, barely rattling the windows and feeling as though someone jumped on the sofa.  “High threes,” I’ll say to my wife as we look up from our books.  “Maybe 4.1 or 4.2.”  We’ll read about it in the paper the next day:  a 4.0 quake struck at 9.13 pm with an epicenter in Napa.

The Richter scale is logarithmic, meaning a 5.0 quake is 10 times bigger than a 4.0 quake, and a 6.0 one is 100 times more massive.  So… the 1989 Loma Prieta measured 7.1 on Charles Richter’s eponymous ruler.  You do the math.  

I was working at home on October 17, 1989, and eagerly anticipating watching the 3rd game of the World Series, the so-called Bay Bridge Series between my then-beloved Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants.  (As baseball fans will recall, the A’s had convincingly won the first two games behind the strong pitching of Dave Stewart and Mike Moore.  Because of the ten day delay that followed the earthquake, both pitchers were able to pitch again when play resumed, repeating their victories for a four game sweep.)

Fortunately for me, I was living in a building on Clay Street, near the top of Pacific Heights, meaning I was on bedrock.  Ironically, the building was of the “Marina” style, which is a type of 1920s wooden construction with three residential stories over a ground level parking garage.  This was the architectural layout that doomed many identical structures in the Marina district, since the parking area didn’t have diagonally-braced walls.  But those buildings were built on the Marina’s landfill, not bedrock, so when the quake struck their foundations wiggled and sagged in the sandy liquefaction.

Bedrock or not, it was a terrifying experience.  I remember walking through my dining room and the floor literally rising up and sending me flying.  I landed on the hardwood floor, clinging for a hand-hold as the apartment pitched and heaved.  Recordings show the quake lasted all of 15 seconds but it felt like at least double that duration, maybe more.

The weird thing about riding out a major quake in a solid neighborhood is that you have no idea of the extent of the damage.  Power was immediately lost so I had to dig out a battery-operated radio to get any news whatsoever.  (I’m embarrassed to say that, once I’d survived the quake intact, with no real damage to my building, my initial reaction was annoyance that I wouldn’t be able to watch the baseball game on TV.  I naively assumed the game wouldn’t be interrupted.)  After walking into the street and connecting with similarly dazed neighbors, we drifted back to our units to resume our lives.  Completely oblivious to the utter devastation in other parts of San Francisco and the greater Bay Area.

Local radio reports were similarly hampered by the loss of power, so I got the first inkling of the scale of disaster with a phone call from my parents – from England!  They’d seen TV news footage and my mother, who is known for her hyperbole and melodrama, painted a shocking picture.  San Francisco was in flames!  The Bay Bridge had collapsed!  Scores of people had been crushed to death beneath collapsed freeways!  It was only later that I would learn this was all, more or less, true.

As news of the destruction started to trickle in, neighbors of mine sought each other out.  We collectively worried about missing spouses and significant others — lots of workers were stuck in the Financial District and, remember, this was back before many people had cell phones.  As they straggled the several miles home on foot (I believe the SF Muni, which barely operated in those days in normal circumstances, was totally out of commission), the mood lightened.  We’d survived and now the question was, what about the rest of the city?

This human coming together, as I recall, was the feel-good story of the Loma Prieta aftermath.  Neighbors who may have only exchanged pleasantries before the quake suddenly became much closer.  There was no TV to distract us so as the daylight faded we lit candles and uncorked wine and shared stories.  What else was there to do, really?  To be completely honest, the succeeding several days were some of the best in my life.  People really came together, throwing BBQ parties (why waste all those thawing steaks?) and helping out total strangers in need.  Nobody could go to work so it was like a holiday, but with a community purpose.  Several of my good friends lived in the Marina District and their buildings had been condemned.  In cases of less than total destruction, the authorities gave residents 15 minutes to go into their homes and remove belongings for the last time.  The firefighters were worried an aftershock might bring down the structure entirely.  (My friend Monique was not so lucky:  her building was completely destroyed.  She was at the baseball game and literally escaped with the clothes on her back.)

My friends Jesse and Barbara had to evacuate their apartment, so together with our buddy Chris, I rented a U-Haul truck so we could drive to their Marina apartment and remove enough of their belongings in the allotted 15 minutes.  The only problem – the fire and police departments had cordoned off the neighborhood and wouldn’t let any vehicles in.  What to do?  Luckily, we got talking to an NBC reporter who wanted to report on our situation.  So we struck a deal – he could film and interview us during our rush exodus if, with his credentials and camera crew, he helped us pose as a press vehicle to make it past the checkpoint.  It worked.  Safely past the police sentry, we drove over severely cracked pavement, parked in front of the tilting building and rushed upstairs to start unloading.  Jesse started carrying more delicate items (photo albums, artwork, etc.) downstairs while I literally tossed bedding and clothes out the window onto the sidewalk.  Luckily, the fire marshall had a soft heart and didn’t hold us precisely to 15 minutes.  We had time to load enough of significance and even conduct our NBC News interview.

I’ll never forget Jesse’s mother arriving midway through the process, dressed as if for the opera and carrying a huge bag of gourmet food which she commenced to pass around.  We stared at her in disbelief as we ran frantically to and fro trying to beat the looming time limit.  As a non-resident, how in the world had she got in?  Simple – she’d explained the situation to a sympathetic police officer who then proceeded to escort her taxi through the checkpoint on his motorcycle.  So typically San Franciscan.

With Jesse and Barbara safely evacuated and sleeping in my living room, life took on an odd schizophrenia that probably characterizes many disasters.  On the one hand, you are shocked by the devastation and saddened for those who have suffered – or even perished.  But on the other hand, you’re experiencing life at its most elemental and fulfilling, so it’s hard not to take some perverse pleasure in that.  After the power came back on (I think it was day two or three), I retrieved an old soldering iron and in the evenings started assembling an aircraft intercom kit I’d been meaning to put together (I was flying more actively back then.)  Soothing, repetitive, tactile work, kind of like knitting.  During the day, I helped friends move into temporary housing and otherwise volunteered doing relief work.  Meanwhile, our little city was the focus of worldwide attention and sympathy.

But don’t get me wrong – I have no desire for a repeat of that post-apocalyptic experience.  I suppose it was the 1994 Northridge earthquake that really got to me.  I wasn’t there for the main temblor but I immediately flew down to Burbank after learning how much damage had been wrought on both my parents’ and my sister’s residences in the San Fernando Valley.  Upon visiting my parents’ place in Sherman Oaks, actually my sister’s old condo which they were using as a pied-à-terre while they contemplated moving back from England, I was surprised they were still alive.  The place looked like a tornado had struck, with furniture and books and large appliances (television, refrigerator) scattered around like matchsticks.  A massive bookcase had come down on my mother’s side of the bed, which was also skewed at a bizarre angle.  If my mother hadn’t been in the bathroom when the quake struck (it was before dawn), the bookcase undoubtedly would have crushed her.

I remember standing in a hardware store in Chatsworth (where my sister lived) when the first of several aftershocks struck.  Maybe around 5 on the Richter scale but with the plate glass windows rattling and everyone’s nerves already frayed to the breaking point, I was not a happy camper.  Then another similar aftershock rolled through maybe five minutes later as I was lined up at the cash register.  That one really pissed me off; I remember swearing out loud, loudly.  I wanted to buy the spare part for my sister’s house (what was it, a toilet valve?  I forget) but my instincts were to drop everything and run outside.  It was like being subjected to a geological form of waterboarding.  A younger, more callow version of myself used to tell people that I “enjoyed” earthquakes, I suppose as some sort of native Californian badge of honor, but no more.

The reality is there will be another major quake in the years to come.  Maybe even a “Big One” like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake – and we all have read how nasty that was.  Living with this kind of uncertainty is bizarre.  We can’t really do anything about it, except prepare disaster kits (we have them in both of our vehicles, as well as the house) and an emergency plan.  Earthquakes are unique among natural disasters in that there is no warning possible.

As with other unpleasant things, people tend towards a state of denial about earthquakes.  I remember, in the wake of the Loma Prieta quake, homeowners in the Marina District putting their properties up for sale with handmade cardboard signs at bargain-basement prices.  But within a few years people drifted back and “forgot” the dangers of living on quicksand.  Today it’s one of the most desirable and expensive neighborhoods in San Francisco.  But you’d never catch me – or Jesse and Barbara – living there.

Two decades have gone by – it’s hard to fathom.  So much has occurred since then, but in some ways it seems like yesterday.  I suppose in geologic terms it was a millisecond ago.  Like the fault lines themselves, that cuts both ways.  We’re only here on this blue marble of a planet for a brief spell, but the aggregate of moments we do have often give the illusion of permanence.  So:  here’s to making the most of what we have while we’re here.  And, whenever possible, to sinking our foundations into bedrock!

September 30, 2009

Faux Boomer

Filed under: General — akascribe @ 1:27 pm

I was born in 1961, which makes me a Baby Boomer.  But I’ve never felt like one.  I missed out the Sixties, unless you count making it into the 4th grade as “participating” in the watershed decade of the last century.  I never had to worry about whether to burn my draft card, although I did sign my selective service card “under protest” in 1979 so that my federal student college loan wouldn’t be held up.  (Yeah, I know – pretty pathetic boomer credentials.)  By the time I was out of college and ready to fully indulge in the sexual revolution, STDs and AIDS were the acronyms du jour.  Pardon me for feeling gypped.  Big time.

Whatever Boomer issues sprang up in the social zeitgeist, there were only crumbs left on the table when I arrived.  But I and my contemporaries got tagged with all the Boomer stigmas: over-educated, profligate, self-absorbed, wine-swilling hedonists.  (Okay, I guess I plead guilty to at least some of those.)

It seems I’m not the first to note the displacement of my sub-generation at the tail end of the Baby Boom.  A few sociologists have named it the ‘Tween Generation, while some wag has called us the Brady Boomers (since we grew up watching The Brady Bunch on TV).  Whatever you call it, it still sucks to be a Boomer pretender.

The other bad thing about being a ‘Tweener is that the generations that came after mine seemed much more, well, cool.  Generation X had way better music and Generation Y has the whole digital thing in its DNA.  Plus, their politics are better.  My ‘Tweeners were part of the Reagan Revolution, which caused me great distress in the 80s.  I’d travel to Europe and have to apologize for my government, even though back home a lot of my contemporaries were happily joining fraternities and sororities and raising another beer to Uncle Ronnie.

For me, the worst part of being a Faux Boomer, though, was that my parents were part of the so-called “Greatest Generation” – those children of the Great Depression who fought in World War II (in my father’s case) and made the world safe for democracy, went to college on the GI Bill (again, Dad), then stormed out into the workplace to create the immense prosperity of the post-war years.  In contrast to them, my trials and tribulations seemed miniscule.  Dinner table conversation might consist of my mother describing V-1 bombs buzzing overhead in wartime London, then the severe food rationing which lasted in Britain through the early 50s.  Of course Dad could regale us with actual war stories, like being wounded and captured during the Battle of the Bulge and enduring actual starvation in a German POW camp.  What did I and my sister have to offer?  We didn’t get the prizes we wanted in our Cracker Jack boxes?  Our Wham-O Slip ‘n Slide stopped working?  Pretty thin gruel.

But there are some advantages of not being a bona fide, dues-paying member of the Baby Boom generation.  I never had to choose between Beatles and Rolling Stones – I could enjoy them both.  I never had one of those bad acid trips that never ends.  And I could take genuine pride in voting for Barack Obama, knowing I was electing one of my own – the first President born in the sixties (actually, one month before me).  You can have your Bill Clintons and your George W. Bushes – we’ve finally got my kind of Boomer in the White House!

September 16, 2009

Say it Ain’t So: Serena Williams and a Plea for Decorum

Filed under: General,Sports — akascribe @ 10:05 pm

Ever since Serena Williams’s outburst at the U.S. Open, I’ve been trying to process what this unfortunate incident means for tennis and society as a whole.  Given the “perfect storm” of rude behavior lately, starting with Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” heckling of President Obama in the House chamber (for which he was thankfully formally reprimanded by his colleagues), and Kanye West’s boorishness at the MTV Video Music Awards, civility – or the lack thereof – has been the topic du jour.  My good buddy Marco got tapped by his editors at USA Today to write a same-day piece earlier this week on that very subject.  As usual, he knocked it out of the park.

Today, more specifically on the subject of Serena’s antics, another superlative local journalist – Bruce Jenkins of the San Francisco Chronicle – has written an acutely observant article.  A word about Bruce.  Apart from his sharing the same SoCal hometown as me, his reporting is one of the (dwindling) reasons why I keep subscribing to this paper, but it is incredibly sad that this veteran sportswriter was forced to cover Wimbledon and the U.S. Open this year via television because of budget cutbacks at his paper.  It would be a cliché to say that the Chronicle is bleeding red ink, with its imminent demise a much talked-about Bay Area issue, but for Bruce’s sake and that of his fellow loyal readers I hope the Hearst Corp. can somehow figure out a profitable business model soon.

Bruce’s article makes the point that the professional tennis establishment not only tolerates but actually relishes the vulgar behavior that its athletes (like McEnroe and Connors in previous decades) all-too-often exhibit because that drives up TV ratings.  Just like I suppose people tune into NASCAR races to see a crash, Bruce bewails the fact that there aren’t enough tennis aficionados content with the purity of the game itself.

Well, count me as one of those aficionados who could do very well without a tennis pro losing it when she’s about to be legitimately beaten (by the refreshingly wholesome Kim Clijsters) and threatening a lineswoman in a profanity-laced tirade.  Especially as I was watching the match with my 8 year-old son, who has recently started playing the game in earnest. 

Collin absolutely loves sports and is as ardent a spectator as participant.  Basketball is uppermost in his firmament (with Michael Jordan the archangel) but he’s equally happy hanging with his dad and watching Lance spin up Mont Ventoux, Tim strike out the side for the Giants or Roger dispatch another pretender with his one-handed backhand.  He (rightly) has admired Serena for her game so he was as shocked as I was to see her lose it in that fashion.  We talk a lot about sportsmanship and, believe me, at 8 years old it can be tough to hold it together after a difficult loss.  So what’s he to make of it when Serena basically gets away scot-free with her behavior?  I can preach humility and manners until I’m blue in the face but the television set doesn’t lie – there was Serena completely blowing off questions about remorse in her post-match press conference and there she was again the next day, playing with her sister in the doubles finals as if nothing had happened.

Now I know I can’t protect my son from the big bad world forever and he is already as sophisticated as most kids his age.  For instance, when CBS replayed Serena’s courtside verbal barrage, they bleeped the profanities.  Collin volunteered that she probably said the “F-word.”  “You think?” I asked, feigning innocence.  “Yes,” he continued.  “That either means frick or fuck.”  Amusing, but I’m less concerned about his burgeoning playground vocabulary than the reality that highly paid professionals (and, by definition, role models) feel entitled to their rude behavior by the lack of any meaningful disapprobation.

And that’s really it, isn’t it?  The lack of consequences.  I can threaten my son with taking his racquet away if he throws it, but now he knows that Serena can smash hers with impunity then grab another one from her bag.

So what are we to do?  Well, I suppose we could vote with our remote control and boycott sports broadcasts that prove to be more spectacle than sporting.  But that’s not likely to have much impact, especially, as Bruce Jenkins imagined, someone probably remarked to Serena later with approval:  “Girl, you went off!”  Which is a far cry from what the young boy in Chicago supposedly said to Shoeless Joe Jackson in the wake of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal:  “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

September 13, 2009

Top Ten Cuisines

Filed under: Food, Glorious Food — akascribe @ 9:56 pm

A favorite parlor game of mine is having everyone name their top ten cuisines of the world.  This is sure to get more than the gastric juices flowing and can provoke some surprisingly heated discussions.

It helps to be with a group of people who are passionate about food, in which case everyone wants to justify their responses and wax rhapsodic about some favorite meal.  To really force the action, I also like to require a second list – of just the top five.  What could be controversial about that, you might wonder?  Oh man.  Getting a serious foodie to prioritize only five cuisines can create some major arguments, even some personal angst.  Try it sometime.

By cuisines, I mean by nationality.  Italian.  Thai.  That sort of thing.  But these days, as our palates get more sophisticated, it probably makes sense to get more specific.  I’ve never tried it this way but it could be interesting.  Northern Italian, instead of just Italian.  Or even from the Veneto, if we’re going to really go for it (I do love a good seafood risotto).

Anyway, here is my list, with some explanations/justifications below.  Like I said, it’s tough to do this, if you really love a lot of different types of food.  And I do.

Top Ten Cuisines in the World

  1. French
  2. Italian
  3. Thai
  4. Vietnamese
  5. Indian
  6. Mexican
  7. Mediterranean/Middle Eastern
  8. Japanese
  9. Peruvian
  10. Moroccan

(1)  French.  This seems almost cliché (pardon the linguistic pun).  But really, what else?  I probably cook more Italian but if I think about great meals I’ve had, or want to plan a menu for dinner guests, I’m probably thinking French before anything else.  And if it inspired Julia Child and Alice Waters to do what they’ve done, who am I to argue otherwise?  Just because the French have haute cuisine doesn’t mean this stuff has to be fancy.  There’s nothing simpler than a hunk of baguette and cheese, but that’s my go-to snack at home if I’m feeling a bit peckish.  And because for me food necessarily means food and wine, the French have that category locked up as well.  A dry rosé on a warm summer evening with a salade Niçoise?  Heaven.

(2)  Italian.  This is always a close second for me.  Like I said, I probably cook more Italian – pasta of course being a mainstay – but why dwell on its runner-up status?  The simple fact is, Italians know how to live.  And since so much of life revolves around meals, our indebtedness to La Cucina Italiana is enormous.  When it comes to true comfort food (think spaghetti all’amatriciana with a nice glass of Montepulciano), Italian food rules the roost.

(3)  ThaiSeems obvious but you’d be surprised how infrequently it makes people’s top five.  You don’t need to go to Thailand to taste the real thing but it helps.  The American version has been de-fanged somewhat for our more delicate sensibilities.  I can’t take it as spicy as I used to, but there’s something about the Thai use of the whole spectrum of hot, sweet, bitter and sour, together with all those wonderful ingredients, that is unique in creating eating pleasure.  I remember once eating a spicy beef salad on the overnight train from Bangkok to Chang Mai that was so hot I thought my mouth would disintegrate.  But try as I might, and with perspiration literally pouring off my face, I couldn’t stop eating it – it was too delicious.  Some people drink wine with Thai food but for me beer tastes better.  Plus it helps quench the fire.

(4)  Vietnamese.  Once I get on the subject of Thai food, then Vietnamese isn’t far behind.  I’ve never been to Vietnam but I really want to go.  I’ve heard the scenery is gorgeous, I like the people and the food is amazing.  The French influence certainly helps but it’s something else – a passion for complexity while using basic ingredients.  I wouldn’t attempt to cook Vietnamese food myself, even though I imagine it isn’t that hard to master.  But as anyone who has ever had an honest bowl of pho can tell you – it doesn’t get much better than that.

(5)  Indian.  I spent a lot of time in England growing up and Indian food was our take-out of choice.  I mean, who wanted bland battered fish and soggy chips when you could get Rogan Josh and Chicken Tandoori?  Indians rightly prize their cuisine as one of the world’s greats so it earns itself a place in my top 5.  I think what also helps make Indian food so interesting is the blending of cultures and ingredients.  It can be rice-based (biryani) or wheat-based (nan).  Meat-based or vegetarian.  But that complex palate of spices is a constant.

(6)  Mexican.  A classically misunderstood cuisine.  Bastardized by Taco Bell and countless other imitators.  The real thing is complex, soul-satisfying and unique.  Every once in a while I get a Mexican food craving that can’t be satisfied by anything else.  It can be fancy – think mole sauces – but it doesn’t have to be.  Enchiladas verdes, frijoles and guacamole – the ultimate comfort food.  It doesn’t hurt that Mexican beer is so good.  Make mine a Negra Modelo.

(7)  Mediterranean/Middle Eastern.  I know – this is a blatant cheat.  I suppose I could pick Lebanese or Greek or Turkish but the common elements remain the same.  Olive oil, feta cheese, hummus, pita bread, falafel, lemon, etc.  Persian food is a particular wonderful variant, with the use of saffron and pomegranate.   And the desserts, incorporating dates, honey, nuts and phyllo dough, will satisfy any sweet tooth.  It completely guilds the lily that a Mediterranean diet is so good for us, as medical studies now show.  As if we didn’t know?

(8)  Japanese.  I would probably rank this higher, but I find parts of Japanese cuisine close to unappetizing, such as the breakfasts.  I mean, I’m not a big fan of tofu in general, and combining that with broiled fish and seaweed first thing in the morning?  No thanks.  That said, what I do like about Japanese food is wonderful.  Sushi alone is a major contribution to world cuisine and the variety of rice and noodle dishes is amazing.  A personal favorite is unagi donburi – grilled eel in a savory sauce over vegetables and rice.  It’s no wonder the Japanese live so long – there is something unique to their cuisine that leaves one, after a meal, feeling both satisfied and clean.  There is little more appetizing on a rainy day than a bowl of miso soup.

(9)  Peruvian.  Here’s one you didn’t expect, I’m guessing.  And maybe aren’t that familiar with.  But once you get to know it, you’ll become a fan.  Like a lot of great cuisines, this is an amalgam of cultures, in this case New World (Incan) and Old World (Spanish), with a little Asian thrown in for good measure.  The signature dish is ceviche.  Other Latin cuisines have their own variants of this raw fish marinade, but (in my humble opinion) nothing compares to the Peruvian version, which incorporates the unusual corn and potato species indigenous to Peru, as well as aji, a particularly piquant type of chili pepper.  And even before the meal begins, Peru offers us one of the all-time great cocktails:  Pisco Sour, which is somewhat reminiscent of a margarita but much better, utilizing Pisco, a South American grape liquor.

(10)  Moroccan.  There is, admittedly, some overlap with Mediterranean cuisine here.  But there is also enough separation that I felt this deserved its own place on the list.  Use of cumin and cinnamon, two of my favorite spices, predominate.  Standout dishes include tagine, the wonderful couscous-based stews, harira, a lentil, tomato and lemon-flavored soup, and b’stiyya, a shredded chicken pie made with cinnamon-flavored phyllo that is as revelation of contrasting flavors.  It doesn’t hurt that a Moroccan meal feels so festive.  You eat it with your hands, communal style, and in restaurants the meal is often accompanied by a belly dancer.  By the time the mint tea arrives, sweetened with honey, everyone is in a very good mood.

Okay, so what did I miss?  Well, obviously Chinese.  This may seem like an egregious sin, but I have a simple answer:  I don’t eat that much Chinese food any more.  Not that I don’t like it and appreciate its incredible diversity – I do.  But if the choice is between Chinese and, let’s say, Vietnamese or Japanese, which are you going to choose?  Let’s be honest – the latter two combine the best features of Chinese cuisine (rice, noodles) and push them beyond the realm of the ordinary.

But that’s part of the fun – arguing about what should be on the list.  Of course nobody is right or wrong.  And as long as we all can enjoy a good meal, we’re all winners.

September 12, 2009

Woodstock Redux

Filed under: At the Movies — akascribe @ 4:44 pm

I have great admiration for Ang Lee.  He makes movies for grown-ups:  moving, thought-provoking and entertaining.  So I must give him a lot of leeway with his latest, Taking Woodstock.  It isn’t a bad movie – I think he is probably incapable of that – but as a dramatic feature it’s a bit of a fizzle.

The problem is Woodstock itself.  It becomes the main character in the movie and, as such, there’s no dramatic arc.  It’s almost like a documentary.  We know exactly what will happen – the show will be an acid-tripping, rain-soaked success – so the conflicts of the actual characters become completely ancillary.

Because I recently attended an anniversary screening of A Walk on the Moon, written by my dear friend, Pamela Gray, I couldn’t help mentally comparing the two movies as I sat in the cinema.  Even factoring in my personal allegiance to Pam, Taking Woodstock came up way short.

Both are set in the Catskills during the summer of 1969, and both involve a lower middle class Jewish family struggling to make ends meet, seemingly oblivious to the cultural crisis reaching a crescendo.  The movies even utilize identical newsreel footage, e.g. of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon and of the New York State Thruway turned into a hippie parking lot.  But because Woodstock never threatened to become a main character in A Walk on the Moon, the conflicts of the human characters remained paramount and we were left genuinely in doubt about the life-altering choices they will make.

Ang Lee must have recognized this risk when he made his film, and Elliot, the main character, is so likeable (played by the comedian Demetri Martin) that one is tempted to give Lee a pass.  I missed the actual music festival – I was 8 years old and living on the West Coast – so I have no way of knowing if the mythology of Woodstock, of the carefree, happy hippies camped out in Yasgur’s farm, matches up with the reality.  I mean, with all that rain and lack of food, there must have been some bummed out dudes.  But regardless, Lee feels the need to give Elliot the burden of not just immigrant parents who won’t let him go, but also being a closet homosexual.  The problem is that Lee handled this much more sensitively and thoroughly in Brokeback Mountain.  Without Jimi Hendrix and Joan Baez et al getting in the way, the tragic tale of two cowboys wrestling with their sexual orientation raised some serious dramatic stakes.  The closest Taking Woodstock comes to bringing us to the edge of our seat is whether the amplification system will electrocute someone, owing to the incessant rainstorms.

One almost wonders what kind of a movie it would have been if played for laughs.  There is some humor, to be sure, most of it thanks to a wonderful cameo turn by Liev Schreiber as a cross-dressing security guard who hires himself out to Elliot’s family.  (They run the motel that serves as Woodstock HQ and Elliot finagles the permit that gets the festival onto a neighbor’s farm.)  The fact that Schreiber, in A Walk on the Moon, played Diane Lane’s straight-arrow husband who is cuckolded by the hippie Viggo Mortensen, is pure poetic irony.  Schreiber, a big burly guy, steals the show in his wig, pumps and frocks, but he’s completely believable:  he’s actually the only character in the movie who knows who he is and is comfortable showing it.  But apart from Schreiber’s Vilma, the rest of the characters unfortunately fail Somerset Maugham’s famous test of three-dimensionality. 

Sorry, man – I don’t mean to be such a major bummer.

September 11, 2009

Food, Glorious Food

Filed under: Domestic Tranquility,Food, Glorious Food,General — akascribe @ 11:17 am

I knew when I started this blog that there would be entries about food.  You see, I love food.  Now that remark immediately strikes me as nonsensical.  Of course I love food – I need to eat and I am a pleasure-loving creature.  But it never ceases to amaze – and dismay – me when I see people who don’t truly love food.  Now they may think they like food, as they gorge their faces on what they would describe as food.  But even though the current McDonald’s advertising slogan is:  “I’m Lovin’ It,” that does not come anywhere close to what I’m talking about.

I don’t wish to sound like a food snob.  Lord knows I’ve had a meal or two at Mickey D’s.  And it’s certainly easy, as a Bay Area resident in the epicenter of the American real food movement, to come across with a superiority attitude when it comes to things culinary.  But much as it might seem that we Californians are ahead of the curve (as, let’s face it, we often are), we’re actually just getting around to shopping and cooking and eating the way other cultures have been for ages.

To be a lover of food, it certainly helps to have been brought up in a home where good food was prepared with love.  I can thank my parents for that, especially my mother, who cooked untold thousands of nutritious, tasty meals.  Someone is our family might have been upset at another or might have had a rotten day, but I know it soothed the soul to sit down to a set table and a hot meal.  Maybe it was homemade spaghetti Bolognese with a green salad.  Nothing fancy, really, but honest and delicious.

I won’t get into a diatribe about what’s wrong with the food industry or modern dietary habits.  Michael Pollan and others have covered these bases superbly.  If To Kill a Mockingbird is still required reading in school – and I hope it is – then The Omnivore’s Dilemma should be as well.

It will take time, but I’m essentially an optimist.  The cost of sustainable food (e.g. organic, local produce) is coming down and is more widely available.  People will realize how much better they feel when the put quality above quantity.  Meanwhile, I’ll continue my love affair with food.  Shopping for it, cooking it, serving it to others.  And yes, especially eating it.

September 6, 2009

The Case For Marriage

Filed under: Domestic Tranquility,General — akascribe @ 11:03 am

I’ve been a long-time reader of The Atlantic (which I still stubbornly refer to as The Atlantic Monthly) and in recent years I’ve enjoyed seeing my old childhood friend, Sandra Tsing Loh, author the occasional book review.  So imagine my surprise when I glanced at the cover of the July/August issue and saw the teaser: “Sandra Tsing Loh: The Case Against Marriage.”  The actual article’s title was even worse: “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” with the subtitle: “The author is ending her marriage.  Isn’t it time you did the same?”

Now divorce is sad, especially when there are kids involved.  But using one’s personal break-up as a platform to condemn the entire institution of marriage?  Even for Sandra, who can be, shall we say, a bit melodramatic in her humor and style, this seemed extreme.  The personal details, which she unfortunately saw fit to parade for our voyeuristic discomfort, were fairly prosaic.  A suburban marriage gone cold, with two intelligent, loving parents who apparently became absorbed in their work (her soon-to-be-ex is a musician who travels a lot with his band).  Then she met another man, an affair ensued, and (as she put it), she and her husband cried, they rented their hair, they bewailed the fate of their children, but she decided she didn’t have the strength to “work on” falling in love again in her marriage.

I know the publishing industry is in a dither about shrinking revenue models and I certainly wouldn’t begrudge my old friend the opportunity to earn her crust of bread.  But the reason I read The Atlantic is that its topics and analysis are typically pitched at a slightly more elevated level than People.  (I also subscribe to The New Yorker and like a lot of folks I was dismayed during Tina Brown’s editorial tenure, but that ship righted itself – bless you, David Remnick! – and it now produces, I think, the perfect blend of popular interest, social humor and intellectual heft.)  Whither The Atlantic?

To be fair, for the past few years the magazine has kept up a running forum parsing the societal pressures affecting educated, haute bourgeois women, often housing the eloquent post-feminist book reviews of Caitlin Flanagan.  Flanagan, who like Sandra, is a Los Angeles-based working mother of two, tacks perhaps a bit more towards the traditional side of the family values waters, although I haven’t discerned that much that separates them.  Both witty prose stylists, they have (until Sandra’s latest personal bombshell) demonstrated a healthy regard for the frustrating joys of juggling school lunches, busy working husbands and their own mid-track literary careers.  Where they apparently parted company is sex.

Sex, you gulp?  I don’t toss this out cavalierly and I certainly don’t mean to be, in any way, titillating or invasive.  But Sandra’s article goes to great lengths to describe the lack of sex in her own marriage and those of her circle of woman friends.  This, in a nutshell, is her argument: middle class marriage gets routine, so with the parents exhausted from their work-a-day chores, sex gets left by the wayside. Knowing this, why bother getting married in the first place?

To which Caitlin Flanagan would no doubt respond: for the kids.  And furthermore: you (married couples out there) have got to make more of an effort in the bedroom.

Now I’m not just writing this because I read The Atlantic or because I went to school with the author of the article in question or because I’m a guy with an axe to grind.  The subject intimately interests me.  I, too, am married, with a kid, and with a wife who writes professionally part-time while serving as the primary caregiver at home.  I am the exact same age as both Sandra Tsing Loh and Caitlin Flanagan, with very similar socioeconomic backgrounds (intellectual parents, suburban middle class upbringing, graduate school education).  I know about the trade-offs required in a relationship with two creative, working parents.  Would I like my marriage to have a more robust sex life?  You bet.  I mean, we’re doing okay – I promise sweetheart, this is all that I’m going to be writing on the subject! – but let’s face it, there are seasons in most people’s lives and the to-hell-with-dinner, rip-the-clothes-off-on-a-daily-basis stuff typically wanes a bit once you settle down and have a family, especially when economic pressures exist.

I imagine it was ever thus.  What changed, in modern times, is that divorce gradually became more acceptable.  To read the psychological literature, it is nevertheless devastating on children – I don’t think anyone should delude themselves about that – although there are certainly unhealthy marriages that should be ended for the sake of the kids.  But for the most part, marriages are like epic voyages: there are joys and strains, there are boring stretches and transcendental moments and there are times when you wonder whether to pack it all in.  And like the saying goes, it isn’t so much the destination that counts but the journey itself.

And I do believe that children fundamentally alter the marital landscape.  Without kids, a divorce is just a breakup with annoying costs and paperwork.  With kids in the picture, it’s a whole different ballgame.

Ayelet Waldman, the Berkeley lawyer and novelist, stirred things up a few years ago when she “confessed” in a New York Times essay (titled, “Truly, Madly, Guiltily”) that she loved her husband more than her kids, even going so far as to say that she would get over the death of one of her children but that she’d be inconsolable if she ever lost her spouse.  She then took her faux mea culpa act onto Oprah where she and her hostess cleverly turned the tables on an initially hostile female audience.  As some of these women fessed up to living in loveless marriages, perpetuated for the sake of the children, Waldman emerged triumphant.

Personally, I don’t think it was Waldman’s placing her husband – the absurdly talented writer, Michael Chabon – at the top of her domestic pecking order that pissed off so many women.  (The men, of course, had there been any in the studio, would have been cheering fit to bust.)  No, more likely it was Waldman’s gleeful boasting that, four kids later, she and her hubby have an incredibly hot sex life, routinely going at it like newlyweds on a tropical honeymoon.  Who wants to hear that when you aren’t getting any?  But assuming, for the sake of argument, Waldman is telling it like it is, I say: more power to them.  We all need role models to aspire to, be they literary or conjugal.  I just hope, for their sake, they reach their golden anniversary and beyond.  Anything less, and the collective schadenfreude will be palpable.

On the flipside, a very close friend of mine has been undergoing a horrific divorce.  Actually, it’s more of a custody battle – there is so much money at stake (he runs a hedge fund) that there will be plenty for everyone, even after the lawyers have had their feast at the trough.  Hearing some of his stories would make your blood run cold.  I mean, Alec Baldwin, who has famously endured a protracted custody battle with his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, and has even written a book about it, would meekly fold his cards in a divorce war stories showdown with my friend.  So what brought him and the mother of his two beautiful kids to the precipice?  I won’t go into the details, one, for privacy reasons and two, because no one really knows what goes on in a marriage anyway, except for the participants, and even they sometimes aren’t quite sure.  Suffice to say that there are usually plenty of issues and fault to go around.  And sometimes you just get unlucky in who you choose for a spouse – which can often mean that the spouse was unlucky with who they got for parents.

For these and other reasons I prefer not to sit in judgment of another person’s marriage.  I’ve got enough miles on my own domestic odometer to know that it’s an exceedingly complex, occasionally frustrating, but often immensely satisfying institution.  At some stage in life you discover true humility (which, as Socrates demonstrated, is the alter ego of wisdom).  You get knocked around a bit, maybe sit out an inning, and your youthful romantic illusions get washed away.  That doesn’t mean you take your ball and go home, but – to continue the sports metaphor – staying in the game requires a respect for the rules, a wary eye for errant passes and a reluctance to engage in trash talking.

So: the case against marriage?  It’s almost too easy to make, especially when times are tough.  But, if we’re being really honest with ourselves, what’s the reason why we yearn for a happy ending when we watch that boy-meets-girl fable at the cinema?  This: it’s what, deep down, we truly want.  To be with someone we get, fully and completely, and who gets us the same way.  Someone who can share the heartaches and the triumphs that fate dishes out.  A fellow traveler on the journey of life.  And even if it sometimes doesn’t work out, that’s not a bad thing to shoot for.

September 3, 2009

Strokes of Genius

Filed under: Books,Sports — akascribe @ 2:44 pm

I just finished Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played by Jon Wertheim.  The book is an account of the 2008 Wimbledon Men’s finals match, but it’s about much more than that.  Written by a Sports Illustrated reporter, it provides: an in-depth analysis of what most tennis cognoscenti agree was the greatest match ever; a biography of both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal; a discussion of what it takes to be a world-class athlete; a look at the culture and dynamics of the professional tennis circuit; and a paean to why competitive sports, professional or not, matter.

I must confess that I’ve been playing tennis since I was 8 and I’ve been a serious fan of the game as long as I can remember.  This cuts both ways: I’m certainly biased in favor of a book devoted to tennis, but I’m also more qualified to criticize any shortcomings.  However, you won’t hear any gripes from me.  Wertheim, who is a really stylish and intelligent writer, had me from the get-go and I enjoyed every digression (and there are many), even as I longed to get back to the play-by-play.  And of course I knew the outcome!  (If you don’t know that Nadal upset Federer in five sets, there’s a strong possibility that you wouldn’t be interested in the book.)

What makes the book particularly compelling is that Federer and Nadal, while each very likeable and superb athletes, are so different in playing style and personality.  Everyone who follows tennis will have a favorite – it’s sort of like Ted Williams vs. Joe DiMaggio (or for Beatles-lovers, Paul vs. John) – but even if you’re a fan of Roger (like me), you can’t help but come away with a deeper appreciation for Rafa.

Apart from all the “inside the game” stuff, which is, again, pure catnip for someone like me, there’s a universal message about sports and life in general, which is made possible because both players are so clearly decent and sportsmanlike both on and off the court.  Whatever one’s talents, and these guys clearly are one-in-a-million, the notion that we can pursue our chosen métier with passion, strive to do our best, and not hang our head or undercut the other guy when (inevitably) defeats occur, is at once both obvious and profound. And if that isn’t a ringing endorsement for the place of sports in our lives – and for this book itself – I don’t know what is.

September 1, 2009

It’s Not About the Hike

Filed under: General,Health & Wellness,The Great Outdoors — akascribe @ 10:13 pm

A few buddies and me, we’ve established what now can reasonably be described as an annual tradition.  Every June we head out of town for a weekend.  The locale usually varies but the constants are: an all-day hike, good food and lots of male camaraderie.  I think I can speak for the others when I say it’s become a major highlight on the calendar.

I’ve known the other three – Arthur, Edwin and Marco – for varying amounts of time and through differing connections, and I’d been happy socializing and even hiking with each of them before we started doing these wilderness pilgrimages, but it soon became apparent that we’d stumbled onto something special after the first trip together to Yosemite.  Actually, Art didn’t make that one, owing to a bicycle accident, but since I’d hiked Half Dome with him once before, it seemed like he was present.  We rectified it the next year, though, with a less strenuous but still beautiful hike in the Sierra south of Yosemite with our full compliment of four.

The original idea, I think, was something closer to camping.  Maybe not full-on backpacking, but at least cookouts and sleeping bags. Somehow it has morphed into staying at rustic but nicely equipped vacation rentals, with real beds and a kitchen.  I don’t think any of us minds.  We’ve all roughed it before and, speaking for myself, I’m unashamed to admit that at my age the creature comforts suit just fine.

That first year was the oddball, since we stayed in Curry Village tent cabins, which is neither fish nor fowl – you’re not really camping but you can’t cook for yourself either.  Which was just as well, as anyone who has climbed Half Dome knows.  You rise before 6 am, eat your own hastily-prepared breakfast in the dark (since the cafeteria isn’t open yet) then start hiking up.  And up.  After five hours of nature’s StairMaster and if you time it right – and we did – you’ll get to the cables before the crowds and then summit before noon. Eating lunch at the top, almost 5000’ above the valley and having survived (at least one-way) the infamous cables, can’t be adequately described. You really have to do it once, especially since there are routinely calls for the Park Service to impose restrictions on hiking Half Dome whenever some unfortunate climber tumbles off the cables to his death.  The hike down is long, hard on the legs and around mile 14 exhaustion sets in.  I don’t ever remember pizza and beer tasting so good, or sleeping so soundly.

Don't Look Down!

Don't look down!

Since then, however, the vibe has been more easy-going and less focused on the hiking. Perhaps a bit too much, as we discovered to our chagrin last year.  Everything was great – we’d found this amazing little slice of heaven in the Trinity Alps – but we’d started our hike without a real trail map (very uncharacteristic of me) and missed the trailhead altogether.  It was, in retrospect, an honest mistake, since the signpost was missing and the trail seemed to logically be an extension of the fire road that departed the parking area. If we hadn’t been talking and laughing and generally having so much fun, however, we might have noticed earlier that this “trailhead” didn’t exist.  When we were already a mile in and the fire road petered out, we were left with two choices: backtrack or try to bushwhack up and over the mountain’s shoulder to our alpine lake destination. We chose the latter.

Bushwhacked

Bushwhacked

I don’t believe we were ever in jeopardy, but it was an object lesson in preparedness.  Not only were we not carrying a proper trail map with contour lines, but I had foolishly neglected to bring my water pump that filters out bacteria and other nastiness from streams. After slogging it upward for several hours and finally throwing in the towel in an impenetrable Manzanita grove, we scarfed our sandwiches clinging to the side of the mountain, then retreated back down.  But we’d used a lot of the water on the way up and the day was only getting hotter.  Thank goodness we have a good collective sense of direction and no one had gotten injured.  After (mildly) kicking ourselves, we especially enjoyed those first cold beers at the cabin and vowed to return to finish the hike the next year.

Which we did.  Partly this was to complete the hike, but – to be honest – we’d enjoyed the place so much that we figured, why not? Cooking and eating hearty-gourmet fare (steak and potatoes figure prominently on the menu), swapping stories we’ve probably told before but don’t mind hearing again, and generally relaxing in the midst of friends who can be counted on to laugh at our dumb jokes, while returning the same in kind – this is what our guys weekend is about.

It's Not About the Hike

It's Not About the Hike

It’s interesting.  We all love being with our significant others and kids (we can now add Art to this category, and Edwin in the kid department), but there’s something to be said for reaching middle-age and hanging out without females in the mix.  This isn’t to say women don’t work their way into our conversations, but not in any manner that our own ladies would find problematic.  It’s guy talk. Healthy doses of sports, politics, history (you’d have to know the players), career musings and just general bullshitting.

I once had a seminar on medicine and philosophy in college that included a visit with Norman Cousins, the late editor of The Saturday Evening Post.  Cousins had just survived a serious illness and had written a book called Anatomy of an Illness about the mind-body connection and how (in his belief) laughter had healed him back to health.  He told us how he’d bought videotapes of every Marx Brothers movie available and then watched them over and over in his hospital room.  It’s become a cliché but only because it’s true: laughter is the best medicine.

I remembered this after watching a video Art recently assembled from stills and footage he took on this year’s trip back to the Trinity Alps, where we finally completed our hike.  The soundtrack (recorded on his innocuous-looking, compact digital camera – incredible!) included some of our laughter and I realized how much of the weekends are spent… laughing.  No wonder it feels so good.

We haven’t picked next year’s destination yet but I’m not too concerned.  We might not finish the hike we intend but we’ll have a hell of a lot of fun.

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