One of these things is not like the others…
The one that looks slightly more, well, excited, is Henrik Rummel – one of the US Olympic rowers. Just when you think it’s the pool guys that offer the most intriguing views, the rowers throw on some spandex and suddenly Mr Rummel’s a human sundial.
Welcome to the Wonderland of Zonderland. This guy set the high bar, well, high – and deservedly won the gold medal for the Netherlands.
We were driving along the outskirts of Amsterdam, having just had dinner with my family. The sun was setting and the golden hour was upon us. I’d asked Andy to take this route home so I could grab some photos. As we passed one of the old homes, I noticed a surprising sign on the side of the house: ‘Save Us, Girl Scouts’. My heart warmed to think of my hometown as being so progressive to put such a clever anti-boy scouts message up after that organization had maintained its anti-gay policies.
“Wait, pull in here,” I said to Andy. “I want to get a picture of that sign.” We entered the gravel driveway and maneuvered around a dilapidated truck. I lowered my window and tried to get a few shots, but the angle was wrong. “No, back in and get closer,” I instructed. I still couldn’t get a decent photo, so I hopped out and walked a little closer to the house. I framed the sign and snapped a few pictures. Andy was turning the car around. The gravel crackled in the background.
I looked at the house. Near the sign hung a rusty star, over-sized as I got nearer. The house, on closer inspection, was not well-kept. I read the sign again: ‘Save Us, Girl Scouts’. Something was wrong. My initial reading of what that meant was off. This wasn’t an anti-boy scouts message, this was a message asking the girl scouts to follow in their anti-gay wake. By this time, Andy had gotten out of the car and was walking toward me.
“Get back in the car,” I said urgently. “We have to get back in the car now.” He wasn’t moving quickly and a sliver of terror ran through my body. “Andy, now,” I repeated, raising my voice. There wasn’t time to explain. I slammed the door behind me and slumped down in the seat. “Go faster, you have to go faster,” I pleaded as he slowly, too slowly, started driving away. I thought I heard two loud cracks against the car. “They’re shooting at us, go!” I screamed.
At the end of the driveway, Andy slowed to check if it was okay to go. A car was coming and he had to stop. I saw the long end of the rifle first, then just the beard and mustache of the lower half of the man’s face. “Get out of the car,” he said to my husband. I racked my brain for an outrageous tale to explain us. I wondered if we should try to pretend we were straight. I prayed that Andy would not get out of the car and try to be a policeman. All I felt was fear – the fear of being hated – and the powerlessness against that rendered me silent. Andy started to open the door…
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I gasped and sat up in bed. It was still dark out. Andy stirred a bit beside me. It had only been a dream. I threw the sheets off my sweaty body and laid back down. This is how being hated manifests itself, I thought. This is how terror infiltrates the mind. This is how the Pope, and the Boy Scouts, and Chick-fil-A, and anyone who has made subtle or not-so-subtle anti-gay remarks or actions work to break us. We can pretend to be strong, we can pretend it doesn’t matter, we can pretend that they have the right to their beliefs, but this is what happens. I’m just glad that this time it only happened in my mind.
Despite what I’ve been posting here, there is more to the Olympics than guy candy, Speedos, & bulges. For me, the most enjoyable part of the whole thing is when good sportsmanship is in evidence. These are athletes who have devoted their whole lives to being the best that they can be – and they all seem to understand that the other athletes have done the same thing. There is a competitive camaraderie that’s tangible, and though they each want to win the gold, for the most part they are not sore losers if they don’t. This is the sort of thing missing from the professional organized sports I usually hear about in this country – football, baseball, & basketball – to say nothing of the parents of Pee Wee baseball kids.
I am continuously moved to see people from different countries coming together, embracing at their triumphs and setbacks, but through it all united as one body of supremely-talented athletes. Apart from the thrilling spectacle of a perfect routine or game, it is the picture of two athletes supporting each other in their success, no matter the outcome. Yes, there are probably just as many icy stares and non-hugs when you’re at that level and the dreams of a medal don’t pan out, but Mr. Mikulak was a gracious reminder of the very best of these Olympic games. It’s not just about talent, it’s also about attitude. On that night he may not have won a medal, but his heart was pure gold.
This is Epke Zonderland, a gold medalist from the Netherlands. The name alone would be worthy of admiration, but he’s got the body to further back it up.
{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
Once upon a time I played the oboe. I wasn’t horrendous at it, but I certainly wasn’t the best. The oboe is not an easy instrument to play, and its temperamental home-made double-reed nastiness is not the easiest thing to master, but I did my best. No teacher in the Amsterdam School District had a strong-enough background in the oboe, so if I was to excel I had to get private lessons from someone outside the area. My goal, half-concocted by my parents to pad my extracurricular activities for my college career, was to make it into the Empire State Youth Orchestra.
Thus began my oboe lessons under the tutelage of a Mrs. Green, who lived a few towns away, in Ballston Spa. It was about a 45 minute trek through the back roads and winding woods of upstate New York, heading from Amsterdam towards Saratoga. Not at all an unpleasant ride, if you’re making it for happier reasons than weekly instrumental lessons, and not the most fun in the treachery of winter, but a pretty enough journey nonetheless.
It can also be a long road when a tortured adolescent is not speaking to his family, so perhaps both my Mom and I were glad for the silence-filler of Madonna on perpetual play. For some reason, this song stands out as representative of those journeys, especially in the spring to summer of 1991.
A cut from her majestic ‘Like A Prayer’ album, this was Madonna at her most sensitive and thoughtful, singing whimsical lyrics in a love letter to childhood. With its orchestral intro, string-laden melody, and brass bridge breakdown, this was closest to a ‘classical music’ song that Madonna has ever attempted. As such, it’s an anomaly in the Madonna canon, but a gorgeous one.
The back-story is that Madonna wrote this for the daughter of her main producing partner at the time, Pat Leonard (the person responsible for some of her most powerful and iconic songs, such as ‘Like A Prayer’, ‘Live to Tell’, and ‘Papa Don’t Preach’.) In that respect, it marks one of the only Madonna songs that is clearly about a specific, and named, person; usually she takes the universal route, one of the calling cards of lasting pop songs. Leonard was an integral part of the now classical period from 1986 to 1989 that cemented Madonna as an icon, and this song is the least she could have done for his child.
It doubles as an ode to innocence and the magic of being a child. So much of Madonna’s persona has been tinged with a childlike, slightly mischievous, impetuous nature (the very anti-thesis of the coldly calculating woman that many mistakenly believe her to be) that this is, remarkably, a rather revelatory dreamscape of pretend.
For me, it was a last grasp at a childhood that was fading just as that Spring and Summer matured. In the car on the way to those oboe lessons, the afternoon sun rendered dappled beneath the bright green canopy, I sat in the backseat, reading or grabbing a nap or simply looking out the window, watching for the tell-tale signs of the seasons. The land seemed greener then, less hot and dry, and summers stretched out without any end in sight.
I honed my oboe skills, learning to make my own reeds by hand, running beeswax alonog the string, soaking the stems until malleable, delicately shaving off the tips to find the perfect sound. Reed-making was as much about luck as science for me, a tricky little part of being a decent oboe player. While other oboe-players ordered pre-made reeds, I was not allowed such ease, and it made me a better player. I understand the result of hard work, and how much more it meant. That summer, I practiced and improved, and by Fall I was ready to audition. Even if I wasn’t as good as the first oboist (I eventually made it into the Repertory Orchestra, and then the Youth Orchestra), I had the satisfaction of knowing how to make a double reed, the pride in crafting my own sound, from my own hands.
It paid off, and whether it was the oboe or my grades or my application essays, I made it into every college to which I applied. (I still remember the recruiter from Boston College challenging me as to what extra stuff I had to offer the school, to which I said I was in several orchestras: “Yeah, but unless you play something like the oboe you’re not that different from everyone else – what instrument do you play?” Yeah, the oboe.)
My heart, however, did not belong to the instrument. I didn’t like performing in concerts (I was a nervous wreck), and I didn’t have the drive or ambition to go much further than the college orchestra at Brandeis (which I was dragged into after much kicking and screaming, and only for one year). I also didn’t have the love for the oboe that a truly great musician must have. The orchestral stints, the practicing, the reed-making – they were simply a means to an end – the end result being getting into a good school. It was a cold and calculated move, devoid of the passion and heat of which any worthy artistic endeavor should be comprised. There was a lesson there too, a very valuable one.
I’d gone into Brandeis with a vague notion, mostly instilled by my parents, that I should major in something scientific. While it was no secret they’d have been thrilled if I went into the medical field, I wanted nothing to do with that. Up until that moment, I’d done what I supposed to do – and my oboe playing, even with its moments of enjoyment, was not something I would have pursued on my own. When given the chance to give it up, I did. Not with anger or resentment, but with the realization that it wasn’t for me.
The same went for my scientific career. After a tough ‘Brain: From Molecules to Perception’ course, in which I managed to go from an ‘F’ to an ‘A’ in the course of a semester, I had to admit that my strengths were not in the sciences, but in the realm of words. It was exactly the opposite of the vision my parents had for, and about, me. I went to my adviser, and changed my major at the end of the second semester. I felt relief, freedom, happiness, and hope. It was the first of many moves where I went against what I was supposed to do, and in the end became richer for it.
Madonna was leaving her past behind too, saying good-bye to the 80’s – the decade in which she ‘ruled the world’ – and entering the brave new world of the last decade of the century. The rocky period of adulthood loomed ahead of both of us. For now, though, there was this song of childhood. We could hold onto it for a little while longer.
If you’re going to be bad, you should be really, really bad. To that end, this recipe for Lobster & Truffle Oil Mac-&-Cheese. Based on a ridiculously heart-attack-inducing mac-&-cheese recipe from Patti LaBelle (her Over-the-Rainbow version), this has been modified to include lobster, and the accompanying seasonings. The key change-up is the addition of the sherry and nutmeg, and the switch to a bit of Gruyere. The Velveeta stays the same.
We served it with a bunch of blanched green beans, simply prepared with some butter and sea salt. It was an inconsequential nod to something green and healthy, slightly off-set by the butter and salt, but with the lobster mac-&-cheese, it’s a drop in the ocean.
Lobster Mac-&-Cheese
Ingredients:
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 lb. elbow macaroni
1 lb. cooked lobster meat, roughly chopped
1 stick butter (8 Tbsp.)
1/2 cup shredded Gruyere cheese
1/2 cup shredded mild cheddar cheese
1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
2 cups half-and-half
1/4 cup dry sherry
1 cup (8 oz.) Velveeta, cut into small cubes
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon truffle oil
1 cup bread crumbs
Directions:
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter a deep 2 1/2 quart casserole.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the oil, then the macaroni. Cook until just tender (al dente) according to package instructions (about 7 minutes). Do not overcook. Drain well and return to pot.
In small pan, melt stick of butter and stir into the macaroni.
In large bowl, mix cheeses together. Add about 1 1/2 cups of this to macaroni, saving remaining for top. Add Velveeta, half-and-half, sherry, eggs, seasonings, and truffle oil to macaroni and mix well.
Transfer to buttered casserole dish. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and breadcrumbs, then dot with butter. Bake until bubbling around edges, about 35 minutes.
To all you guys who ever described yourselves as having a swimmer’s build, you can take it back now.
This is Britain’s Tom Daley, and this is how it’s done.
Now if you’ll excuse, I have some three-month-fasting to do, with a side of manorexia.
{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
Looks like I jumped the gun on this one by talking about it a few days in advance, but I had no way of knowing that the next random selection of the iPod would be the one I just referenced a week or two ago. This is a historic occasion, as it marks the first time the Madonna Timeline selection lines up perfectly with the current Madonna single. It’s a testament to her endurance, and a fantastic selection for a summer anthem.
This is, at first glance, classic carefree Madonna at her dance-poppy best – a return to her ‘Holiday’ roots, where it all began some 30 odd years ago. (For those who doubt her legendary status, think about this: it just entered the Billboard Dance chart as her 60th entry there. That’s right, 60.)
Madonna has never been one to look back – it’s one of her most admirable qualities, and the very thing that has kept her forward-moving career on that one singular track. A lot of her fans would have her simply repeat former-glories, but that’s never been her way. Even if she winks back at what she’s done (as she does both in this song and its accompanying video), she’s never been about the past.
She’s also been about the power of a pop song to transcend its limited boundaries, becoming an epiphany unto itself – the very act of escapism as its own goal – and ‘Turn Up the Radio’ re-asserts her mastery of the genre. I’m not going to claim there’s anything ground-breaking here, and those who have never been under her spell may cry banality (like they always do when dissecting her lyrics), but the glorious majesty of a catchy melody wins out. Score one for ear candy over lyrical dinner. And yet there may be something deeper here…
At first I thought this was going to be a straight-forward reading of a perfectly-crafted summer pop ditty. The infectiousness is there, the timeliness is present, the video is a slightly nostalgic reminder of the simple premise of having a good time, but the last few times I was listening to this (in the shower, of course, and in the car), a new reading struck me.
Maybe it was the rocky start to this season, and the resulting melancholy (the nightmare of jury duty still haunts me), but it suddenly seemed that this song wasn’t just about having a good time, it was about insisting upon it – begging, pleading, and crying for it. This wasn’t a simple ode to a joyful moment. This was a desperate cry for escape and deliverance.
It brought to mind Adrienne Rich’s poem ‘The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven Understood At Last As a Sexual Message’ in which the poet turns the ‘Ode of Joy’ by Beethoven into a harrowing description of rage and anger. This was what I was thinking about when trying desperately to get back into the song, to find the joy again. I found myself singing, and then screaming, along with these very lyrics, this part right here, and I couldn’t tell the tears from the shower water or the rain, I just pounded wet fists against whatever would withstand them.
As the percussion trampled with its stomping beat and the music raced to its inevitable release, I tried tearing a hole in my despondence, ripping away at the heart that gave both light and darkness, inconceivable happiness and inconsolable sorrow, in a dance of desperation ~ a dance to the death of something.
The torrents fall down, the world crashes around, and like flotsam I feel like I’m floating in the lost abyss of an open sea, drifting and flailing and powerless to the ebb and flow of a life swirled beyond my control.
And I cling desperately onto the silly things that once mattered, that once seemed to make all the difference, and nothing seems to help. It is all so pointless, so futile, so damning – and so we fight for the fun and escape, for the way out of our miserable little lives, for the only way we know how.
Song #73: ‘Turn Up the Radio’ – Summer 2012
The Victory Café in Albany has never disappointed me – in all the years of work parties and get-togethers, bridal showers, baby showers, golden showers – I’ve always enjoyed the food and the friendly staff. However, once in a great while they go above and beyond their normal standard of deliciousness, and that is when they serve the following:
24 Karat Pulled Pork Melt on Jalapeno Corn Bread with Bacon, Caramelized Onions, and Pepper Jack Cheese Served with Potato Salad
Now, take a moment for that to sink in. Imagine, if you will, the singular taste sensation that results when these ingredients are put together, smoldering and melting into one another ~ the spicy heat of the jalapeno corn bread and pepper jack cheese, the sultry sweetness of the caramelized onions, the jaunty textural spike of crisp bacon, and that savory, smoky melt-in-your-mouth richness of 24 karat pulled pork. Its golden moniker is no accident, and it more than lives up to the billing.
It is, quite simply, the best sandwich in the world. I don’t use that term lightly, and I don’t use it often, so you know I mean business. I only wish they had it more often – I wait and wait and wait and it only shows up once every few months. (Which, given its likely caloric make-up, is probably best for my pants.) That also might be the reason for its goodness – the fleeting always tastes better.
When the tiny two-table farmer’s market was selling sweet corn last week, I jumped at the chance to pick up a few ears and grill them. I’d talked to a few people who did it, and they said it was something to be tasted. Now, I’m not a big fan of the traditional grilled taste. I’ll never understand the appeal of eating charred, carbon-coated burned victims, but our new grill has been doing a nice job of cooking things perfectly without that off-putting aspect.
For the corn, I was advised to soak the entire ear – husk and silk and all intact – for at least an hour, then grill it on a medium setting for twenty minutes, turning once or twice. That’s the kind of simple instruction I can get on board with, and after the twenty minutes was up, I started to shuck the corn and check out the results.
They were better than expected. The grilled (or “charredâ€) bits were shucked off and thrown away, and what was left was a juicy corn cob, not watered down, and with none of the flavor leached out. It was so much better than the boiled version I had known all my life. It’s a good moment when you try something new and it turns out to be such an improvement.
After posting a pic on FaceBook a few people said the next thing to try was to partially husk it, slather with flavored butter, then wrap it back up and grill from there. That does sound good, but might be one step too far. It’s always better to keep things simple, especially in the summer.
There was a great article in the New York Times this past Sunday on shyness. In it, the author discovers a number of outwardly outgoing people (Chris Rock included) who have been crippled with debilitating bouts of shyness. I read it and found myself saying “Yes! Yes! Yes!” throughout the whole thing. (I don’t usually respond to inert newsprint, so this was big.)
Given what I put up here, most people assume I’m a show-off and an extrovert. When I go out I try my best to live up to that, but going out takes a great deal of energy and preparation – more than anyone will ever know. I was reminded of Judy Garland, and what she used to do to prepare for a show. In one of her biographies it was reported that before she took to the stage, she would pump her fists, physically and mentally gearing herself up for the task at hand. It’s not easy to seduce the public. For some of us, it takes quite a lot.
The article delves into the interesting rise of the internet and the shy exhibitionist. How can someone so seemingly comfortable revealing everything – literally and figuratively – be all that shy in person? I can only speak for myself, and in my case it’s a simple matter of living my life, and having a creative outlet, with or without an audience. It may be difficult for some to believe, but I would do all that I do without any onlookers, and I’ve been doing it since 1993 to back that up.
Consider this: I started doing “projects”, taking photos and writing way back in 1993. The internet as we know it today, with all its personal blogging websites and social networks, did not become what it would until the late 90’s. I started all this insanity in the era of 35 mm film, Word Processors, and stamps that cost 29 cents. I didn’t start my website until 2003 – so for six years I did all that you see here on my own, with just a few friends that were subjected to the “wind of banners that passes through my life”.
{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
So quotes Madonna in the intro for her 2001 single ‘What It Feels Like For A Girl’, from the autumnal ‘Music’ album. It’s an excerpt from ‘The Cement Garden’ and it’s brilliant, throwing a defiantly-feminist slant into the whole equation, and investing the proceedings with more than a dollop of serious intent.
Above gently-percolating beats, and the fluid, musical techno-wizardry of Guy Sigsworth, the melody is a loose and light one, almost at odds with the rage boiling just under the surface of the words at play. It is a plaintive cry for understanding, coupled with the realization that there may never be understanding – the conundrum of being a girl in today’s world – and, perhaps, yesterday’s world- expressed through the words and music of a woman who’s been every girl: Material Girl, Bad Girl, Mer Girl, and Girl Gone Wild.
The way Madonna conveys that ache and yearning is the hallmark of what makes her so amazing, not just as a woman, but as an artist. Within this song is both an admittance of vulnerability and a beacon of self-sufficiency – the power and the weakness of being a girl.
She has said she wrote it while pregnant with her first son and thinking of her first daughter, wondering how it must be for a girl growing up in this world ~ how hard, how beautiful, how sad. As she matures into her mid-fifties, no one knows that difficult journey better than Madonna. Now, as attacks come based solely on her age, and the fact that she’s a female (how else to explain the cruelty of jabs about her arms, her body, her refusal to go away?) the song has an even deeper meaning. This is one of the great, and often over-looked, strengths of a Madonna song – they evolve through the years, taking on different meanings, and revealing nuances that grow and bloom as time unfurls.
To controversially accompany the song, Madonna filmed a gritty Guy Ritchie-directed video, set rather sorely to a harder-edged remix, which works in one way, but might have been much more powerful with the gorgeousness of the original track as its backing. Juxtaposed with all the intense imagery, the beats become the focus, and the lyrics are shamefully lost. Still, it’s a wild, entertaining ride, with numerous little dirty winks at the audience, and it demands repeat viewings to get it all in.
The song was released in the late winter of 2001, just before Madonna was set to embark on her first tour in eight years, ‘The Drowned World Tour‘. In that pocket of time just before spring arrives, heartache resonates a little more, and the hopeless/hopeful push and pull of this song, and its shuffling undertones of melancholy, may be more deeply felt.
Do you know what it feels like for a girl?
Do you know what it feels like in this world… for a girl?
