Joy Ray

Travoltas Mutter, and other mysteries

Being in a blogging frame of mind today, I would like to share my favorite chapter in a German textbook I once used.  It addresses, of course, the mysteries of John Travolta.  Note the Pynchonesque symbology utilized on the cover page.  What are we to make of this?

 

This is followed by an equally intriguing diagram that seems to outline some kind of clandestine cabal led by Travolta's mother, involving Reagan, Superman, Germany and Englewood New Jersey.  This can't be good!

 

Finally, a selection of doubtlessly coded phrases are provided, which if spoken in a precise order may persuade Travolta to share his hard-won secrets.

(Thanks to Mark Case, for mentioning "John Travolta" and "book" in the same Facebook post today and reminding me of this cherished tome.)

Where's the dignity?

I just got my new passport - my first since 2000.  As happy as I am to have a new passport, and to be able to travel, all I can say is: the design is really embarrassing.

The outside, at least, still looks (more or less) the same. But inside is a kitchy klown kar of Americana: flags and eagles, monuments and pseudo-inspiring quotations reflecting a diversity so agonizingly precise that you know the selection process took months and dozens of meetings to finalize.  It's like a patriotic checkbook on steroids.

I liked my old passport.  Simple, plain, down to business.  Not a scrapbook.  Not a brochure.  Not an advertisement.  It was where stamps and visas went.  Now I find it hard to believe that stamps and visas will even be visible against all the background clutter.

Is this supposed to remind us as we venture abroad, how totally awesome the USA is?  Is it supposed to inspire us to live up to our true and exceptional American selves?  Are we supposed to whip it out at our next overseas dinner party, to dazzle foreign friends with our wicked cool bison and eagles?

 

The mind boggles.

an explanation, of sorts

I'm not sure why I haven't posted anything in awhile. 

I have some ideas for posts. 

For instance, stories behind various songs I've written and recorded, especially those of the (IMHO) under-appreciated Sissy Bar, which tend to have underpinnings both strange and specific. 

Or how to fly first class most of the time, for cheap or free (one of my obsessions...let me tell you, I really identified with Up in the Air). 

Or some thoughts about recent reading material - for purposes best left unsaid, at least for now, I've been reading books about women uncovering family mysteries, and have found that some (The Forgotten Garden) are better than others (Sarah's Key) while some (The Lost Hours) are just a few ticks north of terrible.  

But...no posts as of yet.  So there we are.

Best of Buenos Aires

Lately I've gotten some requests for recommendations on what to do in Buenos Aires. Here is the list. Go forth and enjoy.

THINGS TO DO

BA Free Tours
Both of these are really good, led by a brother and sister who work for tips. They’re both funny, and it’s a cool way to get a little bit of history and sightseeing in.

San Telmo Market
This is on Sundays. Best if you can go when it’s not too hot as it’s all outside.

La Boca / PROA Museum
This is a cute and touristy neighborhood (also reportedly a lot of pickpockets/crime). Good to go for a bit of sightseeing, plus check out the museum which is really cool.

Recoleta Cemetery is kind of cool as is the Hippodromo (racetrack). The MALBA museum is trendy and has a decent gift shop. I prefer the nearby Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes which has more well-known international artists (plus it’s free).

RESTAURANTS

Vineria de Gualterio
If you’re a foodie, this is the place to go. A prix-fixe molecular gastronomy tasting menu.

Cabana Las Lilas
This place gets slammed for being an overpriced tourist trap. But it has the best steak, bar none, in Buenos Aires. Before or after dinner, make sure to spend a little time walking around Puerto Madero.

Morelia
This place serves thin crust pizza cooked on a grill (alla parrilla), I recommend the Calabrese. Also fantastic gnocchi. Good for a casual dinner, cash only.

Primavera Trujillana
This family-run Peruvian restaurant is located in the Belgrano neighborhood, and is the real deal for ceviche. Order pisco sours and ceviche. Come early (8PM) so they don’t sell out of fish (this has happened to me). Cash only.

Don Julio
This is my favorite steakhouse in Palermo Soho. It’s casual, inexpensive and good.

Bar 6
This is a good place to grab lunch in Palermo Soho. I’m partial to the veggie woks.

GENERAL TIPS

• It’s really hard to get small bills (under 100 pesos) so be strategic with the ones you get. Coins are also in short supply.
• Tip 10% at restaurants, always in cash (even if you pay the check by credit card).
• Avoid restaurants with sushi or any kind of Asian food. They are really mediocre compared to Southern California.
• Eat steak any chance you get! My favorite is the lomo, a punto (basically: filet mignon, medium rare).
• For wine, I prefer a Torrontes (white) or Tannat (red). Generally wines called “Reservas” are better. I find Malbecs really hard to drink but the Cabernets are good (they pronounce it “caber-net”, like a fishing net).
• Spanish is pronounced a little differently in Argentina. Double-L and Y sounds are both pronounced kind of like the “zs” in “Zsa Zsa Gabor”. So instead of “poy-yo” (for pollo/chicken), it sounds like “po-jho”. And “Avenida de Mayo” sounds like “Avenida de Ma-jho”. This will be useful with cabs!

Come on, guys

If you're a guy, and you're on a plane, and an obviously pregnant woman is struggling to hoist her roller bag into an overhead bin, and you're standing right next to her...give her a hand.  It will take you five minutes and you'll look like a hero.  And not a chump.  Especially if you happen to be in a airport in TEXAS, for heaven's sake.

The best pasta ever, a recipe!

Today I am going to share a failproof pasta recipe that I have been perfecting over the last year.  It isn't fast to make (it takes about an hour), but it's easy and delicious, perfect for cooking with a glass of wine in one's hand.  It's very flexible in terms of ingredients, but there are a few secret tricks that I will share that are absolutely crucial (especially right at the end). 

Let's start, shall we?

For this example I used the following ingredients:

• Several fresh tomatoes, chopped into large-ish pieces
• Diced onion (about half of one large onion)
• Minced garlic
• Olive oil
• Diced hot pepper (optional)
• Sausage (optional - but oh so yummy - for best results, remove from any casing)
• You can also add things like diced bell peppers, squash, herbs, chickpeas, etc.  I've experimented with several items and the ones shown above are my faves.  
• The amounts shown here result in enough pasta for two people plus some leftovers; modify as needed.

You will also need at least one type of cheese.  I had a few types lying around so I included:

• Soft spreadable herb cheese (CRUCIAL)
• Buffalo mozzarella
• Parmesan

And of course the pasta.  To make this recipe correctly, you'll need something durable like spaghetti - not a stuffed pasta like ravioli.  I love home-made noodles but the sauce is so awesome you won't notice a difference with storebought, I swear.

Here's a tip: if you're using spaghetti, break the noodles in half before cooking.  I had to do this in Argentina because our pot was so tiny - but it makes them much more pleasant to eat.

I like to get all my ingredients chopped and ready to go before I start cooking.  Maybe so I can pretend I'm the host of a cooking show.  Or maybe because I'm a Virgo.  At any rate, we're ready to start cooking now. So let's do it!

First, put a few tablespoons of olive oil in a pan over a low heat with some minced garlic.  As every occasional chef knows, this is primarily to impress your guests and make the house start to smell good.

When the garlic is starting to brown just a bit, add onions and any other "hard" vegetables such as peppers or chickpeas.  (We'll add "soft" veggies such as tomatoes in a moment.) Again, keep your heat low.  No rush here.  Have more wine.

Once these have started to soften and brown, you can add your sausage (unless you are vegetarian, in which case you have my sympathies).  Cook that until it's nice and brown, and make sure you're kind of chopping the sausage up into small pieces as it cooks (no big lumps).  I took a picture of this but it looked kind of gross so I will spare you and cut to the next step.

Once your sausage has browned, now is the time to add tomatoes and any other soft veggies (e.g. squash) that you might be adding.  Mix this together thoroughly.  You may need to add more olive oil, you really want those tomatoes to simmer away nicely. 

Make sure the heat is low, cover your pan, and set it aside for 20-30 minutes (this is the part that takes the longest).  Have a little more wine while you wait.

Here are the tomatoes, cooking away.  You want this to get nice and juicy.  When the tomatoes have gotten really soft, smash them up with a fork.  Keep mixing up your sauce, but keep the lid on at all other times so that the moisture doesn't escape.  You don't want to end up with a dried-out sauce.

Now you can finally get your water boiling and cook your pasta. 

One thing I like to do right before the pasta is done cooking, is get a cup full of pasta water and save this aside.  (This is a Mario Batali trick.)

If your sauce isn't liquid enough, you can add this at the end (not usually necessary, but good to have just in case).

NOW COMES THE CRUCIAL PART.  THE PART THAT MUST NOT BE SKIPPED.

Once you have cooked and drained your pasta, put it in the pan with the tomato sauce, and put your cheese(s) on top.  The most important cheese to add is a couple tablespoons of a nice, flavorful soft cheese, e.g. Rondele cheese spread.  You can also use gorgonzola crumbles or any soft herbed cheese.  I also threw in some buffalo mozzarella but this won't add much flavor, just a little extra creaminess.

Now get a sturdy spoon and stir the s*** out of it!  The glutens from the pasta, the cheese, and the sauce will combine into a miracle of pure deliciousness, like so:

Please, whatever you do, do NOT serve the pasta and sauce separately. 

Do NOT neglect to add some kind of gooey soft flavorful cheese  (parmesan alone will not do the trick). 

While everything else is pretty negotiable, these two steps are the key to "the best pasta ever." 

Now serve, eat, and enjoy!  And let me know how it went, or if you have any other tips.

Chase the robots?

Is it just me or is anyone else kinda creeped out by Chase's California ad campaign?

I mean, as a former WaMu customer, they seem to be doing a pretty good job of handling the transition.  (Apart, that is, from baiting consumers into low-interest loans and then jacking the rates up.)  But my bank account still works.  I can, like, write checks and deposit checks and stuff like that.

But seriously, they seem to have taken Minority Report as their ad inspiration.  "I've got it.  Take classic California imagery, turn it robotic blue, and replace the SUN with our LOGO!"

 

Is it really possible to read this tagline as anything other than a threat, probably from a different species?

WE'RE HERE FOR YOU, CALIFORNIANS.  EVEN YOUR BIKES AND BOATS CAN'T SAVE YOU NOW.  THE GREAT BLUE EYE OF CHASE IS WATCHING YOU, FOREVER.

 

Or consider these stills from a Chase commercial, casually using a Beatles song as if to say, yeah, we're freakin' RICH, man.  Succumb.  In the brave new world of Chase, we Earthlings are forced to live dreary lives of monotone isolation, drinking bad coffee with other unemployed people at a blue-collar diner, driving for days through unpaved desert landscapes, warmed only by the eery light of the blue Chase octagon.

 

 

 

Okay, already, you win.  I'm scared.  Now can I close my checking account?

Waiting for fire

There were rumors flying around town yesterday that the fire was coming.  Someone in town was trying to sign people up for home flame retardant protection, saying that fire was expected here in 36 hours.  The fire captain shot down that rumor.  (Hey - it's a recession!  Guy's got to make a living!)  A shopkeeper said the sheriff had told her an evacuation order would probably come through in the next day or two.  Well, it's a small town.  Rumors are practically legal tender here.

 

Luckily we have friends in high-information places who told us nothing like that was in the works.  YET. Still, they said, the fire had moved from Glendale to Juniper Hills in the course of a few days -- so the idea of it reaching us in Wrightwood was not totally unrealistic.  I looked on the California fire map and saw that indeed, the biggest group of devilish-looking flames was the one headed straight for us, with nothing in its way except a near-empty and tinderstick-dry National Forest.

So after enjoying a perfectly-cooked Porterhouse steak (thanks Jay!), I thought it might behoove us to pack up a few things.  Sort of a pre-evacuation maneuver.  I got out some old empty boxes and put them on the living room floor, then walked around trying to figure out what to take with us.

Right before we left Argentina, I had a dream that we came home and our house had burned down.  I walked around the neighborhood, fresh from the airport, still dragging my rolling bag behind me.  The homes were nothing more than still-smoldering charcoal.  The firefighter who was showing me around was apologetic,  But, in my dream, I was relieved.  I had everything I needed: Jay, our dog, my laptop, my favorite clothes.  The rest was just...stuff.  I thought this was a metaphor.  What if it was prophecy?

We're currently a one-car family, with a lone Honda Element to carry two people and a dog.  We'd have room for a few boxes but not much more.  I picked up a few things to take with us.  The ashes of our old dog Dewayne.  Photo albums.  My mom's wedding china from the 60s.  A photo of my Silverlake kickball team which featured Vince Vaughn and Noah Wyle before they were famous.  Tax documents.  Paintings.  Scanning shelves, opening cupboards, looking for items that fell within the perfect nexus of Portability, Necessity, Irreplaceability, Sentimental Value and Monetary Value.  The nice lawn furniture, the flat-screen TV, books and movies and skis and knick-knacks, a giant ceramic Hello Kitty, all of these would have to stay and take their chances with the fire.  Would our Vespa have a better chance of making it if we parked it inside the house?  Or could we somehow manage to drive it to...wherever we would go?  We looked up dog-friendly hotels in San Diego, away from the smoke.  We called friends with vacation homes in Palm Springs. 

This morning things seem more hopeful, at least in our location.  Someone posted on our local message board, "The fire looks like it's really laying down this morning. It doesn't look like it made it across Littlerock drainage, and it's lightly raining here now...Today looks like a good day for fire fighters."

Let's hope so.

Oh my.

Who needs Halloween II when you have this?

It ain't me, babe

Last night I ran into some friends who, as it turns out, unbeknownst to me, read my blog.  How cool!

They had developed a theory that the sentiment expressed in my recent post about a Dylan concert (to paraphrase: "Fuck you, Bob Dylan.") is akin to the sentiment expressed so beautifully by Joan Baez in her song "Diamonds and Rust," which is of course a tribute to her ex-boyfriend, one B. Dylan.

That got me thinking about that song, which is one of the songs of my childhood.  My mom had the album it is from, and I used to listen to it all the time.  I didn't know who Bob Dylan was then, of course, and I didn't know the song was about him.  But even when I was very young, I found "Diamonds and Rust" to be intriguingly haunting, a blurry window into adulthood that seemed impossibly far away.  It introduced me at an extremely young and impressionable age to ideas like how glamorous it is to fall in love with someone that is both charming yet undependable, and how you can end that relationship yet still miss it.  "My greatest mistake," as Sheryl Crowe would put it more pithily and, of course, more shallowly, years later.

Here is the song, as performed live by Joan Baez in 1975:

As flattered as I am by the comparison to the song, and as much as I'm sure "Diamonds and Rust" is now part of my subconscious, I'm not sure that the sentiments are actually the same.  My blog post was expressing disappointment about Dylan's purposefully obtuse and eardrum-blasting concert, whereas the song seems to express disappointment that the first blush of passion and promise that Joan Baez felt for Bob Dylan didn't pan out.  She's nostalgic, but maybe not for a real person.

On second thought, maybe my friends are right.

Here is another YouTube clip I found, a performance with Dylan and Joan Baez at the Newport Festival in 1964.  Notice how he cheerfully drowns out her voice and hogs the microphone.  Notice her swooning regard.  Notice his impish grin. 

How can anyone NOT love Joan Baez?

Addicted to stats

One of my favorite things about TypePad is that I can see where people are coming from when they visit my blog.  This is endlessly fascinating to me.

For instance today I saw on my stats that I got this visit:

I then can click on the link (right column) and it takes me to the page the person actually saw, namely:

So searching for "buenos aires graffiti" somehow got a complete stranger to one of my blog posts.

Beyond that, the post really does have a picture of buenos aires graffiti - and it's a pretty entertaining one. 

Cool.