corruption within

main hall, originally uploaded by vivid tangerine.

an image i've always wondered about, and never seen . . . my friend writes about it beautifully here.

Mabfataah

I miss my old kitty. Neener sent these photos. Aww . . .

Aliens in America

In my frustration over the dwindling selection of decent silly TV shows to watch, with the writers' strike and ABC's frequent rerunning of previously aired episodes of Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Pushing Daisies, Samantha Who, and Big Shots, in an act of desperation, I went over to CW to see what I might be able to find. (Since I continue to refuse to pay for cable just to get the basic channels, believing it is criminal to charge me to be the depository of advertisements for corporations wishing to cultivate new desires in me, I'm limited to what is available streaming over the internet.) And I've become surprisingly charmed by a new show there called Aliens in America.

The premise: A kind-hearted Pakistani teenage orphan named Raja lands in the middle of Wisconsin, to a stereotypical American Midwestern household: The mother lovingly smothers the family, the bumbling father (played by delightful Scott Patterson, Luke Danes in Gilmore Girls) navigates the baffling world of being the sole breadwinner through various jobs and moneymaking projects such as raising llamas in the backyard, the older daughter wakes up one day to find she is one of the hottest girls in school, and the younger son seems so interminably relegated to geekdom, the parents try to treat his status with the social equivalent of electroshock therapy by taking in a foreign exchange student. They imagine the fantasy exchange student will whisk their son straight to the category of most popular boy in school as he trots across the football field, his blond locks blowing in the breeze as the muscles ripple all along his tall Nordic frame.

Instead, they get Raja, and much hilarity ensues. At its heart, it's a very lighthearted and silly comedy, and it surfs along on the waves of various caricatures of American and Pakistani culture. Raja, naturally, wears kurta pajama and a head covering, prays to Mecca five times a day, avoids immodest talk and images, and speaks English with a heavy South Asian accent. But relying on these stereotyped caricatures, the show pokes fun, most of all, at the Midwesterners who can't seem to stop calling Raja Roger, assuming he is a terrorist, mistaking him for a Mexican or persons of any number of other nationalities, and expecting him to speak alternately for all Muslims, all people of color, or anyone who isn't from Wisconsin. In the process, there's just a hint of political critique embedded in the fun (though I also wish, like the folks at Vulture, that it weren't always at the expense of Midwesterners). Along the way, there are lots of quirky moments that keep you guessing.

Although I'm not sure how long I'd follow it if I had Lost and Battlestar Gallactica back in the spectrum, I have to say, I'm enjoying it for now.

Vacation-time Fun

We went to see the beautiful film "Atonement" this afternoon in Emeryville after a leisurely day with the family. Ba and Lolo called this morning at 10:00 to ask if we wanted to join them for Belgian waffles.

We went together down to the Grand Lake farmers' market and got a mess of delicious waffles from the Waffle Mania truck there. I teased the owner that I had high standards since I'd tried waffles on the streets of Bruxelles, but he didn't seem fazed and I wasn't disappointed. Apparently the authentic yeasted dough is shipped directly from Belgium.* The finished waffles have a crispiness, sweetness, and caramelization that make them unlike anything you've had in an American style waffle, even most of those that get called "Belgian waffles". If you're a Bay Area person, try them. If you're not, then you'd better just high-tail it to Oakland or Brussels, whichever works better for you.

(Photo borrowed without permission from a fellow blogger and waffle enthusiast in Marin.)

We washed down the waffles with some fine Hawaiian coffee. Then we came home and Mom made some more food, fried eggs and ham leftover from Christmas eve. By then it was about time to take a nap. Then we went down for the film, which was excellent, and went out to Yoshi's for delicious sushi and other Japanese specialties.

Tomorrow I head to Yosemite for New Years. We'll bring in the new year with hiking, snowshoeing, and cozy games with a friendly group in a hotel room in El Portal. And then, shortly after driving back to the Bay Area on the 1st, it'll be back to Michigan, lickety-split, to start the new semester.

Below is a taster of the beauty of Yosemite, borrowed from a fellow blogger. Yosemite falls is one of our favorite hikes in the area.


*For more press on Waffle Mania, see this article in the Marin Independent Journal.

RIP, Hummer

Surely it was a sweet life in Zack's tender care, but I hope you've found a better place nonetheless.

Little Joys of Teaching

But I didn't tell you the best part about today . . .

I gave my students the end-of-semester evaluations, and thanked them for a lovely semester, and there was that awkward moment of my collecting my things to leave the room. And what did they do? . . . They applauded. :)

About the image above: My mother has been a wonderful elementary school teacher since I was in grade school. Although the level of writing and analysis of our students is obviously different, sometimes I think there isn't actually much difference between our work as educators! Mom has always brought home lots of gifts from her students at the end of every school year, and a Sandra Boynton mug with this picture is one I have drunk coffee out of many times in her kitchen. :) It seems apt for my circumstances now, although to update it for the modern classroom, we'd need to put a cell phone in the paws of the dancing ADHD kitten on the desk, and an iPod earbud in the turkey's ear and a laptop with YouTube showing the latest viral videos on the desktop in front of the lamb.

Photograph by Marcell Nimfuhr. (Please let me know if you'd rather I not leave these up here, Marcell!)

Oh, my heart is a little broken over missing Robert Hass reading at UMMA yesterday. He is one of my very favorites. I even got out my old copy of Praise to lend to Katie after our late-night giddy return to e.e. cummings a few weeks ago.

(Late-night Monday edit: Oh, Marta, remember reading "Meditation at Lagunitas" aloud to one another with Ross, over and over again, when we were all ailing and huddling around together on the beds in our room in Spiti?

[It was Kaza, wasn't it? Where I hung on the shoulders of you both, and you dragged me, complaining the whole way, down the hill into the valley to the hospital, to get me medicine for my intestinal bug, only for us to discover a week later that I'd been taking sulfa drugs that gave me hives, and for Ross to discover a few months later, that the mangoes you brought me for comfort everyday were only further contributing to the allergy!? Those were the good old days, I tell you. The good old days of riding on a tractor to get between villages, drawing our tupattas over our mouths and noses to filter the dust, then taking turns racing to the toilet for our assorted ailments. . .] And then there was the night you went off on your date and the Scandinavian/Korean Christian Buddhist wooed me from below the wall where I was sitting and singing by myself, and gave me the book Living Buddha, Living Christ that I still can't quite let go of, though I've never quite read it either. . . Oh, how I miss being young, sometimes.)

Photograph by Marcell Nimfuhr.

Fitting, by the way. . . I'm the Hermit today. I wish I could hide away for a few more days. I think I could finally get all my work done if I could just have a respite from the social and not have to prepare a face to meet the faces that I meet...

I'm putting off even writing to and calling people I love. Yeah, I think that "I" in the Myers-Briggs from years ago probably still holds, even if I do flirt more than anybody you know. :P

A half year of bad hair days

Bah. I miss my old haircut. And my life in Budapest. And my fabulous friends there.

Just blog-surfed my way to Ingrid Michaelson. Like the sound. I really do love most of the music on Grey's Anatomy, so that caught my attention, when I noticed that her songs been featured there. (It's hilarious, too, how many people seem to be devoted to documenting who's being played there It's proven handy to me, though, because it's ultimately what got me hooked on fabulous, fabulous Regina Spektor.) Ingrid Michaelson has a really freaky clown video though. Clown romance. Eep.



My head-fog is very slow in clearing the past couple days. My students yesterday raked me over the coals with questions about their papers, and I still felt rather bewildered at 3:00.

Interesting and appropriate, my tarot card of the day according to Facebook:

(The Fool desires to achieve great things in life, but does not always anticipate the hard work required. Full of curiosity and searching for answers, the Fool symbolizes a new beginning and endless optimism. He must be careful in the decisions he makes, as his lack of experience is often a hindrance. While others may avoid taking on insurmountable odds, The Fool will attempt to accomplish near impossible goals with almost reckless abandon.)

Hier Spricht Radio PMR

While we're at it . . . I'm also incredibly curious about this, a new book by an old friend of mine. To see more of the photographs, (or for the German-speakers among y'all), see the book's website.

Marcell is someone I met years ago in Lisdoonvarna, Ireland, who caught my attention immediately as someone intensely thoughtful and sensitive, who pursued his interest with passion and focus and a refreshing lack of cynicism. He also took photographs that had a way of showing you an entirely new glimpse of something, even if you'd seen it a thousand times, whether it was a face, a metro station, or the old stove you cooked on in your own kitchen. Back then in the mid-'90s, he had penetrating things to say about Yugoslavia and beautiful images to accompany his ideas in one of those rare slideshows you wish would never end. We haven't been in touch in a very long time, but I still follow his career with interest.

Nyócker!

Damn, I want to see this. I think it's going to take some searching, though, unless I'm willing to wait until my next trip over the pond . . . whenever that is.

bittersweet

(Photo from Au pays des homes integres)

For some reason, this afternoon and evening my mind is lingering on a humid, crowded, underground dance floor in Budapest, Hungary, underneath the old space of a popular outdoor bar, in May of 2005. But of course you know the reason, because you were there, dancing, sparkling at me, drawing your exuberance all around me like an embrace that foretold the other kind. That is one snapshot of us.


And here is another. Morning. Coffee from your French press, two cups, little spoons, sugar. Two of us sitting at a right angle on the L of your black leather sectional couch, our images reflected in the mirrored panels of the closet door. The decor not to your tastes, but the now-familiar (then unfamiliar) mismatch of it endearing somehow, anyway, in its very reminder of our shared liminality as visitors, as foreigners, and the ironic lens through which we both saw this world. The midsummer yellow light and breeze filtering in from the heavy double windows soaring above the market in the square.

And a lapse in words, filled in instead with music, of a kind I had never heard. (Mustafa Kandirali, was it? I always forget the name, but never the sensation, never the sound.) Clarinet, at once mournful and ecstatic, reaching higher, and yet deeper, finding secret untouched places, lifting me up outside of myself, to sweep me out on wings, quick, through the windows, over the roof of the csarnok, to the Duna, and rushing back, to realize with a dizzy glance at you that I am falling in love, against all sense and reason. Too soon even to say the words, they expanded, percolated upwards, and settled in my chest. Silent on my lips, though, they were transparent in my eyes, which I tried to settle anywhere but in yours.

To this day, a taksim unfettered by accompaniment is almost too, too naked, too burning, too frighteningly alive, to hear in mixed company, for it still seems like our secret, locked in that moment on that day in your flat, that space to which we will never return.(I wish now I'd captured our view from the windows, to remind me, to remind me. . .)

(Photo from Budapest Daily Photo)

Such a sweet tender sadness and joy, to miss you.

European Integration and Franco-German R&B

Sometimes I just have to think that Europeans do it with more style. I can't say I love the R&B number that the French and German foreign ministers have just recorded on the theme of European integration, but the concept of working with artists and new media to demonstrate a sentiment is one that I can subscribe to, and there's a freshness and a candor about their message of inclusivity and the appreciation of cultural diversity in the new Europe that I can't imagine too many of our politicians generating.

As they explained on the PR Newswire, "Steinmeier and Kouchner brought two messages with them as they met and exchanged ideas with the young people in the studio in Berlin's diversNeukolln neighborhood. "We are not here to learn how to sing," Steinmeier said. "We want to show that we benefit from the abundance of cultures. Even with all the mistakes, the omissions in the process of integration, there are successful cooperations," Steinmeier said. The second message, he said, is that young artists tell their own people: Learn German, get training." There's something intriguing about the promotion of German language here too . . . and something telling in a French minister singing along to the German lyrics.

The song, by the way, was written by Muhabett, a German-Turkish musician, and a 17-year-old budding artist, Sefo. The style is apparently a newly emerging one called R'nBesk, which "combines American R&B, Turkish Arabesk and Pop with German lyrics" (PRNewswire).

And just for your enjoyment, here's a video of the ministers jamming with the musicians and a handful of other energetic youngsters. It's even better than the clip I heard on PRI's The World the other night on my car radio (pretty much locked in place on NPR).