We took a post-dinner walk to our local ice cream parlor. Mr. P was unduly shocked into giggles when I ordered my vanilla frozen custard with chocolate jimmies. He thought “jimmies” sounded like a euphemism for a man’s, um, family jewels. After I dispelled that notion, he then was most curious about these elongogated flecks of confection.
“We don’t have jimmies in France,” he said, eying my cup covetingly.
I cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s what I hear.”
Posted in Existence.
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– July 25, 2008
Yesterday the Massachusetts House of Representatives gave its initial approval to a bill that would require all future legislation to use gender-neutral language like “he/she” and “his/her” instead of the general use of “he”. Finally there will be justice for anyone who has ever read state legislative documents and felt subordinated by pronouns!
The gender-neutral law was introduced by State Representative Cory Atkins of Concord, who has a gender-neutral name him/herself. Atkins spearheaded the bill after he/she read a bill about nursing that used masculine pronouns. “I thought I must have picked up the wrong legislation because it was all, ‘he’ this, ‘he’ that, when nursing is predominantly a female profession,” she/he said. Actually, nursing is done exclusively by women out of biologic necessity, which I imagine made the generic “he” in the breastfeeding bill even starker.
As a wordsmith, the use of concatenated pronouns offends my inner sense of diction. It’s inelegant and jarring to the eye, and legalese hardly needs any more idiomatic clutter. Agreeing with me is Rep. Robert Hargraves of Groton, who told the Boston Herald “I think it’s (expletive)… We’ve got too much to do here with actual items to be fooling around with this crap.” Obviously he is not a man given to pondering linguistic nuances.
The issue is not precision, of course, because when Chapter 265, Section 26B forbids “Drugging persons for kidnapping” (here) by repeatedly stipulating “against his will,” we all intuitively know that women cannot be legally be drugged and kidnapped either. The issue is if the use of the “generic he” in legislation truly discriminatory. I chalk it up to linguistic convenience , but one bourn out of a long history of systematic sexism. So if Rep. Cory Atkins is willing to risk accusations of frivolity by crusading for against gender bias in legislation, I say, you go girl/guy!
Posted in In the News, Massachusetts.
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– July 24, 2008
Over the years, American-style Chinese food has slithered to bottom of my list of preferred cuisines on a trail of sesame oil. I’ve found that applied avoidance of Chinese restaurants is a necessary precaution to avoid the hours of queasy digestive rebuking that can result from eating batter-fried protein, greasy carbohydrates, and limp vegetables swimming in sweet-n-sour-n-salty sauces.
Yet I’ve always assumed that genuine Chinese cuisine must be quite tasty and sophisticated, on the childlike logic that China is a big country with a long history and a lot of people. So I was intrigued by The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones (author of Lost in Translation), which promised on the back cover to “unlock the deepest mysteries of legendary Chinese culinary arts to produce a feast for the human heart”.
The plot is as tidy and convenient as tightly-wound spring roll: Maggie, a 40-ish American widow and food writer, travels to Beijing to deal with a paternity suit involving her late husband. A magazine editor suggests that, while she’s there, Maggie should write about an up-and-coming Jewish-American/Chinese chef named Sam Liang, who cooks in the tradition of his grandfather, a renowned chef of the Forbidden City. While Sam prepares for a national cooking contest, he explains the intricacies of Chinese cuisine to Maggie, like how some cuisine evolved with poetry because poets often collaborated over meals, why fat is considered a delicacy, and how texture can sometimes trump taste.
Owing to several sub-plots, Sam and Maggie forge a bond. Maggie, who is dealing with the hurtful paternity suit, finds great comfort from, um, eating Sam Liang’s chicken, as shown in this excerpt that typifies much of the book’s language and style: She plucked a morsel from the side of the bird, low on the breast where the moistness of the thigh came in, and tasted it. It was as soft as velvet, chicken times three, shot through with ginger and the note of onion… It put a roof over her head and a patterned warmth round her so that even though all her anguish was still with her it became, for a moment, something she could bear.
The story goes down like steamed chow mein: Soft and amiable, with nothing too heavy to chew on. Before I realized it, I had finished over half the book. I just kept shoving the words in my brain without stopping to ponder them. I had to put the The Last Chinese Chef down for a week, and cleanse my brain with the fiber-filled Posthumous Keats before I was stricken by the desire to finish my plate.
Ultimately, The Last Chinese Chef satisfies the Recommended Daily Allowance of insight into China’s culinary traditions. In fact, it contains abundant, nearly toxic levels of Chinese food descriptions, all punctuated by our heroine Maggie gloating about how incredible it tastes. This is all pressed together with superfluous sub-plots and characters, and then deep-fried in love. The ending fortune cookie is an expected, sweet but cringing sex scene between Maggie and Sam. For all its pretenses of being about genuine Chinese cuisine, The Last Chinese Chef sure goes down like American-style Chinese takeout.
Posted in Review.
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– July 23, 2008
Wal-Mart has sounded the death knell for z.b.d. design, a line of trendy women’s clothing that the megalith retailer sold online for nearly a year. As always, Wal-Mart’s concern is with the bottom line. Says Wal-Mart executive, “We’ve gotten a better return in focusing more on seasonal key items that are a little bit more basic.” Like frozen hamburger patties, take and bake pizzas, and Malt-O-Meal cereal.
Let us take a moment to reflect upon this loss, this passing, this quietus of the pinstripe trapeze jacket ($18.88) and the retro smock tunic ($7.88), casualties of a pessimistic economic climate that is expected to render our nation’s most lowly consumers incapable of owning any clothing other than ribbed tank tops and cotton clam diggers.
z.b.d. design was Wal-Mart’s second attempt at wrestling market share from Target by tantalizing big-box America’s inner fashion diva with tweed swing jackets and gigot-sleeve mock-neck tees (available in black and raisin). The first attempt, Metro7, is available in some stores and online after its disastrous debut, albeit on a scaled-back basis with more emphasis on practical designs. The z.b.d. design was available exclusively online. Perhaps Wal-Mart was wagering that the sleeveless lace v-neck top ($16.88) would attain a certain digerati cache. Perhaps Wal-Mart was catering to the fashionistas who were too ashamed to be seen in a Wal-Mart but still just had to have the square-neck silver-and-black satin leopard-print dress ($24.88). Perhaps Wal-Mart was hoping that online consumers wouldn’t be able to tell how cheaply and poorly tailored the “Made in the USA and/or Imported” clothing is.
I’m not fashion maven, so I lack the eagle-eyes to discern the stylistic differences between Metro7 and z.b.d. design. Both offer tunic tees and swing jackets. Both push puff-sleeves and slim pants as if they’re going out of style (ahem). And, judging by Wal-Mart own marketing images (see below), both apparently look woefully unflattering on anyone with a face. It would seem that Wal-Mart abides by Oscar Wilde’s philosophy: Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Posted in Americana.
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– July 22, 2008
Yesterday a hot humid haze visibly veiled Boston in a regional steam bath, and I could not stray from air-conditioned realms without my forehead and chest erupting in beady sweat and my fingers and ankles swelling to plump lethargic lumps. I holed up in my bedroom, writing gibberish perfume reviews until the AC air’s ersatz coolness became suffocating, Dictionary.com’s cleft palate charity advertisement became depressing, and Mr. P came home from his Sunday morning triathalon to whisk me away to Crane Beach in Ipswich.
It wasn’t an archtypical beach day; an opaque layer of gray clouds shrouded the sun, and a fresh sea breeze across the 65-degree water made swimming a chilling prospect. But Mr. P liked how it reminded him of the beaches in Brittany, and I liked how I could bare my fair skin without fear or sunscreen. We settled in our beach chairs between a young family who was erecting a sandcastle at the behest of a barky toddler, and an odd group of determined teenaged sunbathers, splayed on a blanket, silent except for intermittent Pringle crunching.
While we eat our picnic lunch, Mr. P drops his sandwich in the sand, giving me the opportunity to trot out that old chesnut about “that’s why they’re called sandwiches,” which makes him laugh because he thinks that I made it up. When we finish eating, I spend a few idle minutes digesting and people-watching, then decide to take a walk. Mr. P is more interested in reading the Sunday New York Times and taking discrete sips from his beer, so I set off by myself down the beach.
Crane Beach is one of my favorite New England beaches. It is a peninsula with a long stretch of silky white sand that ribbons around an amazing beachscape of billowy sand dunes. Further down the beach, away from the crowds and the lifeguards, there is a large flat area where the ocean becomes shallow at low tide. You can wade in the ocean about 1/3 of a mile out and never get wet above mid-calf. Shoals of sand emerge everywhere, and you can stand on these islands, totally surrounded by water, alone except for the buried clams blowing air holes at your feet.
I arrive at this section of the beach when the tide is waxing, the shoals are shrinking, and waves are absorbing the clear tidal pools back into the murky sea. Further out, a man takes pictures of a woman as she repeatedly rushes a group of piping plovers resting on a shoal, scattering them in a photogenic cloud before she sneaks away and the unsuspecting birds return. I wander around the shallow flats, where the lapping tides have created pronounced ripples in the sand. I plant my feet into the yielding grooves and imagine the sand exfoliating the skin of my soles. The water no longer feel glacial. In fact, it feels perfect.
I start to walk in the water back towards the main beach, back to the crowds, to the life guards, to Mr. Pinault. The water level inches past my knees, so I step onto a disappearing shoal to remove the J Crew army-green shorts that I modestly donned on top of my swimsuit. Soon the water level touches my waist and the tides gather strength. I expand the length of my gait, enjoying the water’s renewed resistance against my legs. I have left the shallow area of shoals and flats; I have entered the ocean in earnest.
Suddenly the ocean bottom drops out from under me. I am about 30 feet from the shore. I tread water while holding my shorts in my left hand above my head, bobbing in the waves. The water is suddenly horribly frigid. I attempt to touch the bottom again, and a wave surprises me from behind, soaking my hair and covering my mouth. I continue to tread water, but I am not controlling my body’s direction — the ocean’s current is. A moment of panic seizes me, because I know this is how people drown.
I abandon the foolish effort to keep my shorts dry and start swimming backstroke towards the shore. Very soon I am back in thigh-height water. There are two fishermen on the shore, watching me continue to walk in the water back to the main beach, back to the crowds, to the life guards, to Mr. P. The way the fisherman watch me, I know they saw me alone and struggling. They thought they would have to come rescue me. But I never needed rescuing. I just needed the nerve to put my shorts in the water.
[Below is a picture at Crane Beach from October 2007, taken by Mr. Pinault at low tide. The rippled sand flats are visible beneath the horse.]
Posted in Massachusetts.
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– July 21, 2008
The 2008 Tour de France is well underway, but that and a baguette will get you a mouthful of bread. After some years of fledgling American interest in the Tour due to Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis, this year’s Tour de France has kindled about as much notice as an African civil war.
It all comes down to doping, an unsavory topic that dominates most of the Tour’s media coverage. Fans are turned off by the suspicion that most top cyclists are using performance-enhancing drugs, and the Tour’s credibility suffered a severe blow when last year’s winner Floyd Landis forfeited his title after testing positive for synthetic testosterone. Many other renowned cyclists have been forced to sit out of this year’s Tour due to previous doping violations. Though this year’s crop of riders pinky-sweared to race dope-free and restore the sport’s credibility, already there have been 4 riders thrown out for “doping practices”.
Mr. P has long contended that all top cyclists (including Lance Armstrong) must be doping… except the French ones. He points out how a French rider won an early stage this year, but then quickly fell back in the rankings. If a cyclist races like hell one day, how can they repeat the performance day in, day out, for 21 punishing stages and 2211 miles, without doping?
I’m not as cynical, or else I’m more naive. I like to think that Lance Armstrong accomplished his feats because he is superhuman. I like to think that Floyd Landis, that nice Mennonite boy from Lancaster, was the victim of a witchhunt. But I also know that people who reach the pinnacle of their profession are highly competitive and not likely to pass up on any advantage, however ethically dubious it may be. Doping will continue to haunt the Tour de France, as it does most major sports competitions, and it is left to the fans to sort through all the gruff to find their heroes and their inspirations.
Posted in In the News.
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– July 20, 2008
My age, intellectual endeavors, and general disdain for popular culture would seem to make me impervious to Hollywood crushes. But ever since I saw American Psycho, I’ve had this thing for Christian Bale. It’s a cerebral attraction, I assure you: I think he’s really hot.
So I’ve been looking forward to seeing Bale’s second turn as Batman in The Dark Knight, and he didn’t disappoint. Granted, it’s kind of hard to see Bale’s face when its covered by that pesky bat mask, but I enjoyed watching his mouth as it trash-talked villains, rough-talked politicians, and sweet-talked Maggie Gyllenhaal. Bale’s suave, cool, slightly priggish good looks are in full bloom as Bruce Wayne, and all I can do to quell my inner swooning is touch my engagement ring and think faithful thoughts.
Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome Knight is not the star of the show, it’s the late Heath Ledger, whose much-hyped performance as The Joker is generating posthumous Oscar buzz. Honestly, though Ledger’s dark and creepy Joker is a welcome departure from Jack Nicholson’s jovial and innocuous interpretation, it just didn’t scream “Give that man an Oscar!” to me. I say, give it to Christian Bale instead!
As far an action movies go, the Dark Knight is riveting, if only because the pace is so fast that one moment of lapsed concentration could cause 10 subsequent minutes of confusion. I know that mass market movie-goers like fast paced movies, especially if each scene is punctuated by an explosion, gun fire, or a car chase, but I had a hard time keeping up. Adding to my confusion was that a surprising amount of dialogue was drowned out by background music or sound effects. Plus, as previously mentioned, Christian Bale’s mouth is fitfully distracting.
Posted in Review.
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– July 18, 2008
It’s summer. We’re in the thick of hot and humid laziness, the kind that makes me want to curl up under a shady tree in the grass on the banks of the Charles River and watch the insane joggers stumble past… or flop down under an umbrella on the white sands of a North Shore beach and pretend the waves are breaking above ankle-height… or position my open mouth under the dispensing valve of a vanilla soft-serve machine, to suckle on soft-serve until my brain is frozen into a stooped monolith, rendering the need for self-cooling through bodily perspiration unnecessary.
Posted in Existence.
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– July 17, 2008
It’s the height of tourist season in Boston, and the streets are crowded with comfortably-dressed and sensibly-shod sightseers, every last one of them toting a camera with which to digitally preserve the thrills, the excitement, the experience… of Boston!
“Excuse us, can you take our picture?” asks a burly man in a T-shirt and jean shorts, motioning to a thick-backed woman fussing over a baby carriage while two sub-10 year old boys swing around their gangly limbs nearby.
“Of course,” I say, taking the proffered bulky camera. Picture-taking has recently supplanted direction-giving as my #1 Random Tourist Demand, with “Do you know where any Red Sox players live” being a distant #3.
We happen to be standing in front of the Boston Federal Reserve, a very distinctive, immense 33-story building. “Do you want the building in the picture?” I ask, as the family huddles together, the father barking at his sons to stand still.
“Sure,” the father calls, and I step backward to get the Federal Reserve as a backdrop. The parents smile widely while the two boys stare grimly and the toddler in the carriage begins to cry. Snap.
“I think that looks good,” I say as I walk over to hand back the camera.
“Thanks,” he says. His wife tends to the child while the two boys, evidently annoyed by being immobile for ten seconds, begin hitting each other. I’m about to walk away when he asks, “Say, what building is this?”
“That’s the Boston branch of the Federal Reserve,” I say, injecting a hint of mock-reverance in my voice.
“Oh, wow” he says. “They’re the guys who manage the oil, right?”
I pretend not to hear, smile, half-wave, walk away.
Posted in Massachusetts.
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– July 16, 2008
Every time I go to CVS, the cashier hands me a 3-foot long receipt consisting mostly of coupons specially generated to tintillate the raging thrifty consumer within, based on a profile that CVS has compiled from my purchases while using the CVS discount card. Since I chiefly go to CVS to buy Altoids, deodorant, shaving ravors, and other personal hygeine products that have no adequate organic substitutes, the CVS coupons that I am issued indicate that I’ve been pegged as a candy addict with a keen interest in an wide array of depilatories.
Then, about nine months ago, all my CVS receipts began to include a coupon for alli, an FDA-approved over-the-counter weight loss drug from Glaxosmithkline. Great, some CVS database pegged me the perfect candidate for a diet drug that is upfront about causing “gas with oily spotting, loose stools, and more frequent stools that may be hard to control”. As alli’s literature makes painfully clear, that’s not a side effect, that’s a “treatment effect,” meaning that is what is supposed to happen when you take alli. Think about it! A respected pharmaceutical company, staking millions of dollars in R&D, marketing, and advertising on a diet drug that causes the user to shit out excess dietary fat before they can digest it, in an unpredictable, leaky, frequent and oily sort of way!
As has been recently reported, Glaxo has sold about 4 million alli kits in the first year, and hopes to grow the diet drug’s sales to 5 or 6 million a year, a goal that is dependent on repeat buyers. So maybe that explains the permanent presence of the alli coupon on my CVS receipt. A classic marketing ploy to get consumers hooked… on a pill that makes them shit undigested fat.
I imagine that when the fine folks at Glaxo were crafting the horrific verbiage that describes how the drug works, someone sensed what a catastrophically ill-conceived idea alli was. I mean, how you could advise your prospective customers “Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work” and think, “We got a blockbuster diet drug here!”
I do admire how the alli product literature says that these unpleasant “treatment effects” will help to reinforce healthy eating habits. I guess it only takes one alli-managed pizza and ice cream binge to sear an avoidance of fatty foods into one’s consciousness.
Posted in Americana.
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– July 14, 2008
