What’s my motivation?
When I woke up this morning, I’d intended to write another installment of Gastronomy Domine. Hence the altered subtitle above. (Pop quiz: have any of you noticed that I change the subtitle with each new blog entry?) I wanted to do a piece on basturma, the Armenian ur-coldcut that is to pastrami what a Top Dog Polish is to Oscar Meyer. Real scientist George Muscat introduced Karen and me to basturma some time in the late 80s. The three of us went to Tarver’s Deli in Sunnyvale (now closed, I think) and picked up some flat bread, tarama (carp roe), basturma, and a ball of vicious cheese we’ve never found anywhere else. George taught us how to make taramosalata. We spent the afternoon scarfing roe, itsy bitsy flat bread-and-basturma sandwiches, and dime-sized bits of vicious cheese. Then we went into a crowded supermarket and breathed on people.
But, alas, I’ll have to leave that story for another time. For the past two days, I’ve been stressing over Jacob. He had three good days, and then Monday morning the headache came back in force. Most of my anxiety comes from the fact that Jake’s Medford neurologist wouldn’t return my calls. 4PM today, we’re still waiting for the guy to set up a lumbar puncture (something to look forward to! . . . but the point is to get an answer). He finally called Karen about 5PM. Tentative plan: Karen will drive in to Medford with Jake tomorrow, and the procedure is set for Thursday morning. They’ll be doing it with IV sedation, so it should not be terribly traumatic for Jake. I’ll keep you posted.
***
We’ll get back to basturma some other time. It’s worth its very own bit.
D.
Hey, you! Robot!
Karen and I watched I, Robot on DVD today. We hadn’t seen it in the movies; frankly, the trailer turned me off. It was one of those tell-all trailers that left me with the sense that I had (A) seen the movie, and (B) hadn’t liked it. Technophobic blather, I thought.
Well, I was only partly right.
I don’t think I’m being too much of a spoiler* to say that there are some baaaad robots in this film. But to dismiss I, Robot as neo-Luddite claptrap would be an oversimplification. Sure, the bots are bad and the AI is evil, but it’s the nature of that evil that is interesting.
Yes, yes, there’s the usual SF trope that humans, with all their foibles, have ‘heart’, and that is what makes us superior to machine logic. That’s the overt message, and it’s trite as hell. But there’s another message, too — a philosophy the movie condemns: in order to protect us, we must be deprived of our freedoms. If a few people are harmed along the way, well, tough noogies.
Commentary on contemporary US politics in I, Robot: am I reading too deep? It is better to live with the risk of violence than be deprived of our personal liberties. Is that sentiment so controversial we have to bury it in a Will Smith flick?
Aside from the fact I, Robot and I have the same politics, here’s what’s really cool about the movie: it has the same take on entertainment as I do. I can’t think of another film that has I, Robot‘s balance of humor, poignancy, action, and creepiness. That’s what I strive for in my writing, and that’s what I, Robot delivers.
Here’s who we have to thank:
Will Smith, who makes the most of a superb script. (“You are the dumbest smart person I have ever met.” It’s a cute line, but in Smith’s hands, it’s a corker.) Aside from starring, he also gets an exec prod credit for the film.
Director Alex Proyas, who milks Smith for all he’s worth and who makes the sentient robot, Sonny, touching without being maudlin (you listening, Spielberg? Naw. Didn’t think so).
Screenwriters Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman. Vintar, who also wrote the screen story, is perhaps best known for Final Fantasy. Goldsman has lots of fine credits but deserves a great big HUH? for Lost in Space.
Well, Karen wants to look at kitchen cabinets at the hardware store. Gotta run.
D.
*One nice thing about reviewing a year-old film: I’ll bet those of you who would watch a movie like I, Robot have already seen it.
Breath-holding; another vertebrate
Karen took Jake to the neurologist’s neurologist yesterday afternoon. On call, hammered by an emergency, and close to two hours late, but he managed to make time for my son and do a complete neuro exam. My hero! It never fails to impress me when I find a good doctor; I’m so used to the opposite.
He thinks Jake may have chronic viral meningitis (which is what my internist — another good doctor — thought, too). He wanted to do a lumbar puncture, but he was running too late. He had Karen call me to ask whether I would trust any of the Crescent City doctors to do an LP on my son. (No.) Currently, the plan is for Karen to take Jake back to Medford on Monday, to some hotshot pediatrician who does lumbar punctures on kids all the time.
You might ask what good this will do. Well, there is something to be said about knowing. Beyond that, there’s no treatment for chronic viral meningitis. Just have to wait it out.
On the up side, his headache has been better for over 24 hours now. This is significant. In the last 10 weeks, he’s had only one or two other breaks from the headache, and those lasted only a few hours. With any luck, this whole thing might pass, and Jake won’t even need an LP.
***
We home-school Jacob, which is a damned good thing, since with this illness he hasn’t accomplished more than two full days’ worth of work in the last 50 school days. A few weeks ago, to con him into doing a bit more work, we promised him another kitty. That will make three cats — four, if you count Tolerance, who ran off some time ago. Tolerance was Jake’s favorite, so this new kitty is sort of a replacement cat.
We bought a calico from the Humane Society. I’ll post a photo ASAP. Jake named her Emerald, which is a fine name, except it reminds me of Emeril, and no one liked the idea of naming her Emerald LeCatsy.
***
Decent writing day: just under 1300 words. It’s another battle sequence, which never fails to amaze me because I don’t know squat about the military. At my father’s suggestion, I read Audie Murphy’s book — well, I read about half of it. Got bored. My next big idea was to buy the PC game Call of Duty. I might not be a veteran (thinks I) but if I finish Call of Duty, I’ll have some sense of what war is like, right? But I only finished a third of it. Got bored.
I can only pray that my readers will be forgiving. I’m no Joe Haldeman, that’s for sure. I’m looking forward to getting John Scalzi’s book from Amazon (Old Man’s War)to see how he handles his battle sequences.
Only one battle sequence left in the novel, and this last one will be a corker. It’s unconventional enough that I should be able to get by on imagination alone.
D.
Gastronomy Domine I*
Ever seeking the ultimate coffee experience, Karen bought a roaster. We already fork over $$$ for 100% Kona, but that’s not good enough for my lovely arabicatroph**. Now she can buy green Kona beans and roast them herself.
I’m not sure I understand this. Isn’t Vietnamese iced coffee already the ultimate coffee experience? Imagine a cup of liquefied Dreyer’s coffee ice cream with all the punch of a triple espresso. It doesn’t get much better than that . . . right?
Wrong. Turns out I’ve been drinking stale coffee all of my life. While green coffee beans will stay fresh for many months, roasted beans start losing it within two weeks of the roast. Hence the desire to burn one’s own beans.
The desired end product is something between a full city roast and a full French roast. You want it just past the second crack stage. Yes, that’s how I love my beans: with two cracks***.
Theoretically, if we start with 100% Kona green beans and roast ’em just right, we’ll get the perfect cup of coffee. Well . . . maybe not, since these Jamaicans claim their stuff is better than Kona.
And then there’s Indonesian crappucino.
This is not an urban legend. (Technically, it would be a third world legend, but it’s true.) The world’s rarest, most prized, and most expensive coffee is Kopi Luwak, which owes its distinctive “earthy, musty, syrupy, smooth and rich [flavor], with both jungle and chocolate undertones” to its passage through the bowels of the Asian palm civet, Paradoxurus hermaphroditus. Mmmm, musty and chocolatey. Only William S. Burroughs reaches such rhapsodic heights in describing the smell of bowels.
What? You don’t believe my Kopi Luwak story? Here’s a link at Nature.com. (The quote above comes from this Nature News story.) Thousand-dollar-per-kilogram coffee wouldn’t ordinarily rank a Nature News piece, but the story has a more serious side, as it covers Canadian food scientist Massimo Marcone’s efforts to reproduce Kopi Luwak under alternate circumstances. He reasoned that in Ethiopia, a different species of civet coexists with wild coffee beans, and thus:
“In a forthcoming issue of Food Research International, Marcone describes how he brewed coffee from beans that he personally picked out of the faeces of African civets (Civettictis civetta) and compared it with a mug of Kopi Luwak.”
Now, that’s dedication.
So here’s what I’m thinking. We have a bag of green Kona coffee beans. We also own two cats, one of whom will eat anything . . .
Knowing Karen, she will be content to roast her Kona green beans and call it the ultimate coffee experience. But I know better.
D.
*If you need an explanation for this title, you’re either too young, or too old; in any case, this joke loses all humor in its explanation. Sorry, kids (gramps), ask your 43-year-old father (son).
**Just because I shun neologisms in my writing doesn’t mean I can’t do ’em. By the way, a quick search will show you that www.arabicatroph.com is available, so if you’re an obligate coffeaphage, you might consider setting up a website.
***Hey, Maureen: betcha didn’t think I could sexualize coffee beans!
The twinkie method
Many of you writers have heard of Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method for planning novels. Some of you, I know, are actively flakin’ away. Mr. Ingermanson makes no claim that his approach is the best; he freely admits there are other successful techniques.
Well, here’s mine: the twinkie method.
Unlike the Snowflake, the twinkie does not require many oodles of column inches of explanation. It’s a simple two-stepper you could do in your head, though I prefer to work it out on paper. My memory just isn’t that trustworthy.
1. First, figure out the novel’s outer shell.
2. Next, figure out what manner of creamy goodness you’re gonna use to stuff that shell.
I’m not sure, but I strongly suspect Terry Pratchett uses (and Douglas Adams used) this technique. Be honest: don’t most Discworld novels feel like a series of great set-pieces crammed into a rather loose framing plot? (Night Watch is a notable exception.)
For those folks trying to establish a correspondence between the twinkie and the snowflake, my step 1 is the same as Ingermanson’s step 1. My step 2 is Ingermanson’s step 2 through 10. Isn’t that helpful?
But, seriously, folks. I tried to start a snowflake last night for the sequel to The Brakan Correspondent. I hit on this 14 word* one-liner after an hour’s work:
Nothing will stop an unscrupulous extraterrestrial talent scout from snagging Earth’s hottest new writer.
Short and sweet, but it barely hints at what I have in mind. How do I tell the reader that the action will take place on Sylvanon, the galaxy’s ultimate Planet Hollywood? How do I keep the reader from thinking I mean me when I write ‘Earth’s hottest new writer’? (I mean, don’t you just hate it when Stephen King puts himself in his novels? Think Misery, which wasn’t misery enough.) In fact, the Earthling in question writes for Hallmark Greeting Cards (‘The next Kahlil Gibran!’ my protag will gush. ‘A Richard Bach’s Richard Bach!’) And how do I work in the fact I’ll be stirring in two characters from Brakan Correspondent to thicken the stew?
Here’s what I’ve managed thus far:
On planet Sylvanon, entertainment hub of the galaxy, an unscrupulous talent scout intent on snagging Earth’s hottest new greeting card writer finds himself in the middle of two Brakan expatriates’ deadly conflict.
Whew. Thirty-two words, and isn’t it a mouthful? I’m not entirely happy with it, but I’m too eager to move on to step two. Time to think up some creamy goodness**.
D.
*Ingermanson: “Shorter is better. Try for fewer than fifteen words.”
**No, I haven’t finished the novel . . . but it’s damned close, and I’m feeling some nascent separation anxiety. I think the birthing process will be less traumatic if I know I am already pregnant with the next novel. And how’s that for an over-extended metaphor?
Thanksgiving
As some of you know, I’m relatively unburdened by the religious memes that oblige me to be either (A) thankful for the blessings God has given me, or (B) guilty as hell if I’m not feeling particularly (A). Relatively unburdened. Which is to say, I’m a God-fearing heathen. Which is to say, I don’t think I’ve figured this one out, and I doubt I ever will.
The point is, my son Jacob is still sick, despite our attempts to turn his stomach into a medicine cabinet. His headaches are getting worse, as is his nausea, and his neurologist wants to send him to a neurologist. How f-d up is that?
Today, Jake passed his eye exam with flying colors. (Perhaps that is proof of God’s existence. Jake’s mother and I would lose to Mr. Magoo in a game of darts.) That was my last hope that this would turn out to be something innocent. And yet . . . and yet my sublimely pessimistic medical imagination has run dry on what this COULD be. The CT and MRI effectively ruled out brain tumor or meningitis. The normal CBC (blood count) and sed rate ruled out leukemia. And now I’m racking my brains for all the hideous things I learned about in med school and subsequently forgot.
He sees the neurologist’s neurologist this Friday. I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, I keep thinking about how religious folks deal with these stressful things. With faith, right? Faith that things will turn out all right. Faith that God has a plan. Faith that, even when things turn out for the worst, God still has a plan, and that we’re too dense to know His mind.
Ever hear the saying, “God never gives you more to deal with than you can handle”? Bullshit. Karen and I are handling this just fine, thank you very much, but I know there are things under the sun which would exceed our capacity. I know it. I’ve seen it happen to other people. It’s my business.
What a downer I am tonight. Maybe I should hop over to iTunes and see if I can find Felix Unger’s, “Happy and Peppy and Bursting with Love.”
D.
Eyeglasses Elton John would kill for
This morning, I began writing review of Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which would have made Pauline Kael* giddy in her grave. Two-thirds of the way into it, the electronic ether had a seizure, or perhaps an epidemic e-brain fart, and I had to reboot. Review lost. By the time everything began behaving, my patients had the nerve to show up on time for their appointments.
So I’ll be brief. Lovely turn by improbably named actress Zooey Deschanel (that’s Zooey, not Zoey) as Trillian. Ms. Deschanel looks edibly girl-next-door in every scene (though particularly in her shorty shorts) so it’s easy to see why Arthur Dent would fall madly in love —
Ach! There it was, a spoiler. Yes, they’ve grafted a love story onto HGG. I had to ask my son (who has read the story more recently than I) and my wife (who has a far better memory) to make sure this was an innovation. How do I feel about this? Terrific. I’m not one of those who worship HGG. (I’m far more partial to Adams’s Dirk Gently books. Click here to read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency in comic book form . . . is that even legal?)
Sure, the original HGG is fun, but it’s flawed, too. Chief flaw: I never really cared about Arthur or any of his pals. I just read it for the jokes. The love story makes a fine antidote for this problem.
Next impression: the true star of the movie is the Guide itself, realized in cheesy splendor by the movie’s animators, and wonderfully voiced by Stephen Fry. Everyone else took a back seat (yes, even Alan Rickman; after his sixth or seventh line, I could sense him in the sound studio sucking down gallons of espresso, saying, “Oh, bloody hell, will this never end?”) although I did enjoy Mos Def’s spot-on version of Ford Prefect and Bill Nighy’s dead-pan take on Slartibartfast. Nighy, you may recall, was tons of fun as the unscrupulous hair dresser in Blow Dry (another Rickman movie), and he showed up again more recently in Shaun of the Dead. Finally, here’s my nod to John Malkovich for his bit role wearing said titular eyeglasses.
Oh — loved the Vogons. Best evil muppets since Dark Crystal.
Verdict: one thumb up, one thumb . . . eh. I miss the TV series.
D.
*The drudge, she hated everything Kubrick ever did, and she gave Blade Runner one great ripping raspberry. But I still gotta love her for liking Reanimator.
Deus ex South Park
Delightful New York Times Op-Ed piece from Frank Rich today regarding the conservative movement’s embrace of South Park. Brief quote:
“South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias,” by Brian C. Anderson of the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, gives a wet kiss to one of the funniest and most foul-mouthed series on television.
Anderson has myopically focused on certain episodes that lampoon Hollywood lefties like Rob Reiner, Barbra Streisand, and Sally Struthers; and who could miss the undeniably conservative bias of Parker & Stone’s movie Team America? Yet, as Rich points out, Anderson was a bit too quick to the press: South Park’s recent episode looking at the Schiavo case skewered the Right’s mammoth over-step.
Rich also looks at the Right’s recent move to increase censorship of movies and TV. Time to trot out the names and addresses of our national representatives and get writing.
Back to South Park. Rich could have mentioned any number of episodes which fell far to the left of center. In one, the kids lie through their teeth to buy ‘real Ninja weapons’ at the fair. While playing with their gear, Butters gets nailed in the eye with a shuriken — and that’s not the end of the violence visited upon poor Butters. Yet when the townfolk learn about Butters’ injuries, what do they care about? The fact that Cartman has exposed himself in public.
Better example: In South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (good night — I just got that joke!), Parker & Stone satirized all those V-chipping tight asses who want to protect their preciouses from four letter words, and impose their morals on the rest of us.
The point — and I think Rich overlooks this — the point is, South Park is satire. Their writers will attack hypocrisy, arrogance, pomposity, and overzealousness wherever they find it; there is no shortage of it on both sides of the political red line. In a very real way, Parker & Stone are cutting away the bullshit to show us slivers of truth, much as The Daily Show does with their fake news.
Three cheers to South Park. Here’s hoping they’re the next in line to win a Peabody.
D.
The dust that makes the stars shine
We watched the first few minutes of Blade Runner this AM on Satellite. (Gotta love Leon: “My mother? Let me tell you about my mother.”) As the credits scrolled, I thought about William Sanderson, who played lonely replicant engineer J. F. Sebastian. Karen and I once sat next to him in the coach section of a 747. Then as now, Sanderson was better known for his role as Larry on the Newhart Show (Daryl & Daryl’s brother), but I pumped him for information on Blade Runner. Yes, he thought a lot of the movie, too. No, he’d never read P. K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but that didn’t matter: Ridley Scott hadn’t read it, either.
I was in med school at the time, working on my MD/PhD. This really seemed to impress him. So we sat there, shooting the bull, each impressed with the other, two guys with crappy self-images stroking each other’s ego. Well, maybe I’m projecting onto Mr. Sanderson . . . still, it struck me at the time that this fellow didn’t have an arrogant bone in his body.
Check out William Sanderson’s page on IMDB. He’s been busy. I wonder sometimes whether character actors get more work than the big boys and girls.
From William Sanderson, my thoughts wandered off to another character actor, Ian Wolfe. Don’t know the name? His filmography on IMDB lists 200 appearances, and that’s not including over 80 ‘notable guest appearances’ on TV. His career stretched from 1934 to 1990, when he made his last appearance as “Forger” in Dick Tracy. I remember that when he died in 1992, one of the local LA news anchors quoted Wolfe as having once said, “I was the dust that made the other stars shine.”
Still not ringing a bell? Here’s a picture. And if you don’t recognize him now, you’re really too young to be reading this blog.
D.