To an epicure, certain items are beyond praise: Olive oil, holy basil, noodles, good stock. Counted among these magnificent essentials is the simple tomato. Grown in summer or in a hothouse off-season, they are always worth it, always important.
Something to reflect on during these difficult times.
Also, rogue chef Anthony Bourdain is back with a new cookbook. From the roast chicken recipe : Don’t throw away “the pope’s nose” (the ass). That’s flavor. The entire volume is like that, obscure secrets of the trade laced with profanity. I spent a while with it in the bookstore yesterday, and came away with provocative new ideas about vinagrette and boeuf.
Space Tropic
William Raspberry from the Washington Post admits that divisive politics makes for better copy:
Scores of public controversies are reported as to-the-mat battles between unyielding opposites — in part because our journalistic habits send us looking for these irreconcilables.
But Raspberry doesn’t go far enough. By exaggerating these political conflicts the media rubs salt in the wound, and soon enough the extreme groups on both sides of an issue feel more justified in portraying each other as grotesque caricatures, worthy of contempt.
Then both sides keep amplifying the rhetoric, and ‘purples’ get to hear them repeat the latest bombast from Fox, or Franken, or Limbaugh, or those velveteen socialists at NPR, as if we simply never had the pleasure of being assaulted with a “reasonable position” before.
Space Tropic
A young, well-educated workforce is essential to the health of modern cities. Their economic participation and cultural decisions (in art, music, and nightlife) are a feedback loop that increases the vibrancy of the city, and it’s attractiveness to others. Read this book about it.
In Cincinnati, some groups have made it their mission to add cultural cachet to a town that has a reputation for being sedentary and bland. Their efforts are praiseworthy. But ‘the creative class’ eventually gets tired of coming home at 3AM, gets married, has children, and needs a place to live. These things actually happen. (People in their 20s think of this like Logan’s Run, the 1970s sci-fi movie where people float up to the ceiling and explode at the age of 30.)
This changeover means other issues become important, such as public safety, neighborhoods, and schools. Robert McCluskey put this very elegantly in a children’s book. Except in a modern re-telling, the ducks would be suspicious of Officer Michael, and form an action network against kids on bicycles.
Our local government in Cincinnati (like many towns), halfway-understands some of these issues, but is mostly preoccupied with getting the next retail-derived tax fix spiked into a vein.
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‘The Incredibles’ is a massive hit, but you may want to think twice. This article from our nation’s leading progressive magazine contends that the movie may be pro-freedom, and even family oriented.
‘Polar Express’ isn’t doing as well. This is because ultra-realistic computer generated animation freaks the living daylights out of everyone. Had Zemeckis called I would have warned him.
My daughter and I are both Miyazaki buffs, and so we anxiously await ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’. It was previewed in Japan recently by this person, on the site that specailizes in rambling reviews and nerdy movie hype, Ain’t It Cool News.
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A sign of the times. No word yet on a remake of the 1987 classic. Obviously Ms. Lopez would take Kim Catrell’s part. Andrew McCarthy, incidentally, has apparently parleyed his lack of comedy skills into a new career writing for conservative publications.
Which reminds me, I keep seeing a Korean family at my local YMCA. Now, being naked in the locker area is normal, but this family feels obliged to run back and forth naked, in a group. The first time I thought they were in a rush. But I saw them again today, racing around the lockers, the sauna, and the showers.
It’s a father and his two boys, and the boys are usually explaining the complexities of some video game in between short breaths, while the father nods, and runs naked. “And then you. Hide under the castle. Until. The princess returns. Then you. Use the red gemstone!”
I don’t know what this means. It doesn’t appear to be wrong or unwholesome. Maybe they are simply enthusiastic about exercise.
Space Tropic