Excellent Quote: The Dark Wind

On my annual family vacation to Emerald Isle in North Carolina this year I was in search of suitable beach reading -- I had gotten overly excited and pre-read most of my beach books well before the actual trip. Fortunately, at the beachfront house we rented there was a bookshelf full of trashy reads that included a few gems. Of these, Tony Hillerman's The Dark Wind stood out.

I love Hillerman's writing. His books feature (mostly separately) two compelling protagonists, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, both of the Navaho Nation Police, and a third, mesmerizing character: the Four Corners area of the West. The setting for Hillerman's mysteries add a layer of interest and context to his novels that most writers lack. In addition, the land serves as grounding for the equally engaging practices of the Navajo Indians, an important element in his "long and respectful interest" in Native American culture.

Here is what I mean; in the book Detective Jim Chee sets out to interview a woman who lives on a remote plateau:

"Black Mesa is neither black nor a mesa. It is far too large for that definition -- a vast, broken plateau about the size and shape of Connecticut. It is virtually roadless, almost waterless, and uninhabited except for an isolated scattering of summer herding camps. It rises out of the Painted Desert more than seven thousand feet. A dozen major dry washes and a thousand nameless arroyos drain away runoff from its bitter winters and the brief but torrential 'male rains' of the summer thunderstorm season. It takes its name from the seams of coal exposed in its towering cliffs, but its colors are the grays and greens of sage, rabbit brush, juniper, cactus, grama and bunch grass, mesquite, pinon, and (in the few places where springs flow) pine and spruce. It is a lonely place even in grazing season and has always been territory favored by the Holy People of the Navajo and the kachinas and guarding spirits of the Hopis. Masaw, the bloody-faced custodian of the Fourth World of the Hopis, specifically instructed various clans of the Peaceful People to return there when they completed their epic migrations and to live on the three mesas which extend like great gnarled fingers from Black Mesa's southern ramparts. Its craggy cliffs are the eagle-collection grounds of the Hopi Flute, Side Corn, Drift Sand, Snake, and Water clans. It is dotted with shrines and holy places. For Chee's people it was an integral part of Dinetah, where Changing Woman taught the Dinee they must live in the beauty of the Way she and the Holy People taught them."

-- Hillerman, Tony. The Dark Wind. Thorndike, ME: Thorndike Press, 1982. Pp. 167-68.

It is typically gorgeous writing that adds real resonance to the story itself and contributes to the larger narrative arc of all of Hillerman's series, which are embedded in the culture and landscape of its characters, whether criminals or law enforcement officers. If you haven't read one of Tony Hillerman's 18 Navajo mysteries go to your local library and have them dig around in the stacks to loan you one. If you have, reread one STAT.

PS - Speaking of evocative words, "You Worry Me" by Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats is a moody blues; now playing on iTunes.

Recipe: Shrimp and Grits

The deservedly praised southern culinary master Bill Neal once wrote, "Shrimp and Grits is undoubtedly the most requested recipe I have yet created." And rightly so. It is an outstanding mix of freshness and soulfulness.

Unfortunately, many folks who didn't grow up with it think of grits as runny diner goo. But it actually makes an outstanding polenta-like base for a subtle melange of mushrooms, scallions, shrimp, and bacon; it is even better if you add sharp cheddar cheese to it.

Without further ado, here is Bill Neal's "real" recipe:

1 recipe Basic Boiled Grits (see below)
Tobasco sauce
Freshly grated nutmeg
White pepper
1 lb fresh shrimp
6 slices bacon
Peanut oil
2 C sliced mushrooms
1 C finely sliced scallions
1 large garlic clove, peeled
4 t fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 T fresh, chopped parsley
Salt
Pepper

Prepare the grits according to the recipe using the full amount of cheese (see below). Season to taste, but lightly, with Tobasco, a very little nutmeg, and white pepper. Hold in a warm place or in the top of a double boiler over simmering water.

Peel the shrimp, rinse them, and pat dry.

Dice the bacon and saute lightly in a 10 inch or larger skillet. The edges of the bacon should brown, but the bacon should not become crisp.

Add enough peanut oil to the bacon fat in the skillet to make a layer of oil about 1/8 inch deep. When quite hot, add the shrimp in an even layer. Turn the shrimp as they start to color, add the mushrooms, and saute about 4 minutes. Turn occasionally and add the scallions. Add the garlic through a press and stir around. Then season with lemon juice, a dash or two of Tobasco, and parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Divide the grits among four plates. Spoon the shrimp over and serve immediately.


Making the Grits

If y'all ain't from the South, here's how to make cheese grits. Don't tell nobody, but you can use instant grits if yuh's skairt to make real ones.

4 1/2 C water
1 t salt
1 C hominy grits
Butter
3/4 C grated sharp cheddar cheese

In a 3-quart heavy-bottomed saucepan bring the salted water to a strong boil. Slowly sift the grits through one hand into the water while stirring with a whisk in the other hand. When all grits have been added, continue stirring and reduce the heat to low until only an occasional bubble breaks the surface. Continue cooking for 30-40 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.

Beat in a good quantity of butter and the cheese and serve immediately.

Preparation of the grits is a grrrreat job for a co-chef. Get them a nice glass of wine and set them to whisking away, low and slow, while you make the main dish.


PS - Sweet baby Lord, it is good! What's also good is "Time" by Angelo De Augustine; now playing on iTunes.

Excellent Quotes: Enter a Murderer

Agatha Christie was only the most famous of the British writers during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. An equally charming contributor to the genre was New Zealand import Ngaio Marsh, herself both an award-winning writer and a theatrical producer.

Marsh's Poirot was Inspector Roderick Alleyn--the hero of thirty-two stories. He is a gentrified Detective Chief-Inspector whose Oxford erudition and sarcastic humor belie a street-wise tenaciousness and a feeling heart.

The detective's second adventure, 1935's Enter a Murderer blended Marsh's two great loves, centering on a play wherein one actor is killed onstage by a gun that has mysteriously been filled with real bullets rather than the usual blanks. Alleyn is, of course, in the audience for the fateful event and you'll be shocked that the denouement of the story involves reassembling the cast on stage to walk the "it's you, unless it's you, but really it's you" bases:

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Alleyn, "I have asked you to come here this morning in order that we may stage a reconstruction of the first scene in the last act of The Rat and the Beaver. In that scene, as you know, the deceased man, Mr. Arthur Surbonadier, loaded the revolver by which he was subsequently shot. You are all aware that Mr. Jacob Saint is under arrest. He will not be present. Otherwise, with the exception of the deceased, whose part will be read by Mr. Simpson, we are all here."

-- Marsh, Ngaio. Enter a Murderer. New York, NY: Felony & Mayhem Press, 2012. P. 186.

If I had a dollar for every drawing room conclusion I've read I'd be a jillionaire. Still, both as an example of the enduringly popular genre and as a too-little-known character, Detective Alleyn is worth spending time with.

PS - Speaking of classic Golden Age mysteries, this month Twentieth Century Fox is releasing a lavish, star-studded remake of "Murder on the Orient Express." I wonder whodunnit? But you don't have to wonder about whether or not you should listen to Dunez's "I'm a Rebel Just for Kicks"; now playing on iTunes.

Books I Have Read (and Donated)

I have a small book problem. It lives in my small apartment. I need to do something about the number of books I have and the answer is not more cowbell. Neither is it another bookshelf.

So, in an idiosyncratic deal with myself, I am posting a list of books I have read (so as not to ever forget each precious one) and passed on to another reader at the library's book donation center:

The Godwulf Manuscript - Robert B Parker
Death in Paradise - Robert B Parker
High Profile - Robert B Parker
Sea Change - Robert B Parker
The Secret of the Old Clock - Carolyn Keene
The Partner - John Grisham
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
The Broker - John Grisham
The Client - John Grisham
In Pale Battalions - Robert Goddard
Death By Hollywood - Steven Bochco
The Killing of Monday Brown - Sandra West Prowell
The Horse You Came in On - Martha Grimes
I am the Only Running Footman - Martha Grimes
A Man with a Load of Mischief - Martha Grimes
The Dirty Duck - Martha Grimes
The Old Fox Deceiv'd - Martha Grimes
Jerusalem Inn - Martha Grimes
The Anodyne Necklace - Martha Grimes
The Deer Leap - Martha Grimes
Our Kind of Traitor - John le Carre
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John le Carre
Our Game - John le Carre

PS - I cannot remember the plots of half these books. Why I should feel the need to know that I read them is beyond me. A perfectly good alternate solution would be to throw out all my other books and just read these over and over, being pleasantly surprised each time. Oh, and another thing not to forget is to listen to "Hope the High Road" by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit; now playing on iTunes.

Excellent Quotes: A Catskill Eagle

My Mom fled the long winters, seasonal affective disorder, and blue collar parochialism of her neck of New England for warmer climes as soon as she graduated from college. But, some of the family still lives there and so do many friends and I have been going back more often for work lately. My travel has been all in the summer and spring, when a fella thinks, "Yeah, I could live in Boston. What a pretty place." (Note: I also regularly think this about Chicago; I have been advised to visit during the winter months before making any foolhardy decisions.)

Now, the Cradle of Liberty has many things going for it, Puritanical weather aside. One of them is Janet Echelman's aerial sculpture over the new Rose Kennedy Greenway. Another less ephemeral thing is the legacy of Robert B. Parker's Spenser mysteries. The books center on a laconic Beantown private investigator, known only as Spenser, with a sweetheart named Susan and A Man Called Hawk as a best friend.

I am a sucker for anything driven by a code of honor character--gimme an N, gimme an O, gimme an I, gimme an R, whaddya got? Heartache! Spenser indeed has an internal code. And Hawk has a code, too. Spenser's code makes room for a girlfriend--he is not actually a true Philip Marlowe clone--even if the relationship is sometimes rocky. Hawk's makes room for the occasional fine, foxy lady but his code is too close to the street to really let anyone all the way in. The bad guys don't stand a chance.

Spenser and Hawk are kindred spirits, but they cover their brotherly affection, book after book, with a steady flow of snappy, erudite banter as they track down the baddies. They are either the first post-racial detectives in history or they just don't give a crap what anyone thinks; they play the race card on each other like it was a long night at the green felt table in Vegas. In A Catskill Eagle, Spenser has just broken Hawk out of a false imprisonment and they are tracking down one Jerry Costigan, who has been horning in on Spenser's Lady Friend and may be involved in much more:

"Remember where Mill River Boulevard is?" I said.

"Un huh."

"Jerry Costigan lives off it on something called Costigan Drive in something called The Keep."

"The Keep?" Hawk said.

"The Keep."

"The more money you honkies get," Hawk said, "the sillier you get."

"Wait a minute," I said. "Didn't you grow up in a place called The Ghetto?"

"Shit." Hawk said. "You got me."

"See, you intolerant bastard."

Hawk drove quietly for a moment and then he began to laugh. "Maybe I move to Beverly Farms," Hawk said, "buy a big house call it The Ghetto." He made ghetto a two-word phrase.

"The Wasps would turn lime green," I said.

"Match their pants," Hawk said.

-- Parker, Robert B. A Catskill Eagle. New York, NY: Dell, 1985. P. 65.

There are a jillion Spenser novels. I think I have read every one. If you haven't read them, try out one of the forty on offer. If you haven't read one in a while--Parker died while writing a new novel in 2010--I suggest picking up a paperback for a long flight and getting reacquainted.

PS - Why the television series starring Hawk was set in DC, I will never understand. But understand this: "Time to Pretend" by MGMT is good stuff; now playing on iTunes.

Hacking

Quite a while ago I went to the Noisebridge hacker space in San Francisco to be all rebellious and to learn me some hacking like a real hipster.

Now, I imagined that a Matthew Broderick figure dressed in subtle greys and designer blacks would be teaching me to code my way past the corporate ice of the New York Times to list myself in their database as an expert news source on hacking and computer security issues. Shazam! Super-size my irony, to go, please. What I got was a middle-aged dude in cargo shorts who somewhat phoned in our lesson on soldering Arduino boards to make one of a number of prefab kits.

The good news: I picked a kit to work on that allowed me to assemble a master remote control that issues the "shut off" command for every known major brand of television. Bwahahaha! It works up to 50 feet away. I have tried it on my own tee vee and it turns off the boob tube like a champ.

If only I weren't such a non-hacker chicken and were willing to take it with me to bars and airports to flip the kill switch on the droning ubiquity of cable "news" in public spaces. But I worry about explaining to the flight safety mandarins how my exposed wiring and inexplicable mini-UV light bulbs are just a fun project and not, wait, no, I don't need to visit the special room, no, it is just a fun project I did, and I have a plane to catch, please, please take off the surgical glove, there is no need for that....

Still, it was fun to re-learn to solder -- turns out I had completely forgotten how to do it correctly -- and to brush shoulders with Fog City's energetic maker culture. Not that I can actually make anything else without serious coaching and supervision. But, I do have my one hilarious remote. If your television mysteriously up and quits, look out the door for my car coasting down your street with the lights off.

PS - Prior to that, I went to a maker space and took a lesson in lock picking. Yeah, I can't do that by myself, either. But, speaking of the waterless Golden State, I can listen to "The Golden State" by John Doe; now playing on iTunes.

Recipe: Balsamic Salad Dressing

Recently I took a cooking class. Never done it before and it was a lot of fun. Our chef/instructor was very, how you say in America, high-energy, but she knew her stuff. We learned to prepare a few Southern Italian dishes and drank a Sicilian wine that was full-bodied and didn't threaten to kill anyone, you know, the way a lot of full-bodied Sicilians do in books and movies.

So, a win. Yum.

Without giving away too many state secrets that would put my cooking class host out of business, below is her truly yummy recipe for a balsamic dressing for a Panzanella salad; I think it would go well with a green salad,too.

1/8 C balsamic vinegar
1/4 C olive oil
1 T Dijon mustard
1 T honey

Combine all in a jar with a tight lid and shake until well-mixed.

PS - As noted, we had it over a salad of large, toasted bread cubes, tomatoes, cucumber, shallots, and basil. Golly. Also delish is "The Unguarded Moment" by a very young The Church; now playing on iTunes.

5-4-Fri: View Count Zero

I have a surprising number of blog posts that Sitemeter now swears nobody has read. This cannot be true because some of them have posted comments from readers. Still, in a shameless, cable-television-like effort to boost ratings without going to the trouble of actually generating any new content, may I recommend five of them to you this Friday:

Cryptonomicon
B-Minus
Excellent Quotes: The Sign of the Four
5-4-Fri: Mixed Drinks
The Inaugural

Let's see if the old Interwebs tracker will acknowledge hits going forward.

PS - Looking back, it seems that I only posted ONE blog entry in all of 2010. Such shameful slacking. Oh, but Digital Underground is not slacking on "Humpty Dance"; now playing on iTunes.

Recipe: Sauce Bolognese

The Italian cook and author, Marcella Hazan had an enormous influence on American cooking--bringing her Proustian memory of the great food back home to life in her recipes once she settled in New York. I think her most indelible contribution is the brilliant Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, published by Knopf in a sublimely beautiful green-jacketed edition as gorgeous as the meals inside. (The consistently amazing physical volumes produced by Alfred A. Knopf's crew ought to be the subject of its own blog post.) I got my copy from a couple of Foxes, but I have kept my Mom's meaningfully marked up edition, too.

My go-to Hazan recipe is Bolognese Meat Sauce:

1 T vegetable oil
3 T butter
1/2 C chopped onion
2/3 C chopped celery
2/3 C chopped carrot
3/4 lb ground beef chuck - get the butcher to grind a cut from the neck
Salt
Pepper
1 C whole milk
1/8 t nutmeg (shaved from a whole nutmeg)
1 C dry white wine (Sauvignon Blanc or Pino Grigio)
1 1/2 C Italian plum tomatoes with their juice; cut them first
Fresh grated parmigiano cheese

In a pot that retains heat, such as the excellent, blue Le Creuset pot I bought expressly for the purpose, add oil, butter, and onion on medium heat. When the onion is translucent, add the celery and carrot and cook 5 minutes more. Add ground beef  with salt  and light pepper (Hazan makes a point of adding salt when sauteing meat to extract the juices). Brown the chuck. Add the milk and simmer, stirring often, until it has bubbled away. Mix the nutmeg in. Add the wine and simmer until it, too, has evaporated. Only then add tomatoes and stir thoroughly. Cook at the lowest simmer your stove top can pull off for 3 hours or more--more is better. Taste and correct for salt prior to serving.

PS - I serve it over orecchiette because it is SO. DAMN. GOOD. Oh, and "Gun" by Emiliana Torrini is quite a smooth morsel, too--listen to it during that three-hour simmer-a-thon; now playing on iTunes.

Everything Old is New Again

When I was a teenager there were lots of changes going on. I needed glasses, braces, and new medical checkups. It took adjusting to. I felt socially conscious about some of these things in ways that I never had before. Were people looking at me? Was I ever going to get used to them? Did other kids have them, and which kids did? And, as I entered early adulthood, checkups began to include what one of my doctors called "the pause that does not refresh."

(And let me tell you, people were indeed looking. Not only were braces not yet cool, I was wearing headgear; that has never caught on. And rightfully so. I felt like Joan Cusack in Sixteen Candles. My dentists were flabbergasted by how quickly my teeth were moving. "Wear the headgear all day," they insisted. I did. To school. To Junior. High. School. My teeth flew past their desired alignment. Then back again all too quickly under readjustments. Finally, the head of the dentistry program--struggling to make sense of my anomalous data--opined that, just perhaps, the other kids were lying about wearing their headgear all day and my results could only be caused by actually doing so. They were shocked to learn of the mass deception. Clearly, no one had thought to visit any junior high school anywhere ever. I could have spared them their data analysis, time in gear had an inverse one-to-one relationship with my datability.)

Now that I am all growed up and playing on the back nine, I find that I am again adjusting to new glasses and am back in orthodonture. My hipster glasses--de rigueur chunky black plastic frames with a soupcon of purple--are really trifocals. Tri. Focals. It cost me a cool grand to ensure they don't have visible lines in the lenses. When I appear to be looking disdainfully down my nose at the menu choices, I am really just trying to find the optimal focal point under dim light to see the fine print on what the entree comes with. (I have a colleague who unabashedly asks me to hold the menu over on my side near the table candle so he can read it rather than suit up with magnified lenses.) I have a new invisalign retainer to counteract the ravages of orthodontic time by shifting my lower teeth back into the nice, straight smile position all that commitment to headgear had achieved. And the checkups now include colonoscopy prep, which involves a pretty grim night of waterboarding oneself like a masochistic Jack Bauer.

A time of change marked by new glasses, braces, and medical needs. I am keeping an eye out for acne just in case.

PS - Everything old is new again. See how I wove that in? Maybe I should close this story with "The End," the way I did when I was 13. Oh, and since the kids are all about the new hit, "Watch Me" by Silentó you oldsters should get hip to it, too; now playing on iTunes.

Excellent Quotes: Ready Player One

After hearing for quite some time from people whose taste I trusted that Ernest Cline's debut novel, Ready Player One, was a must-read I recently decided to snag an eCopy for my iPad and snuggle up with the bits and bytes.

Turns out it is a dork-fest that obsesses about what essentially amounts to my childhood. And it is a page-turner, too. Score!

Set in a dystopic future (as which current science fiction novel is not), the book follows the adventures of the alliterative Wade Watts--who goes by the handle Parzival (yay, English Literature!)--as he solves three challenges put forward by the world's greatest game designer in an attempt to win a fortune, get the girl, and change the universe.

By gad, it really is a dork-fest. A wonderful, unabashed, comprehensive, lovingly articulated dork-fest. Cline name-checks everything from "It's a Dead Man's Party" to the Dungeons and Dragons rule book, John Hughes movies to Blade Runner, the TRS-80 personal computer to Second Life, nerd bonding over video games to first crushes. RP1 functions as a storyline, as a kind of social history, and as a non-alphabetized concordance to the '80s. Fun.

Do I have any niggling complaints? Sure. It is game-obsessed. It is an obvious novice effort stylistically. But, come on, man, that stuff is nitpicking. The ride is worth it; even for those of us who never legitimately finished Zork on our own.

Speaking of Zork--the first famous text-based role-player game--here is Wade starting down the path to solve one of the clues:

"I took a look around. My surroundings were eerily familiar.

"The opening text description in the game Zork read as follows:

WEST OF HOUSE

You are standing in an open field west of a

white house, with a boarded front door. There

is a small mailbox here.

>

"My avatar now stood in that open field, just west of the white house. The front door of the old Victorian mansion was boarded up, and there was a mailbox just a few yards away from me, at the end of the walkway leading to the house. The house was surrounded by a dense forest, and beyond it I saw a range of jagged mountain peaks. Glancing off to my left, I spotted a path leading to the north, right where I knew it should be."

-- Ready Player One. Cline, Ernest. New York (NY): Random House, 2011. Pp. 394-95 (eBook version).

If, like me, you once reserved the introductory sections of your cassette mix tapes for computer programs that you loaded into the microcomputer by pressing "Play," this book is a glorious romp through your youth. It has practically everything but my track and field kit and the Barrel of Hee. Even if you aren't pushing 50, it is still great fun.

So, if you haven't yet, drop the quarter and get started. Cline is ready, Player One.

PS -  The book prominently features easter eggs, and even functioned as one, with the author offering a DeLorean to the winner of his contest-within-a-contest. Oh, and if you didn't dance to it then, you can dance to "It's a Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo today; now playing on iTunes.

Jet Lag

I recently went on a marathon of business and personal travel. I visited in succession the following cities: New York, Chicago, Wilmington, Bern, Zurich, Prague, Louisville, and Miami. I was on the road for 20 straight days. It seemed like a good idea when I booked the trip.

Now, I saw a bunch of great places and people while I was gone. I ran with the supermodels along Swiss rivers; I drank White Russians overlooking the charming Charles Bridge, on which construction began in 1357; I lounged on the beach in 80 degree weather in late October; I saw my brothers; I attended the wedding of one of my oldest, closest friends; I practiced flirting again, an important step but not necessarily to any satisfying end; I grew a full beard.

All in all exciting and interesting. But I had not planned for the brutalizing, merciless, hideous effects of jet lag.

Let's look at my trip again in terms of time difference from the place where my furniture currently resides: "I visited in succession the following time zones: 3 hours, 2 hours, 3 hours, 9 hours, 9 hours, 9 hours, 2 hours, 3 hours. I changed time zones 7 times in 20 days." Honestly, at some point I was not sure which end was up.

When I got back to home base, my body decided to punish me for two weeks running by operating on an average 3 hour time difference. This means I woke up at 4:30 AM willy-nilly. I was pooped at 5 PM at work. I began to fall asleep on the couch in the middle of "Arrow," I started to cry at Maxwell House commercials, I grew desperate for it to end.

The best description I've read of the torture of jet lag comes from a book by the brilliant William Gibson, which I already featured in this older post. Cayce, the protagonist of Gibson's book, arrives in the U.K. from New York:

"She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage."

PS - It has been a month now and my soul and I are again reunited. Thank goodness. Oh, and you'll want to get united with "Mistress" by Valkyries; now playing on iTunes.

All Aboot My Trip to Canada

I recently visited our kinder, gentler selves in Canada for work and pleasure and noted a few things: (a) they talk funny, (b) Americans--and we also feel totally comfortable hogging the continental appellation--feel totally comfortable pointing that out to them, (c) they never get mad at it, which must be a particular flavor of unamusing, constant, and blatant violation of the guest/host relationship, (d) like Californians, Canadians tend to end a preponderance of their sentences in the interrogative tone, which is a tough speech tic not to imitate when it permeates your world, and (d) sometimes you can misinterpret them unexpectedly.

To wit: I was in Edmonton and trying to get from my hotel to a nearby museum. I asked the Concierge for directions. Here, roughly, was our exchange:

  Me: Hey. (Flagrantly giving myself away as a Yank.)
  Concierge: Good evening? May I help you?
  Me: Yes. I am trying to get to the Art Gallery of Alberta.
  C: Oh, sure. That's close, eh?
  Me: Great.
  C: Gettin' there's a very simple prough-cess?
  Me: Nice; what do I do.
  C: Go straight oout the door and take 100 Street?
  Me: Okay.
  C: Take 100th Street up a few blocks to 102, eh?
  Me: Okay? (Giving into the cadence)
  C: Turn right, go down two blocks? You'll see it just there?
  Me: Thanks?
  C: Glad to help? Have a great time. (Meaning it.)

So, I went out the door (on principle, I refused to cave in and go oout the door). I walked up 100th Street and took a right on 102nd Avenue. I walked down two blocks and did not see anything resembling a museum. Confused, I retraced my steps to 100 Street. I finally decided to go one block further on 100 and I came to 102-A Avenue, which, as promised, led two blocks down to the museum and its yummy restaurant, Zinc, which was my destination.

Can you believe it? He said, "102-A" and not "102, eh?" And, thinking it over, I am convinced that there was no way to have anticipated it.

PS - Crazy story, eh? Oh, and of all the great Canadian musical contributions, nothing tops Celine Dion. Just kidding! Of course I would never cruelly hurt you by steering you toward Celine like that. One legitimate contender, however, is Cowboy Junkies, who put out a gorgeous cover of the Velvet Underground classic, "Sweet Jane" penned by the recently deceased Lou Reed; now playing on iTunes.

Do It: Read "Kill the Password"

A while back, my main email account was hacked. After some deliberation, I had given my new email address to a friend whose Internet hygiene is questionable and, sure enough, within 24 hours I was receiving notes from friends that I was spamming them.

My first reaction was panic. What if the hackers locked me out of my own account? What if they stole my credit card numbers? What if they posted my miserable self-recorded guitar playing on the Web?! My next reaction was to act immediately to change my password and read up on security. Then, sheepishly, I began to change my password everywhere I had an account. Why? Because I was using the same password every. place. I. went.

I know. Bad form. But I am more secure today. Thanks in large part to a recent article in Wired magazine, which, while painting a doomsday scenario for the future of online safety, does offer some very helpful security tips.

To wit, few of the author's "Dos": 

"Enable two-factor authentication when offered. When you log in from a strange location, a system like this will send you a text message with a code to confirm. Yes, that can be cracked, but it’s better than nothing. 

Give bogus answers to security questions. Think of them as a secondary password. Just keep your answers memorable. My first car? Why, it was a “Camper Van Beethoven Freaking Rules.” 

Scrub your online presence. One of the easiest ways to hack into an account is through your email and billing address information. Sites like Spokeo and WhitePages.com offer opt-out mechanisms to get your information removed from their databases. 

Use a unique, secure email address for password recoveries. If a hacker knows where your password reset goes, that’s a line of attack. So create a special account you never use for communications. And make sure to choose a username that isn’t tied to your name—like m****n@wired.com—so it can’t be easily guessed."

So, do it: read "Kill the Password." It's great.

PS - The last of the "do's" has been the real eye-opener for me. Oh, and it is completely safe to bend an ear to "Devastation" by The Besnard Lakes; now playing on iTunes.

Excellent Quotes: The Hardy Boys

Friend, are you like me? Do you like action, mystery, and cliff-hanging suspense? Then you, too, will want to read The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories, Registered Trademark. Yes, youngster, you'll enjoy the thrilling adventures of America's favorite detective duo, Frank and Joe Hardy. Their keen insight, cheeky but never inappropriate disregard for adult supervision, and touching camaraderie with their swell friends help bring the criminal element to justice and will thrill you, making you eager to read more of their serial exploits, all in hard cover.

Indeed, if you can ignore the dated, casual ethnic stereotyping, leveled vocabulary, and the fact that there was no actual author named Franklin W. Dixon, you can--as I do--feel nostalgic about this classic casebook series. You can even re-read one as an adult, which I recently did.

The entrepreneurial offspring of Bayport's well-known detective Fenton Hardy, the Hardy Boys--always introduced as brown-haired and level-headed Frank and younger, blonde, impetuous Joe--were a staple growing up in my house. Their best pal Chet Morton always had a sweet tooth, a new hobby that proved remarkably helpful to the case at hand, and a vivacious sister, who provided a love interest for Joe. Their "favorite dates" Callie Shaw, a giggly blonde who sees Frank, and the aforementioned Iola Morton, a brunette who goes with Joe, added romantic interest, forming cleverly mismatched hair color couples.

The books were full of this sort of thing:

     "While Frank and Joe stared in utter amazement, the huge clock and the wall section behind it began sliding to one side.

     "'Why,' Frank gave an inward gasp, 'it's a door, hidden by the clock attached to it!'"

     -- While the Clock Ticked. Dixon, Franklin W. New York (NY): Grosset & Dunlap, 1962. Pp. 134-35.

I never confused it with literature, but I must admit to reading a ton of them as a kid and to collecting a few of the 66 titles for myself. Go back and read a story; it's fun, but you'll probably need only the one. And recommend matching wits with the Hardy Boys to an age-appropriate kid in your life.

PS - No need to buy all of them. You can just fire up the old jalopy and check them out from the Bayport Public Library. Oh, and "Sunrise" by Yeasayer is a thrilling adventure in an of itself; now playing on iTunes.

Caneel Bay

I recently went to the US Virgin Islands for a brief vacation. I was a Virgin Islands virgin, so I wanted my first trip to be special (and I wanted them to respect me afterward). I chose to go to Caneel Bay on St John. I chose right.

In a fit of noblesse oblige, Laurance Rockefeller--who was enraptured by the island--bought up much of St. John through an environmental protection intermediary, gave it to the US government to create the Virgin Islands National Park, and built a low-profile but sprawling hotel for the 1% on several of its many charming bays. As a result, your Caribbean vacation can consist of lolling around in a paradise well-stocked with sunshine, gorgeous water, charming flora and fauna, and hikes in the park rather than gambling, smoking, and sitting cheek to jowl with casual drunks in the swim-up bar at a chain high-rise hotel adjacent to a nominal "beach." Thank you, Laurence.

The Rockefellers are like that. Yes, they have sometimes been problematic misogynist monopolist prudes who crushed their competitors with Social Darwinist furor. But they protect land with vision and missionary zeal. And I like my overlords like that ... and I love that for $31/hour today someone like me can bask in the Caribbean's glory before global warming makes translucent seas and coral reefs a relic of the Holocene.

It is truly delightful.

PS - Go there immediately...or, uh, once the hurricane season ends (Caneel closes for September and October). You can thank me, and Laurance, later. Oh, and "Pelican" by The Maccabees is also delightful; now playing on iTunes.

Excellent Quotes: Game of Thrones

When he is not obsessing over medieval culinary delicacies and the finer points of battle dress, media sensation George RR Martin is busy crushing it story-telling-wise.

Hearing about the popularity of his Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, I got a copy of the first book for my girlfriend. She promptly inhaled the five-part-to-date series and is impatiently awaiting the next installment. I decided to give it a shot since she liked it so much and have been amazed at the way Martin invents and fully inhabits his fictional land of Westeros, home to seven squabbling kingdoms. Nearly every one of the inter-bred ruling family members and their minions is interesting (chapters are serially told from the perspective of one character at a time), there is enough hot and cold running backstory to pay homage to Frank Herbert, and the author has conjured up a killer app for his series: The Wall.

The Wall is made of solid ice 700 feet high, 100 leagues long--that's 300 miles to those of us not living in the British Isles--and so thick that it houses tunnels and prisons and The Seven know what else inside it. The Wall is all that stands between the "civilized" residents of the South and a northern territory known as Beyond the Wall or, more chillingly, as "The Land of Always Winter."

Somewhat disappointingly, The Wall is not really an allegory about the small-mindedness of Rep. Duncan Hunter or the bizarreness of modern US/Mexico relations. It more than makes up for it, however, by being awesomely about keeping The Others out of the South. The Others are a terrifying race of gaunt ice beings whose eyes shine blue and who silently slaughter you and your pals as they remorselessly converge on you regardless of your defenses. Oh, and, after they kill you, your undead corpse--complete with colorless skin offset by black, blood-engorged hands--rises to kill anyone you knew before. Brr.

Take a gander; here, Sam, one of The Wall's guardians, summarizes what the history books in Westeros say about the shivvery beings beyond The Wall:

 "The Others come when it is cold, most of the tales agree. Or else it gets cold when they come. Sometimes they appear during snowstorms and melt away when the skies clear. They hide from the light of the sun and emerge by night ... or else night falls when they emerge. Some stories speak of them riding the corpses of dead animals. Bears, direwolves, mammoths, horses, it makes no matter, so long as the beast is dead. The one that killed Small Paul was riding a dead horse, so that part's plainly true. Some accounts speak of giant ice spiders too. I don't know what those are. Men who fall in battle against the Others must be burned, or else the dead will rise again as their thralls."

-- A Dance with Dragons. Martin, George R.R. New York (NY): Bantam Books, 2011. Pp. 179-180 (of 1705 in the e-version).

Martin seamlessly weaves together something the reader has seen--Small Paul's nightmarish death at the hands of a corpse-riding ice horror--with a totally believable "history" from the past of his fabricated world. Combined with an unerring ear for an authentic-sounding kind of Middle Ages lingo--"it makes no matter" and "plainly true"--the plot sucks you into a fully-conceived universe that you are happy to inhabit for thousands of pages.

PS -- I must admit that I skipped the fourth book, which has nearly universally been reviewed as a slog whose only real purpose it to set up book five. I am quite a slow reader so I WikiCheated instead and read the plot online, skipping from book three to the present. Oh, but "Northern White Clouds" by Supermule is no slog; now playing on iTunes.

Excellent Quotes: The Affair

Lee Child (nee Jim Grant) is already a best-selling author of thrillers; he is about to become quite le celebrite when the Tom Cruise vehicle, "Jack Reacher," is released this December.

Reacher novels all follow a bullet-proof formula: Jack--a code-of-honor drifter who got BRACed from the Army's military police and has since gone off the grid--drifts into town. His engagement in the plot begins uneventfully. He picks up a job or hitches a ride or buys a cup of his beloved coffee. This immediately entangles him in a massive and highly-secretive plot to do very bad things, conducted by bad men, that the Law cannot or will not address. Jack laconically investigates. He meets and beds a local woman. Events come to a head. Inevitably, Jack brutally kills the perpetrators (sometimes he kills a symbolic representative of the evil-doers, sometimes he kills their leader, sometimes he kills a phone book full of baddies.)

As a character, Reacher has some endearing quirks: He does not do laundry; instead, he simply throws his old clothes away when he buys a new set. He owns just a toothbrush. He always knows what time it is without consulting a watch or clock. He has a Sherlockian memory for all sorts of neat facts that prove useful in solving crimes, such as the rate of deadfall due to gravity, the population of most major cities, the percentage of cheese in the moon, and so forth. He doesn't really care much about anything. But--like all good noir heroes--he secretly does care about some things and he'll do anything to get to the truth.

As an author, Child, too, is  endearing. He has a delightful way of over-specifying the mundane and under-selling the big stuff. He brings a LOT of detail into the narrative, but avoids the Clancyesque (THIS Jack will never reach into the darkened room and expertly and precisely flip the light switch of the Leviton MDI06-1LI 600W, 120 Volt AC 60Hz, Single-Pole light switch mounted exactly 3 meters above the Woodgrain Millwork WG 1866 9/16 in. x 5-1/4 in. x 96 in. Medium Density Fiberboard Base Moulding that abuts the carpet).

Violent, yes. Formulaic, true. Still, I love me some Reacher novels. Here's a taste for those of you who have not yet met the quietly menacing protagonist in the black and white. Jack is on an emerging date with Sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux, the local lady he will bed:

"The clock in my head hit ten in the evening. The pies arrived, and so did the coffee. I didn't pay much attention to either. I spent most of my time looking at the third button on Deveraux's shirt. I had noticed it before. It was the first one that was done up. Therefore it was the first one that would need to be undone. It was a tiny mother-of-pearl thing, silvery gray. Right behind it was skin, neither pale nor dark, and very three dimensional. Left to right it curved toward me, then away from me, then toward me again. It was rising and falling as she breathed."

- The Affair. Child, Lee. New York (NY): Delacorte, 2011. Pp. 199-200.

Read the series. I recommend either starting at the start, with Killing Floor, or at the helpful review of Jack's life to date, with Bad Luck and Trouble.

PS - One of Jack Reacher's key attributes is that he is six-foot-five (Reach-er, get it?). In the movie he will be portrayed by Tom Cruise, who's playing height is five-foot-seven. Enjoy the ensuing fanboy controversy. Oh, and "Sticky Chemical" by Bobby Bare is another endearing thing; now playing on iTunes.

Funny Thing: Muzak

As any reader of this blog knows, I am fairly dedicated to music. I am learning how to play the guitar (for 15 years now), am a recovering mid-life crisis band member, and I provide a song recommendation with each entry in the “PS” section of the post.

I also have a good-sized CD collection. Not so large that I can start my own rebel Internet radio station anchored off the New York skyline. But large enough that it can be reasonably blamed as a major contributor to the fact that I continue to rent an apartment rather than own my own home.

I have been having a devil of a time migrating my collection out of my ‘90s-style entertainment unit--which hulks in a corner of my living room intimidating the bric-a-brac and the smaller furniture--and into my iMac. Sometimes, I sort of want to follow one well-heeled pal’s lead and just pack it all up in boxes and send it to a company that loads it onto a drive for you at a fixed price per CD...but then the Scotsman in me goes nuts and says, “Hey, English fancypants, you canna load them yourself, you valueless yuppie?!”

But the prospect of logging serious time at the computer swapping hundreds and hundreds of disks in and out is daunting. It is a mirage of discipline that fades as I walk across the desert of dinner dates and movies and work. What to do?

Well, I’ll tell you, dear reader. I determined to load one CD onto iTunes each day when I get home from work. Not more. Not less. Just a few minutes every day. In a few years I’ll have all my music in there and each day my iTunes reservoir groweth rewardingly.

This has, surprisingly, been working exceedingly well. I just refresh a small stack of CDs on my desk and pop one in nightly when I get home from the grindstone factory. I am up to 5.1 days of music already (you gotta love the Apple measurement systems).

But I did recently have one moment of panic that reminded me that I am not a digital native; that, like Larry, Curly, and Moe, I am perpetually waiting at the nun’s orphanage for digital parents to adopt me, getting older and more eccentric with each passing software release (woo woo woo).

As I got into the groove of slugging a new CD into the collection each day I inserted one that was both a DVD of music videos and a CD of songs all on one platter (damn you, broken-up R.E.M. and your tech savvy). As only Apple can, when it came time to eject the disc, my iMac wanted to know which format I wanted to eject: one, the other, or both. I panicked. I began pressing buttons at random. The pretty, rainbow wheel of “loading” began to spin perpetually like a digital Tibetan prayer wheel in the center of my screen. My system began to Escher itself into a Mobius strip of indecision. Nothing worked. Nothing responded. I was screwed.

I looked desperately for an override. I examined with minute attention to detail the body of the computer, looking for a pinhole into which I could insert a paperclip to eject the disc as in days of old. I swore. I begged Steve Job’s ghost for insight. I promised to put an Apple bumper sticker on my car. Nothing worked.

After some serious sweating, I recalled that I had a brand new, shiny, optical drived, envy-inducing iPad. Ha! Salvation. I sat by my recursive iMac and used the iPad to Google how to force a disc out of a Mac. It was so meta.

And here is what it the sum total of mankind’s knowledge, stored on the Cloud and delivered at the speed of light from a self-repairing global network of servers told me: push the eject button on your keypad. Push “|>”

Doh!

PS -- Seriously? I overlooked the eject button?! Sigh. Oh, one song you should load into your collection is "The Heartbreak Rides" by  A.C. Newman; now playing on iTunes.

Thai Massage

This week I met with my professional coach for a healthy and frank discussion of my weaknesses as a person and employee and finalized a work plan to face head on some of the issues that keep me from being the best that I can be. I also met with my boss for my 2011 performance review, celebrating what I had done well in the past year and addressing the strategic concerns that continue to bother her and keep me from being the best that I can be.

I also started running again, slowly and badly, since my recent annual checkup revealed that I have gained 10 pounds and am approximating the ideal weight for an all-pro tight end but not so much for a desk-bound middle-aged manager and that my weight issues are compromising my long-term health and keeping me from being the best that I can be.

Additionally, I scheduled time with my dentist to replace two old, dark amalgam tooth fillings with miraculous, white ceramic fillings that cost about as much as a new car payment. (Speaking of cars, I dropped a cool grand on car repairs, too.)

I brought the week to a gentle close by calculating how much I owe the federal government in taxes.

All in all a purposeful week of accomplishment and bravery that left me in serious danger of weeping openly if one more piece of constructive criticism or personal upgrade crossed my path.

So, I decided that I needed to:

(a) drink with a vengeance and wake up in jail with a new tattoo
(b) get a fluffy puppy who will love me unconditionally
(c) get a professional massage

I chose (c) a massage. In fact, I decided to get (c) a Thai massage because there is a parlor a few blocks from my house. Now I understand that this sounds like I chose (c) pay for sex. There are a few common misconceptions about Thai massage floating around. Let me clear some up.

     There is no sex involved. This is initially disappointing but ultimately morally comforting. It also proactively eliminates the need for my next annual medical checkup to include a healthy dose of penicillin.

     You pay about 60 dollars an hour. Your life looks on the surface like you are in the 1% if you take a gander at the iPad, the Starbucks card, the cool neighborhood, the hipster cache of music, the foreign car, and all the rest. But you are reminded in a subtle but ugly way that you are really in the 99% if your level of relaxation,which grows with each minute of massage, simultaneously erodes with the nagging consciousness that it is costing a dollar a minute to relax.

     Thai massage is not really massage. When you hear the word "masseuse" you imagine an attractive but un-embarrassingly-arousing woman named Helga who smooths the week's woes from your body with firm and comforting caresses. A Thai masseuse is in reality a tiny but unnaturally strong woman named Somchai or a compact, gymnastic man named Sunan; neither is interested in your comfort. Thai massage is less like getting a lightly-oiled hug and more like enduring a thoughtful beating.

     Yes, they step on you. Dude, I got Sunan and he stood on my thigh for quite a while. Ouch.

On a scale of 1-10--where 1 is the pressure of flannel sheets on your body as you sleep by a crackling fire and 10 is telling your captors the nuclear codes just to make. it. stop--my massage held steady between 6-7, punctuated occasionally by real pain.

Really, I feel like I joined Fight Club. But, I can rotate my head to see behind me beyond my elbow now.

So I had my many troubles manhandled out of me and I paid dearly for it. I needed it. I needed it a lot.

PS - But next time I may call Helga. Oh, and "Neeps and Tatties" by Stanton Moore is not painful at all; now playing on iTunes.