scory

The annual end of the year blog post composed high over North America

2011-12-30T10:39:00.001-05:00

Imagine the shock you may encounter that I’ve unexpressed thoughts on the departing and incoming years. 2011 was a great and awful year in many ways. We’re hoping that 2012 will have more great, and less awful. Here’s my list of hopes, fears, joys, and discoveries from 2011 and for 2012In no particular order:

1. Aging parents create new challenges for which there are no textbooks, no magazine articles, and no roadmaps.

My mother, at 88, is more childlike all the time. The medical term for her cognitive change – loss, really – is “senile dementia,” which is both cruel and accurate. There are many known causes. There is no cure. For now, compassion and routine are enough to allow her to live independently, comfortably, and with a measure of dignity. I’m terrified that progressive cognitive loss will tip the balance and require a change in her living situation. I’m hoping that after a long and eventful life, one night she will breathe her last breathe, and spare me the horror of seeing her infantilized and her the horror of being the child to my adult. Does this sound horrible or insensitive to you? Tough. I’ve had to make a horrifying decision at the end of my father’s life, too: remove him from a respirator and watch him die, or allow him to continue to exist, trapped in a failing body. I chose to watch him die, with comfort and compassion surrounding him. It’s far more humane to understand that the end of life is the end, rather than to beg and plead for a few more hours, days, months or years bound by increasing limits and mounting losses. My mother talks often about being “ready to go.” I understand and support her.

2. When work is the majority of your life, the appeal of home is greater than any amount of luxury.

Both G2 and I have work that we love. (OK, I love my work more than he does). But the sheer volume of work, and the expectations that we have of ourselves (not to mention other have of us) mean the time devoted to work has grown radically, for both us. Add to that a travel schedule that includes two to three weeks a month away from home for Graham, my regular trips to Oregon for elderwrangling, and you can understand how we’ve grown to resent travel. Upgrades? Fur lining on the shackles. Exotic destinations? I’m tired of novelty right now, thanks. While I believe that home is wherever you are with the ones you love, I prefer that the one I love share the same physical space at certain 85 year-old house in Washington, DC.

3. Music which sounds like it is from the past and future at the same time is what I want to listen to right now.

TV on the Radio. Caetano Veloso. LCD Soundsystem. Luisa Maita. Criolo. Joni Mitchell. Deathfix. Brian Eno. Afrika Baambaata. Brad Melhdau. Talking Heads. Joshua Redman. Monk. Bebel Gilberto. Marvin Gaye. J.S. Bach. The Clash. David Darling. Yeah, it’s a pretentious list. Sue me.

4. When the world is running down, get fucking furious and make it better.

I wish I could live this better. Alas, I’m no Caldicott, Gandhi, or Maathai. But for those of us who are privileged, but not obscenely wealthy – let’s say the 90 - 99% -- we need to recognize that while our road to hell is cosseted with good woolens, fine leather, and the best food the Earth has ever produced, we’re burning our planet to the quick along with the 1%. There is no genetic replacement for me – by choice. For the people I love and with whom I’ve a parental relationship, I’m horrified of the world that I’m bequeathing to them. Increasing inequality, increasingly scarce resources, and a climate that is changing in ways even the best modeling can’t predict: that’s not something I’m proud of leaving behind, and I will do more to change it.

5. Making and taking care of things is a great gift, and one that we undervalue.

My parents imbued me with values that encourage do-it-yourself. I’m grateful for those values, and try to live it. Yes, it’s in small ways – we have a garden that we care for ourselves, we clean our house, and we minimize our use of services provided by others when we can (see item 2). But when we do purchase things made by, or use the services of others, we try to make sure that the providers are well and fairly compensated for the work that we engage them to do.

6. Live, love, laugh.

Three simple words to live by. We’ve already resolved to do more of all three in 2012, and hope that all of our friends and family will do the same.

Truth to Power and the Power of the Prophetic Voice

2011-10-02T09:31:00.000-05:00

Professor Cornel West, whom I first wrote about here, and whose acquaintance I am proud to acknowledge, is on fire here. There's not much more to add, other than I hope that Occupation Wall Street will find a way to give voice to what Brother West spoke of in this video.

Faites attention

2011-09-17T19:26:00.002-05:00

The United States has a pretty significant history of labor and social unrest as a result of economic inequality and ownership abuse of labor. Conveniently, it's been expunged from our current education's curriculum.

The period from 1900 - 1950 saw the development of organized labor and the evolution of its relationship from a threat to ownership into an effective collaboration with ownership and management. The reason why it was effective is that ownership correctly understood the threat to it that organized labor represented.

People need to pay attention to what's beginning to happen.

The apocalypse of words

2011-07-14T22:44:00.000-05:00

From my beloved. I've added a bit.

We are on the brink of a new age.
It's all about community.
Float this.
Clear that.
"ASL" is geezer speak.
Roll your own roll-your-own.
The words aren't what they were.
Cry out, blogosphere!
Splog is an aggregate noun.
Single. Word. Sentences!
Always be launching.
Clustering.
We're about what Web 2.0 is about.
An AJAX-driven GUI.
The new is old.
This will change everything.
Hack it.
MSM just doesn't get it.
Folksonomy.
The buzz is loud and clear.
It's all changing.
Podcasts.
You need someone who gets it.
Social is the new push.
We shall transcend borders.
Label what defies categorization.
2.0 is the new New.
This is newer media.
Faster. Faster!
On-demand streams.
News clouds
What's the value proposition?
Hyperspecialization
Chase the short

This sounds like a fuckin' TED or Gartner Symposium keynote presentation. No wonder I try and avoid them like a plague.

Still here

2011-05-22T09:13:00.001-05:00

Why it's May 22nd and we all appear to be here, as fractious and joyful and broken and perfect as before. I'm willing to bet that's the plan, contrary to recent efforts to make money off of absurd hopes from some kind of spacelift salvation.

Now, back to gardening, elderwrangling, and cat herding and rat whispering.

Lucy v. Charlie Brown

2011-04-09T07:06:00.001-05:00

The final budget bill, and the entire manufactured crisis appalls me. It reminds me of the advertisement for the National Lampoon many years ago: "If you don't buy this magazine, we'll shoot this dog".

Every year, the budget gets held hostage by some idiot -- I'm sorry, Representative or Senator -- who believe their re-election hinges on some marginally important issue.

Many, if not all of the appropriations bills for FY 2011 were written and out of committee almost on time last year, well before the mid-term elections. The Republicans used delaying to prevent them from being acted on. They thought they could create outrage by delaying action, which they could used to their electoral advantage, and they did. Score one for Lucy v. Charlie Brown.

The Democrats never made the case at the time that they faced Republican obstructionism, or if they did, the message was so muddled as to have no effect. The Village is complicit, because most of them don't understand the process, and their salaries are paid for by revenues from advertising sold to corporations which benefit from the broken process.

The opportunity to discuss and debate policies and programs proposed in the President's budget request is intended to be in the Spring, by the committees responsible for governance and oversight of the programs to be funded. You wanna wack funding for Planned Parenthood? Great -- propose striking the funding line from the appropriation, and propose rewriting the authorizing legislation for the agency that is responsible for administering the grants to elminate their authority to do it. Then vote on it. If you don't win, you try again next year. It's not sexy, but it's how our government is supposed to work.

What makes for good goverment and good governance is so radically different than what is useful for electoral success -- particularly after Citizen's United and Gore v. Bush -- that I can't see a way out of the woods.

What Reich says

2011-03-19T09:59:00.000-05:00

Busy with work, busy with life, and pretty much disgusted with the world. What's truly appalling to me is that sound, sane voices like Robert Reich's aren't heard, aren't respected, and aren't headed.

That's all for now.

The Man in the High Castle

2011-01-22T08:56:00.000-05:00

Not that I believe in conspiracy theories, but it's becoming more and more apparent that Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are the direct descendants of Joseph Goebbels. This little gem should put allow us to cast aside any doubt.

Targets

2011-01-09T13:25:00.000-05:00

I know that I'll sound like a DFH and a socialist but: a developed country treats its mentally ill citizens with respect and provides medical care and support for them. A developed country controls and limits access to deadly weapons. A developed country encourages civil disagreement on political issues, but recognizes -- and when necessary, limits -- speech that incites violence.

What, exactly, does this make us?

Much more to follow.

Mini Killer

2011-01-02T11:07:00.000-05:00

I love small, fast, well-built cars. They're fun, practical, and the tiniest bit socially responsible. It's also a market segment that is barely acknowledged in the United States: we get the BMW Mini Cooper, while Europe has the Alfa MiTo, Fiat 500, Ford Escort -- you get the idea. Americans, it's said, won't buy small premium cars.

Bullshit.

Take a look at how many Minis are driving around in cities. That's a market segment, kids.

Audi seems to have realized this. Or at least I hope so. The pictures were taken on New Year's Day in Adams-Morgan. Yes, it's an Audi A1, with Michigan manufacturer plates. It's a sweet car. Mind you, the copy of Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich" sitting on the passenger seat was a bit off-putting, but still.

Christmas Curmudgeon

2011-01-01T15:20:00.000-05:00

I'm on Frontier Flight 790, flying from Portland to Denver on Christmas Day. It’s remarkably quiet and peaceful, and my row mate, her infant son and I have as a gift that rarest of modern travel situations, an empty middle seat. The air is remarkably smooth, and the snow-covered Sawtooth Range below me is a beautiful sight. I’m returning home to Mr. Gunn and the Dauphin, Tick Tock bin Trouble after a bittersweet visit with my mother – not because there was any particular flaw, fault, or fight – but because it’s painfully clear that with each day, a little bit more of what made Virginia Jean Kuehner Cory so special is lost to her, to me, and to the world.

For as much as we live in a material world, most of what matters to me is intellect, experience and memory. Thirty years ago, I rather spectacularly celebrated Christmas by buying my mother a stereo so we could listen to classical music for Christmas (never mind that I bought it out of money that I neither had, nor had any right to expect – but that’s a different story). Mom has used that stereo off and on for the last thirty years, happily pushing the analog buttons and turning the weighted tuning and volume knobs to pull classical and jazz music, and news out of the turntable, tuner, and CD player.

So watching her punch vainly at the buttons of the television and DVD remote, and seeing her increasing agitation with its failure to effect a desired response from the old stereo equipment was painful beyond words. My mother’s loss of what seemed to be an almost intuitive skill shocked me. I’ve long been accustomed (if disconcerted) to her memory lapses, her increasing repetition, her agitation at the new or unexpected. But this, this was completely other – every bit as disconcerting as her reaction to anesthesia after her most recent knee surgery. Here was something she had known and used for 30 years – 30! – and she was incapable of understanding that the modern remote would not work on her vintage stereo.

So much of what I’ve shared with my parents has been experience. That I can’t share that with my mother any longer is a cruel gift to receive. Was she happy I was with her, and that we shared a few simple meals, a couple of games of Scrabble, and some simple kindnesses? Yes, without doubt or question. Was I happy to be with her? Of course; and yet not one moment spent with her was without an underlying sadness and questions. How much more of her is there to loose? How long will she be able to live independently, as she does now? How pained is she by her loss?

I’m grateful that I spent four days with her, and that we shared some of our cherished holiday traditions – decorating the tree, shopping for clothes (for me – she wasn’t interested in shopping for herself), eating ridiculous Belgian chocolates – which seemed to bring her real happiness.

The greatest gift to her, however, will be peace: to sleep, perchance to dream, and to gently leave this life. I can’t offer that gift – but I hope and pray that she soon finds it.

Enough!

2010-12-05T14:39:00.000-05:00

Let the Bush-era tax cuts expire. Create pressure for real, substantive, and economically and socially beneficial tax reform. This paper is a good explanation of the reasons why this is what's required. Progressive taxation is a prerequisite for a liberal democratic society. The last time I checked, that's what the United States Constitution created (although recent Supreme Court rulings seem determined to interpret it somewhat differently).

The United States faced a similar situation after the Gilded Era, and the set of political and social changes (which included an unsustainable 90% rate of taxation on the wealthiest Americans) also produced a physical and social infrastructure that created real productive capacity, human capital, and real wealth creation which lasted roughly from 1946 - 2006. The radical restructuring of taxation that began with the Reagan Administration and was completed by the Bush Administration has gutted our productive capacity and human capital, and has spawned bubbles and ridiculous schemes to create notional assets (see: derivatives, credit default swaps, mortgage-backed securities) that masquerade as "wealth". What they failed to do was support an educational system and physical infrastructure that trains people for all types of work, and allows rapid development and implementation of new technologies. Anyone interview recent graduates recently for positions that require thoughtful analysis? Notice real gaps in achievement and accomplishment among mid-career professionals due to a lack of ability to manage lifelong learning? Thought these might strike a chord. Drive anyplace, and tell me that roads today are better than they were in 1990. Don't even consider that our water and electric systems have been appropriately maintained. As for mass transit and rail transit, join me and my fellow commuters on Washington's Metro system to see just how badly that's failed.

And for my affluent and wealthy friends, a gentle reminder: countries with great inequality in wealth and opportunity have a tendency towards violent and uncontrolled change. See, for example, 18th Century France and 19th Century Russia.

Finally, a very simple truth: if you want something good, you have to pay for it. States are not magical unicorns that poop cupcakes. They take real individual sacrifices to create common goods that provide individual and collective benefits greater than what can be accomplished individually.

"Do we need anything at the store?"

2010-10-29T05:10:00.000-05:00

Four days in Portland for elderwhispering and elderwrangling with my mother: I knew it would be a difficult four days, but what I could never know is how difficult.

First, the good news: my mother's knee surgery was completely successful, and she is both mobile and as pain-free as an 87 year old is reasonably likely to be. That's a great comfort to me, as I saw her become more and more lost in both chronic pain and in the desperation of being shut in -- to her home, her body, and a collapsing world.

Next, the bad news: my mother has senile dementia. I hoped that the relief from chronic pain might also relieve some of the confusion that Mom increasingly displayed. For years, my mother repeated herself in conversation. I attributed it to not being engaged, and not engaging in, challenging intellectual activity. Crossword puzzles and Scrabble aside, I'm not aware of my mother having bought a new book in years, nor had she expressed an interest in politics and current events since 2003. "No blood for oil" was her mantra, and coming from a woman who was a lifelong Republican (though to her credit, she voted for Clinton both in '92 and '96, Gore in 2000, and Kerry in 2004) it was a testament to the cupidity of the Cheney-Bush Administration.

But after that the world changed: We occupied Iraq, we muddled on in Afghanistan, our economy and society floundered, and the losses in Mom's life kept piling up: the deaths of high school, college, graduate school, and professional friends were noted. The fellow residents of Mt. Angel Towers moved in, settled in, and died. Her sister, Monica Kuehner, died. My father, George Cory, her divorced second husband, died. Her closest friend, Edith Throckmorton, medical librarian extraordinary, compulsive hoarder, and fierce curmudgeon, died.

And I suspect that beyond the cumulative losses and failing joints, bits of my mother's body were betraying her. Perhaps it was the neurological changes that 50 years of hard living -- by which I mean smoking like a chimney and drinking like a fish -- can cause in a body: Decreased bloodflow to the brain; loss of glial support cells; loss of neurons in the cerebral cortex; accumulation of toxins. Who knows for sure, but the cumulative effect is the same: my mother is losing her short and medium term memory and other elements of adult cognitive function.

To be clear -- this is not Alzheimer's disease. I haven't faced the horrors that other friends and acquaintances have with parents and spouses and friends who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. My mother is still there, is still (mostly) content, and is still aware. But things I've taken for granted -- like setting up a daily schedule, or organizing a bill paying and filing regimen, or even having a conversation with Mom where there was information exchanged and integrated -- none of these can be assured at this point.

I realized this completely and irrevocably when on our last day together, my mother asked me not less than five times in 15 minutes if we needed to buy anything at the local grocery store. We had, two days earlier, purchased milk, cookies, cranberry juice, and toilet paper to add to mother's collection of all of the above. I threw out the existing milk, added the cranberry juice to the four bottles in the pantry, and wedged the toilet paper into the closet with the other 25-30 odd rolls. (We ate one of the two bags of cookies). So with each iteration of mom's question, I'd work through the list of items she'd likely be asking about, and assured her that she had many more of them stored in her house that she was likely to use. I was for the most part patient with her -- though our family is infamously inpatient with each other, and my patience is often suspect.

What I'm trying to come to terms with is how to accept is that at the end of my mother's life -- and for many people, at the end of their lives -- the person who we know and love is lost to us before they die.

And what I need at the store is the grace to understand just how to do this.

McFly Shrugged

2010-10-02T10:23:00.000-05:00

This may well be the best critique of Rand ever:

That said, it’s a totally ridiculous book which can be summed up as Sociopathic idealized nerds collapse society because they don’t get enough hugs. (This is, incidentally, where you can start your popcorn munching.) Indeed, the enduring popularity of Atlas Shrugged lies in the fact that it is nerd revenge porn — if you’re an nerd of an engineering-ish stripe who remembers all too well being slammed into your locker by a bunch of football dickheads, then the idea that people like you could make all those dickheads suffer by “going Galt” has a direct line to the pleasure centers of your brain. I’ll show you! the nerds imagine themselves crying. I’ll show you all!

Go. Read. If you must, read "Atlas Shrugged" or "The Fountainhead" (an arguably better novel than AS). But recognize that it's genre pornography.

American Exceptionalism

2010-09-28T05:58:00.000-05:00

I loathe most aspects of American Exceptionalism. Except for this: The Bill of Rights -- one of the towering achievements of political philosophy -- defines what it means to be a human being in terms of inalienable rights, and from that, what it means to be American. We -- and other countries, too -- have over time, accepted and extended the Bill of Rights to include more rights applying to more people.

Women and people of color didn't do so well at first. Minorities -- ethnic, religious, and sexual -- still have issues. The same thing is true for economic inequality. We're still working on this -- and as long as we as a people continue to work on the extension of rights for all, then I'm satisfied with the American experiment.

This idea -- that we as a people need not be afraid of the other -- is the one part of American Exceptionalism I both embrace and hope to see written large across the world.

Wherein the present becomes the future

2010-09-26T22:07:00.001-05:00

No, I didn't take a video of William Gibson as he was reading from "Zero History" or responding to questions from the audience. I sure as hell used my 'berry to record my thoughts. And here they are:

Obsessive need to buy books. "Zero History," of course. Picked up trade paper copies of "Neuromancer" and "Count Zero." Fanboy nervous. Also Killcullen and McPhee. The Killcullen is for MMF. Will read first. Kilcullen's the most important military thinker since Lawrence.

Watching and listening to the staff and acolytes is funny. From Eno c. 1973 to Comic Book Guy and the usual washington technorati.

Powell's v. Politics and Prose: no contest. Powell's. Why do we stay in this miserable town?

And the battery is dying. Can I be surprised at my 'berry's intransigence? Of course, an iPhone wouldn't be any better.

Men to women ratio: ten to one - at least. I've seen more women at The Eagle!

Glad I got here early. It's packed.

Gibson looks like an Oregonian. Yah Oregon!

Gibson sounds like a less fucked up William Burroughs. And reading, it becomes a real profound similarity.

And the Bigend/Bell connection - terrifying.

Milgram is more fascinating all the time. And Bigend - more terrifying.
Gibson talking on his characters and his process is fascinating.

Cornell boxes. Ah. I never saw the Bridge as a great Cornell box. But it makes sense. And I am eternally grateful to Gibson to introducing me to Joseph Cornell with "Count Zero."

Gibson is wicked smart and savvy. Imagine this is what a reading with Twain would have been like.

Comparing Hollywood movie production to slime mold. Brilliant.

Does no one know how to ask a question? Answer: yes.

Really?

2010-09-09T06:19:00.001-05:00

A present for me, Rahm? Why, thank you! The country thanks you too.

Perhaps now we'll see if the President can get some decent advice and staff work.

Grumpy

2010-08-21T12:15:00.002-05:00

Really, I didn't need to fill out a stolen passport application. Or deal with the Washington Metropolitan Police Department -- who have yet to call Apple to follow up on the "registration" of my stolen computer. Or deal with Apple, to restore the iTunes purchase on my stolen computer. Or try to reconstruct drafts of my mother's obituary and the outline of a novel. Or pull the weeds from the garden gone feral. Or deal with overcompensation from colleagues who've made teeny little mistakes in the past and have to cover their asses in the present. Or play midwife to our -- yikes, I said it -- very pregnant cat, abandoned by our former neighbors and now in our care.

Really, what I'd like more than anything is to escape everything for a few days.

That's all.

Wherein I take notes (on my ‘berry)

2010-08-07T11:44:00.005-05:00

(edited slightly for format and content. Sue me)

LCD Soundsystem, Roseland Theatre, Portland, OR May 29^th, 2010

Intro music "I'm not in love" 10cc. Best FU ever. I knew Murphy was a fan.

Us and Them (Better than TH Stop Making Sense tour? It’s really close. Nancy Whang moment - she's from Portland? Was her mom really in the theatre? Cool!)

Drunk Girls (Murphy: "those are the two fastest versions of Us and Them and Drunk Girls we've played in a long time")

Get Innocuous!

Yer City's a Sucker

Pow Pow!

Daft Punk is playing at my house (channeling Nirvana)

All I want (“St. Elmo's Fire” meets Morrissey, wherein I remember (in tears) running, stoned out of my mind, through Raleigh Park on an August night in 1984)

All My Friends (with I Zimbra as a reference) - un-fracking believable.

I Can Change (Murphy can really sing, if he chooses)

Tribulations (Mosh pit w 30 and 40 year olds. Cool. Sorta glad I chose the balcony. Moshing in Spanish boots and an Armani shirt not so good)

Yeah (think "swamp thing by the Cramps." Really, I only need a cover of "take me to the river" to die and go)

Encore

Someone Great (bawling – really!)

Loosing My Edge (the live Rock Snob's Version. I admit to shouting out the lyrics I know)

New York I Love You (more SPM, through the NY Dolls -- only much, much better.)

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Signs of intelligent life in the Senate, etc.

2010-08-05T05:51:00.003-05:00

1. This is reasonably good news. I had written here that one of the ways in which we can get governance back on track is to clean out the arcane rules of the House and Senate, including reforming the rules around cloture and filibusters. That the most static of the status quo Democratic Senators (that's you, Diane Feinstein and Chris Dodd) are amongst the most vocal opponents of rules reform is telling. If memory serves me, there are a number of Senators -- Democrats and Republicans -- who in fact support reasonable rules reform in both chambers.

2. Cat Scratch Fever exists, and is extremely unpleasant. In fact, it may be more unpleasant than even the horrible Ted Nugent song. The inflammation on my wrist, combined with one particularly swollen lymph node, fever, and headache are making my life extremely unpleasant right now.

Coincidence?

2010-07-31T13:57:00.005-05:00

Office

Living Room

Coincidence has given me more opportunity to consider the work of Marcel Breuer at great length. While his work works in our living room, and while I love my work in his office building, his office building doesn't work. And I like brutalism.

Washington Summer

2010-07-31T10:46:00.004-05:00

We've had one of the hottest summers on record in Washington. Both the meteorological information and our electric bill confirms this. So when it the weather breaks, and we have a few moments of relief, my first response is to go outdoors.

Into a swarm of biting flies and mosquitoes.

It's my fault for forgetting to put on Cutter's before I go outside. We have the handy wipes at the door. It's just that I grew up neither plagued by or worried about mosquitoes. Oregon had few of them, SF and LA fewer still, and in Kenya, I lived above the malaria line (though I often traveled into malaria territory). Now, we have confirmed reports of West Nile Virus, Dengue fever, and allegedly malaria in the Washington area. (Or perhaps I should use the au courant DMV appellation. )

While I have the memories of a very lovely afternoon and evening spent on U Street, I also have a significant number of mosquito bites on my arms and neck. Keeping this in perspective, this is better than Manhattan's current plague of bedbugs.

Hypocrisy

2010-07-18T08:57:00.004-05:00

We had a glorious dinner last night at Central Michel Richard, celebrating (among other things) 10 years together, great successes at work for both of us, and a general sense of actually getting things done, and done reasonably well. The food and service were perfect -- Alsatian comfort food filtered through haute cuisine preparation and care, and with a wine list that was both comprehensive and not usurious in its markup. Bacon and onion tart, yellow tomato gazpacho with lump crab meat, steak tartare, grilled sea bass: everything was perfect, and some of it was sublime. Central is a lovely room, and looks and feels like a Parisian or Brussels brasserie, full of blond wood and relatively large, handsome tables and banquettes with an huge open kitchen at the back.

And yet, I was uncomfortable the entire time I was in the restaurant.

Partly it was the sound level, created by the cackle of unhousebroken adults who insist on using their "outdoor voices" at every opportunity, and which the acoustics and materials of the room (long, high open ceilings, lots of aforementioned blond wood) exacerbates. The other part was the absolute entitlement to which damn near every diner in the restaurant felt was owed to them.

I'll be the first to admit that I can be imperious when I don't get what I expect. But I also try to acknowledge and understand both why I can't get what I want, and why I'm out of line when that imperiousness shows up.

The sense of privilege and entitlement that I perceived on the faces of many of the diners at Central was appalling to me: for them, this wasn't a treat or a special occasion, this was part of everyday life. Given that with wine, dinner for two with tip ran close to $200, if that's everyday life in Washington, DC, then there's a lot more money floating around in the hands of a relatively few people than I thought possible.

Now, here's the hypocrisy: the same people who are completely enjoying their entitlement to fine dining are outraged at the idea that the Government might take more of their hard-earned money and use it for helping poor people. Because those people don't deserve to ... what - eat? have a home? have access to minimal health care?

This was the argument Martin Luther King put forward before he was murdered: that to complete the extension of civil rights, we must understand that economic circumstance is just as much a source of prejudice and discrimination as race. We've demonized poor people in the United States for the last 40 years, starting with the race and class baiting of the "welfare queens" that the Republican Party began in the 1970s and has lead to poor people being despised and defamed regularly by the news media, commentators, pundits, and politicians. We've watched -- in some cases, helplessly -- as the Bush-Cheney administration "engineered" a huge redistribution of income and assets from the middle classes to the wealthy. We've seen education dragged down to such a point that very few young people seem to have the skills or inclination to become educated to the point where they can identify logical errors, discern an argument, or recognize outright propaganda.

I've said it before: The Republic has failed. The hypocrisy -- which may very well be at the core of this country, from the moment of its founding -- has poisoned everything. Watching it die will be a most unpleasant experience.

Towards a better democratic republic

2010-07-14T18:20:00.002-05:00

1. Let the Blue Dog Democrats go the way of the Dixiecrats.

2. Streamline the House and Senate rules. No more supermajorities! No "blind holds". Transparency and accountability now.

3. Draft a Constitutional amendment to clarify the relationship of "corporations" to "citizens" and exclude corporate entities from being political actors.

4. See my previous blog posts here, here, here, and here.

5. Keep calm and carry on.

That is all.

Catch up

2010-06-26T16:55:00.002-05:00

For anyone reading:

Our house was broken into in April, and stuff was stolen. It sucked. We're still picking up pieces from that incident.

My mother had knee replacement surgery for the third time at the end of May, and it was successful. At 87, that makes her both a clinical trial and a tough old bird. I'm proud of both, and that I could help her. Thanks to all for your support, friendship, prayers, and sacrifices of farm animals.

I saw the best pop/rock concert of my life (LCD Soundsystem) while in Portland helping my mother. I also ate three incredibly memorable meals, two at the Silver Grille in Silverton, and one at Le Pigeon.

Oregon is Tuscany, Provence, and Catalonia all rolled into one. Why we don't live there is an open question in the Gunn-Cory residence. Oh, the economy thing. Ooops.

Our house was broken into again in June, and more stuff was stolen. This with an alarm system. It sucked even worse than the first time we were robbed.

I guess that makes the Oregon question even more painful than ever.

That is all.

Reversing roles and avoiding tragedy

2010-05-23T11:45:00.004-05:00

Virginia Cory -- my mother -- is having elective knee surgery tomorrow. Never easy, surgery today is complicated by a variety of hospital-acquired infections, including some very nasty staph infections that most people have heard about as "flesh-eating bacteria." Now, it turns out there are some very simple pre-surgical practices that can help prevent those hospital-acquired infections.

One of them is pre-surgical bathing with a strong disinfectant. By bathing, the practice means careful cleaning of the surgical site, plus areas where the various tubes and attachments penetrate the surgical patient -- that is, pretty much anywhere on the skin, and the other orifices where things pass in and out of the body.

Now, let's look at the facts:

My mother is 86 -- almost 87 -- years old. She's competent, but she's also in great pain, and isn't the most flexible person in the world. She's not able to get to all the places on her body that she needs to bathe and clean.
My mother was a professor of nursing. She knows one or two things about bathing patients. Including getting to those orifices.
I'm cheap labor, and could with some instruction, bathe my mother properly. My mother could probably instruct me, and I've already researched how to bathe patients for pre-surgical staphlococcal prophylaxis.

Now, here's the issue: this kind of bathing means you have to get to some very private places. Yeah, those private places. I'm not squeamish, nor ashamed of, bodies. The thought of the bathing doesn't bother me at all -- except for my mother. When I think about doing this for Virginia, in a weird way the Orestia comes screaming into my mind. Seriously. And as we know, nothing good can come from that story -- which arguably is the tragedy of all tragedies. So it's on to plan B.

I've made sure that one of the nursing assistants will bathe my mother, and show her how to clean the appropriate bits tomorrow morning. In this simple way, I'm really, really hoping to avoid both classical tragedy and modern tragedy.

The New Doctor, continued

2010-04-30T06:43:00.002-05:00

First, it made me cry.

Second, what is Steven Moffatt's infatuation with ginger women?

Third, Amy Pond and River Song. Discuss.

Too big to fail

2010-04-24T10:16:00.004-05:00

This pretty much sums up why I think "too big to fail" is wrong. If the Chicago School had ever considered economic models analogous to ecology (in particular, population modeling) they would have seen that there are limits to growth -- rather spectacular ones, in fact. It seems to me that there was a whole lot of productive investment in the 1980's when Glass-Stegall was intact and a whole lot of investment banks did just that -- invest capital in business, and get a reasonable return. Alas, the profits just weren't big enough for some, hence the mania for mergers and acquisition, outsourcing, and when that dried up, the development of exotic financial instruments -- also know as "three card monte for the economic elite".

The resources required to support massive consolidation and centralization of capital, as demanded by the Chicago School and their "efficient model" simulations are always greater than the resources demanded by multiple small concentrations of capital, just as massive monoculture in agriculture is unsustainable for the same reasons. The inputs always exceed the outputs; but you get a concentration of resources in one location for a period of time. However, at the end of the model, when the input resources fail, the entire system collapses.

That's the end game of the Chicago School, and the direction we've been headed as a country for the last 30 years.

We're still headed in that direction, and frankly, it's probably too late to change.

But this is a great illustration, and fantastic satire.

Pope Palpatine and his Evil Empire

2010-04-03T07:17:00.003-05:00

It's not very sensitive or politically correct to describe the Catholic Church as a zombie that can only be destroyed by a chain saw -- on Holy Friday. But I'll stand by my analogy. I think the religious corollary to Godwin's Law is any comparison of anti-clerical action to Antisemitism.

Really? Did the Pope's PR folks think that would work to make us sympathetic? About the organization that brought us the Crusades, the Inquisition, and witch-hunts?

Don't get me wrong -- I love the ritual of Mass, and what individual clergy and Catholic communities --including the Catholic laity -- have done over the millenia include wonders and miracles. But the Church as a corporate body, at this moment in its history, is corrupt and festering beyond redemption. End it now.

If it's war they want ....

2010-03-20T09:57:00.002-05:00

Seriously, the states' right issue has been settled, both at the end of the gun and with a gavel, for a long time. You lost the first time. You'll lose again. And if you don't lose, we'll sell you and the rump end of the current Republic to the Chinese in exchange for our debt. Hell, maybe they'll have more luck with bringing you all into the 2oth -- let alone the 21st -- Century than we've had.

What Josh said

2010-03-07T09:46:00.003-05:00

Please, for the love of all that is good about democracy, no more families in politics. No Kennedys, Udalls, Cheneys, Bushes, Reagans, Gores, Clintons, Bayhs -- no more. Dynasties make bad politics and policies.

That is all.

Pull the band aid off

2010-02-18T07:33:00.002-05:00

There is much gnashing of teeth and wailing in the blogosphere about the "go slow" approach to the repeal of "Don't ask don't tell". To which I say, "pull the band-aid off". The same is true for, oh, let's say, health care reform, campaign finance reform, tax policy, etc. Apparently the shrinking violets who populate the Capitol, and their eager to please minions who swarm Capital Hill aren't willing to make enemies with the people who pay for campaigns and with whom they drink and eat at horrifying benefit dinners and in mediocre restaurants in DC (Lauriol Plaza anyone?).

Pull the band-aid off.

The wounds that our polity has suffered aren't getting any better by covering and coddling them. The treatment -- open air, some astringent medicine, and possibly cutting away some of the rotten bits -- aren't pleasant, aren't easy, and aren't expensive. This is simple political medicine. Do something. Hold politicians and bureaucrats accountable. Change directions if necessary.

But the consequences for not doing anything are severe: the patient -- our republican government -- will continue to suffer, decline, and rot.

Just pull the band aid off.

The Kids are Alright

2010-02-08T16:54:00.003-05:00

I have three things to say about the Super Bowl:

1. Bon Jeu, Saints!

2. Hate on the Who all you want (and do so at your risk in my presence), but both Townshend and Daltry have the good sense to wear long sleves, something which cannot be said for other aging rockers (Jagger and Springsteen come to mind).

3. Was that the Edge on stage playing fill guitar? And when did Simon Townshend ever play with his brother?

We get mail (SOTU Edition)

2010-01-29T19:03:00.003-05:00

From the inbox:

S --

I couldn't watch (I would have had to take a day off to find John Boehner and Eric Cantor and beat them to a pulp, which most likely would have cost me my job). Have to say it was somewhat better than I expected. And it certainly got him the NYT headlines that he was hoping for after a week of "Democrats in Disarray" "Obama in Trouble" and the rest. The press is so maddeningly predictable.

More public flogging of Congress, the press and the high court, please. Sad little Sammy Alito whining silently that he's not responsible for killing democracy. What a worm.

R,

At home with a miserable cold that started last night. SOTU was infuriating to me -- we watched five minutes, and I went to bed. G2 correctly noted that the SOTU has become a Catholic Mass or an opera, with the Congress and invited guests jumping up and down like a well trained parishioners or claque. The only saving grace is Obama can deliver a speech better than any President in recent memory, including, in my opinion, St. Ronnie. Take that, la Noonan!

As for the color commentary, it's more appalling than the speech itself. Nothing good can come of having Skeletor (James Carville) and Mrs. Skeletor (Mary Matalin) provide commentary and berate each other. The myth of Tracy and Hepburn is just that -- a myth. It was scripted, people. And just having to look at the Skeletors is appalling, let alone having to hear their flatulent bleating.

As for the Supremes, the military in their full gear, and the other assorted guests, all I can say is: kabuki theatre.

On the other hand, G2 is mightily amused at the level of dudgeon I can summon when provoked on 1. lowering rates of marginal taxation and 2. the "success" of the conservative movement and the "free market". I verbally disemboweled our cab driver when he started in on how California should just lower taxes more and they'd be successful. As I said, "You didn't emigrate from Ethiopia so you could watch your adopted country become a third world country, did you?"

Dudgeon

2010-01-23T15:14:00.004-05:00

As in high dudgeon.

For a number of years -- ten in fact, starting in 2000 -- I've regularly expounded on the coming death of the Republic, how this and that has finally lead to some interpretation of the Constitution so loathsome and repugnant that the Founding Fathers would, if they could, climb out of their graves and rebuke us all.

The combined events of this week -- the failure of the House and Senate to create a package of health care reform that doesn't have odious benefits for corporate interests, the election of Scott Brown to the Senate in the seat formerly held by Teddy Kennedy, and the Supreme Court's decision on campaign finance freeing corporations and unions from any restriction greater than than on individuals -- have put me in a foul mood. It doesn't help that my mother is in failing health and that I can't effectively assist her. And our cat is in failing health, and we can't help him. Oh, and that G2 has twice too much work to do -- and no relief in sight.

How, exactly, is all this better than what we had in 1979?

The Octopus

2010-01-04T06:50:00.002-05:00

The latest example of Murdoch meddling. If you don't believe that Murdoch, his family, and his associates are hell bent on destroying independence in media in the English-speaking world (for their own exclusive benefit), go buy stock in Sky TV.

In any case, the article alludes to the value that public broadcasting brings to the U.K. Government spending does create positive, tangible benefits that then create additional benefits, sometimes multiplicative, to local, regional, and national economies. Ronnie and Maggie, and their tame economists were wrong. Can we finally acknowledge that and move on, please?

What Josh says

2009-12-24T07:34:00.001-05:00

Posted without comment

Bush Administration: Brought down by full weight of failures of Bush admin policies.

Obama Administration: Brought down by full weight of failures of Bush admin policies.

--Josh Marshall

Fiasco

2009-12-15T06:38:00.004-05:00

I've been quiet on the blog front because I really haven't had that much to say, and have been too tired to say it, even if I did.

But watching the growing fiascos on health care and foreign policy, I have just one comment:

Really?

Democrats, you seriously need to understand how to use the rules of the House and the Senate, understand that some people (Joe Lieberman) never were your friends and allies, and act decisively to keep them from doing any more damage.

Republicans, there still is hope of redemption for you. I know you think Jesus will save you. But if you're willing to postpone that long game, being responsible advocates for limited government and small business would be a really good goal. And would save you from the abyss of hate that you currently stand at the edge of.

Politics in a republic should not be a cage match, or a screaming contest, or a mad race to write checks to lobbyists and public relations firms. It's about representing your constituents, not who writes you checks. I don't think the Founders ever intended for elected officials to become prostitutes for campaign funds.

That is all.

The sound of wingnuts' heads popping

2009-10-09T05:52:00.003-05:00

While I can't say I completely agree with the Nobel Prize committee's selection (it takes more than saying it's a good idea to have a limited number of nuclear weapons, in my book, to demonstrate a commitment to arms control), I'll enjoy this for the grief it will cause amongst the VRWCoD (that's "Vast Right Wing Confederacy of Dunces"). It also made me check multiple news sources. But it is, apparently, true.

Now I can say I went to college with both a President and a Nobel Laureate.

KCRW

2009-09-05T23:34:00.002-05:00

A long time ago, in a decade in the last century, I read a bunch of newspapers and magazines every week. The Times (LA, NY, and Financial), the Guardian, the Independent, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, the Reader, Rolling Stone, Stereo Review -- you've got the picture. Like many young people, I was acutely aware of what was musically cool and uncool. I have the LPs to prove it (I didn't own a CD player until the next decade). And while I attended college in Los Angeles, I listed to KCRW, a radio station broadcasting from Santa Monica Community College. (I listened to KROQ and the Long Beach Community College station, too). KCRW featured two shows that were incredibly influential to my music listening -- "Morning Becomes Eclectic" and "Saturday Night Avant Pop".

So I was so glad when KCRW was one of the first radio to broadcast on the Web. I've remained a fan, and have enjoyed how they've expanded both the role of the DJ and the station as a way to learn more about popular music. As technology has advanced, the role of technology in helping to choose and predict content -- think Amazon's "You might like .... " or iTunes "Genius" selection algorithms -- can be useful tools. But I prefer the editorial role, and the DJs at KCRW do just that, sifting through the torrent of new music and pulling together the best of it.

Now, KCRW is about to debut a new service: Eclectic 24, which sounds like a mash-up of all the content and talent they've developed over the years. I'll be fascinated to see how it works -- if the media is dying, public radio appears to be one place where both innovation is occurring, and people are turning to for news and information. (There's the foreign press, both print and broadcast, but I'll save that for later). I'll tell you more after I listen on Monday, September 7th.

Please, please make it stop

2009-08-29T15:19:00.002-05:00

She may be the daughter of Blythe Danner and Bruce Paltrow. If genetics alone had anything to do with it, she'd be both beautiful and a lovely, sensitive actress.

Something went horribly wrong. Please Gweneth, step away from the keyboard, the microphone and the camera. Your ego is really, really toxic, and we don't need it right now.

Practice

2009-08-15T11:08:00.004-05:00

Some people hate doing chores on weekends. Au contraire, mon frere: there's nothing more relaxing that doing exactly what you need to do. The practice of the routine -- strip the bed, pull down the bath linens, wash the clothes, mow the lawn -- is exactly what I want after a week at work in which evil flying monkeys seem to escape from every possible orifice of every possible creature and bring the most unexpected, unwanted, and unplanned things to my desk.

Besides, I have no one to account to but myself. If something goes wrong, it starts and stops with me.

Reunion

2009-07-24T17:49:00.000-05:00

As in 30th high school reunion. I'm excited to see people I haven't seen in - well, 30 years. But not before I get a haircut and shave. The 15 extra pounds its too late to do much about.

And sometimes we bake

2009-07-05T11:41:00.004-05:00

Peach Blueberry rustic tart, recipe adapted from "Cooking with Julia Child and Jacques Pepin." The pastry is a standard pate brise, which means a suspension of butter in flour. The peaches and blueberries are coated in lemon zest, some sugar, and tapioca flour. There's a simple jam glaze.

Think of it as summer on a platter.

OK people --

2009-03-07T12:43:00.002-05:00

Reaganomics failed. Get over it.

Greed is not good.

One doesn't get a "do-over" if one looses an election, Norm Coleman.

Loosing an hour of sleep sucks.

Hangovers are not my friend.

That's all.

Towards a more responsible MSM

2009-02-15T09:23:00.002-05:00

From the Independent, one of the two British papers I regularly read.

Britain's banks, especially those receiving public funds, should immediately adopt a policy of voluntary restraint, in pay and bonuses.
If taxpayers are paying, their representatives should decide on bonuses, and any earned should be given in share options, exercisable only when public funds have been repaid.
Failure should not be rewarded. Bonuses paid in the past year by banks bailed out by the taxpayer should be repaid now.
At a time of widespread job losses and sacrifice, it is vital that there is a not only a widespread perception of fairness, but the reality of it too.

Simple, direct. Krugman's op-eds in the Times have bordered on this level of prescription, but this is not opinion: it is a statement, sanctioned by the editors of the paper, of what must be done as policy.

Refreshing.

Enough

2009-02-05T06:01:00.002-05:00

Listen, Senators and Representatives.

Take your ridiculous stimulus package and bury it. Then try again. Here's your plan:

Strategy:

Reverse the direction of the United States with regard to the concentration of wealth and the systematic degradation of the human capital and physical infrastructure.

Tactics:

Progressive taxation on earned income from minimal to say, 50% on income above $1,000,000.
Capital gains taxed as income.
Incentives for individual savings in insured financial vehicles.
Immediate reduction of Federal spending on Defense.
Immediate increase in Federal spending on infrastructure, including social infrastructure (education and health care).
Development of a regulatory framework for financial institutions to ensure that reasonable and prudent risk is rewarded fairly -- but that speculative risk can and should fail
Forced liquidation of assets of financial institutions, nationalization of failed banks, followed by a period of recapitalization and a privatization of the banks, allowing the United States citizens to achieve a return on investment for the risk we assumed in saving the financial classes collective asses.

Accept nothing less. This is an national, even global emergency. If we don't do this now, the consequences are dire.

Now get to work, assholes.

And this is how it starts ...

2009-02-01T08:59:00.002-05:00

From today's New York Times:

"Still, some of the island’s premier properties are for sale. Bruce McMahan, a hedge fund executive, has put his 7,300-square-foot condominium, which he used exclusively to entertain business associates, on the market, along with all its art, for $30 million.

Its walls are covered with copies of paintings from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. The paintings were done by a team brought over from Russia by Mr. McMahan, who heads the Argent Funds Group. There is also a collection of Fabergé eggs and boxes and original correspondence from the Romanov family, which ruled imperial Russia, all housed in what is called the “Romanov bedroom.” Two Rodin sculptures adorn a terrace that fronts the ocean and is guarded by a German shepherd."

Did they really think they could repeat the model of the Russian Empire? Seriously? I likes me some icons and Fabergé eggs too, but the aristocrats lost then, and they'll loose again. Having a lot of fancy stuff does not give one moral authority (cf. the Catholic Church) nor does it mean you have a sustainable social or business model.

Arrrghhh.

Corporate Responsibility

2009-01-19T10:11:00.002-05:00

Perhaps if some other companies took a page from this book, there would not be quite the crisis we find ourselves in today.

If you received a sub-par sandwich of pastrami this last week, Ken and I would like to extend our sincere apologies. Let me explain.

Tuesday we discovered a part on our smoker was broken. We fixed it after making a large batch of pastrami. We didn't realize it had resulted in meat cooked at a lower temperature than normal, leaving many pieces unacceptably chewy. Unfortunately, most of our customers were too polite to complain and we didn't fully comprehend the extent of the problem until this weekend. Over several days, as many as a quarter of our pastrami sandwiches may have been rubbery.

We would like to assure you we have spent many hours over the weekend working with our staff to prevent this from ever happening again, instituting procedures and working with them to better recognize unacceptable pastrami and avoid serving it.

If you purchased a pastrami sandwich over the last few days and felt it was sub-par, I would like to give you a free sandwich to make up for our mistake. Please bring in a receipt or some other proof of purchase, and we will humbly help you forget your previous bad experience. I know that some of you may not have a receipt. If you felt you received chewy pastrami this last week, call or email me and I will try to make it up to you somehow.

You may have recommended a friend or family member try us this last week. You may have overheard someone at the office complain about their meal here. Please pass along our apologies and offer of recompense. We want to hear from them and let them know that what they got was not our best and not what they can expect in the future if they give us another try.

Thank you for understanding. Once again, our sincere apologies. We will send out a normal email soon, but for now, we just want to say we're sorry.

Nick "Zuke" Zukin
Ken "Kenny" Gordon

At the risk of sounding like a DFH, "small is beautiful."

While it may seem like a spurious analogy to compare pastrami sandwiches to home mortgage loans, if banks had known early that a significant proportion of their loans might fail and took action -- and accepted the possible loss of profit -- the financial crisis would not be as broad or as deep as it currently is.

Maximization of profit for the short term creates a "extraction mentality" that is unsustainable, in either business or natural resource management. If learning from a sandwich shop is how to learn sustainability, so be it.

An Open Letter to Rick Warren

2009-01-08T06:23:00.002-05:00

Dear Pastor Warren,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Pastor Warren. Regardless of one’s faith and traditions, this season is symbolic of renewal and rebirth. Among Christians, the story of the birth of Christ is an incredibly important moment in the liturgical calendar to which every Christian is called every year.

Which is why I’m writing to you. Because of your visibility and prominence amongst Evangelic Protestants, President-elect Obama asked you to offer the invocation at his Inauguration. Many Americans – and I count myself among them – believe that Barack Obama’s election represents the first signs of rebirth and renewal for America. This renewal means America can once more stand as an example of what an idea – that all men and women are created equal, and that all have inalienable rights – can be when it is actualized in the form of a constitutional, democratic republic.

One of the ways in which our Republic ensures the rights of all people is to separate church and state. In this way, no one can be coerced into participation in a religion, nor can one religion exercise undue influence on another. This practice has created a vibrant tapestry of belief that may be confusing, but is something to which all communities can and should aspire. Your church is one such example of an expression of faith that is outside of the formal Protestant and Catholic ecumenical framework of Christian belief.

And as the leader of a church, I ask you to consider, and to renounce your public statements about homosexuals and homosexuality. Your language has deeply hurt and offended many men and women, myself included. And you have slowed – but far from stopped – the effort to extend a civil right of recognition of same-sex partnership in the form of civil (not religious) marriage.

I support, and will continue to support your church’s (and any church’s) right to profess its faith in any way it chooses – within the context of a faith community. However, when you speak as a religious leader in the secular community about political issues, such as denying civil rights for sexual minorities, you abuse the very separation of church and state that allows your church’s existence. If you continue to do so, I would have no choice to believe that your words and action are not those of a religious leader, and the organization that you lead is in fact not a church, but a political organization.

Your church can be a force for good. Many of the missionary works of your church does to reach out to the poor and abandoned reflect the spirit that Christ intended us to demonstrate in the world. I would also ask you to reflect that Christ might feel that the love that same-sex couples demonstrate in their partnerships reflect his desire to see love increase and grow in the world.

The New Doctor

2009-01-06T22:30:00.003-05:00

Having grown up as an Anglophile and with a love of science fiction, one might expect that I would have been a long time fan of Doctor Who, the peculiar BBC series that has infatuated the UK for 40 or so years. You would be incorrect: young Scott could abide neither the production values (horrible) or the RADA trained actors, preferring American sci-fi such as "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica". It was only when BBC and Russell T Davis revived the series in 2004, and brought on board Christopher Ecclestone and David Tennant as the Ninth and Tenth Doctors that I truly enjoyed the series. (I confess that watching Tom Baker as the Doctor makes much better sense now.)

Alas, both Davis and Tennant's tenure as producer and the Doctor are ending. And the Eleventh Doctor is Matt Smith. I will need to be convinced. I wanted a ginger Doctor, and Damian Lewis would have been perfect. Hugh Laurie would have been good, or perhaps Chiwetel Ejioforn ("'Kinky Boots", "Dirty Pretty Things"). Somehow, I'm not getting a shoegazer Doctor - which is what I fear we'll have with young Master Smith. Hell, even Catherine Zeta-Jones (rumoured to want the role, as the production is based in Wales) would have been preferable.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (delayed)

2008-12-21T12:36:00.002-05:00

Having checked and rechecked the weather, it appears Portland, Oregon is due for a white -- and icy -- Christmas. But without me. I'm afraid that I'm canceling the Scott Cory North America Holiday Tour 2008. Because as much as I want to see my mother at Christmas, there's no amount of money or love that can make me risk life and limb to travel at this time in inclement weather.

Why Portland, Oregon rules

2008-12-19T17:39:00.003-05:00

The Portland Cello Project, an independent cello orchestra.

My favorite instrument, my favorite place. Genius.

That is all.

Holiday Havoc

2008-11-27T08:40:00.003-05:00

It's not a real holiday at the Gunn-Cory home if there's no plumbing disaster. This year's is the failure of our kitchen faucet, followed by the installation of a new faucet stopped just short of completion by connection lines one inch too short to reach the new faucet.

Have any idea how hard it is to find an open store on Thanksgiving?

Kmart is open. Now, let's hope they have braided plumbing line.

What Radar always wanted to be

2008-11-11T12:14:00.003-05:00

The Daily Beast. Tina Brown, back again after the debacle that was "Talk". I've read somewhere that she thought blogging was the perfect career for her. I disagree: the medium in which journalism -- real journalism -- is distributed has caught up with its best practitioners. Josh Marshall also falls into this category, as does Dave Neiwert and the late Steve Gilliard.

Change we can make happen

2008-11-05T07:04:00.002-05:00

Yesterday America voted. I'm both proud of the process and pleased with the result.

We needed change in leadership, and I believe we've made decisions that will give us a change in leadership.

For many years, this country has been governed for the advantage of the few at the expense of the many. It's time to change that.

For many years, the politics of fear have been used to bully and intimidate people. It's time to change that.

The election of Barack Obama and of a slate of national and local candidates who believe in change, who believe in governing for the benefit of all, is an important first step. Today, we all need to begin to assess what we need to change, and how we prioritize and accomplish that change.

Bible Spice

2008-10-30T09:28:00.002-05:00

I've gone with Attack Barbie, but Alec Baldwin's "Bible Spice" works for me.

La Noonan, c'ette fin

2008-10-26T20:16:00.004-05:00

Cross posted (and expanded) from a comment I wrote at Hullabaloo.

I'll admit over the last forty or so years I've said some intemperate things about the man to whom Peggy Noonan acts as hagiographer, Ronald Reagan. Most of them have been based on things he (or his cronies) actually did. Not to mention the other Republicans about whom Peggy and her claque support long after any pretense or patina of "conservatism" has worn off their shiny, corporatist, authoritarian foreheads.

Peggy and company have lied from whole cloth since the ascendancy of Bill Clinton, and have engaged in "discourse" that would have them ejected from a high school extemporaneous debate for ignorance. Now that one of their own -- or properly, not of their kind -- has gotten the spotlight, Reagan's 11th commandment has been conveniently forgotten.

Well Peggy, Charles, David and Ann, you aided and abetted the creation of the monster that is Sarah Palin, you damn well better be ready to take care of her and what she leads the base to.

One of my dearest friends absolutely loves Peggy. And for perhaps three columns this spring, I thought I might understand her love for the Pegster. But alas, as the claque heads for the exit, there's not getting around the fact that whatever crocodile tears they're crying now fail to make up for the fact that as apologists for this mad experiment in "free markets" and "conservatism" we've endured the last 28 years (the Clinton hiatus counts only as a brief recovery, since Bill's "triangulation" prevented substantive change in right direction, only making the horror less worse than it might otherwise have been) saying "we were wrong" is about as convincing as John McCain on the stump: not.

With some luck, we will as a Republic and an a polity survive this mess. But I don't think there's salvation or redemption for la Noonan, Krautheimer, Brooks, Will, both Kristols, Coulter, or any of the others of the right-wing Wurlitzer which appears to be bleating a final Apocalyptic spasm of hate and fury.

Good news

2008-10-24T17:14:00.001-05:00

The last thing I was expecting from BMW was an all-electric Mini.

I was wrong.

How cool is that?

Slow Food

2008-10-10T17:45:00.003-05:00

The slow cooker is our friend. It lets us take this and make from it, this:

Braised Beef Short Ribs served over "Bubble and Squeak" Pancakes (Potato, Leek, Carrot)

Oh yes, it was very good indeed.

Secretary Krugman

2008-10-10T05:46:00.002-05:00

Professor Krugman proves that economists can provide sensible advice, in language almost anyone can understand.

An Obama Administration could do far worse than consider him to serve as Secretary of the Treasury.

Crash

2008-09-23T05:54:00.002-05:00

And reboot.

Progressive taxation on earned income from minimal to say, 50% on income above $1,000,000.
Capital gains taxed, but a rate below earned income.
Incentives for individual savings in insured financial vehicles.
Immediate reduction of Federal spending on Defense.
Immediate increase in Federal spending on infrastructure, including social infrastructure (education and health care).
Development of a regulatory framework for financial institutions to ensure that reasonable and prudent risk is rewarded fairly -- but that speculative risk can and should fail

It doesn't have to be the end of the world as we know it. It does mean the party is over, and we need to clean the place up, sober up the lushes, and get on with it.

thinking, thinking ....

2008-08-30T11:08:00.003-05:00

It's been a busy few weeks with work intruding on personal life, and little spectacles like the Olympics and the national political conventions demanding what scarce concentration I have at the moment. But as a result of a lot of work and political issues, I've been forced to think some deep thoughts about how increasingly martial our government has become. I'll be writing more about this, but let me leave you with this: the Department of Homeland Security has alluded to monitoring all domestic public Internet traffic in a public forum.

Chew on that one.

I'll be back with more.

Beeee-yotch Slap

2008-08-22T05:50:00.003-05:00

There are so many things wrong with the New York Times editorial pages these days. I could abide William Safire as the Time's example of a conservative. But John Tierney? William Kristol? Please. Spare me the odious claptrap that flowed from their pens. Don't let me start on Tom "The World is Flat" Friedman, because whatever I will say will be misconstrued as being biased against free trade and capitalism.

Sure, Krugman's there, and Bob Herbert, and I enjoy and respect both. Except for them, the pages have become as bad as the Wall Street Journal.

But one stain more than any other violates the pages: Maureen Dowd. And James Wolcott delivers one of his patented ripostes to her latest emission.

To which I say: Bravo, Wolcott, bravo!

Led Zeppelin Live

2008-08-05T22:24:00.003-05:00

If for some reason you never saw The Who, Cassandra Wilson, Led Zeppelin, James Brown, Kiri te Kanawa, Roxy Music, George Clinton, Ella Fitzgerald, Queen, Placido Domingo, or Luciano Pavarotti, leave this here website thingy immediately and go here. Then buy tickets. And see one of the most talented performers I've ever been priveledged to see. Cee Lo is amazing, and the band performs like the the Stones, Zeppelin, or the Who at their peak. Stunning.

Myth Busted

2008-08-04T05:49:00.002-05:00

One of the benefits of reading broadly the world press is sometimes something really extraordinary will present itself. This article is one such thing.

I'm a huge fan of the do-it-yourself philosophy, and I tremendously admire the women's dogged efforts to reproduce the flavor of Coca-Cola. While I don't think I'll be trying the recipe any time soon, the idea of getting non-high fructose corn syrup based Coke in the States again is tremendously appealing.

It's also interesting to note that the bits of food chemistry that that are the basis for molecular gastronomy restaurants such as the Fat Duck, el Bulli, and Minibar are seeping into craft cooking.

Musical Jeopardy for $800

2008-07-22T10:47:00.001-05:00

Music most likely to make me jump on a platform and start freestylin' like it is 1994 and Tracks is at peak:

What is "You Belong," by Hercules and Love Affair?

Correct!

(Also the song that's most likely what Michael Jackson would have sounded like had he come out after "Thriller" and embraced his S&M streak. Which is better that what he became!)

The genius of Joss Whedon

2008-07-19T11:51:00.004-05:00

The post-modern musical is alive and well. Whedon really can do no wrong.

And who knew both Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris could sing?

A love note to Kenny and Zuke's

2008-07-15T15:57:00.003-05:00

We first encountered K & Z's at Christmas, when we stayed at the Governor Hotel before continuing on to Mt. Angel. We saw it on an early morning wander through NW Portland while looking for a more substantial breakfast that pastries. Imagine our surprise to find a updated deli smack on the Ace Hotel and Stumptown Coffee. Intrigued, we stopped and grabbed a table, and ordered from an unapologetically retro menu.

To say our meals were good, or even great is to miss the point entirely. I have never had pastrami or corned beef made with as much love and care as Kenny and Zuke's uses. Both meats were perfectly cured from fine beef. The sides and condiments were perfect. The bread was hearty deli bread. There was nothing light or nouvelle about K&Zs deli cuisine: it was and is full bodied, full flavored, full of fat and satisfaction.

I could not stop thinking about it, so it should be no surprise that one of my first stops while in Portland for my mother's birthday was K&Zs. I bought sandwiches and lox and bagels for mom and me - with which my mother was thrilled (Mt. Angel, and her retirement community aren't really hip to Central European meets American ethnic food filtered through the Slow and Craft Food movements.) It should also be no surprise that I bought lox, corned beef and pastrami to take back to Washington, DC with me.

Bruises Part 2

2008-07-15T15:56:00.000-05:00

The bruise on my thigh is the color of eggplant; it covers all of my inner thigh. With assurances from doctors, I know the bruise will fade and heal (looking like "a Rothko painting" per my orthopaedic surgeon's comment).

My psychic bruising is a different story. Passing cars startle me, and vigilance has become hypervigilance. Seeing African-American men of a certain age makes me tighten my grip on my umbrella (which in turn accompanies me to and from work). With work, the base anxiety and uncertainty will be resolved.

But will there be scars? Will I be able to move smoothly, without visible distress or discomfort through any situation?

What's good for the goose

2008-07-15T15:50:00.003-05:00

From a comment yesterday left at Joe.My.God:

Good satire is lost on Americans, particularly after being satire desensitized, first by the Reagan administration, and now by the Bush/Cheney administration.

The equivalent McCain satire of Senator John in Depends and Cindy with her Amex card and prescription drugs in the Oval Office would have the networks and NPR (nice polite republicans) baying.
scory | Homepage | 07.14.08 - 11:22 am | #

I'm not quite sure where this originally appeared, but I find it mighty amusing.

Bruise

2008-07-08T15:49:00.002-05:00

The follow up from last night's adventure. This is what happens when a thrown tire iron hits one's leg.

No, there are no naked pictures. Please move along. Nothing more to see.

Target

2008-07-07T21:01:00.004-05:00

I was walking home from the Metro on a warm summer night, on a street I’ve walked pretty much every day since we first moved into our house in March. I wasn’t paying too much attention to my surroundings as I was listening to Joni’s “The Hissing of Summer Lawns”. I’d smiled at the couple walking past me on 9th Street NE. I saw the dark blue Chrysler drive past as I turned the corner on to Kearney. I admired the day lilies and saw a young man jump out of the car and walk toward me.

He was holding a tire iron. And he was motioning threateningly at me. If he said anything, I couldn’t hear it. “Edith and the Kingpin” had just segued into “Shades of Scarlet Conquering”. I play my iPod loud.

I’m pretty sure he wanted the iPod though.

I was carrying an umbrella, a heavy messenger bag, and my cell phone.

I don’t think he expected me to swing the umbrella at him. I swung at his jaw and missed. He ran back to the car, throwing the tire iron at me while on the run. It hit my leg. The iron didn’t damage my khakis. However, there will be a bruise.

I picked up the tire iron as I was dialing the cops. I thought about throwing it at the car, or smashing a window. But then I exercised some judgment.

I called the cops immediately. They answered, and at the same time, a patrol cruiser rolled past, and stopped when I flagged him down.

The officer very patiently took down the information, and asked for more details. I provided them as best I could. I should have taken a picture of the license plate - or the kid. Oh well. If charges are filed, it will be for simple assault.

I’m pretty shaken. G Squared is a bit more shaken, I think.

I’ve said that if you stay aware, and walk with confidence, you’re pretty safe anywhere you go in the world. I still feel that way. But I won’t be wearing my iPod on the street any more. I was lucky. This guy was not.

And I will be carrying an umbrella, or a walking stick.

That is all.

Good Times

2008-07-05T17:40:00.004-05:00

It follows from this (disco redux) and this (chamber punk) that I love the outsider music of the late seventies and early eighties. It won't be a suprise that I made this playlist (good times) with the purpose of it being the soundtrack for our housewarming party.

The Brazilian Hipster The New Gold Standard Fort Knox Five
Ain't It Funky (Fort Knox Five Dub) Ain't It Funky / Tricka Technology A.Skillz & Krafty Kuts
I Love to Move In Here Last Night Moby
World's Famous Duck Rock Malcolm McLaren
Soweto Duck Rock Malcolm McLaren
The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance Vampire Weekend
Wordy Rappinghood (Remix) Tom Tom Club
Do What You Wanna (Mr. Scruff's Soul Party Remix) Verve Remixed 2 Ramsey Lewis & Mr. Scruff
Blue Monday - ('88) (The Best Of) New Order New Order
Les And Eddie Cinco De Mowo! Mocean Worker
Sound Of Silver Sound Of Silver LCD Soundsystem
Money In the Bag (K & S Remix) Boogie Angst Kraak & Smaak
Dancin' At The Bains Douches Kid Creole Redux Kid Creole & The Coconuts
Good Times (LP Version) Dance, Dance, Dance - The Best of Chic Chic
Cowboys And Gangsters Fabriclive 36 - James Murphy & Pat Mahoney Gichy Dan
Blind Blind - Single of the Week Hercules and Love Affair
Workinonit Donuts J Dilla
D.A.N.C.E. Justice Justice
Ghetto Train Chaos Restored - Justin Martin Justin Martin
Back To The Raw (Ruff Mix) Louie Vega Presents Dance Ritual Kerri Chandler
I Am the Black Gold of the Sun Nuyorican Soul Nuyorican Soul
Housequake Sign O' The Times (Disc 1) Prince
Kiss Parade Prince
Anotherloverholenyohead Parade Prince
A Noite Sem Fim Sao Paulo Confessions Suba

It's not a suprise to me that its more fun today to dance around our family room, looking over the lawn and the roses and the kitchen garden than it is to claw out a bit of space at a big room dance event. I've experienced the highs and lows of street life, and while I may go back from time to time, I'll be a tourist. No more for me scrambling for a cab at 4 in the morning after a long evening of drinking, dancing, and sometimes more. I'll do most of my dancing in the sunshine, thanks.

On Aging

2008-06-17T09:46:00.002-05:00

Nothing brings aging home like a parental birthday. I wrote this as I was high above Illinois returning to Washington, DC from celebrating my mother’s 85th birthday in Oregon. As birthdays go, it was a very low key affair – a visit to an old friend that my mother and I hadn’t seen in four years, some shopping, a dinner out at a favorite restaurant, a drive in the country. What was lovely and touching and difficult was to see how much less flexible my mother has become, and how much she both needed and appreciated my accommodation of her changing needs.

One of my personal phobias is discussing underwear with my parents and family. It’s an odd phobia, because I’m neither embarrassed by my body nor am I particularly sensitive to other people’s bodies. But should my mother ask me if I need new underwear, I go into a tizzy: I don’t want my mother to know that my current preferred underwear are Champion C9 briefs and boxer briefs sold only at Target. And I also don’t want to know what kind of underwear she’s wearing – it just feels a little tawdry and unseemly. (Sort of like the infamous Bill Clinton “boxers or briefs” questions, only more so.)

But I had to confront the phobia head on. Mom wanted to buy some new brassieres, and so off we went to Nordstrom, a store known for a dedication to customer service and attention. I dropped my mother off in Women’s Foundations (translated from retail: brassieres, girdles, panties, and hosiery) and wandered off to do my own shopping. She’d asked for 20 minutes, and I obliged her, having in that time bought four “work” dress shirts and two “fancy” dress shirts. My mother was beating a retreat from the dressing room with a chastened looking young sales woman. I asked the sales woman if she’d had any luck and my mother loudly exclaimed, “they don’t have anything for me here.” When I questioned the sales woman, she pointed out a couple of bras that my mother had rejected because they “were too bulky”. Now, while I have great admiration for my mother, slinky bras and underwear were never observed, even tangentially in our house. Apparently the shop girl misunderstood “easy to get in and out of” for “skimpy”, imagining that my mother meant to go to “TRL Cancun” or “Grannies Gone Wild” and rip off her bra and show her tatas.

So it took a fair amount of interrogatory to find out what the issue really was: the bras that my mother had been shown had multiple clasps which made it extremely difficult for my mother, whose arthritic digits more resemble knotty wood than fingers, to either fasten or undo. And while I am sure that Nordstrom’s stock did include far more selection that my mother had seen, and which certainly would have had something appropriate for her (as the dowagers of Portland all shop at Nordstrom) we bade our age-challenged shop girl farewell, and decamped for Macy’s.

Following a brief stab at shoe shopping (Mom has cut back her shoe habit from Imelda Marcos levels to a couple of pair a year, as her feet no longer welcome Salvatore Ferragamo and Kate Spade flats and pumps she prefers) we wandered into Macy’s women’s underwear. There’s always a frission about being a man in a women’s underwear section: it’s the straight world equivalent of a man or a transsexual crashing the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. The Women’s Underwear department is supposed to be a safe and empowering place for women. My Y chromosome, penis, and testicles clearly violated that, never mind that I haven’t had sex with a woman in 14 years. I was glared at by a number of women, including one of the sales staff.

Luckily, I was able to recruit an attentive and sensitive woman who helped Mom find two bras (both age appropriate and easy to get in and out of), a girdle, and panties. She was sensitive to my mother’s needs, and was able to adapt to a challenging customer. The world did not end for me, nor did I feel the need for any kind of brain bleach (associated with the bra and panty purchase).

My mother was satisfied with her purchases, I survived unscathed, and I learned a valuable lesson about how to actualize accommodation. For Mom, it means ensuring that the script she has for her encounters with people is closely followed, and a minimum amount of improvisation takes place. She wants what she wants, and at 85, she deserves getting it as she wants it.

And I can live with that.

One for the good guys

2008-06-12T14:59:00.002-05:00

Thank you Justices Kennedy, Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer, and Stevens. Let's hope Bush and Cheney understand what this means.

the future of cars?

2008-06-10T16:55:00.007-05:00

I've loved two BMWs -- the 2002 and the Alpina 3.0 CSI coupe. In the last thirty years they haven't made a car that I've even been tempted to buy or drive.

I would buy and drive this in a heartbeat. It's the first radical rethinking of the automobile in a very long time.

Editor's note: I completely forgot that the Mini Cooper is a BMW product, and that I both love to drive, and would love to own, a new Mini Cooper, particularly in the S version.

Music Friday

2008-05-16T08:20:00.004-05:00

Originally meant to be two posts, I'm combining them into one

Chamber Punk
Vampire Weekend is one of the cool kids' indie bands of the week. Four Columbia University students and their friends turn their record collections and educations into homemade music that is alternately funky and arch. The alleged Afro-pop influence and connection is more name and timbre checking than real and deep, but its still refreshing. Also, any band that uses cello with a South African walking beat and steel guitars wins my vote.

If David Byrne had a sense of humour, the first Talking Heads album might have sounded like this.

Disco redux
Bought and have been listening to Moby's "Last Night". Moby is far from a cool hunter, in the sense of identifying and popularizing trends before they become huge. But in the same way he captured something of the spirit of house music in a way that made it accessiible with "Play," he does the same with new disco and "last night." No, it's not a cocaine and poppers filled tribute to Studio 54 and the Paradise Garage, but lights at a moment around 1984, after Joy Division had become New Order and released "Blue Monday" and Annie Lennox was inventing the sound of the disembodied Diva, when the Pyramid Room and Danceteria and Limelight were serving up the first syncretization of disco and punk.

Of course, the release of a compilation of August Darnell's work (not just as Kid Creole) makes Moby a moot point. Darnell, Giorgio Moroder, and Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers (Chic) pretty much defined disco in the 70s and 80s.

Cooking, Gardening, Galactica, Julips

2008-05-03T19:53:00.003-05:00

Some random thoughts -- hell, even musings.

Crock pots allow for very long, very slow cooking, turning tough cuts of meat into something extraordinary. Not quite sou vide but very, very good.

Gardening is a tremendously cathartic activity. One is able to actually accomplish something visible and measurable. And you feel something at the end of the work.

This season of Battlestar Galactic is going into some very strange, very dark places. I'm not sure I like it.

On this Derby day, I made and drank my Mint Julip.

The Anti-Christ in the Supermarket

2008-04-29T18:48:00.005-05:00

The DP and I had dinner with his sister and brother-in-law over the weekend, and our conversation included a riff on how famous – or famous for Washington, DC – people can move around the city in relative anonymity. Mention was made of seeing LeBron James at Sequoia enjoying a drink at the bar, unmolested by anyone.

I didn’t think anything of this, and went on my usual weekend business of shopping, including a stop at the Temple of Yuppie Pulchritude, also known as Whole Foods. While perusing the organic, cruelty-free meat, I overheard this comment:

“Thank you for all you’ve done for the Republican Party! We’ll see how well we do against the Democrats in the next election cycle.”

I turned and saw a syncophantic woman giving Karl Rove a metaphoric blow job.

Now, my initial reaction was fury, followed by nausea. I knew that if I did what my rage was driving me toward – decking Karl Rove, in the middle of the Tenleytown Whole Foods – I would likely end up in jail, and on my way to Guantanamo Bay for a long term vacation with waterboarding, and not windsurfing, as my recreation. I would also end up on the front page of the Washington Post, possibly above the fold, which is a level of celebrity and infamy I have never sought or desired. I thought about asking Rove how his math was doing now, but realized that it would have violated the rules of public anonymity described above.

So I chose plan B: I pulled out my mobile phone (why did I forget to take a picture?) and called the DP.

“Hello,” he said.

“I’m standing next to the Anti-Christ at the meat counter at Whole Foods,” I responded. Rove shot me a cold look from the pig eyes stuck in his potato face, looking like a living, breathing Mr. Potato Head

“Cheney shops? At Whole Foods? I though he only ate kittens and babies?”

“No, not Cheney. Rove”

“Oh. Ewwwww.”

“Yeah. I feel dirty now.”

“I bet.”

“Love you. ‘Bye.”

“Love you too. ‘Bye.”

And that was it. Rove had wandered off. I saw him in the checkout line, and was glad I wasn’t immediately in front of or behind him.

What I want to know is how, in the spectrum of famous and famous for Washington people, do I get to see both Karl Rove (hideous) and James Carville (extra hideous in a shorty bathrobe with his pipe cleaner legs)? Not George Clooney. Not Angeline Jolie. Hell, not even Barack Obama. No, I get Rove and Carville. Hell, I tell you. A circle of hell.

What I'm listening to now: Duck Rock

2008-04-29T07:56:00.004-05:00

Malcolm McLaren’s real work of genius (creation of the Sex Pistols aside). It’s a blender of influences, mixing the call to prayer, Trevor Horn’s electronica, Bronx scratching and MCing, South African “growlers” and tight female harmonies, ever sort of Afro-Caribbean flavor, and a liberal dose of “found sound” thrown in for good measure. Lyrically and musically, it's all over the map -- a real, joyful mess. Duck Rock was a mash up before the term existed, and was one of the last moments when there was anticipation of some crazy sunny multicultural future.

Just hearing the words “Too much scratching is making me itch” will send me into a shiver of joy.

Note: The album cover featured art work by Keith Haring.

We get mail

2008-04-21T14:59:00.003-05:00

From the DP:
For my edification, what was that line by Stocker Channing about "Cats"?

My response:

From IMDB - It turns out it’s Tess (the daughter) not Ouisa Kittredge (the mother, Stockard Channing) who delivers the line:

He offered you parts in Cats? I thought you hated Cats. You said it was an all time low in a lifetime of theatre going. You said, "Aeschylus did not invent the theatre to have it end up a bunch of chorus kids in cat suits prancing around wondering which of them will go to kitty-cat heaven."

The same can and should be said of the Bush Administration, the Constitution, and democratic Republics. But I digress.

Home Sweet Home

2008-04-11T14:56:00.005-05:00

Just catching our breathe. More to report, including adventures in plumbing, and learning how to push a lawn mower again.

Super Sunday

2008-02-03T17:13:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the best things in life are the simplest. One of our rituals – done most, but not every weekend – is to make pancakes from scratch. We found the recipe from Cook’s Illustrated, which I use as a standard reference for all recipes. That being said, I’ve made a couple of modifications that are indicated in italics.

Makes sixteen 4-inch pancakes, serving 4 to 6
1 tablespoon zest from one lemon
1 tablespoon lemon juice from 1 lemon
2 cups milk
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (10 ounces)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 large egg
3 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted and cooled slightly
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 cup fresh blueberries or frozen blueberries, preferably wild, rinsed and dried

Use a microplane grater to remove the zest from one medium to large lemon. Separate the zest into two equal parts.
Whisk lemon juice and milk in medium bowl or large measuring cup; set aside to thicken while preparing other ingredients. Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and half of the zest in medium bowl to combine.
Melt butter and add zest in a small pan over low heat.
Add melted butter to the milk. Stir gently until the butter is well mixed into the milk. Whisk egg into milk and melted butter until combined. Make well in center of dry ingredients in bowl; pour in milk mixture and whisk very gently until just combined (a few lumps should remain). Do not over mix. Allow batter to stand for 15 minutes
Heat oven to 200 degrees. Heat 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes; add 1 teaspoon oil and brush to coat skillet bottom evenly. Pour 1/4 cup batter onto 3 spots on skillet; sprinkle 1 tablespoon blueberries over each pancake. Cook pancakes until large bubbles begin to appear, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Using thin, wide spatula, flip pancakes and cook until golden brown on second side, 1 to 1 1/2 minutes longer.

Place the cooked pancakes onto a serving platter, and put on the lower rack of the heated oven. When all the pancakes are cooked, bring serving platter to table.

It’s amazing how such a simple thing as a plate of pancakes can be so satisfying and so comforting.

The Fourth Squirrel of the Apocalypse

2008-01-21T21:45:00.001-05:00

There really isn't any more to add.

Sunny Sunday

2008-01-11T23:56:00.000-05:00

Editors note: This is a bit late to the press, but since it's been a night of bourbon and Joni, it seems right to go the archives and pull this out.

Joni Mitchell is a genius trapped in an artist's body. She's been making brilliant music and art since I was an infant, and has lived and loved more than five people.

So why was I so angry when I read this?

Picasso made a lot of shitty paintings. While some of Joni's music after "Mingus" doesn't hold up to the arc of albums from "Blue" to "Mingus", the reason is not her performance or songwriting, but her choice of collaborators and producers.

Strip Joni down to her guitar or piano, pair her with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, or Jaco Pastorius, and what happens is the purest and simplest music. While I'm tempted to blame Larry Kline (an adequate bass player, formerly Joni's husband and her long-time producer) Mitchell's personality is far too strong to be run roughshod by a martinet. Her artistic choices are hers alone, and while she may sometimes be poorly served by her assistants, the core of her work remains direct, potent, and cogent.

I’m willing to rate Joni with Shakespeare and Yeats as the finest poets in the English language. We don't fault their publishers for the paper their work is printed on. Enough said.

Holiday Bloggy Goodness

2007-12-27T15:47:00.000-05:00

Brought to you from high above the Great Flyover, courtesy of Apple Computer and United Airlines (although there will be comment on the latter): a year-end recap of 2007, a year in which no one in my immediate family died, fewer people got sick, and there were no incidents of grievous bodily harm from accidents.

Buying a house is hard work. Buying a house in a crazy market is even harder work.

One falls out of the habit of business travel, and returning to those habits isn’t always agreeable.

When one’s partner and beloved is also a best friend is a gift beyond measure.

Disco is back, and better than ever (see Envoy). Disco and punk had children, and their names are LCD Soundsystem and Justice. The children were separated early in life, and grew up in the United States and France, respectively.

The Dead Kennedys and Carlinhos Brown had a child and its name was Bonde do Rôle (RIP).

Lydia Bastianich and Mario Batalia are training more great chefs than anyone might imagine possible. Great food in Portland, Oregon is easier to find than anyplace I’ve ever been.

It is amusing, if somewhat disconcerting, to find one’s name is on the TSA “Watchlist.”

The McMansion is dead. Long live responsible housing.

Losing post-holiday weight gain with a personal trainer: $1,000. Avoiding gaining holiday weight: priceless.

Food trend for 2008: Fennel.

United Airlines blows. JetBlue and Frontier Airlines rock. Enough said.

The key to good familial visits is to ensure one is relaxed and comfortable before one arrives. Good food and great hotels also help.

I believe in global warming. I’ve also never seen as much of the United States covered in snow as I’ve seen today.

That is all. Happy New Year!

Literary Lions

2007-12-16T11:43:00.000-05:00

The other side of Fashion Week. Enough said.

We Get Mail

2007-11-08T19:21:00.000-05:00

From our correspondence today:

To: scory
Subject: NYTimes.com: Sleuthing for a Danger in Toy Beads
This page was sent to you by: LWB
Message from sender:

For all of your south beach holiday shopping needs.

New York Times
BUSINESS / WORLD BUSINESS
November 8, 2007
Sleuthing for a Danger in Toy Beads

By KEITH BRADSHER

A biochemical geneticist's story demonstrates how recalls come about, in a time when they are becoming routine.

From: scory
To: LWB

I wonder if Tom Friedman counts this amongst the benefits of globalization?

From: LWB
To: scory
Subject: Re: NYTimes.com: Sleuthing for a Danger in Toy Beads

Being able to buy GHB at Toys R Us? Probably. Certainly lower costs compared to buying the stuff on the street -- and fewer American jobs. Makes those Babes in Toyland parties seem less absurd. Maybe there's pot in Holly Hobby Happy Bake Oven brownie mixes.

From: scory
To: LWB

We have gone to hell in a handbasket.

From: LWB
To: scory

We've been in hell in a knockoff LV clutch for seven long years now.

Manhattan, Food, Sightseeing, Shopping, General Magic

2007-10-27T15:32:00.000-05:00

The DP and I celebrated my 7th 39th birthday in Manhattan. It was Manhattan done right: some work (though alas, not enough to write off the trip), seeing old friends, getting angry at the changes in the city -- and enjoying what still remains the craziest, coolest city in the world.

The highlights:

The best Italian meal we've ever eaten at Felidia. Modified traditional service (head waiter, busboys, sommelier, table service waiter) and stunning food -- house cured meats as antipasti, fresh lobster ravioli with butter, chives, corn and cream, and salt-roasted cod. Simple food immaculately prepared and served with competence and grace. I've rarely felt more comfortable or at home at a restaurant -- and given that it shares the block with the Bloomberg headquarters and Le Cirque 2000 in the UES, it's not a homey or comfortable neighborhood, unless you happen to be a billionaire.

The Top of the Rock. The observation deck at Rockefeller Center, at dusk, on a perfectly clear and still night. While I loathe programmed experiences with a passion, the view of Manhattan and the Mid Atlantic region was magical. There are pictures.

Shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue. I love my clothes. I hate shopping. I found exactly what I needed (and then some), with the help of young Mr. Alex.

Running in Central Park on sunny September afternoon. The park was full of people. It's possible one might see more different shapes, sizes, shaded, sexes and ages of people somewhere. But I can't imagine the collection framed by more beauty. I will never forget looking back at Midtown from the Great Lawn -- with, I should note, Blondie's "Rapture" playing on the iPod. It's also fun playing "rich person slalom" while running down Park Avenue.

Strolling in Brooklyn and back to Manhattan. I've gone to NYC more times than I can count or remember. I've been to Brooklyn three times, the Bronx twice, and Queens twice. After Sunday I think I can say that I prefer Brooklyn to Manhattan. It's retained what made NYC specials: a sense of place.

I'm trying to think of a better birthday, ever. But I can't. It was the perfect weekend, and the perfect gift.

Nostalgia

2007-10-26T06:40:00.000-05:00

The terrifying thing is I remember this advertisement. I stomped my little feet until we flew on TWA from SFO to JFK in 1967. Yes, they did become loafer-clad on my first visit to the wonder of Manhattan's many clothing emporiums. Yes, I have both the menu and the "pilot's wings" from the flight. And yes, we did arrive at the Saarinen terminal, and it was fantastic.

Recherche du temps perdu

2007-10-13T12:21:00.000-05:00

A meta post, about not blogging.

Having just returned from a conference on technology, in which the social changes technology is enabling and facilitating was much discussed, I've realized that I'm a socially challenged blogger. I don't post much, and I don't link. My always supportive partner has suggested that if only I wrote more, and on what I actually think about and do, and linked, I could become a solid third-tier blogger. Imagine!

I'm happy here in my little digital backwater, thank you.

And I'm happy occasionally posting. Life doesn't really allow me enough time to be reflective and constructive. So you get what you get.

Also, buying a house doesn't allow much free time. Who knew there was so much to do?

Who's your daddy, W?

2007-09-24T14:38:00.000-05:00

Really, this snippet from the OMB website says it all:

Tips for better results:

* Check your syntax.
* Make sure to use the correct spelling.
* Use the correct case (uppercase for capitalized names, lowercase for common words and phrases).
* Use a comma to separate capitalized names or phrases.
For example: Richard Cheney, George W. Bush
* Try synonyms and variations of words.
For example: CDROM, CD-ROM

I'm sure it's just coincidence that Vice-Emperor Chee-neeh is listed first. An accident, even.

Music

2007-08-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

My "mission statement" for this blog was to include music in some way, shape or form. Well, this might be the moment at which I accomplish this.

This is a tiny part of what's on my iPod.

Summer

2007-08-05T11:47:00.000-05:00

Peach Blackberry Cobbler. Yes, it is as good as it looks. Yes, it was baked at home. Yes, there is a recipe, and no, it wasn't published by Cook's Illustrated or the Silver Palate people. But I was influenced by both, and by James Beard, when putting the recipe together.

Filling:

6-8 ripe peaches, peeled and cut into 1/8ths
2 pints blackberries, rinse and cleaned
1 tbsp fresh lemon zest
1-2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
Fresh grated nutmeg
2-3 tbsp tapioca flakes
1/3 cup sugar

Place the peaches and berries in a large, non-reactive bowl. Add the dry ingredients. Add the liquid ingredients. VERY gently toss all ingredients, using your hands, until the berries and peaches are evenly coated. Set aside for 30 minutes.

Once the peaches and berries have macerated, place them in an 11" glass baking dish. The dish should be about 2" deep to hold the berries.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Once the oven reaches 350 degrees, place the filled baking dish in the bottom of the oven for 10 minutes. The peach-berry filling should just be starting to bubble.

Cobbler:
1 1/3 cups flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp lemon zest
1/2 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
6 tbsp butter, cold, cut into 1/4" chunks
1/4 cup cream
1/4 cup milk

Mix all dry ingredients together. Cut in butter with a pastry knife until the butter and flour mixture has an oatmeal like texture. Add the milk and cream. Mix until the batter just holds together. Do not over mix.

Assembly:

Remove the pre-baked filling from the oven. Make sure to shut the oven door. Place 1-2" pieces of the cobbler batter on top of the filling, leaving only small breaks. Place the dish on the lower rack of the oven. Set timer for 10 minutes. At 10 minutes, move the baking dish and cobbler to the top rack, and sprinkle 1 tbsp of sugar on top of the cobbler. After 10 minutes, turn off the oven, and allow the cobbler to remain in for another 15 minutes. Remove from the oven, and allow to cool to room temperature.

Serve with vanilla ice cream.

To reheat cobbler, place serving in oven-proof bowl and heat in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes.

Back to the Future

2007-08-01T10:24:00.000-05:00

I feel guilty for liking Justice, if only because listening to Justice -- and D.A.N.C.E in particular -- reminds me of listening to AM radio in 1976, which I absolutely detested in 1976.

Of course, listening to AM radio in 1976 also meant hearing "Afternoon Delight" and "Muskrat Love." About which nothing more need be said.

David Foster Wallace is wrong

2007-06-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

We've returned from the cruise alluded to here. I'm pleased to say we've returned both alive and refreshed, and genuinely pleased and satisfied with the experience of having traveled by ship.

While I can understand David Foster Wallace's reaction to a Caribbean cruise (and did in fact see much of the excess he described in his essay), it's easy to step away from that. The horrifying spectacle of the Lido deck is easily ignored on the Promenade deck, where in a comfortable wooden chair, and with the company of a good book, a journal, a pen, and a decent drink (a cigarette or cigar is optional) one can easily imagine they're enjoying recreational time travel back to the 1950's.

Then there's this:

What's not to like?

Through the Looking Glass, or how a new passport tells so much

2007-05-22T06:40:00.000-05:00

On my morning stroll through the blogosphere I ran across this at We, Like Sheep (where curmudgeonly snark is served, somewhat obliquely on a regular basis).

The issue of the new passports really, really infuriates me. My first passport (issued in 1985) was a standard, international type passport -- a perfectly acceptable, useful, document. The renewal in '97 saw a distinctly more colorful version, but still altogether acceptable. This, this travesty of a new passport looks like a fast trip to the bottom of the design barrel.

A passport is meant to facilitate the quick and secure negotiation of a national board, either alone or in conjunction with a visa. It should not be a tool for agitprop. What, you're gonna convince a North Korean border officer of the virtues of "democracy" when he flips through your passport on the way out of the Pyongyang airport? I don't think so.

You want a secure, non-tamperable passport? Establish a global standard for identifying an individual, then install a write-once ROM chip with suitable encryption in the passport, and write the individual's identity to the ROM when the passport is issued. End of story.

I'll save my rant on United States' currency for another time.

Jesus Christ, Larry Flynt, Jerry Falwell

2007-05-20T09:25:00.000-05:00

Jerry Falwell's death brought a maddening, chattering crowd of thoughts and emotions to me. Regardless of how you feel about a person's life, how can you honor and respect the pain their family and friends suffer with death?

Since Falwell's life was devoted to presenting a view of religion and spirituality that I found morally empty and repugnant, and that his conflation of religion and politics was fundamentally wrong, how could I act in a way consistent with my beliefs.

Enter Larry Flynt. Yes, that Larry Flynt.

I've never felt compelled to utter the words "what would Jesus do?" And Flynt never does. But his eulogy, and the relationship that developed between Falwell and Flynt that Flynt writes about is exactly what Christ preached -- and lived.

It should be an example to everyone on how to let grace move one's relationships.

Weather apocalypse and fashion meltdown, or from our recent correspondence

2007-05-18T20:12:00.000-05:00

email like this does remind one that correspondence is indeed a good thing. Once upon a time we wrote letters. Now, this

R --

the latest, in this year's series of weather apocalypses:

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/wwamap/wwatxtget.php?cwa=lwx&wwa=severe%20thunderstorm%20watch

Is it not possible just to have bad weather anymore? Or is this one more way in which 9/11 changed every f*ckin' thing?

As you can tell, I'm in a cheery mood.

Ta,

S

You said it. Just in the last 15 minutes, it started to look like Mordor here.
The rain hasn't started yet, but I'll be surprised if there ISN'T a tornado.

Actually 9-11 allowed the WH to descend so far ethically that John Ashcroft
became a man of principal by comparison. Wonderful.

R

I'd love to say I'm shocked by Comey's disclosure, but nothing that's happened is worse that what I imagined would happen after Bushco stole the 2000 election and strongarmed the Supreme Court.

On a much cheery note, remind me to tell you why I will never wear white pants and a blue blazer. Hint: Gilligan's Island.

Ta,

S

S,

Unless you're also wearing a striped tie and boater (Perrin Tellock flashback -- woah), it's something best avoided.

R --

Add boat shoes, too.

Suffice it to say I felt I looked like Thurston Howell III. When fashion becomes costume, run.

I couldn't stop laughing at the image of myself I saw in the mirror. Hell, I've felt more comfortable in drag than I did in those linen pants and blazer.

S,

When pray tell did you wear this? #$%? Brunch with G's parents? The Eagle? Even more than Thurston Howell, I'm having dueling visions of the British olympians in Chariots of Fire vs. Ted Knight in Caddyshack. My brain hurts.

R -- the ensemble never left the dressing room of _-_, so there is no photographic evidence, of which I'm grateful. Meant as cruise wear, it served to provide much humour for me.

I decamped to ___s, and promptly bought a much more reasonable Hugo Boss brown, black and grey tropical wool blazer, chocolate brown pants, and black linen pants, and a Dolce and Gabana (!) shirt. None of which feels at all like costume, and all of which will be worn in multiple venues outside of the cruise.

I did abandon the tissue thin, white D&G shirt, the wearing of which fetishized my nipples and abs more than a snakebite kit and a leather harness. A lovely piece of clothing for the underwear model set.

S,

Those D&G bits of kleenex will do that. By the way, snakebite kit and leather harness is a phrase and image that will be with me for a while. thank you for that.

Speaking of perky nips, must we go through this every spring? May sucks. During the week it is blazingly hot as if it were July -- super fun in wool dress trousers and just in time to leave town for the weekend, the temperature dives 20 or 30 degrees. As far back as my first summer here, it's been the same thing every year. I still remember freezing in the rain coming home from rowing practices seemingly each weekend up to and through graduation.

On a funner note, you could make some really great party invitations by going back to _-_, recreating the look and taking pictures in the dressing room mirror with a camera phone. I'm just saying.