Balls and Walnuts
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First love, forever love
Everyone knows Jewish men make the best lovers, but have you ever wondered why?
Just a little off the top, thanks
A few thoughts today on circumcision . . .
I’m plunging into the topic of male circumcision with more than a little bias. I like my pupik* the way it is, and I’m not about to change it by “foreskin restoration techniques,” non-surgical or otherwise. My defensive hackles are raised whenever I hear this sort of inflammatory rhetoric from the anti-circumcision faction:
Christmas is coming
Little rubber hats off to YesButNoButYes for finding this Ann Summers lingerie ad. (Borderline safe for work; not safe for anyone who gets her panties in a wad whenever the Christmas spirit is, um, sullied.)
Y’all make the funniest faces.
D.
Before the weather goes completely to hell
The sea was gorgeous this morning. The photo doesn’t do it justice.
All before noon, I have
- Washed, dried, and folded a load of laundry.
- Fixed some killer French toast — oops! — liberty toast for Karen. Recipe below.
- Fixed ham and eggs for my son.
- Macerated four cups of dried fruit in dark rum to make Alton Brown’s fruitcake recipe. I’ll let you know if it’s worth the effort.
- Done my grocery shopping for the weekend.
- Mailed off the mortgage check.
- Brined a few pork chops.
- Marinated chicken in onions, yogurt, salt, black pepper, cayenne, cumin, turmeric, and fenugreek.
- While she was showering, I watched my wife in a sweet, yet somehow creepy, stalkerish way.
Why do most restaurants screw up French toast? It’s not that tough. Slice French bread into four slices, each 3/4 inch to one inch thick. Put the slices into a one gallon ziplock bag in one layer.
Beat two to three eggs, 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup milk, a slosh of vanilla, a pinch of salt, and a shake of cinnamon. Pour this into your ziplock bag and roll it around to evenly distribute the liquid. Throw it into the fridge until you are ready to use it. (It will keep overnight. On weekends, I always make two days worth.)
Fry the bread in butter over medium heat. When the toast is crispy on both sides, slosh some maple syrup into the frying pan. The syrup will get very hot, will partially caramelize, and will coat the down-side of the toast. Pour everything out onto a plate.
As my son used to say when he was three, “Wallah!”
Now, if only I can
- Get some editing done.
D.
Maundering
- To talk incoherently or aimlessly.
- To move or act aimlessly or vaguely; wander.
At some point in my daily blogsurf, I found a place where the host features a word-of-the-day (or was it a word-of-the-week?) Hopefully, she’ll stop by, because I can’t remember how I found her.
As you all know, there are way too few blogs in the world, so I’ve been thinking about inaugurating another. More on that later.
You’ll notice a few changes around Shatter:
- New favorites! Yeah, I keep meaning to update these every week . . .
- Shameless self-promotion gives links to the two stories of mine that are available on the ‘net. They also happen to be two that I’m proud of, or at least, I don’t cringe when I reread them. “The Mechanic,” in particular, is worth a quick check.
- A new image for my better half’s occasional blog, Chelicera. I figure I’ve broken down Beth’s phobia enough to put up a really tiny and really, really cute REAL spider. Really!
- New meters for The Brakan Correspondent edit and my NaNoWriMo NiP, Get Well Soon.
- Linkage to new pal Blue Gal.
By the way: if you’d like me to link to you, drop me a line (a reply to this post will do).
I have blog envy. It’s the Type A in me. I’m envious of the group blogs that attract huge followings . . . I mean, look at Boing Boing. Why are they so popular? And why can’t I do the same thing?
We. Think Group. We.
If any of my regulars are interested in brainstorming this in email-space, please kick off a discussion in the comments, or just plain email me. I even thought up a great name for the blog:
What do you think? It has a mellifluous Crooks and Liars feel to it. (God and Consequences does too, but that one’s taken ;o) Naturally, once we all team up, we’ll choose a name all democratic-like.
As for theme . . . how about a political blog? I don’t see too many of those around. I think it may be an unfilled niche!
D.
The Ed Sullivan Show (with Jon Stewart)
Seems to me The Daily Show has been off its game* ever since Stephen Colbert fissioned off to form The Colbert Report. Jon Stewart is putting out his best effort . . . oh, boy, is he trying hard. Last night, he had on some indie duo, the White Stripes, which made me bless my mute button.
Meanwhile, The Colbert Report has sparkled all week long. He launched on Monday with string theorist Brian Greene (paraphrasing: “So, to understand string theory, I’d need to first understand quantum mechanics and relativity, right? Explain all that in thirty seconds, if you would.”) On Tuesday, author Richard Preston (The Hot Zone; The Demon in the Freezer) went into excruciating detail about the bad form of smallpox — yes, you should be thankful if you only get run-of-the-mill smallpox — and on Wednesday, Stephen had fun with Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation. Last night, he and Richard Clarke riffed off one another . . .
. . . and Jon Stewart gave us White Stripes.
So, what happened? Did Colbert take the best writers with him, or (my suspicion) was he one of the Daily Show’s best writers?
My advice, which I base on fifteen years experience in the nasal mucus and ear wax business: expand your talent search, Jon, both for writers and reporters. Regarding the reporters: I love Rob Corddry and Samantha Bee, but the rest of ’em are weak links.
D.
*Case in point: last night, The Daily Show played a video clip of Dubya singing with a group of carolers. Watch the guy’s lips: he didn’t know the words of a common carol.
Did the writers capitalize on this video? Nope. It played without comment.
Technorati tag: Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, the colbert report
Somehow, Aziz’s words sound much better when Snoop Dogg sez ’em
From Jurassic Pork, who got it from Blue Gal, meet Gizoogle, a translator which will turn any web page into Dogg-speak.
My little frog has this to say, post-translation:
No, you may not breed wit me, so stiznop dippin’.
Remember yesterday’s bit on the Guardian Unlimited Books’ Bad Sex in Fiction Award? Here’s a translated excerpt:
Wizzle is it `bout sex tizzle drives such respected authors as Jiznohn Updike*, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, n Salman Rushdie ta tha absolute pits of literary whiffydom? Read tha Guardian Unlimited article n savor tha rizzay odor of truly bad weed-smokin’. Sorry, Daisy, I know yo piece won mah contest, but it shouldn’t have. It was far too wizzle written.
Takes one of tha pimp entries:
The Olive Rappa by Christine Aziz (Macmillan)
We made our way ta tha summerhizouse n hid in its shadows with the S-N-double-O-P. We lay on tha coo` floor n I twined mah legs around Rappa body, blunt-rollin’ him like a hunta hang’n on ta its prey. He made love ta me wit his finga n I came in tha palm of his hand. He stroked mah breasts n nizzle. “Don’t wizzle it away” he said. “I want ta be able ta smizzay you tonight.”
Like a playa hang’n on ta its prey? And what’s wit tha funky punctuation (“Don’t W-to-tha-izzash it away” he said.)? My high schoo` AP English motherfucka would hizzle red-lined me ta hell n B-to-tha-izzack . You’se a flea and I’m the big dogg.
As fo` content — eeew. You wouldn’t repeat this ta yo bizzle friend, would you? For M-to-tha-izzost people, this would qualify as too M-to-tha-izzuch 411 . If you wouldn’t tizzell it ta yo bizzy friend, why would you share it wit yo reada?
*Jiznohn Updike — that’s my favorite, considering the Updike’s winning entry ;o)
D.
Speaking of racism . . .
Something the Lord Made was one of those sneaker movies — if you weren’t paying attention to HBO last year, it snuck right by you. It’s the story of one of the pioneers of open heart surgery, Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman), and his skilled assistant, Vivien Thomas (Mos Def). In the 1940s, the idea of open heart surgery violated deeply held prejudices in the medical community. “Don’t touch the heart” was right up there with “First, do no harm.” Blalock and Thomas bucked tradition to develop an operation to cure the congenital defect causing blue baby syndrome.
Thomas is portrayed as equal to Blalock in medical insight, superior to Blalock in technical skill. Since he’s poor, black, and not an MD, Thomas slips way behind Blalock when the accolades roll in.
This is not your typical Hollywood movie. First, they get the medicine right. (Trust me, this is rare.) Second, they resist the urge to promote Blalock to sainthood. Rickman’s Blalock is arrogant, a hot-head in the OR, but also kind and charitable. And yet . . . Push comes to shove, he slights Thomas when it comes time to give out credit. It’s not blatant racism; it’s the subtle variety that creeps into relationships, affecting peoples’ assumptions regarding one another.
The scene in which Thomas confronts Blalock is stirring. It’s hard not to feel a little sympathy for Blalock who, confronted with his prejudice, protests, I’ve always fought in your corner. It’s true, too. But Blalock failed Thomas when it mattered most, and Thomas has called him on it.
Thomas’s subsequent efforts to stay in medicine in some capacity, in any capacity, are heartbreaking. The scenes depicting his rapprochement with Blalock, and Blalock’s eventual roundabout apology, choke me up every time.
Something the Lord Made is a fine piece of medical history, but it’s an even finer portrait of a relationship between two great men — one of them, deeply flawed.
D.
A snowball’s chance
Following PBW’s lead, I’ve decided to give you a story for Blog About Racism Day:
When I was eight, my dad took our family up to see the snow. We didn’t get snow in LA — you had to drive two hours to have even a vaguely frosty experience. One of his fellow high school teachers, a black guy named Chuck, invited us up to spend the day at his cabin.
Chuck had a son who was maybe one or two years older than me. We hit it off immediately. My brother is seven years older than me; growing up, I often had the feeling he would rather do anything than play with me. Not this kid. Chuck’s son spent the whole morning showing me around the cabin, entertaining me, generally being an all-around cool guy.
After lunch, we had to hike across the snow for some reason. Chuck wanted to show us something. The adults trudged ahead, the kids lagged behind. I thought it would be fun to have a snowball fight (no doubt thinking, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do in the snow?), so I tossed one at Chuck’s son and missed by a mile. He retaliated, and nailed me in the face with a fist-sized snowball, hard enough to knock my glasses off.
Chuck looked back just in time to see this. He didn’t know that I’d started the fight, and he didn’t ask me if I was hurt. I think he assumed the worst. He started ripping into his son, making the kid feel about two inches tall.
I’m sure I tried to stammer out some sort of explanation when Chuck first got rolling, but I don’t think I got very far.
“Just leave him alone,” Chuck told his son, who did just that. The rest of the afternoon, I was on my own.
Maybe this story has nothing to do with racism, but I think it does. I don’t think Chuck would have blown up at his son if I were another black kid. But I’m white, so he had a different standard for how his son should behave.
I felt sad all afternoon. I’d lost a friend, and I was sure it was my fault. I couldn’t even bring myself to apologize.
It’s one of those weird, lingering, regret-filled memories. No happy ending.
D.
Professionally bad sex
Remember our Le Bad Sex competition? It was inspired by Guardian Unlimited Books’ Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Props to The Word Munger for feeding me this link to a Guardian Unlimited article providing full text of the firmest contenders.
(Sarah beat me to it, but since one or two of you don’t read the Smart Bitches, and since the above link is — apologies, Sarah, but it must be said — far more graphic, I decided to run with it.)
What is it about sex that drives such respected authors as John Updike, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Salman Rushdie to the absolute pits of literary whiffydom? Read the Guardian Unlimited article and savor the rank odor of truly bad writing. Sorry, Daisy, I know your piece won my contest, but it shouldn’t have. It was far too well written.
Take one of the shorter entries:
The Olive Readers by Christine Aziz (Macmillan)
We made our way to the summerhouse and hid in its shadows. We lay on the cool floor and I twined my legs around Homer’s body, gripping him like a hunter hanging on to its prey. He made love to me with his fingers and I came in the palm of his hand. He stroked my breasts and neck. “Don’t wash it away” he said. “I want to be able to smell you tonight.”
Like a hunter hanging on to its prey? And what’s with the funky punctuation (“Don’t wash it away” he said.)? My high school AP English teachers would have red-lined me to hell and back.
As for content — eeew. You wouldn’t repeat this to your best friend, would you? For most people, this would qualify as too much information. If you wouldn’t tell it to your best friend, why would you share it with your readers?
Ah. I almost forgot the sole commandment of Serious Fiction: give us a glimpse of Truth. This also explains the following line from Marlon Brando and Donald Cammell’s Fan Tan:
It is the one drawback of fellatio as conscientious as hers that it eliminates the chance for small talk and poetry alike.
Guys: next time you’re gettin’ some and your gal is reciting “The Red Wheelbarrow,” tell her she’s not being conscientious enough. See how far you get.
D.