The Environmentalist, Recessionist, Atheitst Christmas

OK, so I'm posting this a little late. On the outside chance that anyone desperately turned to my blog for last-minute holiday advice, they were undoubtedly disappointed. But, better late than never, and these recipes and ideas are applicable next year, St. Patrick's Day, Arbor Day, all those other major holidays.

I began the holiday season short on cash, unemployed, and paranoid. Fortunately, I also like to make stuff. Homemade gifts are thrifty, thoughtful, and fun. First, I decided to make cinnamon dough ornaments. My friend Heather made me a couple last year, and my other friend, Martha (Stewart) reminded me of the recipe:

You'll need only three ingredients: a bunch of cinnamon, applesauce, and white glue, Elmer's or similar. In a bowl, mix together 1 cup of ground cinnamon with 1/4 of a cup of applesauce. Once this is blended (use a spatula or a spoon) add 1/2 of a cup of glue until thoroughly blended, then let sit for one hour. Using a wooden rolling pin and your hands, flatten and roll out the dough on a flat surface. Make the dough however thick or thin you want (it doesn't shrink much) and cut out into desired shapes, making a hole for ribbon or string if you want. Then, you can either air-dry the ornaments for 24 hours, turning every few hours so the edges don't turn up, or you can bake them at 200 degrees for two hours, flipping once. Being an impatient person, I opted for the baking method. It made my house smell nice, but some of my edges did curl a little.

Once the ornaments were dry, I painted them using acrylic paints. This part was the most fun, and reminded me of craft weeks at my hippie elementary and middle school. For the three weeks or so between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we'd drop all schoolwork and be elves, which meant beading, basket-making, embroidery, god's eyes, and other random stuff like leather key chains, salt dough ornament, and like any self-respecting alternative school, lots and lots of tie-dye. Obviously, craft weeks are some of my best school-time memories. When we weren't making spider-web earrings and stealing more than our one-daily-allotted candy cane off of the tree, we were playing hearts and spades, spying on each other, and playing in the snow outside. It was grand. Painting my cinnamon dough ornaments reminded me of listening to stories while quietly working with my hands-- I put This American Life on, and mixed up my paints. My shapes were shooting stars, hearts, elephant and brontosauruses. Once the paint had dried (and I left some blank) I strung different types of ribbon and string through the ornaments, grouping them in pairs.

Another Martha project that was slightly less successful was my foray into soap-making. "Making" is kind of a misnomer, since I melted down clear and white glycerin soaps from the grocery store, scented and dyed them, and re-poured them in layers. The recipe and directions are as follows:

Obtain a bunch of clear and white glycerin soaps, available at natural grocery stores or at craft stores. Melt two cups of each soap at a time, keeping them separate. Stir red food coloring into the clear soap, and peppermint essential oil (careful, this stuff is potent, you probably won't want to use more than a couple drops) into the white soap. Using a loaf pan or baking dish as a mold, pour the soap in alternating layers, so it looks like a candy cane. Let set for at least four hours, when the soap should be ready to pop out of the pan. Then, cut into slabs using a (very) sharp knife. I wrapped my soap in tissue paper, tied it with red and white string, and used little labels.

Now, as I said before, this was only a semi-successful project. The first type of white glycerin soap I bought simply refused to melt. It must not have been pure glycerin, because it became chunky and weird, even when melted in a double-broiler for a long time. I had much better results with a second type of white soap. Also, though, I found that my soap, while effective and nice smelling, turns the washer's hands slightly pink. Um, too much food coloring? Thanks for letting me know, Martha. I dunno, it's not bad, it looks more like a healthy ruddy winter glow, at least in certain lights, so I went ahead and distributed the soaps.

My third project was vegan sugar cookies for my non-butter-eating friends. (Poor souls) I found this awesome recipe online, and was pretty pleased with the results. I also made peanut butter cookies for my grammy using a recipe from a Betty Crocker Cooky Book from the early 60's.

For my niece Maddy and my baby friend Nora, I made felt stuffed animals. Super easy and a lot of fun-- my basic embroidery skills were more than adequate. Maddy's animal was a bunny, as pictured, and Nora's was a penguin inspired by this project, which unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of. I also embroidered the edges of pillowcases for a couple friends, again, easy enough to do while obsessively watching the second season of Big Love.

As far as packaging, this seems like a no-brainer at this point, but it's worth repeating that one does not need to buy wrapping paper, cardboard boxes and the like. OK, so I broke this rule a little bit... I got on-sale tins for the cookies (I didn't want them to get crushed) and I purchased a couple boxes when I ran out of ones big enough. For those which I'd saved, I wrapped them in grocery bags, and used flimsy coupon-type paper as padding and insulation. It also goes without saying that magazine pages make the best wrapping paper ever-- Annie Leibovitz photo shoots and slick ads for vodka make the prettiest packages.

The season of the interview, and Celebratory Chicken Pot Pie

These pictures are of a delicious pot pie I made. Also of my pets (Wynona leaped into my drawer, Belly sleeps with her head on a pillow!) because they are (seriously) the cutest pets I know.

I *finally* have a job. I didn't want to write about my interview misadventures before I'd secured gainful employment, for fear of jinxes or bad karma for being snarky and haughty or something. But now that I've signed a W-4 and an I-9, I can breathe a bit more easily unless I get fired for screwing up in some unforeseeable horrible way.

The job-- it isn't a career or anything. I'm working part-time at a Jewish New York style deli/restaurant in Berkeley-- it kind of reminds me of Bagel Mania in Santa Fe, only tastier. (No offense, Bagel Mania, but you guys don't serve free pickles.) Anyway, not exactly a career-oriented job, not that it couldn't be. As put in the employee handbook, working at the restaurant is "good, honest work" and I believe that and think it will be challenging. But I'm not a career waitress. Honestly, I'm not even a very good waitress. Lucky for me, I'm being cross-trained as a busser/food-runner/server/host/counter person. Today was my first day and I did about two hours of hosting. Which was incredibly exhausting. I don't know how I'm going to handle my back to back closing and opening shifts this weekend. (7:30 in the morning?!) All said though, I am immensely relieved to have a job, even if it's not collaborating with Adrian Tomine/ curating the MoMA/ making heaps of cash by selling my wares. (And by "wares" I mean crafts...)

The interview process was easily the worst part. Interviews suck (and I have one more on Monday!). Seriously, to get the job at the restaurant, I first had to take a Meyers-Brigg type personality test. I had to come back for a round of second interviews for a job in reception at a yoga studio. I waited an hour and a half for an interview at a popular brewery with dozens of slacks-and-white-button-downs with offensive perfume and shiny shoes. I interviewed at a bunch of restaurants-- one guy was super mean, and we kind of got into a fight over e-mail. A few never called me back, and the ones that did, well, I didn't want to work there. (I was desperate, but not to the point of having to hang out with "Josh" at the office park soup joint and do dishes for three hours every day.) I briefly and against my better judgment, tried out yet another (it would've been my fifth) unpaid internship at a cool gallery in downtown Oakland. It would have been a great job, if the whole money part was included. But basically, this lady wanted a minion, and I quickly realized I couldn't mop floors (except the ones at my house) for free anymore. You want to pay me to mop? Sure. This internship is actually going to lead to "something"? Mmmm, maybe. You want me to sweep, mop, not pay me, and then go home? Nope.

There was one job I really wanted, with Lonely Planet. I am still convinced I would have been perfect for it, but so are the other hundreds (thousands?) of travel-happy twenty somethings who sent in their resumes.

By far my most memorable and terrifying interview was with this dude. He looks mild-mannered enough, I know, but that's because of the light and the angle of his face. In reality, he has a razor-sharp jaw and an icy stare that he will try to kill you with when he says "this job is all about criticism of your work and not taking it personally and turning out the best stuff possible, even when you are beaten down, over and over again". The company he owns and works for describes itself as a "think tank", but, um, no. They're in advertising. Mr. Owner and his buddy (and good cop to his bad cop) described it to me like this: "Altoids came to us and wanted us to re-tool their image. We went with eccentricity, really studied it in depth for months, and wrote up a fifty page report. Then we pitched it to Altoids, and they loved it." So, all of those weird vintagy-Altoids ads where one group of people finds another doing group doing something inappropriate and awkward? Yeah, that'd be the "think tank". The job itself sounded pretty awesome "are you an anthropologist?" they asked. "We need an anthropologist for this job!" Lots of reading and research about bizarre arcane practices and people, admittedly, a lot of "thinking" and as Mr. Owner assured me "wayyy more money than you've ever made before sweetheart". But even with these perks, it still sounded sort of bad. For one, they've represented everyone from Coke to Proctor and Gamble. They also work with smaller brands, but I don't really think I'd be doing anything positive, ultimately, by selling diet coke to people. Then there was the whole part where Mr. Owner told me (literally) he was a misogynist and he hoped I could handle "strong personalities". He didn't hire me, but I think I'm OK with that. I'd rather eat free pickles and drink chocolate egg creams.

The pictures above are from a chicken pot pie I made following one of K's hockey games. It was pretty easy, is surprisingly low-fat (the creamy filling sauce stuff is pretty much just flour and 2% milk) and we gobbled up all the leftovers-- it reheated nicely, and kept in the fridge for about a week. Recipe below:

Ingredients:

* One large (or two small) boneless skinless chicken breasts.
* Coarse salt and ground pepper
* 3 tablespoons olive oil
* 4 carrots, or a bunch of baby carrots, sliced.
* 1 medium onion, finely chopped (about a cup)
* 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves (parsley, sage, and rosemary, too! If you want.)
* 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
* 2 1/2 cups low-fat milk
* 1 package (10 ounces) frozen peas, thawed
* 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
* Box of phyllo dough (in sheets), thawed

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cook the chicken breast(s) any way you like. (I pan-fried them, about four minutes aside, but poaching or roasting would also work well.

Using two tablespoons of the olive oil, saute the carrots, onion and thyme (I used rosemary, too) over medium heat until the carrots are tender, but still crispy (8-10 min.) Season with salt and pepper. Add flour (still over medium heat) while stirring. Slowly add the milk, stirring all the while, until the mixture is smooth. Cook until the mixture comes to a simmer and has thickened.

Remove from heat, add the peas, lemon juice (I used a little bit extra, it's nice) and cooked chicken. Season with more salt and pepper, or other spices, if desired.

Now comes the tricky part-- you're going to use the phyllo to create a crust. Some recipes suggest only using the phyllo dough on top, but I like having an entire crust. Rolling out the phyllo (it'll be in long strips) is best, because then you can cut them to fit your pie pan. I used several layers overlapping on the bottom (kind of like a lattice-topped pie, only covering the whole surface) lined the sides with them, poured in the filling (I had extra, which I froze) and heaped a bunch on top. It's hard to go wrong, it just depends on how pretty you want your pot pie to look. Brush the top (and the insides, if you want) with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil.

Bake the pot pie for 20-30 minutes (check often, so it doesn't burn) until golden and bubbling. Let pot pie cool for fifteen minutes before serving.

Fall Food: By the Seat of My Pants Calabacitas

The onset of fall and the cooling weather (yes, even in California) makes me want to eat a lot and get fat for the coming winter. I think it's biological. Food just doesn't taste as good in late spring/early summer when all I really want to eat is gazpacho, cucumber sandwiches, and popsicles. Well, OK, not really, I always enjoy food, but fall makes me want to stuff myself with lots of warm, spicy, mulled things.

It's been a good week for cooking. Last Sunday, I made cowboy cookies for my grammy, from a Martha Stewart recipe. While my cookies looked nothing like hers, (maybe because I got steel-cut oats instead of regular oats by mistake) they are tasty and chewy and have enough butter in them that they've aged well. Thinking of it, these "cowboy" cookies remind me of Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist of Brokeback Mountain fame. They most definitely would have packed these on their secret love-treks into the wilds of Wyoming. They're stick-to-your-ribs cookies (with aforementioned oats, chocolate, pecans and coconut) perfect for long days on the trail, and um, frolicking in the outback. Ennis and Jack would have enjoyed. But don't tell my grammy that.

Tonight we had tacos, one of our favorite dinners, and I'd been meaning to use some gorgeous fall vegetables for a while. Calabacitas is a perfect fall side dish because it's flavorful, filling, spicy, and incidentally, vegan. Bring a batch to the next potluck with your hippie friends!

This is the recipe I made up, after vaguely remembering the calabacitas of my youth. I was never so much into them, they were usually a side attraction to my enchiladas or rellenos. But these hold their own.

Ingredients:
2 medium to small zucchinis
2 ears of yellow corn (white corn or even canned will work just as well)
1/2 of an onion, yellow or white
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup of green chile (I had to use Hatch's canned variety, which you can find in most grocery stores. If you're in the land of enchantment, though, use the jarred saucy variety, or, better yet, fresh roasted green chile-- the ultimate)
A few shakes of powdered red chipotle
Olive oil (a good drizzle to begin, then added here and there, as needed)

Instructions:
Chop all vegetables to desired size. (And chop the corn off of the cobs)
Saute the onions and garlic over medium high heat until the onions begin to soften.
Add green chile, zucchini, and corn. Saute on medium heat. Add salt and chipotle to taste. Cook until calabacitas reach desired doneness.

Easy-peasy, you can pretty much do whatever you want. I took the calabacitas off the stove while the corn was still a little crunchy, which was quite nice, and it retained its sweetness. Some calabacitas recipes suggest adding cream to thicken and creamify-- this is totally optional. Calabacitas can also be dressed up or thickened out with cheese, tomatoes, meat, etc. Versatile and delicious!

Hullo, Halloween

For my Halloween costume this year, I adapted butterfly wings from a Martha Stewart project. The wings are up on the wall now, and K says they're Mets wings because of the blue and orange color scheme. Not terribly sturdy,(made of floral wire and tissue paper) but served their purpose. K, was of course, Abe Lincoln. Some of the kids at the school where he teaches were a little confused about who he was dressed as.

Little Billy: Are you a president?
K: Yes, I am.
Little Billy: Are you Barack Obama?
K: Uh, nope.
Little Billy: Are you John McCain?
K: Definitely not.

I thought it was pretty obvious (Who else wore a beard like that without the 'stache?) but I guess it probably is more obvious if you're not seven years old. Still, though. I knew who Lincoln was when I was in second grade. I think.

K's pumpkin was the oldie but goodie "pumpkin barfer" and mine was some sort of animal. I was thinking dog, but I think it ended up looking more like a red panda with its tongue hanging out.

The pumpkin pie was made entirely from scratch (I peeled and gutted the pumpkin myself) and I was (am) very proud of my pastry chef efforts. However, should you ever decide to make a similar pie from scratch, make sure you blend the boiled pumpkin pieces in a blender. Egg beaters and mashing it around with a fork just aren't going to cut it-- I found this out the hard way when my pie was pleasantly flavored and spiced, but weirdly stringy in texture. There's nothing worse-- I like my pumpkin pie smooth and silky. I did think it was pretty, though.

Last night K and I got In N Out burgers animal style for our Halloween feast, ate in the parking lot, and then went to Rocky Horror at this place which in theory looks super cool. Pizza, beer and couches to go with your movie? Yes, please. It sort of sucked though: we had to wait outside in the rain for 40ish minutes before the movie. There weren't that many people there, they just weren't letting us in the lobby. While we waited shivering in our wet wool, dorky-fanboy-movie-theater-bouncer types yelled the rules to us over and over: "There will be NO, I repeat, NO cameras of any kind in the theater. Yes kids, that includes a camera phone. No food, no drinks, no smoking, no drugs of any kind, no alcohol, no weapons, no matches, no lighters, and yes you WILL be frisked at the door!" After three different goons (at least) had told us the explicit rules for gaining entrance to the holy movie theater, they made good on their promises. The girl who frisked me definitely squeezed my boobs, and after that made me get rid of my pomegranate. "They're way too messy," she explained. Um, hello. You guys serve pizza and beer in your theater, and fruit is sloppy?

Rocky Horror is supposed to start at midnight, but we didn't get the preshow (costume contest, various Rocky Horror virgin rituals) until 1 AM. The movie didn't start for twenty minutes after that. I've only seen Rocky Horror twice before-- once downtown in an NYC theater crowded with drag queens, and once at Vassar, as performed by the NSO (No Such Organization, formerly known as Non-Human Student Organization). The NSO was home to the X-Files devotees and Star Trek geeks, the Anime nerds and Buffy worshipers. These kids held a convention at the school every year that was ground zero for dungeons and dragons, LARPing (live action role playing)and purportedly, group sex. I shouldn't dis the NSO, because I too greatly appreciate some of the things they hold most dear: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and yes, I'll say it, The X Files. But they were dorks. The kids who felt awkward in high school who then met a ton of like-minded friends at college and reveled unrestrained in their dorkiness. Bottom line: The NSO's Rocky Horror was wayyyy better than whatever Oakland hipster's finest had to offer. Actually, even at the Parkway, these kids were more nerd than hipster. Which is preferable, but still. I know Halloween and Rocky Horror are only once a year, but please, even that's not cause to frisk me before I can enter your movie theater. Also, Rocky Horror starts at midnight, not 1:22 AM.

The Wide Wild West

(Exciting pictures after the text)


My first car meant a lot to me. Not because I bought it myself, or knew how to work on it, sliding underneath like a grease monkey or anything like that. I was fifteen when I started driving by myself in my own car, because New Mexico is insane and apparently thinks that letting kids who aren't even sixteen drive by themselves will somehow make our drunk-driver-ridden speed-demon-racing roads better. Not that I was complaining at the end of my sophomore year. Hell no, I was psyched. Living in Santa Fe, none of my friends were even close to my neighborhood. Driving was the beginning of hanging out in parking lots, playing hide and seek in cemeteries, and of course, reveling in the two weeks per year the plaza had actual grass. For me, like so many American kids, driving=freedom.

So it was kind of a big deal when my car was totaled near the end of August. I wasn't in the car, and no one was hurt-- the most important thing, obv. But the damages exceeded the value of the car, and so it was time to say goodbye to my dashboard (what had become a somewhat shabby assortment of doodads and plastic toys glue gunned all over the surface, see picture, but which I had recently replaced with astro turf and an awesome jungle scene) my teenage bumper stickers (Weezer, Keep Your Rosaries off my Ovaries, 98.1 Radio Free Santa Fe) every inch of my beloved 2001 Passat Wagon. I drove cross-country three times in that baby, taught three friends to drive stick shift in it, and slept in the back several times. Both of the driving pictures above are of my pal the Passat. Damn, what a car.

My extensive preamble can lead to only one thing: a new car. (Let's face it, living in California with a 72 lb. dog, a car is still essential.) K and I had been planning a trip to Santa Fe, and we left a couple days after the car was kaput. Once in Santa Fe, we (me, K, and my mom helping) used this dealer guy, Fred, to secure a new car. This time I had to pay for it myself-- sign of the times. (That I've grown up, not that the economy is in the toilet and my dad refused, though that is true, too.) Long story short, Fred wrangled me a Subaru Impreza WRX which is, not so coincidentally, the kind of car he has. It's more performance than I need in a car, but a hatchback, has decent gas mileage, and room for Belly. I really like it. K needed to go home and take care of the babies (fetch them from their babysitters) so my sister D and I struck out West for California.

We took mostly two lane highways because that's so much more romantic and fun and Blue Highways than the interstate is. That, and we've both been across 40 gazillions of times and it's ugly and dull, with the exceptions of the red cliffs near Grants and Gallup, and the Flagstaff area. So instead we struck off though Northern, New Mexican mountains and forests, and as it got dark, skirted Monument Valley in Arizona. Just north of Santa Fe, the landscape opens up and is wide enough, and full enough of mountains and mesas that dip into valleys and canyons, that the sky starts to look almost purple if you stare straight up for a long time. If the windows are down when you’re driving, the wind smells like snow melt or cotton wood fluff or charred pinon, depending on the time of year. We also drove across what an old friend of mine termed "Navajo Country" and so made lots of references to that, as we drove by tepees (no, really) silhouetted against Shiprock.

There is no landscape in the whole world I like better than that of the American West.

When we got to Page, AZ (right on the Utah border and next to Lake Powell) every single motel room in town was full because we were right next to Lake Powell and it was summer, and also because there was some sort of weird French convention going on, probably a discussion of how great the Euro is. We got vanilla milkshakes and bean burritos and cried a little (OK, a lot) at the prospect of having to sleep in the car after a long day, but in the end that is what we did. In the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express, where we freeloaded off of their lobby bathroom facilities and password-protected Wifi. Even when greasy and weepy, the MD girls know how to charm a hotel clerk in a pinch.

The next day took us through Utah, where we stopped near an unusually clear blue lake (see the picture) surrounded by fishing and ATVing rednecks. A mother duck swam nearby with her ducklings, and we restrained ourselves from kidnapping one. We stopped in Ely, Nevada, which is right over the border in time to wander around the town before it got dark. This is all I have to say: fucking sketchy. The "casinos" there were like mini museums-- stuffed animals of all tooth and claw, miniature everything, model trains, and lots of old, obese white people who seemed pretty thrilled that you're still allowed to smoke indoors at casinos.

This was the second time I'd driven across Nevada, and it was better than the first because we listened to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on CD. We'd both read the book the previous summer, but it's so intricate and long that we'd forgotten lots of plot details. Driving across the desert at 95 mph listening to the book was almost better than reading it for the first time. Mostly because driving in Nevada is a trip. We saw very few other people on our long lonely road. I think highway 50 is appropriately termed "the loneliest highway in America". You can drive really fast, because there's nobody else, and we didn't see any cops. The highway shoots straight across huge valleys, which look like they're going to go on for hours until you abruptly come up against a spiny mountain pass. Up and over, and into another colossal valley, past derelict gas stations, suspicious government explosions (really) and lots and lots of Joshua trees. The cemetery pictures are from just outside of Ely. So are the tree pictures. We considered leaving some of our own shoes, but we liked them all too much.

Indochine in Pictures

Not really, I just like that word. A few shots from Thailand and Malaysia. In the one where I am wearing a jaunty Peter Pan leaf hat, I am riding an elephant!

Mary Haldeman Dayton April 12, 1927- August 30, 2008

It might be a bit uncouth, or in poor taste to post on my personal only kind of themed definitely sort of irrelevant blog about my gramma's death. But I don't care. She died not unexpectedly at the end of August and I miss her. Here is what I read at her memorial, and above is a picture of her that was in her newspaper obituary. I think it's kind of a weird picture, but it is one she really liked of herself.

The summer before I went to college, I met my gramma in Aspen for the chamber music festival. We spent five crazy, stressful, but mostly wonderful days together. That year in my writing classes at school, I wrote a short story about our vacation. I’m going to read an excerpt from the story—a bit from the middle, and then the end. It’s not quite linear and a bit disjointed, but please bear with me. I’m picking up at a part during which I’ve just biked into town from our condo.

In front of Dior, I locked up the bike next to expensive and gorgeous mountain bikes from Italy. I wanted ice cream and to play in the street fountain like I had when I was six. My dad had splashed in the fountain with me that day; he’s always been the sort of father who doesn’t mind getting messy or looking foolish while playing with children, his own or otherwise. My grandmother is the same way, and I knew if I asked her, even
when I was nine, or eleven, too old to get in the fountain, she’d have come anyway.
I stopped at Clark’s on the way back to pick up more wine, bananas, English muffins, coffee filters, a sling in a size large, and some magazines. Pedaling back up the hill was difficult with my grocery bags balanced on the bike’s handlebars.
Neighbors were fixing hamburgers on the grill when I got back, and I heard kids splashing in the pool, but in our apartment it was quiet, except for the drip of the humidifier, which sounded a long way off in the next room.
“Gramma?” I called, not very loudly. She was asleep, where I had left her. I stood over her and noticed that her eyes were opened slightly, and that I could see little slits of glassy blue. She breathed slowly through her nose and was snoring slightly. Her hair, dyed strawberry blonde and so much thicker than mine, was freshly cut, styled and perfect. Her nose is my dad’s, with a bump on the middle. My sister will have the nose too, in four or five years. The three of them look alike, but I look like my mother.
I studied my grandmother’s still face and thought she was beautiful. Her mascara was slightly smeared, and the ends of her hair curled around her chin; she looked so lovely, lying on her back and snoring.
She had sprayed her perfume, and I put my face into the bedclothes that smelled like her. My gramma wears a lot of perfume; whenever she comes to stay, the whole house smells like her for at least a week after she leaves. From the nightstand, I dabbed it on the insides of my wrists and brought them to my face periodically for the rest of the evening.
I was pulling my pajama pants on when my grandma knocked on my door.
“Del, what do you say we make a trip to the Little Nell? For martinis and oysters?”
She was dressed in a dark blue dress closer to royal in color than navy, Ferragamo shoes, a very nice Hermes scarf, and went bare-legged. It was summer in Colorado, she said, and nylons wouldn’t be necessary. We both put on lipstick (hers coral and mine hot pink) and decided to walk there. Downtown was still fairly busy; it was a Saturday night in a tourist town, at the end of the season, and most of the hotel rooms were full.
“Do you think jeans are OK for the Little Nell?” I asked my grandmother.
“Oh, sure.” Flick of the wrist. “It’s a bar. A very nice bar, but a bar. We used to stay at the Little Nell, in the old days.”
We sat at a table by the window.
“Oh, waiter?” my grandmother trilled, fluttering her fingers. Her hands gleamed with rings and bracelets.
“Two vodka martinis, please. And a dozen oysters.”
We sipped our martinis together. I tried not to wince, while she let hers roll around in her mouth and down her tongue slowly. Our oysters came and we both slurped them from their shells, covered in lemon juice and dotted with horseradish.
“The first time I had a raw oyster was in San Francisco,” I said, “when we were there for Bruce and Lynn’s wedding. We were having dinner at some place down by Fisherman’s Wharf and you made me try one.”
I don’t think she knew how glad I was, how secretly special I felt that I was drinking martinis with her, that I would be able to tell this story at family gatherings fifteen years later. It was a strange sort of premature nostalgia, brought on because for five days in August she was all mine.
We sat quietly. I ran my finger, dipped in water, around the rim of my glass, making a high, resonant note sound, until I realized it wasn’t appropriate, even if we were among the last people in the bar. It was a classic hotel bar, with large red leather chairs and mahogany paneling and ashtrays for old men’s cigars. It was almost empty except
us; it wasn’t the sort of place one went to dance or get drunk on a Saturday night. My grandmother stood up delicately in her black heels.
I took her hand as we walked out of the Little Nell. When I was younger, my gramma never made me hold her hand, but I liked to anyway. People watch her when she walks, and I really don’t think she’s ever noticed. She’s not the sort of woman who bothers with other people’s glances. She grew up thinking she was ugly because of her red hair, which makes her less vain than she might be otherwise.
“Mon Dieu! Those oysters were exquisite, weren’t they, dear?” My grandmother says ‘Mon Dieu’ instead of ‘Oh my God’ because she thinks it makes her sound continental. And it does.
The concierge tipped his head at her and said “Good evening, madam,” as we left the hotel. She smiled, and inclined her head.

Melaka, the Straits of Melacca

In the Cameron Highlands, we were taken on a comprehensive tour of a tea plantation, a butterfly farm (which also had examples of all sorts of exotic insects, reptiles and amphibians) and a strawberry farm. The tea plantation tour reminded me a bit of the tours we used to take on IHP. And man oh man, would my IHP compatriots have had a field day. Apparently, all of the tea-pickers are migrant Indonesian workers who pluck for the equivalent of pennies a day, six days a week. It looked like a pretty shitty set-up, but I didn't know what to say to our guide other than "huh" and a lot of asides to everybody else about how that sounded pretty exploitative. The plantation was overrun with field-tripping Chinese middle-schoolers, and I was glad to depart for the Strawberry place which was small and did not appear to run on close-to-slave-labor and I had a really delicious strawberry milkshake.

After the Cameron Highlands, we journeyed South on a "super luxury VIP bus" (which basically just meant huge squashy seats) to the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, or KL. KL is kind of just another huge Asian city, but much easier to get around than Bangkok. (Which is pretty much the extent of my intimate knowledge of big Asian cities, unless we're counting India as "Asian") KL has a skytrain and a Chinatown and a weird park called the Lake Gardens that is basically their version of Central Park, and lots and lots of shopping malls. I enjoy shopping, but malls kind of make me want to kill myself. I got excited about going to Top Shop and finding some cute pants that fit really well, but that was about the extent of it. Also we went to a fancy watch store with the sole purpose in mind of asking them how I should clean my stainless-steel watch which gets really grimy and leaves gross marks on my arm. Fantastic tip: use an old toothbrush and toothpaste. My watch was super-shiny and gleaming afterwards, and I annoyed the crap out of Lacey pausing to admire the shininess and glinting the faces' reflection across the room like Tinker Bell.

Lacey and I spent the first half of our full day in KL in a soulless, air-conditioned shopping mall housed beneath Malaysia's Twin Towers, the second-highest buildings in the world. They actually had a pretty neat aquarium, with manta rays we could touch and huge sharks in an overhead tunnel and adorably-translated "fun facts" about aquatic life. After lunch, we wandered half-heartedly around the deserted Lake Gardens, probably so desolate because it was freaking hot and really humid. They had a weird sort of mini-zoo, with regular sized deer and also mouse deer, which may be indigenous to Malaysia. We were the only people at the zoo, and fed the regular-sized deer green leaves which we hoped weren't poisonous.

That evening, we partook of group-karaoke in a swank place with a cold/hot/dessert buffet, deals on booze, and private rooms. I only do karaoke when tipsy or with people I will never see again, so Lace and I made sure to cover both of those bases. We did a duet to "Summer Nights" (I was mostly John Travolta) and I did Crocodile Rock, among a few other songs. Fun and kitschy, but we still peaced out early.

We're in Melaka for the night, a historically important fishing port that like Penang, passed colonial hands between the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. We took a guided tour this afternoon in a tricked-out bicycle rickshaw, and had some seriously amazing fusiony/continental/tapas food at a yummy little place on the river. We're not here for very long, which is sort of too bad because it seems like a pleasant little town, in a lazy-dazy way. On the other hand, I'm jonesing to get home to my boy, dog and cat. I'm planning on slinging a couple Singapore slings, and heading on my merry way back across the big blue ocean. I love traveling, and I think I need to go abroad at least once a year to convince myself that I know what I'm doing. Also I just love it. But once a year is probably enough.

High time for high tea

We are now in the Cameron Highlands, first mapped and charted by a British dude called Cameron, and thusly named.

It's VERY British here. We're staying at the Hill View Inn, which is run by Indians, but bears resemblance to so much bad fake-Tudor architecture. The Inn is a basic B&B and reminds me quite a bit of Fawlty Towers, what with its chintzy English decor and gloomy corridors.

After the beach, where we spent another pleasant day with bouts of rain and sunshine, we crossed the border to Malaysia and spent two nights in Georgetown, on the island of Penang on the Western coast. Penang also reeks of colonialism, mostly in the architecture. Lacey and I had amazing Indian food, toured a nineteenth-century mansion where Catherine Deneuve filmed IndoChine, ate some seriously weird dim sum, were awakened at 5 AM by Ramadan prayers being broadcast throughout the city, and I caught a cold. The tour we're on moves quite quickly, which is good and bad. Bad beacuse its exhausting and my immune system gets mad at me, good because we're getting to see a great deal.

In Penang, we visited Southeast Asia's largest Buddhist temple which was a labyrinth of huge golden Buddhas, pagodas, swastikas, kiosks selling everything from Jesus wall-hangings to incense to t-shirts, and a huge concrete bowl called the "liberation pond" containing hundreds of turtles. Apparently, turtles are good luck, but these turtles were piled on each other, and sort of sluggishly moving around looking for vegetables people dropped for them. There was a guy picking his way across the turtles collecting rubber bands that people dropped with the vegetable bundles, and also collecting dead turtles and depositing them in a plastic bag. Cultural differences indeed.

Today we had a psycho bus driver take us from the straits of Melaka to the Cameron highlands. First off, he was a just a terrible driver-- but he compounded this by reading the paper while he drove, taking his hands off the wheel and stretching deeply whenever he felt like it, and chain smoking all the way up the windy mountain highway. I haven't been this terrified on a bus since Mr. Machen kept dozing off on the way to the Gila in 10th grade.

Tomorrow we're going to tea and strawberry plantations, and to a butterfly farm, all of which the highlands are known for. It's quite cool here-- I almost don't have enough clothing and will probably sleep in my socks. We're here for one night only, before heading to Kuala Lumpur, the capital. We're going to have dinner in the second-tallest buildings in the world. KL, as it's called, is supposed to be a lot of fun.

Off to nibble on the rest of my Cadbury bar and take more miracle Asian cold meds before bed.

Tasting and Complaining

The Thai prime minister is being forced to step down because he hosts a cooking show, and apparently, this is in direct conflict with his ministerial duties. No one's talking about it in Krabi, though, the southern Thai beach province where we're currently shacked up.

Lacey and I are pretty sure that the other members of our group think we're puritans. We've been going to bed really early, don't like going out on the town with them, and both have been wearing one-piece bathing suits. We've decided to cultivate this image for entertainment purposes, and it's also useful because we don't really feel like hanging out with them.

We have been having a wonderful time, though. Elephant riding our last day in the jungle was great, especially on the way back because I got to sit on the elephant's neck. His name was Hamun. My legs dangled down behind his ears, and I rested my hands on his head. Elephant skin is terribly rough of course, but also covered with bristles, a bit like a boar. First though, we sat on a seat thing fixed to his back like a saddle, which involved a lot of bouncing around and trying to shift our weight. I somehow thought it would be more glamorous, like a maharajah or a dignified Queen Victoria or something, but riding on Hamun's neck was much more graceful, for both of us.

When we got to Ao Nang, the town in Krabi where we're staying, it was raining. This is because it rains more during September than any other month of the year in Krabi. Again, we did not bother to check this while we were making expensive decisions about where to go on vacation. Still, it's very nice here. Today we took a boat snorkeling beach tour of nearby islands with the rest of our group, and actually lucked out with partly cloudy weather. I am now bright pink despite repeated sunscreen applications. We went to the beach where the Leo DiCaprio movie of a few years back, "The Beach" was filmed. It was sort of disappointing, because there was a lot of litter on the beach, and this seems antithetical to Leo's "I'm such an environmentalist" stance. OK, so it's not solely DiCrapio's fault that the beach has fallen on shabbier times. But it is sad.

The rest of the tour was lovely and quintessentially tropical. The snorkeling was decent to very good, and the scenery was definitely wow-worthy. Limestone cliffs in weird formations, gravity-defying foliage, and twenty-five different shades of blue.

On our way home, we ran back into the clouds that'd been hugging the coast all day, and the weather turned very quickly. I joked to Lacey that it was just like
"The Perfect Storm" which was funny until the boat crew busted out the lifejackets and insisted we put them on. I'm not exaggerating when I say the ride back was extremely intense and slightly scary. It hailed on our heads, I got hit full in the face by the tops of many, many waves, and I think my ribs are now compounded into my tailbone from so many slams of my butt into the seat. The ride was exciting in an "oh my god we're going to die but not really" kind of way, and once we'd arrived safely on shore, I decided it was a safe bet that we're more badass than Leo. Yes, for sitting through a storm and occasionally shrieking. To console ourselves, and partly for medicinal purposes, we drank hot chocolate laced with Thai brandy when we got back.

Malaysia is next, the day after tomorrow. Ten hours on a bus. Ugh. Hooray for snacks and sleeping pills.

Hearts of Darkness

Among the many, many differences between me and the Thai people, this is one of the more unfortunate, and one of the more obvious: I sweat a lot in this climate. Thai people don't. As Lacey gracioulsy pointed out on our first outing into the streets of Bangkok, "Your face is covered with little droplets of sweat."

We had set off across the city in search of a super-cool contemporary art space/"concept mall" called Playgound, that turned out no longer existed, or was under extensive renovation or something. (uh, hello, memo to Lonely Planet) Then we went looking for a vegetarian restaurant called Tamarind, which was empty and bore a for rent sign. (See previous parenthetical aside) So we wandered around the up-market rich Thai people/ ex pat area of Bangkok (wayyy across town from our hotel) when it started to storm. Thunder, lightening, the whole bit. This was real, tropical, torrential, typhoon-style downpour. They don't call it the monsoon season for nothing.

Me: Lace, did you know this was the rainy season?
Lacey: Um. No. Did you?
Me: No idea... Hmm. Maybe we should have checked that before we left?

We made it back across town with a cabbie who shreiked whenever we hit a big puddle, or the rain got more intense, or we narrowly missed a tuk tuk. Not exactly reassuing, but he expertly navigated the roads-tunred-rivers and dropped us off at the hotel soaking, but fine.

Then, joy of joys, we got to take an overnight bus! This really reminded me of IHP, though we only did that once, and it was something we planned on our own. The bus was decorated in shimmering pastels (blue, purple and pink) and there was a psychadellic falling leaves theme throughout. We purchased dinner at the bus stations' 7-11 (which seems to have a total monopoly on the convenience store market here) and I ate a really intersting "crab stick and mayonaisse sandwich", "super extra barbecue" potato chips, and a heart-shaped doughnut with no hole from Dunkin Donuts. Just as we were settling down to sleep, the bus people provided, for our entertainment, some weird movie about a monster in a lake I think, starring James Van Der Beek of massive fame from the piviotal TV series "Dawson's Creek". It was dubbed in Thai, and they played it twice, back to back, even though everyone was asleep. The ride was not as awful as I'd originally anticipated, due to the indespensible "Simply Sleep" and of course earplugs.

Still, we crashed hard, for two hours, when we got to our jungle bungalows. Which are really awesome. We're right on the edge of Khao Sok national park, deep in the oldest rainforest IN THE WORLD. I suppose it's rather unfortunate that I'm reminded of every Vietnam movie I've ever seen-- but really, it DOES look just like Apocalypse Now! Huge limestone cliff/mountains protrude out of nowhere, and the jungle is dense and everywhere, and green green green-- I'm half expecting a bald Marlon Brando to be spying on us from behind a tree. We went tubing this afternoon, down a lazy river; it was wonderful, and pictaresque and again reminded me of too many movies. Then we went to a temple where we fed monkeys and took pictures of them (kind of fucked up and exploitative, but the monkeys seemed to enjoy it) and then we came back to our resort/hotel place and drank tropical drinks and ate delicious Thai food. (Dynamite, no surprises there.)

The rest of our group is mainly unfortunate, and no, I'm not just being an asshole. There are the pair of Irish girls I've decided to call Paris and Nicole, but with bad teeth, who light up their cigs at every available opportunity. There are two Scottish couples who look alarmingly alike, beyond their pale creamy complexions and rust colored hair, only I like one of the couples and not the other. (The one I don't like wore raincoats while we went tubing) There's also two British boys who are barely eighteen and behave accordingly, a sweet Japanese guy called Masa that I want to make friends with, two girls from Wales who are fine, and the only other Americans, lame Bostonians who actually FLEW here from Bangkok because they couldn't stand the idea of an overnight bus. Come on. I may bitch and moan, but I also know when to suck it up.

Lacey being quiet and shy, and me having a penchant for whispering more obviously than I think I am in front of people, I don't think our fellow group members are going to try especially hard to make friends. This suits me fine, as I am here to be with Lacey, and see stuff, and eat, and get as many more massages as possible.

Our one pineapple daquiri each seems to have gone straight to our heads, and I'm tired from too much movement and too little solid sleep. It gets dark quite early here this time of year (by seven PM) and I think I'm going to wash and then sleep sleep sleep.

ALSO-- We're going to ride elephants tomorrow!

Tuk Tuk Thai

Arriving in a foreign land is always overwhelming and surreal. No matter how many times one does so, there's always jet lag, cramps from sitting in coach, and sometimes, not speaking a word of the language to contend with. But all in all, I like the what, 6, 7 hours? of Thailand that I've seen so far.

Apparantly, there's a military coup going on right now, but the only evidence we've seen of that was a bunch of grey uniformed soldiers standing around in a not-very-official looking way. (We is me and Lacey, my bosom buddy from college, and most fantastic travel companion. Lace optimizes cool and collected.) Also the Thais tend to unseat their prime minister every couple years I think, so maybe it's not a huge deal.

Our adventure began in Taipei where I chugged Starbucks (I know, I know, but we needed coffee) and had some yummy dumplings at 6 in the morning. They have a Hello Kitty gate at the Taipei airport, which is basically a marketing ploy, but also super cute. I wanted to buy everything, but especially Hello Kitty plastic stacking boxes for my dad, who has a collection.

Bangkok is smoggy and crowded and filled with people who want to talk to us, most of them male. Most of them well-intentioned, several a little too pushy. We went to Wat Pho to see an enormous gold-leafed reclining buddha and have traditional Thai massages, which were definitely the highlight of the first few hours here. The massages seem to defy lots of Thai conventions: stuff about touching feet and heads, relations between the sexes, and I had two index fingers inserted firmly into my ear canals for an uncomfortably long time. I feel pretty good though, enough to want another one tomorrow. They use a vick's vapo rub smelling herb (menthol, I guess) and give you cute little juice cups of cold tea afterwards.

My head is spinning, so I'm going to end this lackluster post. More later, after I have slept, encountered the third "lady boy" gender, met the other members of our group (oh yes, we're going on a tour) at least some of whom I will undoubtedly despise.

kisses from Siam.

How to make a Secret Compartment Book!

At my just recently ex-Audubon job, we received a donation of a bunch of old children's books. After conducting a e-bay/amazon/google search concerning the current value of first-edition "Tom Swift" (boy wonder from the 50s and 60s who does things like go to space and play cowboys and indians but for real) adventure novels, I was allowed to take one home. I promptly destroyed its literary value by turning into a cool, if somewhat sloppy, secret compartment book. You can make one too, if you want. Here is how:

You will need a book (hardcover is better) that either is really awesome (judging by its cover) or super-boring in case you want to hide things where no one will find them.

Also needed are an exacto knife (the sharper the better) some type of glue, a paintbrush, plastic wrap or a plastic bag, and heavy books. Felt is optional.

First mix whatever type of glue you have with a little bit of water, so it's thinner, but still not too runny. Wrap the front cover of the book and several of the beginning pages in plastic so they don't get glue on them. Paint the outsides of the remaining book pages with glue, on all three sides-- these are the sides of your book/box and need to be solid-- you won't be able to flip the pages anymore.

Next, put the book under several heavy books and wait for it to dry. This is important so it doesn't warp.

Once the book is dry, you can start attacking the pages with the exacto knife. Leaving yourself a margin of 2 or so inches (or whatever shape you want) start carving out the pages a few at a time. This part is lots of fun, but also pretty difficult. I am sort of an impatient person and probably went too fast, which led to some sloppiness in my final product, particularly around the corners. Go slow with the corners! After you've cut out all of the pages to the back cover, clean up the inside sides a little. This is also hard, it's tough to get a good angle to cut the raggedy paper.

Now, paint the inside sides with the glue/water to strengthen the box. If you want to add a felt lining, this is a good time to do it. I measured vaguely and then cut a piece of felt into five separate pieces (one for each of the sides and the bottom) that fit pretty well. I had a hard time getting the felt to stick with my glue/water mixture, so I broke out the gorilla glue. Not a good idea. It kind of dries in blobs, leading to further sloppiness. Next time, I will try a different, less extreme adhesive for the felt bits, or I will try to prop them up until they dry using toothpicks or something. It could be hard. Lemme know if you find a good gluing method for felt!

Now, with the first few decoy pages and the front cover still wrapped in plastic, put the book under heavy books again, for good measure. When the insides are mostly dry, you can open it up and put it somewhere your pets can't reach so the inside felt portion will dry. Stay away from gorilla glue.

Now you have a neat secret compartment box that wasn't purchased from Urban Outfitters. yay!

Red Crossing

This past weekend I decided to take a CPR/First Aid certification course with the Red Cross. My desire to do this came out of some convoluted ideas about being a good citizen and spur-of-the-moment decision making that a click or two and an idle moment on the internet can offer.

My class was held in a miserable windowless cinder block room deep in the boonies of Union City. Union City is one of those sad towns of central California you read about in Steinbeck novels, only not as romantic. There's a street sign (the kind on a stoplight, official and everything) that has two arrows pointing in different directions and reads "Target" and "Circut City". Like, this is Target and Circut City street?

Our instructor was a man named Dave, who seemed to use the class as a vehicle for telling gruesome personal anecdotes as much as a means to teach us CPR and first aid. Apparently, Dave had been the Sheriff/Chief of Police/miner of some kind in a small town in Utah for several years, and had also served as the interim EMT until real medical personnel could arrive from fifty miles away. "Yep," he said. "I have to tell y'all to use a breathing barrier cause that's what the Red Cross recommends. But lotsa times you don't have a breathing barrier, and you just gotta do mouth to mouth. Remember to plug the nose, or you'll get a face fulla boogers." Charming man, Dave. A lot of his stories sounded suspiciously like lies. He described giving someone the Heimlich maneuver (which they don't call the Heimlich maneuver, by the way) at an Outback Steakhouse after walking up to an old man choking on a shrimp. The way he described the scene, play by play, sounded exactly like the part in "Mrs. Doubtfire" when Robin Williams (disguised as the housekeeper Mrs. Doubtfire) saves Pierce Brosnan from choking on a shrimp. It's the pivotal scene in the movie, because all of the man-lady makeup comes off, and I remarked (kind of under my breath) after Dave told his story that it sounded just like Mrs. Doubtfire. He laughed uncomfortably, which I took to mean he was either an exaggerator or a liar. Perhaps both.

A lot of the class participants were there because they were teachers, or had to complete the course for work. There were two pregnant couples present, one with a particularly wild-eyed mother, who insisted on telling everyone that this was the second time she'd taken the course, (the first time was before they had their first baby) and that she never let anyone without a CPR certification NEAR her daughter! I can appreciate being cautious, but sometimes these things serve as forums for people to congratulate themselves on being responsible citizens. Which is a good thing, really. But I wish the shrill, self-righteous attitude didn't come with it. Everyone had an aunt or a coworker or had witnessed a stranger have some terrible accident. "This isn't group therapy, people," I felt like saying more than once, but didn't, because generally that makes one look like an asshole.

The CPR training itself was useful. I'd taken courses before, but it's been a long while. We got to practice on alien dummies and babies with removable faces. And on one another, which is always sort of awkward, even if you're just pretending to give the other person mouth-to-mouth, and instead are repeating "breath, breath" right over their faces. The first aid training was a little bit of a joke-- it reminded me of driver's ed in high school, when we watched episodes of "Red Asphalt" which were basically cautionary tales of brains and guts spilled across the highway. I mean, if I'm actually going hiking and my buddy Marvin falls and breaks his leg, I suppose I will be a bit better off having watched an instructional video. But not by much. In either scenario, I'd probably scream for help and avoid touching poor Marvin's leg if possible.

Sharks and their attacks have been a theme at our house the past few weeks (Bryan, boogie boarding, etc.). In honor of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, our landlady Phyllis (who lives next door) had us over to watch Jaws. That's her in the costume. She made it herself, and is quite proud of it. I fell asleep halfway through in Phyllis' "Cadillac chair" (a nice, broken in Laze-Boy)

This is the most useful thing I learned this weekend, in reference to poisonous snakes that can bite you and make you die:

Red touching yellow, he's a deadly fellow.
Red touching black, he's a friendly Jack.

As always, watch out for snakes, sharks, and please, take CPR. It's for the children.

How how how could I resist you?

Let me begin by saying that I think people who claim never to be starstuck are lying. Granted, this is coming from a person who gets really excited about "stars". I don't even like Julia Roberts, but I still followed her around like a crazy person when I saw her at Whole Foods a few years ago. (So did everyone else in the store) My freshman year of college, as my friends and I were waiting in line to hear Tom Hanks speak, I made a "Tom Hanks is here!" fortune teller/cootie catcher. I know, I'm pretty cool. But at least I'm willing to admit when I am starstuck. Yes, it's kind of lame to get all excited about famous people, but I never ask for autographs or anything like that. (OK, well, one time I did, but it was for my sister, and I made a complete fool of myself telling Lisa Kudrow that we named our dog after her-- a moment of mortification never to be repeated.) We live in celebrity-obsessed times, and um, yeah, I get a little thrill when I walk by Gene Hackman's pillow store in Santa Fe. It may be frivolous, but I take my fun where I can get it.

While I get excited about all manner of celebrities I've happened to encounter (Ted Danson, Michael Chabon, Obama before he was "Obama") there is a certain level of golly-gee excitement reserved for famous people I actually really like. Yesterday, as I literally dragged K to go see "Mamma Mia!" with me, three of them came to mind: Meryl Streep, Toni Collette, and Estelle Getty.

I don't like Abba practically at all. Except for "Dancing Queen" which we used to listen to at camp dances between rounds of the macarena. I don't know anyone who does like Abba, except for this guy I was friends with, and after he revealed to me his sincere enjoyment of the band, I decided he was kind of pathetic. Still, though, I saw Mamma Mia on stage when I was fourteen, and boy what a lot of fun. You can only imagine my unbridled excitement at seeing the movie adaptation starring Meryl Streep. Like half the planet, I worship ol' Meryl, probably to an unhealthy degree. As I tell anyone who will listen, one time she touched my shoulder, said my name, and told me she liked my buttons. (She and my cousin were co-board members at the time, and I wheedled an introduction out of her) Yeah, that was a high point of age nineteen.

Mamma Mia the movie did not disappoint, or at least it didn't disappoint me. K checked his cell-phone for the time on six occasions throughout the film, but he gallantly escorted me. Moreover, he tolerated my renditions of "Waterloo" and skipping and dancing through the grocery store after the movie was over. To be clear, it's a ridiculous film, full of cheese, fluff and bullshit. But (I'm pretty much stealing NYT critic AO Scott's review here) Meryl (and Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walters, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski et al) knows that the film is as silly as it is, and she has a great time with it. They all do-- and if I can suspend my disbelief to see Christian Bale leap off of buildings and drive a monster-truck motorcycle in "The Dark Knight", well, then, I can suspend it in the other direction and watch Meryl and Pierce sing "SOS" to each other and then engage in bikini-clad conga lines up and down the Greek isles. (By the way, I want to move to Greece. Preferably to my own private island with clean whitewashed buildings, cobblestoned walkways, chalky cliffs and tall pines.)

No less absurd, equally entertaining and a good deal more poignant is the 1994 film "Muriel's Wedding." My beloved AO Scott (another one I'd go crazy to meet) put up the following lovely little montage about Muriel's Wedding, because like Mamma Mia, it's also structured around the songs of Abba. Muriel (Toni Collette) lives with her lazy, mean family in Porpoise Spit, a small town in Australia. Her friends are mean to her too, they're bitchy cheerleader types and it's not clear why they're friends with Muriel in the first place. Muriel has two obsessions: the music of Abba, and getting married.



In the video, Scott clips a scene from Muriel's Wedding that could have been taken straight from Mamma Mia. Muriel and her new pal Rhonda (played by Rachel Griffiths) do a really awesome feather-boa wearing lyp-synch to Waterloo. Similarly, the cast of Mamma Mia breaks into song and strictly choreographed dance at the drop of a hat, but of course, they do this in the "musical theater is real" world. Muriel and Rhonda are clearly performing, but they may as well not be. To them, Abba's song and dance routines are as natural as real life, and more fun than most of what their lives are actually about. It's escapism, and watching Muriel in her room in the early scenes of the film listening to Abba and looking at brides magazines initially makes one pity her. Later though, Muriel starts to get a life and kick ass, and the pity slowly evaporates. It's like being starstruck-- we all have our personal Abbas and stacks of bridal magazines. Or, erm, "I met Meryl Streep" stories, and Tom Hanks themed fortune tellers.

On an unrelated note, other than the fact she's a celebrity I adore, Estelle Getty died yesterday. All hail the late great Golden Girl!

The Red Triangle of Death

Last night, our friend Brian came over and we told him about our boogie boarding adventures last weekend. Brian listened patiently before breaking into a huge evil grin and telling us "you guys know you went boogie boarding right in the middle of the red triangle, right?" I thought he was making something up to mess with us, and I started thinking about the Bermuda Triangle and that one episode of the X Files where Mulder is transported back to the Caribbean circa 1930ish and they're all lost on some ghost ship. But then we went to Wikipedia, which of course never lies, and discovered the fated, fabled Red Triangle.

Apparently, the red triangle is this axis of shark attacks that we went boogie boarding smack-dab in the middle of last Sunday. (We'd have to drive for hours to the south or north to escape the red triangle-- check out the map, it's big) Now, I'm not really that scared of sharks. (K is a different story). And 13 shark attacks since 1952 really doesn't sound that bad. Brian is terrified of sharks and kept ratcheting up his terror-speak. "Being eaten alive is the worst possible way to go, I think" and "Hey, there's this awesome video on youtube of this guy getting attacked by two sharks at the same time. Let's watch it!" I tried to distance myself from the madness by getting out the lint roller and picking up pet hair, but I did watch the video, and yeah, it looks really, really scary. Still, that's not going to happen to us, is it?

The red triangle exists for a few reasons: 1. Sharks like cold water. 2. A bunch of seals and other tasty marine life live in the bay area. and 3. The Bay Area is heavily populated and lots of people like to go swimming and surfing here. Thus, (says my friend Wikipedia) "It has also been estimated that of all documented great white shark attacks on humans, more than half have occurred within the Red Triangle."

Bah. We were still going to go out today, because as my sister pointed out, we're more likely to die in a car crash on the way to the beach then we are to be torn limb from limb and then chewed up and spit out by Bruce. And besides, 13 attacks since 1952, and millions of people have been swimming in the red triangle since then? Our odds are pretty decent. Then I remembered that I am currently, um, experiencing my menstrual cycle. (And I'm sorry if that's oversharing, but come on, half of the population gets their period). So we're going to wait. But we're still going to go. If I bought into various sources of fear mongering (Bush, the media, Brian, rival gangs)I wouldn't fly on planes, eat tomatoes, talk on a cell phone, or live in my neighborhood. This blog post as my witness: I ain't afraid of no shark.