WALL•E (2008)

WALL•E is…

A Charlie Chaplin/Little Tramp movie, but, with, you know, robots;

A not terribly subtle social commentary that nevertheless gets its point across without heavy-handedness;*

kind of reminiscent of Silent Running, if Silent Running hadn’t been so relentlessy pessimistic;

proof that Fred Willard is the cinematic equivalent of nutmeg: too much can be overbearing, but just the right amount can really brighten things up;

a great love story, with, you know, robots.

*However, since part of the commentary revolves around the fact that the human race had to leave Earth after filling up the planet with all their consumer stuff, I kind of question the practice at the theater where I saw the film of giving a WALL•E watch to the kids who attended the screening.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

For something so basic and necessary, it is easy to take food for granted. Doing so enables many of us to ignore the chain of social, economic, petrochemical, pharmacological and loose regulatory causality that goes into putting a meal on our plate. For example, the meat most of us eat is the end product of an industrial food chain driven not so much by our collective hunger for burgers and chicken as it is by the mountainous — and ever growing — surplus of corn. Similarly, while the term “organic” conjures up comforting thoughts of healthful food grown in pastoral settings, the reality of the industrial organic business model in place today benefits from regulations that define organic food in the broadest possible terms while charging a premium for them in the marketplace.

In The Ominvore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan tracks his way through four food chains to see where our food comes from, and to identify the true costs and tradeoffs that come of eating in different ways. He explores the complicated, corn- and petroleum-based food economy, culminating in a McDonald’s meal. He investigates the organic food movement, and discovers that the process by which organic chicken and baby greens get to boutique markets require similar economies of scale and comparable tradeoffs to the industrial food mainstream. He spends time working on a farm that produces its food in as close a harmony with natural systems as something as interventionist as agriculture allows. Finally, he learns to hunt and forage, and cooks a meal gathered entirely by the effort of his own hands.

Ultimately, few of us are in a position to feed ourselves and our families as pure hunter-gatherers. Even if we were, the reality is that there is not enough forage out there to feed a nation of scavengers. While the book presents the facts and implications of each of the different food systems Mr. Pollan explores, the lesson of The Ominvore’s Dilemma has more to do with mindfulness — of knowing what you are eating, where it came from, and the benefits, costs, and tradeoffs inherent in that food system — than with changing readers’ ways of thinking or acting.

I’m not sure I wouldn’t be happier not thinking about where my chicken came from, or the evolutionary tinkering that goes into feeding ruminant cattle a corn-intensive diet in order to fatten them up in order to yield more burgers per animal, or even about the reality that undelies the pastoral image on the box of my supposedly organic cereal. I suspect that from this point on, I will have a much more difficult time being casually ignorant; ignoring these realities will now require an act of will.

Profiles in “courage”

Many on the political left are angry with the United States House of Representatives for the passage of a truly henious bit of nonsense. In particular, the House Democratic leadership is taking heat for their capitulating and cowardly response to one of the most pressing issues of our time.

I speak of course of this:

Congratulating and recognizing Mr. Juan Antonio Chi-Chi Rodriguez for his continued success on and off the golf course, for his generosity and devotion to charity, and for his exemplary dedication to the intellectual and moral growth of thousands of low-income and disadvantaged youth in our country.

How dare they? Do these people truly have no shame?

Wait, what did you think I was talking about?

Kirby: King of Comics, by Mark Evanier

I’m not sure I can remember the first Jack Kirby comic I ever read. It was probably in a mass market paperback sized reprint edition of the Fantastic Four, but maybe I’m overlooking a standalone issue of something. For years after that, I was aware of Jack Kirby among the pantheon of comics greats, just one more name among a group of legendary names. Not fully knowing why he was special meant that I didn’t comprehend how much of the visual architecture of the comics I read during my first great comics awakening in the 1970s and 80s was sunk into the bedrock of Jack’s Kirby’s work.

It wasn’t until I read the Kirby tribute issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that I began to understand that he was a breed apart within his field. I know that the first time I read a Jack Kirby comic and really got it was in my early 20s when I got my hands on a copy of a Marvel anthology that included “This Man…This Monster” from Fantastic Four #51.

I also know this makes me a bandwagon jumping poseur — it’s sort of like acclaiming Groucho as one’s favorite Marx Brother, as though 95% of the world didn’t share that view — but there is a reason that certain things are acknowledged for their greatness.

There is a lot of greatness on display in Mark Evanier’s oversize biography of Mr. Kirby. First of all, the dimensions of the book, more coffee table book than traditional biography, allows the reproductions of Mr. Kirby’s work to be shown to great effect. Showcasing early comic strips drawn under a series of aliases in a range of styles to pin ups, commissioned pieces from late in his career, and countless stops in between, the art in Kirby: King of Comics almost makes the story of Mr. Kirby’s life and work superfluous. Almost.

Mr. Evanier, Mr. Kirby’s former studio assistant and friend, writes something more akin to a biographical sketch than to an exhaustive exhumation of every facet of Mr. Kirby’s life. It is a narrative that seeks to illustrate the illustrations it accompanies, or perhaps the illustrations are intended to narrate the narrative. Either way, like great comics, the text and image complement each other and convey a more comprehensive sense of story than either alone might have accomplished.

Because this is a book written by an interested party, it is largely favorable, but also seems largely honest while still doing honor to its subject. If Mr. Evanier avoids putting Jack Kirby on a pedestal (if only because Mr. Kirby’s drawing table is a more appropriate venue) he similarly refrains from casting a cartoonishly villainous light onto any of Mr. Kirby’s collaborators and employers. While Mr. Kirby failed to share in the financial rewards his work generated for his employer, especially in the area of derivative and licensed work, Mr. Evanier is honest that this resulted not only from ungenerous business practices on their part, but also from Mr. Kirby’s lack of business acumen. But these controversies, while noteworthy and significant, are in some ways extraneous to the powerful, dynamic work Mr. Kirby produced, or the ways that work defined — and continues to define — a medium.

The Jack Kirby story as presented by Mr. Evanier seems tailor made for the sort of biopic treatment Hollywood has given to individuals such as Ray Charles and Bobby Darin. His life had the arc on which such films so often rely; humble beginnings, personal drive, early struggles paving the way for tremendous success, mastery of chosen profession conflicting with the unkind realities of the biz, the ebb and flow of the later career culminating in acknowledgement of the proper place in the history of his craft. The only difference is that Mr. Kirby seems not to have needed to tame his personal demons in the same way as these performers.
While his life would be fodder for a film, I personally hope such an endeavor does not come to pass. Perhaps the recent success of films based on Marvel Comics properties (with more to come now that the success of Iron Man validated the profitability of the Marvel Studios financing endeavor) will limit interest in such a project. To tell Mr. Kirby’s story in the Hollywood way would necessitate exploring his relationship with Marvel, and the — how to say this diplomatically? — disproportionate nature of his compensation relative to his contributions. Such a story carries with it the sort of controversy that large companies seek to avoid in order to ensure or improve profitability. Thus, were such a film ever proposed, it’s not difficult to imagine Marvel’s owners attempting to derail the effort in order to keep the grazing pastures for their herd of cash cows verdant.

If superhero comics are a form of modern mythology — at its best, Mr. Kirby’s talent certainly elevated the characters and stories he depicted to that level, both explicitly (Thor, New Gods) and implicitly (X-Men) — it is equally the case that Mr. Kirby’s own life and work embodied a uniquely American mythology. As work, his career reflected the defining ethos of the 20th century: work hard, make money, provide for your family, don’t rock the boat too much, ensure your family’s security after you’re gone. As art, his work continues to fuel the production and articulation of new mythologies. Not bad for a kid from Yancy Delancey Street.

We interrupt this broadcast

I don’t receive many comments to the Bowleg, and I’m rather draconian in my moderation of those few comments that come my way. I can’t imagine censoring comments that disagree with me, so long as such comments are interesting, challenging, or creative in their challenge to my point of view. As I see it, disagreements implies that a reader not only read what I wrote, but was sufficiently affected by it to express an opinion. That’s all to the good.

Disagreements that bore me, on the other hand, aren’t worth my time or attention.

In realty, such disagreements as arise are few and far between. Most comments that I receive and subsequently delete fall into two categories: obvious spam and advertising/self promotion. I don’t have ads on the Bowleg, and I don’t see a need to let someone else use my soapbox to sell their soap.

Earlier this week, I received a comment from the author of a recently-released novel inquiring whether I ever did book reviews for local authors (presumably on the basis of the fact I occasionaly write about Berkshire County). My first impulse was to consider this gentleman’s query more soapselling and delete it out of hand. On reflection, though, I decided his comment deserved more of a considered response.

Having pondered the matter, I’m disinclined to review this book for several reasons:

1) I write about books, not very well. I write about food, not very well. I write about movies, and comics, and current events, and art, and museums, and life in the Berkshires, not very well. As you can see, while the subject matter of my writing tends to vary, there is a common theme that ties it all together: it’s not very good.

For an author, it’s hard enough to actively promote your own work without having to also do damage control because some pinhead with a blog completely missed the point of what you were trying to accomplish with your work.

2) While I have written reviews in the past, I don’t consider the things I currently write, which are primarily for my own edification, to be reviews. They’re observations, opinions, and digressions, with limited critical benefit. By and large, I try to capture a quick impression of the books I happen to read, without much effort or thought put into coherent analysis.

Again, I feel it would be a disservice to this author to subject his work to my usual half-assed and slapdash criticism. Besides, a review written at the direction of the author is fraught with pitfalls. Write a glowing review, and I’ll seem like a shill. Write a negative review, and I’m picking on someone who never did me any harm. Write a balanced review, and I’m too chicken%$#@ to commit to an opinion. Any way you slice it, it doesn’t end well for me.

3) When I have written reviews in the past, they have come about in one of two ways; either an editor has assigned me a particular book to review, or the editor has provided a list of advance reader copies or new releases they happen to have on hand, and asked their reviewers to claim treasure from the trove. Without an editor, my book selection is based largely on whim and word of mouth. While this author’s communication arguably qualifies as word of mouth, we’re back to the whole question of soapselling.

4) Bart Modern is demonstrably not an opinion maker. On its best day, the Bowleg received 63 hits. As of this morning, it has received just over 3,650 hits over the course of almost 18 months. Contrast this with a popular blog like John Scalzi’s Whatever. In May of this year, Mr. Scalzi received just shy of one million hits to the Whatever (999,808 to be scrupulously exact). That’s an average of over 32,000 hits per day, over 1,300 hits per hour on average. To put it another way, John Scalzi attracts more visitors in three hours than the Bowleg has received in its entire life to date.

This is not to suggest that this author should necessarily run straight to the Whatever to promote himself and his work, merely that anyone in his position should focus their effort on maximizing the ripple effect by making sure they throw their stone into the right pond. There are only so many hours in a day, and limited opportunities to reach a potential audience. The puddle maintained by a guy who gets a handful of hits a day is to shallow to produce meaningful ripples.

Still, I admire this gentleman’s tenacity. He wrote a book, and that counts for something in my book. He obviously believes in his work, and is putting in the effort to get it in front of as many people as he can through as many channels as he can. I don’t think I’m the best person to help him do it, but I also believe his effort deserves some acknowledgement.

So, Bowleggers, at the risk of selling some soap, here’s the deal: there’s this guy name of Peter Clenott who wrote a book called Hunting the King. Make of this information what you will.

Hold Tight, by Harlan Coben

I’ve been a fan of Mr. Coben’s books since friends of mine who used to own a bookstore recommended his first Myron Bolitar novel, Deal Breaker, to me. I generally enjoy both the Bolitar series and Mr. Coben’s other, largely standalone, thrillers. Like people who complain that they like Woody Allen’s funnier movies best, I have a slight preference for some of Mr. Coben’s earlier works, which are lighter in tone and substance than his more recent fare, but even his darker stories are engaging (if that sort of thing appeals to you).

[Digression: I can't prove it, but I suspect the influence of all the procedural shows on television raises -- or possibly lowers, depending on your point of view -- the bar for thrillers. Part of crafting effective procedurals week after week is coming up with new mysteries to unravel, or finding a new angle on the old mysteries that make them fresh enough to keep the audience coming back week after week. One of the ways to twist the mystery is to make it more shocking, and to plumb the depths of human depradation and inhuman morality. As this has become the norm on television, it seems it has pushed print authors in the same direction.]

Mr. Coben’s latest thriller continues his strong track record. At the same time, I take slight exception with the book. Mr. Coben is an alumnus of Amherst College, although I try not to hold that against him when I read his work, much as I can appreciate the achievement of Mark Helprin’s A Winter’s Tale despite Mr. Helprin having written speeches for Senator Bob Dole during the 1996 presidential campaign.

However, as a resident of Berkshire County, and as someone who has a theoretical rooting interest in certain of this region’s institutions, I take slight exception to the sociopath/villain/narrative instigator of Hold Tight being an alumnus of Williams College. It’s not so much the sociopathy that bothers me as much as the cut-rate, cartoonish nature of it.

Great, Scott

I believe violence is the refuge of those who lack the imagination or wit to resolve problems through negotiation and reason. However, when I read something like this excerpt from former Mouth of Sauron White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s upcoming book:

The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. . . . In this case, the “liberal media” didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.

–Quote from Mr. McClellan’s book, as cited by Glenn Greenwald

I am forced to reconsider.

So basically, according to Mr. McClellan, the fault lies not with the lies propagated by administration for which he served as a public face, but rather with the failure of the fourth estate to call him and the masters to whom he was a willing lapdog on their blatant lies. While this argument contains a kernel of truth, it obscures a far more basic principle:

Don’t. @#$%ing. Lie. It’s practically a big-C Commandment (depending on whether you choose to construe the prohibition against bearing false withness as a narrow ban on legalistic lying [and it doesn't get more legalistic than the hair-splitting, obfuscation, qualification, and meticulous word choice in which press secretaries regularly engage] or a blanket injunction against lying on general principles). It’s one of the creation myths of our republic (see cherry trees, G. Washington and). It’s something that most parents attempt, with greater or lesser degrees of success, to instill in their children.

If we lived in a remotely sane society, or even just a society where critical thinking was seen as a virtue, Mr. McClellan’s shambling public resurrection trying to peddle the line of nonsense he’s reportedly got going in his new book would be met by an angry mob wielding torches and pitchforks.

[On second thought, the Frankenstein's monster analogy is too kind. In a sane society, Mr. McClellan world be placed in a pillory in the public square, and the parents, partners, and children of all those killed or injured in Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans, and all those who have been otherwise...inconvenienced by this administration and the policies which he daily championed would have the opportunity to walk up to him, spit in his eye, and kick him squarely in the gonads. Hard. While wearing steel toe boots. Spiked steel toe boots. Rusty spiked steel toe boots. Rusty spiked steel toe boots doused with salt, lemon juice, and flaming isopropyl alcohol. And the only relief he should be allowed would be to drink from a plastic water bottle manufactured using BPA.]

Your bosses lied? You knew it, and you did, what, precisely? You repeated their lies, you presented their lies as the truth, you belittled and castigated the people who called you on your lies.

And that’s the truly mind-boggling part; the media you bamboozled, the same cowardly, deferential, docile, and uncritical press you conned? They’re giving you free publicity. Instead of ensuring that you fade from the public eye, and the minds of all but the historians and scholars who relegate you to what you truly are — a minor footnote in a tragic history — they’re promoting you. They’re helping you to sell your book, and to profit from the fraud you helped perpetrate.

So now you get to cash in, pretending all the while that the scales were miraculously lifted from your eyes, you cut-rate Saul of Tarsus? You’re culpable. You’re responsible. And there is no truth you can tell now, no self-serving rationalization you can spit out, no self-justification you can sputter on Larry King or Charlie Rose or for the hometown crowd on Fox News that makes you any less than guilty.

The late Joseph Welch said it best: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Meal of oat (oatie, oatie, oat…)*

While I enjoy oatmeal – both as a breakfast option and on a purely existential level – it’s not the most…exciting meal in the world. You can dress it up with apples, bananas, cinnamon, brown sugar, almonds, dried cranberries or coconut all you want, but eventually, oatmeal gets boring. Eating it becomes an exercise in conspicuous virtue rather than enjoyment. The prospect of yet another bowl of the stuff becomes increasingly daunting.

It was while in the grip of this state of mild aversion and incipient loathing that I hit upon an idea: fried oatmeal. Instead of heating up a pot of oats and sticking them a bowl, I decided to carve off a slice or two of leftover oatmeal and cook it up in a skillet. As with the beefy beans recipe I mentioned a while ago, thinking about this basic recipe in a slightly different way yielded an interesting – and tasty – result.

Fried Oatmeal
(serves 4-5)

1 recipe steel cut oatmeal (1 cup steel cut oat groats, 4 cups water, 1/2 cup half and half [optional] hefty pinch of salt; bring to a boil, then simmer 35-40 minutes, or until all the liquid has been absorbed by the oats), transferred to a rectangular storage container and allowed to set up overnight into something with a loaf-like consistency.

For each serving, you will need:

1/2 apple, diced

1/2 banana, quartered and sliced

1t butter

1t brown sugar

cinnamon to taste

Slice the oatmeal loaf into two 3/4-inch sections per person.

Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat. Coat the pan with a quick hit of nonstick cooking spray. Add the oatmeal slices to the hot pan. Cook 5-7 minutes on a side, or until toasted brown in color. Remove the cooked oatmeal slices to a serving plate.

Return the pan to the heat and add the butter. Once it has melted, add the apple and banana, followed immediately by the brown sugar and cinnamon. Saute 2-3 minutes until the fruit has heated through and softened. Serve this warm “compote” over the top of the oatmeal slices.

The result is something a bit like a flourless bannock or a thicker and moister oatcake. The pan-frying treatment browns and crisps the surface of the slice, which gives it a toasted, nutty flavor. The sautéed fruit provides traditional oatmeal accompaniments, and serves as a way to add a little sweetness to the otherwise neutrally-flavored oatmeal.

*Someday, The Kid will hear the song “Jungle Love” by Morris Day and the Time, and she will be terribly confused.

I resemble that remark

Recently, someone referred to me as a heckler. That reminded me that this…

…was a fun comic that was canceled too soon. Granted, it was no Ambush Bug, but then what is? Aside from, you know, Ambush Bug?

“With moderate power comes moderate responsibility”

Rich Burlew’s The Order of the Stick is one of my favorite web comics.

It’s funnier if you are now or have ever been involved in a dungeon-crawling based fantasy role-playing game, but aside from the occasional meta-reference it also scans well as an epic fantasy adventure story.

This strip encapsulates a philosophy of life I can get behind:

And so I’ve come to realize that I have a duty to use my limited competence to have a partial effect on the world, from time to time.

Well played, Mr. Burlew. Well played.

Full, but not sinful

As I’ve mentioned previously, we’re trying to eat healthier here at the Modern manse. One reason for this is pure (if tautological) common sense; healthy foods are healthier than unhealthy foods. Unprocessed foods are, in the main, better than processed foods, satisfying as those processed foods may be. We’re not being fanatically zealous in our commitment, but the balance of items in our grocery cart has definitely tipped heavily in favor of the foods on the perimeter, rather than the center, of the market.

Another reason is that eating better helps support other lifestyle changes. I’ve been trying to get more exercise lately, both for the baseline benefits of exercise, but also because increasing my activity level supports my goal of droping a few (dozen) pounds over a reasonable period of time.

So, part of our recent commitment to better eating has involved eating better. That is, our desire to eat fresher, healthier, less processed foods has also resulted in our eating food that tastes better. It has also led me to do more actual cooking, using recipes that actually take time, thought, and effort to prepare.

Sometimes, all our schedule really allows for is throwing together a meal that is quick and nutritious. There’s nothing wrong with a simple meal of baked chicken, roasted potatoes (or rice, or some equally nutritive but uninspiring starch) and steamed broccoli. It’s healthy and balanced, if entirely unimaginative. Recently, I took the opportunity to stray off the path of convenience. The other night, I made a roast chicken (okay, so I stayed in chicken territory, which I’ll admit isn’t exactly walking on the wild side, but it takes a bit more effort than just opening the package of chicken parts and throwing them on the baking sheet) with a cornbread stuffing (thanks, Chris Kimball). Roast chicken is still a pretty simple dish, but throwing a bunch of aromatics into the roasting pan (apple, lemon, onion) gives the meat a really nice flavor, with the added bonus of roasted onions as a side dish.

Making the stuffing required bacon, which lead to leftover bacon. Leftover bacon became the impetus for making a coq au vin the following night. Again, this is hardly the most complicated meal in the world — the greatest investment lies not in ingredients, or culinary skill, but in time — but the result is rich, and flavorful, the sort of meal that leaves you looking for one more piece of crusty bread to mop up the last of the sauce.

Indeed, the only problem with indulging in my love of cooking is that it makes me want to (over)indulge in my love of eating. With baked chicken and rice, there’s not much of a desire for seconds, or a need to exercise moderation. Coq au vin on the other hand, requires one to summon some restraint.

But. Just because I’m trying to eat better, exercise more, and, ultimately, weigh less as a the result of making changes to established habits and behaviors (replacing them, over time, with different habits and behavioral patterns that are both healthy and sustainable) doesn’t mean I want to stop finding pleasure in good food. The trick, I think, is to stop conflating that pleasure with moral judgements, stop framing enjoyment of a good meal with sin, and exercise with expiation.

Coq au vin (or Spaghetti alla Carbonara, or whatever your favorite indulgence happens to be) is something to be enjoyed, not something to atone for. Thinking about this or that dinner in terms of the amount of time one has to spend working off, or paying back, the calories, is entirely the wrong mindset for sustainable change. The goal should be to have diet (in the sense of what one puts in one’s body, rather than in the sense of a branded Diet Program [tm] complete with books and prepackaged meals, television exposure and celebrity advocates, seasoned with just the slightest hint of snake oil) and exercise balance each other out as part of a healthy lifestyle. In that way, the occasional indulgence can be seen (as it should be seen) as a source of pleasure.

A good meal should not be viewed as a debt to be paid off in sweat, but a credit redeemed by dutifully eating all that @#$%ing baked chicken the rest of the time.

Lit Graphic

Richly visual and intimately understood, graphic novels — with their anti-heroes, narrative appeal, and storylines sometimes off-limits in other modes of expression — may be prepared to usurp the role that novels currently play.

I call bull%$#@.

Didactics are an important component of the museum experience. Good wall text provides museum visitors with background, context, and history. It illustrates something about the relevance of a particular artist or work in their medium or relative to their position in the history of art. It also explains how a given artist or work reinforces the theme of they exhibition in which they appear.

But oh my; didactics also become a channel for curatorial excess, overreaching, and pretension. Case in point: the above text from one of the introductory didactic panels included in the Lit Graphic: The World of the Graphic Novel exhibition currently on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Comics (or “sequential art” if you prefer) are (or is it “comics is?”) a wonderful storytelling medium. The form is dynamic, flexible, and capable of rendering everything from the birth of an idea to the death of a god, and all stops in between.

But “storylines sometimes off-limits in other modes of expression?” What the heck does that mean? The melding of word and image creates a singular vehicle for exploring all manner of stories, but comics are no more boundary-breaking than any other medium. The closest comparison to comics is film, which is also about presenting visual ideas sequentially. But as with any comparison between print and film, there is a level on which reading is always the more active process, watching the more passive. Regardless of how the information gets into our brain, however, the fact is that neither comics or film (or poetry, or painting, or sculpture, or any other creative endeavor) is constrained by storylines.

Anti-heroes? Narrative appeal? Is there a form of storytelling that can’t include anti-heroes? I’m hard-pressed to think of one, and that’s a good thing. Anti-heroes are usually more interesting than heroes. Is there some sort of narrative that isn’t, or at least can’t be, appealing? That’s a qualitative issue, and not one related to the inherent nature of comics, or any other narrative medium. Some stories are appealing. Some stories aren’t. Good storytellers can take the most mundane story and make out of it something that makes the audience reevaluate the very nature of the world around them. Bad storytellers can take great ideas, strip them of all originality and vitality, and regurgitate them in a way that makes the audience feel debased and insulted.

A mode of expression is a box. Whether that box contains diamonds or dog%$#@ says something about the skill of the creator, not about the structural limits of the box.

And usurping the novel? What the actual hell? Again, any comparison that assumes an absolute scale of comparison between two narrative forms is misguided at best. If cinema has not entirely usurped the novel, comics won’t be the ones to knock the novel off its perch either.

Grandiose and unsupportable claims notwithstanding, there is a lot to like in this exhibit. There was also much that I found either flawed or frustrating.

The gallery featuring pages from Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner was simply amazing. Looking at these selections, there is no doubt why two of the biggest awards in the comics field are named after these creators. The Will Eisner Spirit story on display in the gallery is a revelation; The Spirit barely appears in the story but his absence creates the suspense that drives the story.

Then, the scale of many of the pieces on display was impressive. As a comics reader, I’m used to seeing art on the typical comic book sized page, or smaller. Many of the pieces in Lit Graphic were original art, rendered on illustration paper. When published, the camera-ready art is reduced to the appropriate size. As with any reproduction, the process eliminates some of the texture and detail of the drawn work. Seeing it as the artist intended showed off the skill, and the effort, and made these works all the more impressive.

Case in point, the selections from Dave Sim and Gerhard’s Cerebus. In particular, the cover illustration from the collected Church and State I is phenomenal when seen in a larger scale.

As anyone who has read Cerebus knows, Gerhard’s backgrounds are terrifically detailed, with intricate cross-hatching and meticulous shading, while Mr. Sim’s characters are designed down to the last wart and unfortunate hairdo. The reduced image on the “phone book” collection of the story simply can’t do justice to the amount of effort it takes to produce a piece like this, or the level of detail it contains.

Indeed, this may be the most meaningful contribution exhibitions like Lit Graphic make to the comics field. It’s not that showing comics in museums legitimizes this art form and allows people to play the “Comics aren’t just for kids!” card. Rather, these showings demonstrate that comics are (comics is?) art. Comics don’t need to be legitimized, they merely need to be seen from a different point of view. By displaying these works at the scale at which they were created, by showing every pen line and brush stroke, Lit Graphic demonstrates beyond any doubt the artistry of comic book art.

For me, this great strength was also part of Lit Graphic’s greatest weakness. While the artistry of the creators exhibited is diverse, taken in the aggregate the show feels like overkill. Howard Cruse and Jessica Abel, to pick two names from the exhibition group, are both wonderfully talented, incredibly engaging storytellers with unique artistic styles. Put them side by side (or in the case of Lit Graphic, in the same gallery) and the work of each creator remains distinctive and recognizable. Put them in a gallery with other (and in some cases, lesser) artists whose work encompasses slice of life narratives and the unique style of each artist begins to give way to a certain sameness of convention and form. Taken collectively as representative examples from larger works, these individual panels and sequences become, if not repetitive, then at least somewhat familiar. The similarities start to overshadow the differences in a way that does not happen with a collection of, say, portraits.

But no exhibition is perfect, especially those organized around a particular theme. Large group shows invariably include things that will resonate with some individuals, and leave others unimpressed. What I like may not appeal to everyone. What someone else likes, I may loathe. That’s part of the museum going experience. So long as the these works revolve around a curatorial idea that has the gravitational pull to hold the pieces together, the exhibition can work, regardless of the subjective preferences of any given visitor.

By presenting comic book art as art first and comics second, Lit Graphic does a great service to this unique and important art form. It is both interesting and appropriate for the Norman Rockwell museum to present an exhibition like this. Mr. Rockwell’s career and reputation embody the often dismissive tension between the respect afforded to the artist by the elite, and their dismissal of art with commercial appeal as mere illustration. Just as the museum (rightly) insits on Mr. Rockwell’s artistic legitimacy, so too Lit Graphic helps to legitimize comics.

That’s achievement enough without attempting to stake out exclusive narrative territory for comics alone.

Lit Graphic is on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum (9 Glendale Road, Route 183 Stockbridge, Massachusetts 01262; 413-298-4100 ) through May 26, 2008.

Would you like to buy an O? Toward an economic and lexographic analysis of the letter as commodity.

Among the few prized possessions of childhood that I haven’t chucked in a fit of unsentimental aceticism or austerity over the years is my copy of The Muppet Alphabet Album.

I randomly had the song “Would you like to buy an O?” pop into my head this morning. It’s a great song, but I found myself wondering: if it cost Ernie a nickel to buy an O in 1971, what would it cost to buy one in 2008 dollars?

In order to work this out, we have to first determine the value of comparable commodities to Ernie and the other denizens of Sesame Street. This requires that we first make a general determination of Ernie’s. On the one hand, he is old enough that he is able to live independently, or at least cohabit with a roommate. That suggests he has reached his majority. On the other hand, Ernie seems quite childish/childlike.

It is not necessary that Ernie’s age remains constant over time; what matters is his age in 1971, which is when the song appeared on The Muppet Alphabet Album. Beyond that, age isn’t the primary issue; it’s more a question of both buying power and type of products bought.

So, if an O cost a nickel, how does that compare to other things Ernie might have bought? A five-cent O was the equivalent of half a ten-cent soda (or one-sixth of a 30-cent malted) at Mister Hooper’s store.

To put this in some context, let’s consider the comic book as an example of Ernie’s consumer interest. In the real world, Action Comics sold for fifteen cents in early 1971, and shot up to a quarter by the end of the year. Thus, Ernie’s O was worth anywhere from one-third to one fifth of an issue of Action Comics. This makes sense, since there are two Os in the title Action Comics alone.

When you factor in the Approved by the Comics Code Authority, the O in the issue number [No. 400], plus any Os in other cover text ["The Duel of Doom"], it seems likely that DC comics must have negotiated some kind of volume discount, or at least purchased an unlimited use license for the right to use the O. Otherwise, where would Wonder Woman or Doom Patrol have been?

The reader must also remember that when you buy an O, you get not one, but two O sounds (long and short). On reflection, it seems the O purchase must be more of a licensing deal than a straight up purchase.

Back to Ernie, it would seem that even at a nickel, the O was a pretty good bargain, if Hooper’s sodas and comic books are reliable indices. What I have no way of knowing is what the going rate was for other commodities Ernie acquired (delicious pizza and yummy grape juice, as a way of illustrating the concepts of more and less; a mess of modeling clay for making a noseless bust of Bert, the better to steal Bert’s nose; a banana to stick in his ear) might have been, in the micro-economy of Sesame Street.

But, again, if we project based on what we know, we can start to make a pretty good guess. A 15-cent comic book from 1971 would cost $3.00 today, a twentyfold increase. Similarly, while a soda at Hooper’s would have cost 10 cents in 1971, it’s not unheard of for someone to pay $2 for a fountain soda as part of a restaurant meal. Again, twenty times more expensive.

If this comparison holds out, it would seem an O would fetch $1 in today’s market.

But consider that other factors contribute to price. On the one hand, the O is a static commodity. There haven’t been any significant innovations in its production or application over the past three and a half decades. Aside from routine maintenance, the manufacturer has not needed to make any significant capital investments on the production side. Granted, the number and variety of fonts has proliferated over the years, which gives the O a whole range of different looks, but these are aftermarket modifications rather than factory specifications, and should not affect the base cost.

Indeed, inflation notwithstanding, the only significant pressure on the manufacturing cost should be the cost of the raw materials used to produce the O. According to my best estimate; it takes 14 component parts to make an O; for the sake of convenience, let’s refer to these as parts A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, and N. Logically, any price increase among any of these materials (based on either scarcity or increased demand) must get passed on to the consumer. Consider that Apple alone has driven up the market price for I since the introduction of the first iMac, to say nothing of the iPod, iPhone, iTunes, and iMovie. Then there are is the degree to which the personal computing era and the whole internet age has increased demand for E: e-mail, e-commerce, etc. Finally, consider how language has evolved over the years, especially in youth culture; when Ernie bought his O, “lame” as a physical condition, and few people, if any, said “def” or “feh.”

On the other hand, as you rightly note, the O, like most other products, has become increasingly commoditized over the years. Back when Ernie was buying bananas to stick in his ear consumers might get one banana per bunch with a sticker on it.

Today, nearly every piece of loose produce one buys in the market carries a label. Taken by themselves, the marginal cost of these stickers is negligible. The larger issue is the branding and marketing costs that go into designing and developing a promotional campaign. Again, that’s a cost that gets passed on to the consumer.

Then, as you rightly note, the O has become identified with one of the most widely known and wildly successful celebrities around, Oprah Winfrey.

Given how lucrative the celebrity endorsement market is, her use of the O for her magazine, and other trademark ventures, must cost a pretty penny. Does the manufacturer eat this cost? Of course not. They recover the expense by charging the consumer more.

The marketplace of ideas has also evolved significantly since the early 1970s. While newspaper readership continues to fall, it seems like the number of magazines and niche interest publications increases every year. Then there is personal computing, word processing, the internet, blogging and text messaging; each has led to an explosion of content generation, which contributes significantly to the number of Os the average person uses in a given year. At previous licensing rates, the manufacturer must be losing money. Since the goal of business is profit, the only way to stem that loss is to increase the licensing fee.

Materials, marketing, endorsement, and licensing; each of these factors drives up the cost of the O beyond the rate of inflation. When you factor in all of these real and incidental costs, as well as shipping costs and retail markup, the going rate for an O could climb to as much as $2-$3, if not higher.

That said, the retail marketplace has evolved over the years in ways that may be detrimental to the retailer, but which may ultimately benefit the consumer.

The example of superstore retailers like Wal*Mart and Target, as well as wholesale clubs like CostCo and BJs provide economies of scale that result in savings to the consumer. At the same time, if the manufacturer is outsourcing production overseas or over the border, the reduction in labor costs should also put downward pressure on prices.

The unfortunate consequence of these savings is that independent retailers like Lefty the salesman cannot compete on price, and must compete on service if they are to remain in business. Available evidence suggests that by and large Lefty has a keen grasp of a service-oriented sales philosophy. He takes time with his customer. He describes the product in memorable terms (”round and neat;” “tidy and complete;” “circular and sweet.”). He points out key features and functionality (”You can sing a pretty song with it like so;” “you get two sounds for the price of one.”), and makes those features seem appealing by describing them with words like “catchy.”

Indeed, the only potential downside to the Lefty’s technique is that he may come off as too pushy for some customers when he tries to close the deal. As online research makes it possible for customers become increasingly informed consumers, the “Don’t ask any questions. Just buy the O and take it home tonight” approach must necessarily give way to a more persuasive, and less imperative sales strategy.

The author is deeply indebted to the groundbreaking work of Professors Henson, Oz, and Raposo of the Sesame Institute for Humor, Language, Numerical, Quantitative, and Ethical Development in guiding the creation of this presentation. Thanks also to Visiting Lecturer B. Bird, whose lyrical speech “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ” was an invaluable research resource. Finally, Professor Herbert Birdsfoot, author of the definitive exegesis on folkoric lexography, “The Tale of Tom Tattertall Tuttletut,” served as faculty advisor during the preparation of this work.

This post has been brought to you by the letters O and P, and by the number 12.

Bart’s Beefy Beans

So a few years back, we started making what may be the world’s simplest slow cooker meal: package of chicken breasts (with the packaging removed, natch), can of black beans, drained, jar of salsa. Cook all day on low (high if you start with frozen chicken). Shred the cooked (poached, really) chicken with a couple of forks, spoon into a pre-cheesed tortilla, roll up and enjoy. If you like your tortilla a little crispier, you can always put it seam side down in a skillet over medium heat for a minute or two, then flip to crisp up the other side. Simple, easy, pretty darn good, and comparatively healthy if you don’t get crazy with the cheese.

Then, a few years after that, we found ourselves stuck for what to have for dinner, without time to wait for the slow cooker. In a quick adaptation, I browned some ground turkey, tossed in the black beans and salsa, and created a ten minute version of the all day dish, one that has become a staple in our household. For some reason, we’ve taken to calling this recipe “beefy beans” despite the fact I’ve never once made it with beef.

A few days ago, after some early morning exercise, I was looking for something with protein in it for breakfast. I cracked out some of the previous night’s beefy beans filling, heated it up, and threw it in a bowl. In doing so, I realized I not only had a really basic burrito filling, but also the most basic homemade chili imaginable. Three ingredients, ten minutes. Sure, it’s only one small step removed from opening up a can of mass market chili, but there’s a world of difference contained in that small distance.

Once I started of thinking of this as a chili, I started thinking of other ways to use it: thrown into a chili cheese omelet; served over spaghetti as chili mac; spooned over tortilla chips, covered with cheese and turned into nachos. There’s a whole range of uses for this recipe, this idea, that never occured to me until I happened to look at it from a slightly different angle.

There’s probably a metaphor for life in there somewhere.

Iron Man (2008)

First things first: If you have not seen the film yet, and if you style yourself any sort of geek at all, stay through the credits. You will thank me. Of course, if you truly style yourself any sort of geek at all, odds are this little public service announcement is wholly unnecessary, as you wouldn’t dream of not staying through the credits.

Those post-credit thirty seconds? Best part of the movie, hands down, and a great setup for both a sequel and a spinoff. The leadup to the Big Reveal at the end was well telegraphed throughout the film. And while I personally prefer the classic version of the thing revealed I appreciate the sheer coolness of the parallel version chosen for this film.

I’ve drifted in and out of Iron Man over my thirty-plus years as a comics fan. More out that in, but the character has always been one I’ve generally liked. The film version of Iron Man does justice to the essential core of the character — wealthy industrialist weapons manufacturer forced by circumstance to confront his mortality, and his morality. Robert Downey, Jr. is note perfect in the lead role as Tony Stark/Iron Man. Beyond Stark, the supporting cast is solid, with Jeff Bridges the strongest of the bunch. That’s hardly surprising as giving a great actor a nice juicy villain role usually works out well in comic book movies.

As with any comic book movie, the man behind the mask is only half the equation; the mask — or in this case the armor — that defines the heroic persona is just as important. The Iron Man suit presented in this movie is easily one of the most note perfect translations of comic book gadgetry to the big screen. It helps that the core concept of the Iron Man armor over the decades has been almost constant revision and redesign (and the film plays with this convention very nicely, with Tony Stark suiting up in three different armors over the course of the origin story. It would have been easy enough to design something kinda robotic looking, paint it crimson and gold, and call it Iron Man, but Stan Winston and his crew did that one better; they created a believable translation from comic page to film. The models are terrific. You will believe a man in a cybernetic exosuit can fly.

In a summer movie season targeted at great geek expectations, including a new Hulk, a new Batman, and a new Indiana freakin’ Jones fer the luvva Pete, Iron Man started things off on a high note.

Indulgence

If healthy eating is a habit to be cultivated, then the corollary is that sometimes you have to throw broccoli and self-discipline to the wind and make a pilgrimage to the local dairy bar.

On a warm spring afternoon, there aren’t many things better than sitting at a picnic table amid good company, waiting for your order number — your first of the season — to be called over the PA system. Pay for your order and grab your tray. Quick detour to the condiment bar to load up on specimen cups of ketchup and mustard, each one too small to satisfy the dipping needs of even the dantiest and most fastidious diner, but you always end up getting too many. Back to the table. Pass around the food. Grab a couple of onion rings from the communal order in the middle of the table. Eat. Talk. Laugh. People watch; families, high school kids, seniors, a business type in shirtsleeves walking up to the counter for a decidedly non-business lunch.

You’ve definitely had — and made — a better burger, but context matters. Sunny day, picnic table, not a care in the world except whether or not to go back and order a chocolate frost.

Getting all up in your grill

A week of unseasonably nice weather (for a few days, Mother Nature leapfrogged over spring to give us a little taste of summer) turned this young man’s fancy to thoughts of…grilling. After a thorough — I’m still trying to get the last of the gunk out from under my nails — cleaning earlier in the week, I’ve celebrated the end of a long winter with a few nice grill-centric meals.

Grilling lines up nicely with the healthier eating kick we’re on here at the Modern family compound. As gas prices and food prices continue to rise, we’re making a real effort both to stretch our food dollar as much as we can and to devote the greatest possible percentage of every food dollar to the purchase of, you know, food. This makes trips to the market something of a balancing act. Real food, particularly things like produce, tend to be more expensive than the packaged, processed, partially hydrogenated, high-fructosized. You get more fruit roll-ups for your grocery dollar than you can real fruit.

Okay, so none of this is a revelation. I’ve known for a long time the difference between a real strawberry (or apple, or peach) and a machine-extruded strip of strawberryish plasticine. I know which one is better. I know which one is cheaper. So what’s the point, here?

At present, mindfulness is the point. At present, we’re thinking a lot more about our food when we buy it, and when we consume it.

I’ve always been a by the list grocery shopper. Obsessive-compulsively so at times. I’m not immune to the occasional impulse purchase or good deal, but by and large I have a plan and I stick to it. Improvisational grocery shopping doesn’t work for me; it’s too easy to go over budget, and even easier to load up on things that are not remotely necessary. Lately, in addition to making lists based on what we need, I’m also becoming a circular shopper.

For a long time now, I’ve shopped at one particular store. Not out of any tremendous sense of loyalty, but because they usually offer slightly better specials, which makes them the cost-effective option. Now that I’m shopping mindfully, which has had the added effect of further simplifying an already straightforward list, I’m comparison shopping among markets a lot more. With a pared down list, the value proposition of one store over another on any particular week becomes much easier to determine. I suppose if I were truly dedicated, I would make two or more lists, and break up my shopping trip to maximize value, but I’m not there yet. The gas price and time value costs of multiple shopping excursions outweigh any marginal savings, at least for the time being.

Like the markets themselves, the circulars offer a lot of deals on things I don’t need, heavily discounted in the hope of convinving me that maybe I do need them after all. So, while my actual frozen pizza (or processed cheese single, or store brand ketchup) need is zero, I have to consider whether loading up on ten frozen pizzas for ten bucks might not be such a bad idea. Fortunately, I’m sufficiently cynical that that line of thought usually culminates in the realization that convincing people that buying a whole lot of something they don’t need is a “savings” is part of the reason our economy and our collective values are so screwed up.

So it’s grilling season, and I can get a good deal on a rainbow assortment of grilling sauces and marinades featuring our good friend high-fructose corn syrup, and its hench-additives, the nefarious twins artificial and natural flavor.

Here’s my thing: given a reasonably well-stocked pantry, who needs prepackaged sauces? How hard is it to mix soy sauce and ginger to make a soy-ginger marinade? Absent a smoker to give you the tang of mesquite, why not just add a couple drops of liquid smoke to some chili and lime juice? Sure, chipotles in adobo aren’t a staple in some households, but a choice between a chemical slurry of faux chipotle and mesquite flavor and picking up a can of chilis is really no choice at all. Lemon-pepper? Herb and garlic? Make them at home. They’ll taste better, and you’ll have more control over what goes onto your food.

I speak from guilty experience when I say the main reason people opt for prepackaged sauces is time and convenience. Open the bottle, glug a portion over your food, mix it up to evenly distribute the marinade, and let it sit. Elapsed time, maybe 30 seconds. Simplicity itself.

Know what else is simple? Take a clove or two of garlic, and chop it finely. Transfer to a small bowl. Give it a few shakes of oregano and basil (or toss in a chiffonade of fresh herbs if you have them on hand). Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, half again as much lemon juice, and a dollop each of mustard and honey. Whisk to emulsify. Pour over a boneless pork tenderloin and distribute evenly over the meat. Elapsed time, maybe three minutes, four if you take a minute to rinse out the bowl and clean your knife and cutting board. The result, however, is at least six times better than the prepackaged option:

Preheat your grill to medium-high heat. Remove the tenderloin from the marinade, and wipe off any excess. Sear the tenderloin on all sides, then grill covered for 20-25 minutes, turning periodically. Let the meat rest for five minutes before slicing. Accompaniments at the cook’s discretion (grilled tortilla and a cucumber salad go very well with this meal).

The Conclave of Shadows (series), by Raymond E. Feist

Hey, kids! Do you like fantasy stories?

How about a good revenge story?

And redemption stories; how do you feel about them?

If these are the sort of things that ring your literary bell, you could do worse than to check out this series (comprising Talon of the Silver Hawk, King of Foxes, and Exile’s Return) set in Raymond E. Feist’s Midkemia. This is the severalth series of Mr. Feist’s that takes place in that world, but encyclopedic prior knowledge is not required to follow or enjoy these books. Personally, while I have read the Riftwar series, I have not read any of the intervening Midkemia books; although the Conclave of Shadows books make reference to events in the earlier books, I found these references came with enough context that I could either understand or infer the necessary details.

The books make for quick and entertaining reading, if fantasy is your kind of thing. While the series is self-contained, it ends with a cliffhanger that sets up the next Midkemia series. Indeed, the ending plays like the season finale of a fantasy or science fiction television series, with a reveal that just begs for a To be continued…

If I could figure out how to market this, I’d be rich (Warning: contains satire)

It’s Hacksercize, the new fitness craze*!

Here’s how it works:

1) Get the flu.

2) Cough for, like, three days straight.

3) By the end of the first day, you’ll be amazed at how much of a workout this simple coughing regimen gives to various muscles and muscle groups, including your abs, pecs, obliques, and trapezius…trapeziuses…trapezii…whatever.

4) By the end of the third day, amazement will have given way to whimpering, bargaining with the infinite for deliverance from the pain, and heartfelt promises to make eating better and exercising more a regular part of your daily routine.

*Don’t try this at home. Really.

I’m havin’ an ‘art attack

At the risk of once again laying siege to the unenviable blogging niche of MASS MoCA apologist and New York magazine scold, I’ll note the magazine once again gives short shrift (whether intentionally or carelessly, I hesitate to speculate) to the museum.

The April 7, 2008, issue of New York magazine featured a profile of photographer Gregory Crewdson by Amy Larocca. In her piece, Ms. Larocca wrote,

Crewdson produces large-scale, elaborately constructed photographs taken in and around the town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where the Crewdson family has forever had a small log cabin in the woods.

She went on to note,

Crewdson’s method of photography is highly unusual; he has not taken a picture all by himself for the last ten years, save the occasional snapshot of his kids. He works with a crew of about 40: lighting, set, production designers, and even a director of photography.

Interestingly enough, it turns out there is a large contemporary art facility in the vacinity of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, that has hosted Mr. Crewdson and his crew in the past.

As always, let’s remember that correlation does not equal causation. The fact that New York magazine failed to acknowledge MASS MoCA’s positive contributions (such as supporting Mr. Crewdson’s work, or being the first site to exhibit Cai Guo Qiang’s Inopportune) while commenting critically on its challenges (as with its one-sided and rather judgmental coverage of l’affair Büchel) does not indicate a conspiracy on the part of the magazine against the museum. On the other hand, we all have our biases. While mine run in favor of scrappy museums in rural New England, it’s not surprising that New York magazine has a vested interest in preserving New York as the center of the art universe, and indeed of projecting and championing the image of New York as the center of every conceivable universe.

Where I have a problem — not just in the case of New York magazine, but in every corner where this lamentable facet of the human condition rears its ugly head — is with the notion that one person or organization’s success somehow threatens someone else’s identity. Is New York, the city, the magazine, or the concept, really lessened if something wonderful didn’t originate there? Are the museums, galleries, and theatres of the city truly diminished just because some museum, gallery, or theatre might get there first from time to time?

Back from Hell

In college, there was a small parking lot near the residence hall where various of my friends who worked on campus during the summer lived. As a local, and without an on-campus summer job that provided housing, I lived at home, but spent most of my free time on campus. As the closest parking spaces to the residence, these spaces were always in demand.

There were seven spaces, which we ended up naming The Magnificent Seven. Not content with merely naming the lot, we not only went on to name the spaces after the actors who played the Seven in the 1960 cinematic classic, but we did so in order of decreasing badassitude. Thus, the space closest to the building was McQueen, followed by Brynner, Coburn, Bronson, Vaughn, Dexter, and Bucholz.

There is room to argue the respective rankings of Coburn versus Bronson. On an unweighted scale, Charles Bronson has the edge. He’s the only actor who hits the guy movie trifecta, having appeared in The Dirty Dozen, The Magnificent Seven, and The Great Escape. That’s a strong argument in his favor. On the other hand, the characters he played in these films are all cut from the same basic laconic and competent cloth. Being badass is also about being cool, and in The Magnificent Seven, Our Man Flint has it all over Mr. Majestyk.

When parking, you always hoped McQueen or Brynner would be available, settled for Coburn, Bronson, or Vaughn, and felt cheated if you got stuck with Dexter or Bucholz. Regardless, invoking Elmer Bernstein’s famous score was a karmic necessity to securing any of these much in demand spaces.

This ritual notwithstanding, I love The Magnificent Seven on its cinematic merits as well. While I certainly enjoy the coolness of the top tier characters, I’ve always had a soft spot for Robert Vaughn’s Lee. What can I say? I’ve always liked characters with a broad fatalistic streak. Lee is a man past his prime, and he knows it. Even though he’s lost the spark that defines him, he can’t stop being what he is, even as he know that what his is will be his downfall. In the film he talks about losing that spark. He says, “You can feel it. Then you wait… for the bullet in the gun that is faster than you are.”

I spent a lot of time thinking about the whole gunslinger past his prime trope last week. My friend the Stoat informed me of the Hell Night
dinners* at the East Coast Grill in Cambridge. Fortunately, a business trip to Boston coincided with a Hell Night, and we were able to check it out.

I’m a big fan of spicy foods. I’m one of those “the hotter the better, bring the pain mother@#$%er” types. You know, the obnoxious ones. I’m not one of the obsessives with a refrigerator full of boutique hot sauces, but given the opportunity to cauterize my taste buds, I’ll take it. It’s gotten me into some trouble over the years, as when my boast about my cast iron taste buds fell afoul of a chicken vindaloo that was well within my tolerance, but which sent a dollop of sauce down the wrong side of my windpipe on the first bite, causing me to lose all face among by dinner companions. By and large though, I like to test the limits of my endurance.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed to my distress that my endurance was starting to have demonstrable limits. I hadn’t yet had my fateful encounter with the bullet (pepper) that was faster than I was, but I had to start acknowledging that such a pepper existed, and that it would find me some day.

So I was approaching Hell Night the way Robert Vaughn’s Lee approached the mission to save the village: as a chance to either face down a challenge worthy of my greatness, or to meet my end at the hands of foe worthy of taking me down.

I’m pleased to report that for one night, I found a third option: renewal. I not only faced my peppery nemeses, but conquered them.

I began my meal with habañero tequila, on the theory that if I was indeed courting doom, then as the poet says “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.” Of the quality of the tequila I can make no report as the only thing I experienced of the drink was the heat of the habañero. I wouldn’t counsel drinking more than one of them, but it was a good way to start the meal. It was no so much a palate cleanser as a palate obliterator The tequila came with something the menu called sangrita as a chaser, but I can’t actually report any specifics. It was sorta pulpy, like maybe guava or tomato juice. It maybe had some flecks of chile in it. It went well with the habañero. It didn’t so much cool the flames, as provide counterpoint and restoration, making it possible to appreciate the flavors and complexities of the rest of the meal.

For an appetizer, I had spicy thai skirt stix, peppery beef skewers served with a spicy green dipping sauce almost like a chimichurri, and a thinner, but equally piquant chili vineagar. The beef was tender and flavorful, and the appetizer almost made me regret not ordering the skirt steak from the entree menu. The Stoat’s jalapeño cheddar Tasso hush puppies were terrific as well.

I chose the “Pissah Pork” as my entrée. This was a mixed grill consisting of blazing roast pork butt, an incandescent barbequed rib and a thermonuclear sausage-stuffed grilled banana. The sausage was like a chorizo made with habañero, and was easily the hottest thing on the plate. I suspect the banana was supposed to tame the heat somewhat, but it failed at this duty quite spectacularly, while providing a really interesting flavor combination. The rib was perfectly cooked, and featured both tender and cracklingly crisp bits, all wrapped in just the right amount of sticky spiciness. The butt was out of this world. The pork was rich enough to retain its own flavor, and subtle enough to serve as a delivery system for a really complex combination of herbs and peppers.

Of the various items on the entrée menu, there was only one that promised to be hotter than the pork, which was rated at five out of six bombs. There was a six-bomb lamb shank on the menu. Tempting though it was, I opted for the variety offered by the Pissah Pork. As so often happens, the decision was made easier by the choice of sides that came with each entree. The lamb came with basmati rice and spinach, both of which are perfectly respectable accompaniments, and ones I happen to enjoy. On the other hand, the pork came with mashed sweet potatoes and grilled pineapple. There are few things on this earth that will make me pass up grilled pineapple, and neither spinach nor basmati rice is on that short list. The pineapple was a terrific accompaniment. The chili mashed sweet potatoes were even better: sweet, creamy, and peppery. Both of these sides, along with the banana that came with the sausage, served as a reminder of how well sweet and hot flavors combine, and why that combination is the cornerstone of so many Caribbean sauces.

In the end, I don’t know whether this meal represented my last hurrah or a true Renaissance. As the final tolerably hot meal of my spicy food career, it was a fitting capstone. As a return to form, it makes me yearn for the next challenge. Whether I’m riding into the sunset, or merely over the horizon, this gunslinger sits high in the saddle.

*While the Hell Night writeup also uses the the chilehead as gunfighter metaphor, I thought about it this way before I visited the East Coast Grill website.

Over 1,000? Really?

I may have found the single most pointles and unnecessary book on the planet: The Ultimate Little Martini Book, by Ray Foley.

The cover of the book promises that it contains over 1,000 martini recipes. I find that interesting, given there is only one way to make a martini:

Gin plus dry vermouth in whatever ratio appeals to the imbiber’s palate, blended (shaken, stirred, or otherwise agitated) in a cocktail shaker with ice, strained into a martini glass or served over the rocks, and garnished with some number of olives, the quantity determined by the bartender, or a twist of lemon if the drinker prefers.

That’s it.

There are only three acceptable variants:

The vodka martini: replace the gin with vodka. If you must.

The Vesper, as concocted by James Bond in Casino Royale: 3 parts gin; 1 part vodka; 1/2 part Kina Lillet; shaken and garnished with lemon.

The dirty martini: the standard martini plus a measure of olive brine.

That’s it. Anything beyond that is a gin or vodka cocktail, but it is not a martini. Once you pick up a book with 1,000 recipes and start messing with apple or chocolate, or anise or orange you are no longer in martini territory. It’s a fair bet that any establishment that pretends otherwise, and offers a rainbow assortment of ersatz martinis, is a place where you won’t find a good rendition of the real McCoy.

The Stoatsack Dispatch #1: The Children of Men, by P.D. James

Toward the end of last year, my friend the Stoat came for a visit. One of the (many) reasons we’ve sustained our friendship down through the years is a shared love of, and largely complimentary taste in, books. Her shelves regularly serve as an extended foster care facility for portions of my collection, and some of her books sublet space on my shelves. Books one of us has obtained, read, and enjoyed enough to recommend get passed along, along with the responsibility for their final dispensation (continued passing down a chain of readers, donated to a library book sale, consigned to moulder in a box in the closet).

Our taste is similar enough that most things one of us likes will appeal to both of us. We’re individual enough that sometimes our tastes diverge in interesting ways. This is good. After all, if all we encountered were people who simply mirrored ourselves back to us, how much less interesting a world would we live in? Finally, there are times when a recommendation backfires: in my defense, I thought Make Love* (*the Bruce Campbell Way) was a thoughtful gift. I was wrong. While I yield to no geek in my appreciation of Mr. Campbell’s work, this book was unfinishably unfortunate.

During the visit in question, my friend brought me a largeish paper bag full of books (the eponymous Stoatsack). It’s an interesting assortment: some mystery, some fantasy, a swashbuckling pirate tale, and a few others. I decided to use the Stoatsack as a strategic reading reserve, something to dip into when I’m between books or when nothing on my reading pile grabs my interest.

Faced with both of these requirements recently, and garnished with an impending airplane trip, I started the Stoatsack odyssey with P.D. James’s The Children of Men. I’ll admit I was not a tremendous fan of Ms. James going into this book; I’ve started a few of her mystery novels over the years, but never managed to finish one. In addition, my interest in reading this book was motivated more by wanting to see the film adaptation (I try to adhere to the rule of not seeing the movie until I read the book) than in any real desire to give Ms. James one more try.

Having completed the novel, I look forward to watching the movie. I can’t say I feel any particular sense of urgency about picking up another P.D. James novel.

The book presents a world in which the birth rate has declined to zero as a result of collective male infertility. The cause of this condition is never revealed. Indeed, it is somewhat beside the point, as the novel chronicles the consequences of this reality, rather than the condition itself.

Faced with the impending extinction of the human race, global society has largely collapsed. England is largely immune from chaos, due to the machinations of its seemingly benign dictator, the Warden Xan.

Xan’s cousin, Theo Faron, becomes involved with a group of revolutionaries who want to force Xan to practice the democracy he claims to champion. Through his involvement with the group, Theo, a historian and academic content to allow the ending of the world unfold as long as it does not impinge on his solitude, finds a reason to abandon his passive stance, and becomes central to a struggle — and a secret — that may herald a new status quo.

The book is about its themes more than its content. It is about how society responds to the collapse of established order. In Ms. James case, this collapse comes in the form of the absence of children. It could just as well come in the form of rising sea levels, or atomic devastation, or any other extinction event, and the questions would be the same. How does the human race go on beyond hope? Why does the race go on? How can faith survive? Who will maintain order, and what liberties will they sacrifice in the name of order? What happens to those who refuse to look away, or to those forced to look at truths they prefer to avoid? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? How thin is the line between these imperatives?

About ten years back, during one of my periodic re-readings of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I noticed something that had never occurred to me previously. Great swaths of the story are conveyed in exposition. Mr. Tolkien’s sense of place and attention to detail meant that the characters’ journeys where documented in exhaustive detail, with every feature of the landscape given attention perhaps beyond its due. This same level of meticulous taxonomy plagues the later sections of The Children of Men. As the novel builds toward its conclusion, the pace of the story becomes (frustratingly) tempered with descriptions of forests, and bridges, lakes, and lodges.

Detail is important. Ms. James is quite effective at establishing that while the forests and lakes will abide, the bridges and lodges will outlast their creators if nothing fundamental changes. When the change comes, why delay its arrival through fidelity to the extraneous?

Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell

Follow along; this one takes some explaining.

A few weeks back, a friend of mine mentioned he was involved in a community project. He indicated that my name had come up among the group responsible for the project as someone who should be involved in the organization of the project.

I thought about it for a while, both because I would like the project to succeed, and because I have a tendency to be so flattered by invitations that I fail to give sufficient consideration to what I’m being asked to do. Or, to put it more theatrically, “I’m jest a girl who cain’t say no.”

Fortunately, in this case, I spent enough time in reflection to realize that: a) I don’t have the time to get involved in another project right now; b) I lack the skill set required for the role I was being asked to play, and; c) while I have every expectation that this undertaking will succeed, the person in the position about which I was approached would be the obvious fall guy should anything go wrong.

I shared these conclusions with my friend. He responded by saying in effect, “The fact you put thought into the reasons you don’t want to do X is part of the reason I think you ought to do Y.”

This reminded me of the sequence in Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential about people who got into the restaurant game for all the wrong reasons. In particular, my friend’s encouragement (gratifying as it was) was reminiscent of the budding restauranteurs who were flattered into the business with praise for their ability to throw wonderful dinner parties, or their extensive knowledge of French wines, or their antique collections. In these cases, people who emprically have no business running a business allow ego, flattery, and the machinations of friends hoping to cadge free drinks and meals to blind them to reality. I have just enough understanding of reality to understand why my friend’s suggestion would be a Bad Idea, but enough ego that it’s hard to ignore that little, “Weeellll, maybe,” voice in the back of my head; the voice that would almost assuredly lead me to ruin.

Reflecting on this part of Kitchen Confidential compelled me to reread the book, which in turn brought me to Down and Out In Paris and London, a novel which Mr. Bourdain recommends.

In the first half of the book, Mr. Orwell’s nameless, autobiographical, narrator lives on the boundary between poverty and homelessness. He manages to pay rent, but must often go wthout food to do so. He pawns his clothes to pay his basic expenses. Eventually, he ekes out a subsitence living as a plongeur, or kitchen slave (dishwasher, and general factotum) in a Paris hotel. His insights about the inner workings of restaurants are a product of their time in many ways, but the social, cultural, and economic divide between the people who prepare restaurant food and those who consume it has a truth