Starting today, you can read my disengagement story online.
And if you found the Moving Memorial post below moving or memorable, now you can get all the facts from the AP; see what a proper journalist writes when confronted by a self-proclaimed refugee exploiting his own grief to bend the government to his will: Gaza Withdrawal Creates New Refugees.
*
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Running Commentary
I'm transfixed by images of the devastation Katrina has caused. But I can't just sit watching TV, so here's my digital knitting.
Whenever I run on the beach here, things amaze or delight me. Yesterday I tried to document some of them.
The only lifeguard station on the beach here
Shade trees
Note on the left that sand has piled up against the remains of the Roman aqueduct, caught in the setting sun's rosy glow.
All these tire tracks on the beach help explain why Israel's sea turtle population has declined by 80%. They try to return to the beaches of their birth to lay eggs, but the lights and noise of late-night tailgate parties scare them off and they swim out, return, flee again, and eventually die of this exhausting loop. Or they swallow plastic bags they think are jellyfish and die of choking or blockage. If a cluster of eggs should actually make it to the sand, the 4x4s crush them. I've seen two dead turtles on the sand, each about two feet long. Conservation experts try to redirect the turtles to the few protected beaches, and sometimes they find eggs and relocate them. More information on the turtles here.
So many antiquities, so little time: mosaic floor half-buried in a beach road.
View of Jassa, Arab fishing village.
Jassa fishing boats
*
Whenever I run on the beach here, things amaze or delight me. Yesterday I tried to document some of them.
The only lifeguard station on the beach here
Shade trees
Note on the left that sand has piled up against the remains of the Roman aqueduct, caught in the setting sun's rosy glow.
All these tire tracks on the beach help explain why Israel's sea turtle population has declined by 80%. They try to return to the beaches of their birth to lay eggs, but the lights and noise of late-night tailgate parties scare them off and they swim out, return, flee again, and eventually die of this exhausting loop. Or they swallow plastic bags they think are jellyfish and die of choking or blockage. If a cluster of eggs should actually make it to the sand, the 4x4s crush them. I've seen two dead turtles on the sand, each about two feet long. Conservation experts try to redirect the turtles to the few protected beaches, and sometimes they find eggs and relocate them. More information on the turtles here.
So many antiquities, so little time: mosaic floor half-buried in a beach road.
View of Jassa, Arab fishing village.
Jassa fishing boats
*
Seeing the Mundane in the Mundane
Not every photo explores the mysteries of the unfamilar.
Government building, East Jerusalem
A frisson of Paris, East Jerusalem
Kitty, West Jerusalem
Pickles, olive oil and hookahs for sale at snack stand, Abu Ghosh
Street cred, West Jerusalem
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Government building, East Jerusalem
A frisson of Paris, East Jerusalem
Kitty, West Jerusalem
Pickles, olive oil and hookahs for sale at snack stand, Abu Ghosh
Street cred, West Jerusalem
*
Sunday, August 28, 2005
A Moving Memorial
Hundreds of Gaza settlers are staying in hotels around Israel, waiting not for their houses, but for their temporary houses. About 40 families from Elei Sinai have refused to stay in a hotel, unwilling to participate in the proposed three-stage shuffle from hotel to stopgap house to eventual real housing. Of all those who feel wronged by the Disengagement, these people may be most entitled to their anger. Elei Sinai was founded by settlers forcibly removed from Yamit, a Sinai outpost, when Israel returned the peninsula to Egypt in 1982. This is the second time their elected officials have evicted them upon expiration of their strategic usefulness.
Camped out in a dirt lot by the highway near Yad Mordechai, a major junction near Gaza, the refuseniks demand immediate relocation to temporary housing and eventual resettlement on a strip of pricey beachfront. They won’t even visit a hotel to take showers, for fear the government would make media hay of how it’s providing access to running water. For now, they drink and wash from water tanks.
Surrounded by dome tents and vehicles, the heart of the encampment is about 100 feet by 60, its edges loosely defined by a shade cloth hanging over the dusty jumble of camp cots, sleeping bags, chairs, pets, and people. Lots of people. During the day, adults argue and pray and slumber, and their kids fight and play and read, and everywhere hangs a haze of despair and anger. I haven’t visited a Palestinian refugee camp, but there must be similarities. Where the Palestinians have little choice, however, these Jews are exaggerating their straitened circumstances to shame the government into surrendering better land and treatment to them than anybody else is getting.
But what parent willingly subjects children to such misery and uncertainty? I watched a little girl, maybe nine years old, fussing over a cockatoo. She’d hold it and kiss it, whisper to it, feed it seeds from her palm, even dunk its reluctant head into a styrofoam cup to make it drink. Occasionally she cried, silent and poker-faced as tears ran down her dusty cheeks. At those moments she’d crush the cockatoo to her own birdlike little chest and rock from side to side. When she let go, the bird would shake itself off, fan its clipped wings, roll its head like a boxer, and then flap back up to perch on her shoulder. The girl’s mother lay on a nearby cot, staring at the sky through shade cloth, waiting.
I visited Elei Sinai a week before the evacuation. In any town, a few streets define the perimeter. In settlements, these margins form a frontier on the frontier where houses overlook razor-wire fences and then the hostile land beyond. Not many years ago, Palestinian intruders killed a young woman and her boyfriend on one of Elei Sinai's edge streets. Her father and the town commemorated her memory with an enormous boulder that stood at the perimeter of a sideyard facing the spot where she'd died.
At the perimeter of the Yad Mordechai encampment, I found an open trailer loaded with bric-a-brac: houseplants, lamps, abstract sculptures, framed portrait photos, and some wilting bouquets. In the center, almost hidden by the thicket of mementos, lay the dead girl's monument, on its back, facing the sky.
A dog lay in the dust, tethered to the trailer by a short leash and ignoring the dirty stale bread by his water bowl. I'm usually quick to lecture neglectful pet owners, but words failed me.
August 11, 2005
Camped out in a dirt lot by the highway near Yad Mordechai, a major junction near Gaza, the refuseniks demand immediate relocation to temporary housing and eventual resettlement on a strip of pricey beachfront. They won’t even visit a hotel to take showers, for fear the government would make media hay of how it’s providing access to running water. For now, they drink and wash from water tanks.
Surrounded by dome tents and vehicles, the heart of the encampment is about 100 feet by 60, its edges loosely defined by a shade cloth hanging over the dusty jumble of camp cots, sleeping bags, chairs, pets, and people. Lots of people. During the day, adults argue and pray and slumber, and their kids fight and play and read, and everywhere hangs a haze of despair and anger. I haven’t visited a Palestinian refugee camp, but there must be similarities. Where the Palestinians have little choice, however, these Jews are exaggerating their straitened circumstances to shame the government into surrendering better land and treatment to them than anybody else is getting.
But what parent willingly subjects children to such misery and uncertainty? I watched a little girl, maybe nine years old, fussing over a cockatoo. She’d hold it and kiss it, whisper to it, feed it seeds from her palm, even dunk its reluctant head into a styrofoam cup to make it drink. Occasionally she cried, silent and poker-faced as tears ran down her dusty cheeks. At those moments she’d crush the cockatoo to her own birdlike little chest and rock from side to side. When she let go, the bird would shake itself off, fan its clipped wings, roll its head like a boxer, and then flap back up to perch on her shoulder. The girl’s mother lay on a nearby cot, staring at the sky through shade cloth, waiting.
I visited Elei Sinai a week before the evacuation. In any town, a few streets define the perimeter. In settlements, these margins form a frontier on the frontier where houses overlook razor-wire fences and then the hostile land beyond. Not many years ago, Palestinian intruders killed a young woman and her boyfriend on one of Elei Sinai's edge streets. Her father and the town commemorated her memory with an enormous boulder that stood at the perimeter of a sideyard facing the spot where she'd died.
At the perimeter of the Yad Mordechai encampment, I found an open trailer loaded with bric-a-brac: houseplants, lamps, abstract sculptures, framed portrait photos, and some wilting bouquets. In the center, almost hidden by the thicket of mementos, lay the dead girl's monument, on its back, facing the sky.
A dog lay in the dust, tethered to the trailer by a short leash and ignoring the dirty stale bread by his water bowl. I'm usually quick to lecture neglectful pet owners, but words failed me.
August 11, 2005
August 22, 2005
August 22, 2005
*
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Dead Sea Scrolling
Three weeks ago, my cousin Z. and I drove to the Dead Sea, one of the world's natural wonders and among my favorite places anywhere. The same evaporation that's caused its hypersalinity has left behind an ever-widening shore filled with varied geological phenomena, among them spontaneous pools just south of Mineral Beach. Such pools are common around the Dead Sea, but only a few are easily accessible via service roads. They form when spring water wells up and saturates the loose soil, which then collapses, forming a void that the water fills. At least I think that's what happens.
With time, the pools either expand into ponds ...
or become so encrusted with salt that they essentially freeze ...
or dry up completely.
These volunteer bodies of water are as salty and hot as the Dead Sea itself, but much quieter and harder to reach.
And stranger.
Some are simply not inviting.
Others are.
We chose to defile just one.
Note the white thing in my right hand. (Click on the image to expand it.) It's a flake of soft salt crystal that formed on the surface of the pool. Once I disturbed the water, all the salt flakes sank,
Deçà, delà
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.
Yep, just like that.
Worse still, our feet stirred up black mud from the floor of this once tranquil green pool, so that by the time we left, the water had turned brown. Note the stain creeping up from the bottom of the photo. The very act of enjoying something destroys it. Fortunately, traffic to these pools is minimal.
Why's that? Well, after you get past the warning signs and the lack of roads and the big rock fields, the salty mud around the pools themselves becomes hotter than summer asphalt, which means you must wear sandals until the very last moment before entering the water. Of course, once your feet are bare and you're hopping around to avoid searing them, out come the knife-sharp salt crystals. No hyperbole: My foot is still healing from the salt knives. And then there's the quicksand ... though there's less of it in the dry season.
Would I go back? In a second.
Z. had a somewhat harder time of it ...
but he agreed the excursion away from civilization was well worth its discomforts.
Afterward, we slouched in and paid our shekels for the mediated Dead Sea experience at Mineral Beach, which involves a parking lot, crowds, and lockers, yes, but also the delightfully dopey tradition of slathering black mud all over oneself, basking in hot mineral baths, and floating under the watchful eye of perhaps the least necessary lifeguard on Earth. If you stand in deep water, your shoulders and even chest bob well above the surface. To clarify this point, note that the photo above shows me floating. Should you attempt to swim, you appear to be supported by an invisible surfboard. Drowning seems impossible. If, however, you are so foolish or misled as to actually dive into this miraculous water, you will experience intense eye pain, go blind for a few minutes, and excite comment from everybody within 100 feet, one or two of whom will escort you to the outdoor showers all the while asking why you have done such a colossally stupid thing. Or so I hear.
Dried Fruit Ethics Test
On the way back we were starving. Flat-out ravenous. We pulled over at the date shack we'd seen on our way to the beach. (In case anybody reading this feels a burning need to launch yet another online matchmaking service, yes, I am willing to license the proprietary term Date Shack ™.) It was cool and dusty under the palm frond roof, wind flapping through the fabric walls. The dates were there -- hard, soft, yellow, black, in boxes, au naturel -- but the people weren't. Nor were the prices posted.
Conundrum. An ethical test from on high? How do you buy something when you don't even know what to pay? I called for help. "Hey! I'm here to buy dates! Anybody here?" Silence. Then I saw a few bills and coins on the table, tucked under a dish, and realized sales were being conducted on the honor system. So we estimated the value of the dates, left what seemed like just a little too much money, and drove away, marveling at the mysteries of the Holy Land.
One of the date varieties was among the best I've ever had: meaty, dense, and complexly flavored. The others were so dry, so very nearly inedible, that when I offered one to a guest a few days later, she bit down on it, failed to dent it, looked at me reproachfully, and asked, "Are you making fun of me? This is like a rock." And it was. I tossed the lot of them.
Dead Sea Redux
Yesterday, three weeks hence, I returned to the Dead Sea with a new set of cousins: A. from DC and her kids, also A. (16) and A. (19). En route, we talked about visiting the wild pools, but given the pain they'd caused my hearty 25-year-old cousin, I thought it might all be too much for this crew. So we went for the highly mediated experience at Ein Gedi, next to which Mineral Beach looks rustic. Ere 30 years ago, developers perched an enormous concrete structure on a bluff and installed within and around it such niceties as changing rooms, massage cabanas, a gift store, a swimming pool, baths of varying temperatures and mineral concentrations, and even a courtesy shuttle bus -- if you can accurately use words like "courtesy" or "bus" to describe anything towed by a tractor. Twenty years ago there was no bus; the beach was a short walk from the building. But the trip grows longer every year as the water level drops.
A. (19) was delighted to pose in the water reading a newspaper. His enthusiasm was almost infectious, reminding me of my own visits to the Dead Sea when I was, harrumph harrumph, his age.
I went and bought a beer and applied the mud and read the paper. Soon enough, A. (19) showed up and followed suit, and then we sat around jawjacking and watching mud dry. Eventually, his mom and sister wandered out and joined in the spirit of things. After socializing a little, I languorously rinsed off in the most blissful of showers, a torrent of hot sulfurous springwater gurgling and tumbling endlessly from an oversized spout.
After a few more therapeutic dips, a couple laps around the swimming pool, and a final freshwater shower, I sat in the lobby and waited calmly for the rest of our party, suffused with a sense of enormous well-being. Is it the calming minerals that make you feel good? The sub-sea level atmospheric pressure? The beer?
Lost and Found
On the way back, speeding high above the sea, I pulled off the road on a whim to take in the view. The sun was already behind the cliffs near Qumran, and the still water reflected a pastel sunset off the hazy sky and Jordan mountains. Yup, it was sublime. And then I approached the edge of the cliff.
Down the hill, resting in the dirt about 20 feet below me, were six pieces of luggage: a couple roller suitcases, two knapsacks, and two very girly bags, one tiny, plaid, and hard-sided, the other made of pink fabric with leather fittings. At first I didn't quite register them. Then I focused and realized they weren't empty. They weren't even dusty. They were full and still gleamed with the crispness of valued possessions. I slid sideways down the hill to the biggest one, loose dirt and rocks filling my sandals.
Bag number one held just a jumble of clothes. The little plaid bag held a cornucopia of expensive cosmetics and dozens of daily wear contact lenses. I yelled up to the cousins, who stopped their good-natured bickering and gathered at the cliff's edge above to shout questions. The son, who as we've already seen is a goer, slid halfway down the hill. I tossed up a bag. As he rifled through it for ID, I noticed still more expensive cosmetics strewn across the rocks and dirt, their little mirrors broken and powder cakes flung from plastic housings. It was all so pathetic. I kept imagining how miserable the victims must have been, stripped not only of their money and jewelry but of clothes and makeup and contact lenses too. I gathered up all the things and shoved them into the nearest bags, and then we started hauling up the booty.
When everything was on level ground, we set to work looking for IDs. Incongruously, a pleather-bound Daytimer crammed with scribbled dollar figures and daily temperatures and phone numbers swam to the fore amid D&G undies and Chanel compacts. We decided it belonged to an obsessive-compulsive orthodox Jew from Maryland, prompting endless speculation and a series of basically fruitless phone calls to some of the numbers he'd recorded. At one point I reached Shlomo Jessel, an orthodox Jew formerly of Toronto who now lives and works as a psychologist here in Israel. He was very interested in our quest and attempted to congratulate me in religious terms for my efforts. I pointedly replied that I am not religious and was pursuing this good deed because I'm ethical and not for any notions of godliness, thank you.
Breakthrough. One of the knapsacks contained a te'udat ze'ut, or national ID card, bearing the photo, name and address of a striking young brunette in Jerusalem: Devorah. We loaded the bags and ourselves into the car, called 114 and got her number.
She was cheered by our news. The stuff had been stolen that very afternoon from a rental car parked at Ein Gedi -- precisely where we'd been parked. One of her friends called me back and spoke French, consistent with the French ID tag on the one of the bags and all the fancy French makeup. We agreed to meet in Jerusalem within the hour.
Second Date
On our way past the Date Shack™ earlier, describing the honor system transaction to the cousin, I had thought up a little experiment in human nature. Set aside three days at the Shack with predictably similar revenues. Day one, operate as normal. Day two, leave the stand unattended but with prices clearly marked. Day three, no attendant, no signs. Compare revenues and inventory at the end of each day. How clever of me, I thought. Pointless? Hey, so was the Post-It before it was indispensable.
We stopped at the Date Shack™, where a prematurely wizened, sun-darkened man was on duty, assisted by two round-cheeked offspring who approached the car bearing samples of hard, pale, fresh dates. Not yet wizened. A. told her kids not to eat them, but I was hungry, so cholera be damned.
While they went to get Cokes next door, I learned that a kilo package such as I had taken on my last visit goes for NIS 40, or about $4 pound. I told the proprietor about that visit, and asked why he'd left the place unattended. The kids were delinquent, that's why. He was so delighted by my story, he explained it to his kids in Arabic. We were on such a roll that I told him about my experiment, and while its theoretical nature seemed to elude him, his reply rendered the idea moot. Not only was he quite sure that he makes more money when actually running the Shack, he'd never even seen the money I'd left him. Someone else had stolen it. So much for human nature. So much for my career as a social scientist.
In any case, his extraordinary salesmanship would throw off any such comparison. I walked away with a huge bag of assorted date varieties still on their stalks, way more than I'd wanted, many of them not yet dry and therefore an acquired taste (not yet acquired by me). We'll have dates for weeks.
CSI: Qumran
And now back to our show. Suddenly everyone in the car was a forensic specialist. Shlomo Jessel called back with more info on Daytimer loser Bernard Abady (as in "I'm glad we only found luggage and not Abady"). I assured Shlomo I'd located an email address for the guy and would be pursuing that path.
Then I asked Shlomo about something I'd been wondering. Does he use religious elements in his psychology practice? When relevant, he said. The car was by that point trapped in a checkpoint bottleneck at the entrance to Jerusalem, so I had plenty of time to talk. Not sure how interesting it was to the Triple A. I asked Shlomo if his religious patients had suffered abnormally high levels of anxiety or depression over the Gush Katif trauma. No more than might be expected, he said. The conversation kept evolving as we drove through the checkpoint and into the city, even addressing whether the thugs who'd poured acid on the soldiers in Kfar Darom might be called religious.
Shlomo invited me to visit him or even stay over with his family some night at their moshav near Modi'in. People here offer invitations like that on a regular basis. It's so alien to me. In the US we might agree to meet someone for coffee at a neutral location if we really think they're great, but here it's all about slumber parties with near-strangers ... all the odder because nobody really lives more than two hours away from anybody else in this minute little country.
Miss Navigation
While we were wrapping it up, my cousin kept telling me to turn right, because she thought the Central Bus Station, our rendezvous point with the French girls, had moved. But I knew it was to our left. I finally managed to push and bully way my way through downtown traffic, only to get a call from the French girls saying they'd thought to simplify my drive by walking to the bus stop at the edge of town -- precisely where A. had been trying to tell me to go. So A. was right for the wrong reasons, and les girls had done something wrong for the right reasons. Huh.
Eventually they showed up -- three charming, modestly yet fashionably dressed little Francaises and one guy, all happy to see their stuff again but troubled by what had been stolen. I felt compelled to explain just how improbable it was that I had found their belongings. Why stop at that turnout? Why approach the edge? Why bother checking the bags? Why bother rifling through their stuff? Well, OK, I didn't say that last part. We had a long polyglot exchange and eventually my cousins ambled back, armed with a kassamful of Pringles, and we wrapped it up. I had thought they might at least shower me with chaste little kisses for such valor, but religious chicks won't even shake your hand. They're saving their chaste little kisses for marriage. Here they are:
Post script. I am still puzzling over the meaning of this episode. A. calls it a "Beshert day" (beshert = "meant to be" in Yiddish), but that doesn't answer anything for me. What was the purpose of the events that led to my meeting four French kids under the clock at the Central Station and restoring to them their stolen possessions? Was it to set an example for every person under 20 who was touched by this scene, namely the junior American cousins and all the French kids? Is it just that I'm nosy and afflicted by do-gooderitis. Am I still repaying my karmic debt to the two Mormons who, 20 years ago, pulled over on the 101 at 11pm north of Pismo Beach and helped me get the car off the road and my carcass to a motel? Or is the world simply random, without cause or purpose, driven by our choices and coincidence? Sure wish I could remember all those books I read so long ago.
Abu Gluttony
From Jerusalem we drove straight to Abu Ghosh, widely reputed to be home to the finest humus in Israel. OK, among the finest humuses in Israel. Leave it to the shekel-a-word pundits to assign categorical winners. I'm tempted to say only that yes, it was great, and cripes, we over-ordered. It might have been OK if A. (16) hadn't been sidelined by a stomach ailment and thus hors de combat. While we hoovered three kinds of humus and a dozen other salads, she morosely picked her way through a plate of white rice. No team spirit.
OK, OK. What about the humus? Superior for three reasons.
1. Hand-mashed, not machine-spun. This critical distinction separates the humus men from the humus, uh, boys.
2. Served warm. Not essential, but much better that way.
3. Flavor, flavor, flavor. Was it the salt, or was it the spices? Perhaps it was the long-cooked ful or chickpeas cascading down the slopes of each little humus mountain. Perhaps it was the side dishes, each a shining example of its genre, and none befouled by mayonnaise. Perhaps it was just the raging hunger I'd worked up after a day of running and driving and swimming and dealing with the absolutely bizarre phenomenon of having two squabbling kids in the backseat.
Quizas, quizas, quizas.
Pater Infamilias
My "Is this my beautiful car? Is this my beautiful life?" moment came at the cranky tail end of our all-day excursion. I'd been driving my cousin and her two kids in a luxury car as dilapidated as my own, silently witnessing their abrasive yet loving family dynamic. I'm not sure just what eventually pushed me over the edge, but heck, we're family. More or less.
So throwing caution to the wind, I told the kids to simmer down back there or I'd make them walk. Or ride on the roof. Not exactly dad-like, I guess. I think though am not sure that their mom was happy to get some backup. Eventually we all came down on A. (19), because he was clearly and consistently the aggressor against his ill little sister. Conduct unbecoming a sophomore. Not sure I made a diff -- who am I to give advice? -- but we segued to a conversation about observance and guilt and motivation, and thus did we carry on all the way back to their hotel.
BTW, the concert on the beach at midnight wasn't really worth writing about, but here's the crowd with the Tel Aviv shore and skyline. That's a fishing pole arcing up on the right.
*
With time, the pools either expand into ponds ...
or become so encrusted with salt that they essentially freeze ...
or dry up completely.
These volunteer bodies of water are as salty and hot as the Dead Sea itself, but much quieter and harder to reach.
And stranger.
Some are simply not inviting.
Others are.
We chose to defile just one.
Note the white thing in my right hand. (Click on the image to expand it.) It's a flake of soft salt crystal that formed on the surface of the pool. Once I disturbed the water, all the salt flakes sank,
Deçà, delà
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.
Yep, just like that.
Worse still, our feet stirred up black mud from the floor of this once tranquil green pool, so that by the time we left, the water had turned brown. Note the stain creeping up from the bottom of the photo. The very act of enjoying something destroys it. Fortunately, traffic to these pools is minimal.
Why's that? Well, after you get past the warning signs and the lack of roads and the big rock fields, the salty mud around the pools themselves becomes hotter than summer asphalt, which means you must wear sandals until the very last moment before entering the water. Of course, once your feet are bare and you're hopping around to avoid searing them, out come the knife-sharp salt crystals. No hyperbole: My foot is still healing from the salt knives. And then there's the quicksand ... though there's less of it in the dry season.
Would I go back? In a second.
Z. had a somewhat harder time of it ...
but he agreed the excursion away from civilization was well worth its discomforts.
Afterward, we slouched in and paid our shekels for the mediated Dead Sea experience at Mineral Beach, which involves a parking lot, crowds, and lockers, yes, but also the delightfully dopey tradition of slathering black mud all over oneself, basking in hot mineral baths, and floating under the watchful eye of perhaps the least necessary lifeguard on Earth. If you stand in deep water, your shoulders and even chest bob well above the surface. To clarify this point, note that the photo above shows me floating. Should you attempt to swim, you appear to be supported by an invisible surfboard. Drowning seems impossible. If, however, you are so foolish or misled as to actually dive into this miraculous water, you will experience intense eye pain, go blind for a few minutes, and excite comment from everybody within 100 feet, one or two of whom will escort you to the outdoor showers all the while asking why you have done such a colossally stupid thing. Or so I hear.
Dried Fruit Ethics Test
On the way back we were starving. Flat-out ravenous. We pulled over at the date shack we'd seen on our way to the beach. (In case anybody reading this feels a burning need to launch yet another online matchmaking service, yes, I am willing to license the proprietary term Date Shack ™.) It was cool and dusty under the palm frond roof, wind flapping through the fabric walls. The dates were there -- hard, soft, yellow, black, in boxes, au naturel -- but the people weren't. Nor were the prices posted.
Conundrum. An ethical test from on high? How do you buy something when you don't even know what to pay? I called for help. "Hey! I'm here to buy dates! Anybody here?" Silence. Then I saw a few bills and coins on the table, tucked under a dish, and realized sales were being conducted on the honor system. So we estimated the value of the dates, left what seemed like just a little too much money, and drove away, marveling at the mysteries of the Holy Land.
One of the date varieties was among the best I've ever had: meaty, dense, and complexly flavored. The others were so dry, so very nearly inedible, that when I offered one to a guest a few days later, she bit down on it, failed to dent it, looked at me reproachfully, and asked, "Are you making fun of me? This is like a rock." And it was. I tossed the lot of them.
Dead Sea Redux
Yesterday, three weeks hence, I returned to the Dead Sea with a new set of cousins: A. from DC and her kids, also A. (16) and A. (19). En route, we talked about visiting the wild pools, but given the pain they'd caused my hearty 25-year-old cousin, I thought it might all be too much for this crew. So we went for the highly mediated experience at Ein Gedi, next to which Mineral Beach looks rustic. Ere 30 years ago, developers perched an enormous concrete structure on a bluff and installed within and around it such niceties as changing rooms, massage cabanas, a gift store, a swimming pool, baths of varying temperatures and mineral concentrations, and even a courtesy shuttle bus -- if you can accurately use words like "courtesy" or "bus" to describe anything towed by a tractor. Twenty years ago there was no bus; the beach was a short walk from the building. But the trip grows longer every year as the water level drops.
A. (19) was delighted to pose in the water reading a newspaper. His enthusiasm was almost infectious, reminding me of my own visits to the Dead Sea when I was, harrumph harrumph, his age.
I went and bought a beer and applied the mud and read the paper. Soon enough, A. (19) showed up and followed suit, and then we sat around jawjacking and watching mud dry. Eventually, his mom and sister wandered out and joined in the spirit of things. After socializing a little, I languorously rinsed off in the most blissful of showers, a torrent of hot sulfurous springwater gurgling and tumbling endlessly from an oversized spout.
After a few more therapeutic dips, a couple laps around the swimming pool, and a final freshwater shower, I sat in the lobby and waited calmly for the rest of our party, suffused with a sense of enormous well-being. Is it the calming minerals that make you feel good? The sub-sea level atmospheric pressure? The beer?
Lost and Found
On the way back, speeding high above the sea, I pulled off the road on a whim to take in the view. The sun was already behind the cliffs near Qumran, and the still water reflected a pastel sunset off the hazy sky and Jordan mountains. Yup, it was sublime. And then I approached the edge of the cliff.
Down the hill, resting in the dirt about 20 feet below me, were six pieces of luggage: a couple roller suitcases, two knapsacks, and two very girly bags, one tiny, plaid, and hard-sided, the other made of pink fabric with leather fittings. At first I didn't quite register them. Then I focused and realized they weren't empty. They weren't even dusty. They were full and still gleamed with the crispness of valued possessions. I slid sideways down the hill to the biggest one, loose dirt and rocks filling my sandals.
Bag number one held just a jumble of clothes. The little plaid bag held a cornucopia of expensive cosmetics and dozens of daily wear contact lenses. I yelled up to the cousins, who stopped their good-natured bickering and gathered at the cliff's edge above to shout questions. The son, who as we've already seen is a goer, slid halfway down the hill. I tossed up a bag. As he rifled through it for ID, I noticed still more expensive cosmetics strewn across the rocks and dirt, their little mirrors broken and powder cakes flung from plastic housings. It was all so pathetic. I kept imagining how miserable the victims must have been, stripped not only of their money and jewelry but of clothes and makeup and contact lenses too. I gathered up all the things and shoved them into the nearest bags, and then we started hauling up the booty.
When everything was on level ground, we set to work looking for IDs. Incongruously, a pleather-bound Daytimer crammed with scribbled dollar figures and daily temperatures and phone numbers swam to the fore amid D&G undies and Chanel compacts. We decided it belonged to an obsessive-compulsive orthodox Jew from Maryland, prompting endless speculation and a series of basically fruitless phone calls to some of the numbers he'd recorded. At one point I reached Shlomo Jessel, an orthodox Jew formerly of Toronto who now lives and works as a psychologist here in Israel. He was very interested in our quest and attempted to congratulate me in religious terms for my efforts. I pointedly replied that I am not religious and was pursuing this good deed because I'm ethical and not for any notions of godliness, thank you.
Breakthrough. One of the knapsacks contained a te'udat ze'ut, or national ID card, bearing the photo, name and address of a striking young brunette in Jerusalem: Devorah. We loaded the bags and ourselves into the car, called 114 and got her number.
She was cheered by our news. The stuff had been stolen that very afternoon from a rental car parked at Ein Gedi -- precisely where we'd been parked. One of her friends called me back and spoke French, consistent with the French ID tag on the one of the bags and all the fancy French makeup. We agreed to meet in Jerusalem within the hour.
Second Date
On our way past the Date Shack™ earlier, describing the honor system transaction to the cousin, I had thought up a little experiment in human nature. Set aside three days at the Shack with predictably similar revenues. Day one, operate as normal. Day two, leave the stand unattended but with prices clearly marked. Day three, no attendant, no signs. Compare revenues and inventory at the end of each day. How clever of me, I thought. Pointless? Hey, so was the Post-It before it was indispensable.
We stopped at the Date Shack™, where a prematurely wizened, sun-darkened man was on duty, assisted by two round-cheeked offspring who approached the car bearing samples of hard, pale, fresh dates. Not yet wizened. A. told her kids not to eat them, but I was hungry, so cholera be damned.
While they went to get Cokes next door, I learned that a kilo package such as I had taken on my last visit goes for NIS 40, or about $4 pound. I told the proprietor about that visit, and asked why he'd left the place unattended. The kids were delinquent, that's why. He was so delighted by my story, he explained it to his kids in Arabic. We were on such a roll that I told him about my experiment, and while its theoretical nature seemed to elude him, his reply rendered the idea moot. Not only was he quite sure that he makes more money when actually running the Shack, he'd never even seen the money I'd left him. Someone else had stolen it. So much for human nature. So much for my career as a social scientist.
In any case, his extraordinary salesmanship would throw off any such comparison. I walked away with a huge bag of assorted date varieties still on their stalks, way more than I'd wanted, many of them not yet dry and therefore an acquired taste (not yet acquired by me). We'll have dates for weeks.
CSI: Qumran
And now back to our show. Suddenly everyone in the car was a forensic specialist. Shlomo Jessel called back with more info on Daytimer loser Bernard Abady (as in "I'm glad we only found luggage and not Abady"). I assured Shlomo I'd located an email address for the guy and would be pursuing that path.
Then I asked Shlomo about something I'd been wondering. Does he use religious elements in his psychology practice? When relevant, he said. The car was by that point trapped in a checkpoint bottleneck at the entrance to Jerusalem, so I had plenty of time to talk. Not sure how interesting it was to the Triple A. I asked Shlomo if his religious patients had suffered abnormally high levels of anxiety or depression over the Gush Katif trauma. No more than might be expected, he said. The conversation kept evolving as we drove through the checkpoint and into the city, even addressing whether the thugs who'd poured acid on the soldiers in Kfar Darom might be called religious.
Shlomo invited me to visit him or even stay over with his family some night at their moshav near Modi'in. People here offer invitations like that on a regular basis. It's so alien to me. In the US we might agree to meet someone for coffee at a neutral location if we really think they're great, but here it's all about slumber parties with near-strangers ... all the odder because nobody really lives more than two hours away from anybody else in this minute little country.
Miss Navigation
While we were wrapping it up, my cousin kept telling me to turn right, because she thought the Central Bus Station, our rendezvous point with the French girls, had moved. But I knew it was to our left. I finally managed to push and bully way my way through downtown traffic, only to get a call from the French girls saying they'd thought to simplify my drive by walking to the bus stop at the edge of town -- precisely where A. had been trying to tell me to go. So A. was right for the wrong reasons, and les girls had done something wrong for the right reasons. Huh.
Eventually they showed up -- three charming, modestly yet fashionably dressed little Francaises and one guy, all happy to see their stuff again but troubled by what had been stolen. I felt compelled to explain just how improbable it was that I had found their belongings. Why stop at that turnout? Why approach the edge? Why bother checking the bags? Why bother rifling through their stuff? Well, OK, I didn't say that last part. We had a long polyglot exchange and eventually my cousins ambled back, armed with a kassamful of Pringles, and we wrapped it up. I had thought they might at least shower me with chaste little kisses for such valor, but religious chicks won't even shake your hand. They're saving their chaste little kisses for marriage. Here they are:
Post script. I am still puzzling over the meaning of this episode. A. calls it a "Beshert day" (beshert = "meant to be" in Yiddish), but that doesn't answer anything for me. What was the purpose of the events that led to my meeting four French kids under the clock at the Central Station and restoring to them their stolen possessions? Was it to set an example for every person under 20 who was touched by this scene, namely the junior American cousins and all the French kids? Is it just that I'm nosy and afflicted by do-gooderitis. Am I still repaying my karmic debt to the two Mormons who, 20 years ago, pulled over on the 101 at 11pm north of Pismo Beach and helped me get the car off the road and my carcass to a motel? Or is the world simply random, without cause or purpose, driven by our choices and coincidence? Sure wish I could remember all those books I read so long ago.
Abu Gluttony
From Jerusalem we drove straight to Abu Ghosh, widely reputed to be home to the finest humus in Israel. OK, among the finest humuses in Israel. Leave it to the shekel-a-word pundits to assign categorical winners. I'm tempted to say only that yes, it was great, and cripes, we over-ordered. It might have been OK if A. (16) hadn't been sidelined by a stomach ailment and thus hors de combat. While we hoovered three kinds of humus and a dozen other salads, she morosely picked her way through a plate of white rice. No team spirit.
OK, OK. What about the humus? Superior for three reasons.
1. Hand-mashed, not machine-spun. This critical distinction separates the humus men from the humus, uh, boys.
2. Served warm. Not essential, but much better that way.
3. Flavor, flavor, flavor. Was it the salt, or was it the spices? Perhaps it was the long-cooked ful or chickpeas cascading down the slopes of each little humus mountain. Perhaps it was the side dishes, each a shining example of its genre, and none befouled by mayonnaise. Perhaps it was just the raging hunger I'd worked up after a day of running and driving and swimming and dealing with the absolutely bizarre phenomenon of having two squabbling kids in the backseat.
Quizas, quizas, quizas.
Pater Infamilias
My "Is this my beautiful car? Is this my beautiful life?" moment came at the cranky tail end of our all-day excursion. I'd been driving my cousin and her two kids in a luxury car as dilapidated as my own, silently witnessing their abrasive yet loving family dynamic. I'm not sure just what eventually pushed me over the edge, but heck, we're family. More or less.
So throwing caution to the wind, I told the kids to simmer down back there or I'd make them walk. Or ride on the roof. Not exactly dad-like, I guess. I think though am not sure that their mom was happy to get some backup. Eventually we all came down on A. (19), because he was clearly and consistently the aggressor against his ill little sister. Conduct unbecoming a sophomore. Not sure I made a diff -- who am I to give advice? -- but we segued to a conversation about observance and guilt and motivation, and thus did we carry on all the way back to their hotel.
BTW, the concert on the beach at midnight wasn't really worth writing about, but here's the crowd with the Tel Aviv shore and skyline. That's a fishing pole arcing up on the right.
*
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Watching Gaza Burn on CNN
I'm sitting on a couch in a Caesarea home as the sun sinks over the Mediterranean and the battle for Gaza rages on CNN. It's not easy for a TV-phobe to stare so fixedly at a screen. But I'm managing. Reminds me of watching the LA riots way back when.
A soldier is trying to cut through loops of concertina wire as teen zealot miscreants hurl oil and dirt at him. Weird blue chemicals have been added to the water cannon. Contrast the vicious behavior of these last holdouts atop a synagogue with that of the solicitous policemen who continued talking to the holdouts in the Neve Dekalim synagogue -- or "mosque" as CNN's geopolitical wizards kept saying.
All but the most elite journalists were evicted from Gaza two days ago, so I beat a retreat after three unpleasant days in the sun. The settlers hate the press by now. I've never felt so vulture-like as when trying to get Gazans to answer questions. In fact, I drove to Kfar Darom three days ago, but two kids at the main gate turned me away.
"You can't come in."
"Who says?"
"The community has decided."
Power-mad, I thought, but intransigent.
So I turned the car around and drove away past two huge tanks.
TV again: The kids raging against the cops and the police are crazed yet curiously gentle in their violence. They'll all go to jail for this. The ironic thing is that few if any of these rebels even lived in Gaza; they're mostly infiltrators, or supporters, or mistannenim, which means sneaking people, a reference to how they bypassed the dozens of roadblocks. When I was down there, some of the sneakers cheerily told me that the sneaking stories were so diverse and inspiring that people inside the settlements had been talking about compiling them into a book. Car trunks played a big role, which makes sense, because none of the border guards ever checked my trunk.
Back to the screen ... Compare this extraordinary openness with how almost any other government on earth would treat such an operation: complete media blackout.
Some of the cops in riot gear look like they've been doused in frosting. The most frosted of them all is beset by the fundamentalist version of soccer hooligans, yet the kids are pretty peaceful; they mostly keep yelling at him and trying to take away his megaphone.
Now the cops are emerging from the synagogue in their underwear on international TV to be doused in bottled spring water. The question is whether they're suffering from a chemical agent flung on them by the protesters, or if they're suffering from the effects of the blue water they sprayed onto the roof, which has been bailed by the bucketful onto the cops attempting to break this final bastion of resistance.
Earlier I heard a police negotiation specialist in Maine, I think, opine that the settlers were holding fire in order to maintain the high road for their future relations with the rest of the country. Someone forgot to tell the Rooftop Kids.
Some annoying things about CNN:
"successive governments" -- how many times will they say that?
"mosques" -- Jews don't pray in mosques. Those buildings are synagogues.
Misidentifying the rabbis in orange vests as local overseers.
"watershed" "watershed" "watershed" "watershed"
"Smoke rising from the Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim signals to the Palestinians that the patience of the weak wore down the strength of the mighty."
As Danny Ayalon, Israel's US Ambassador, tells CNN the Israeli position, the Hilltop Kids turned Rooftop Kids are being perp-walked past a huge pile of furniture they'd used to barricade the synagogue. Hilltop kids are ultra-rightist settlement youth who literally do live on hilltops, often in mobile homes.
There's something ludicrous about the containers dangling over the roof. They can't touch down, because the building probably wouldn't support them. But they've served their purpose: the cops have conquered the roof and now they're stripping down to their skivvies up there too. And the rebels have been led away.
My secular cousin just called and put everything in perspective. "Ah, they're just kids," she said. "The police didn't need to make such a big deal about them. If they'd left them up there for a week they'd have come down on their own." By those lights, this showdown is an event staged for the benefit of world opinion, which seems to be what the Arab press is sneering.
The sun has set. It's too late for a run. I'm on deadline. Back to work.
Oh, and it turns out the cops were being doused in acid.
*
A soldier is trying to cut through loops of concertina wire as teen zealot miscreants hurl oil and dirt at him. Weird blue chemicals have been added to the water cannon. Contrast the vicious behavior of these last holdouts atop a synagogue with that of the solicitous policemen who continued talking to the holdouts in the Neve Dekalim synagogue -- or "mosque" as CNN's geopolitical wizards kept saying.
All but the most elite journalists were evicted from Gaza two days ago, so I beat a retreat after three unpleasant days in the sun. The settlers hate the press by now. I've never felt so vulture-like as when trying to get Gazans to answer questions. In fact, I drove to Kfar Darom three days ago, but two kids at the main gate turned me away.
"You can't come in." "Who says?"
"The community has decided."
Power-mad, I thought, but intransigent.
So I turned the car around and drove away past two huge tanks.
TV again: The kids raging against the cops and the police are crazed yet curiously gentle in their violence. They'll all go to jail for this. The ironic thing is that few if any of these rebels even lived in Gaza; they're mostly infiltrators, or supporters, or mistannenim, which means sneaking people, a reference to how they bypassed the dozens of roadblocks. When I was down there, some of the sneakers cheerily told me that the sneaking stories were so diverse and inspiring that people inside the settlements had been talking about compiling them into a book. Car trunks played a big role, which makes sense, because none of the border guards ever checked my trunk.
Back to the screen ... Compare this extraordinary openness with how almost any other government on earth would treat such an operation: complete media blackout.
Some of the cops in riot gear look like they've been doused in frosting. The most frosted of them all is beset by the fundamentalist version of soccer hooligans, yet the kids are pretty peaceful; they mostly keep yelling at him and trying to take away his megaphone.
Now the cops are emerging from the synagogue in their underwear on international TV to be doused in bottled spring water. The question is whether they're suffering from a chemical agent flung on them by the protesters, or if they're suffering from the effects of the blue water they sprayed onto the roof, which has been bailed by the bucketful onto the cops attempting to break this final bastion of resistance.
Earlier I heard a police negotiation specialist in Maine, I think, opine that the settlers were holding fire in order to maintain the high road for their future relations with the rest of the country. Someone forgot to tell the Rooftop Kids.
Some annoying things about CNN:
"successive governments" -- how many times will they say that?
"mosques" -- Jews don't pray in mosques. Those buildings are synagogues.
Misidentifying the rabbis in orange vests as local overseers.
"watershed" "watershed" "watershed" "watershed"
"Smoke rising from the Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim signals to the Palestinians that the patience of the weak wore down the strength of the mighty."
As Danny Ayalon, Israel's US Ambassador, tells CNN the Israeli position, the Hilltop Kids turned Rooftop Kids are being perp-walked past a huge pile of furniture they'd used to barricade the synagogue. Hilltop kids are ultra-rightist settlement youth who literally do live on hilltops, often in mobile homes.
There's something ludicrous about the containers dangling over the roof. They can't touch down, because the building probably wouldn't support them. But they've served their purpose: the cops have conquered the roof and now they're stripping down to their skivvies up there too. And the rebels have been led away.
My secular cousin just called and put everything in perspective. "Ah, they're just kids," she said. "The police didn't need to make such a big deal about them. If they'd left them up there for a week they'd have come down on their own." By those lights, this showdown is an event staged for the benefit of world opinion, which seems to be what the Arab press is sneering.
The sun has set. It's too late for a run. I'm on deadline. Back to work.
Oh, and it turns out the cops were being doused in acid.
*
Gaza Photo Blog: Pre-Evacuation
Some views of Gaza settlements just before the people were cleared out.
Neve Dekalim was a religious settlement. Once they marry, observant Jewish women wear wigs. Here's a wig that was left behind.
The 20-family settlement Shirat HaYam swelled by dozens as supporters pitched tents and built temporary structures on the sand.
Shirat HaYam was built around a row of crumbling structures. Many years ago, before the Sinai changed hands twice, Egyptian officers would vacation in these beachfront houses.
It's a minor miracle no other shutterbugs are in the frame, because this curiously Victorian image of a woman contemplating the sea provoked a photographic feeding frenzy.
Gaza was littered with these meter-high cubes of concrete, many of them heaped up into fortifications and gun turrets.
Some of them fell down. Background: tent city.
Neve Dekalim was a religious settlement. Once they marry, observant Jewish women wear wigs. Here's a wig that was left behind. 
The 20-family settlement Shirat HaYam swelled by dozens as supporters pitched tents and built temporary structures on the sand. 
Shirat HaYam was built around a row of crumbling structures. Many years ago, before the Sinai changed hands twice, Egyptian officers would vacation in these beachfront houses. 
It's a minor miracle no other shutterbugs are in the frame, because this curiously Victorian image of a woman contemplating the sea provoked a photographic feeding frenzy.
Gaza was littered with these meter-high cubes of concrete, many of them heaped up into fortifications and gun turrets.
Some of them fell down. Background: tent city.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Humus and Hummus and Hoummous
Humus, or hummus, or hoummous, is a passion among Israelis. Falafel may get more press Stateside, but it doesn't inspire the same kind of arguments and allegiances here in the Holy Land that humus does. Two weeks ago, Tel Aviv hosted a giant humus-off, wherein restaurants and stands from all over the country competed for top honors. I heard about it too late, at a meeting of the "Momo Humus Club," my uncle Momo’s half-serious, unscheduled, invitation-only, Friday afternoon snacking event. While I missed the Tel Aviv fandango, I have to say with some pride that my uncle’s product is better than almost any chick-pea paste I've ever had, in terms of flavor, texture, spices, and presentation.
The humus fanaticism here is very chowhound, very like the kind of aimless yet earnest discussions my friends in L.A. have about pizza or Manhattans. And it's the only fanaticism in Israel I can support. Best of all, it crosses the major divide: My center-rightist uncle finds some of his favorite humus in Arab restaurants.
Last week, my cousin Zadok, who’s visiting from the US, went to a hotly tipped humus spot in Jerusalem. Hotly tipped by Momo, the family expert. Zadok shared a table with a British ex-pat who's lived here for 2 or 3 years and says he knows where to find the best humus and falafel all over Israel. Later, Momo visibly bristled when Zadok said he had a list of the ex-pat’s favorite spots. “Yes? What are they?,” Momo challenged. He had to agree that most of the guy's choices were sound. I'm trying to get Zadok to set up a dinner or lunch meeting so I can interview the guy for an article about humus. Apparently he says the best in Jerusalem is on the Via Dolorosa in the Old City. Yes, that Via Dolorosa, right on the way to the holiest of holy places in Christianity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Yet humus is not a recent trend. My dad and his brother have been debating the merits of different humus spots for decades now. Maybe they were just ahead of the curve. Whenever I came here in my 20s and 30s they couldn’t wait to take me to the newest humus place. Just like nightclubs, the humus hotspots change every few months. I’d be unpacking, still unshowered after 25 hours in transit, and my father would lope into the room. “Let’s go for some humus!”
“Now? I just got here. Well … I am kind of hungry,” I’d say, listening keenly for a growl in the vicinity of my stomach. “What about dinner?”
“Dinner’s later,” dad would say. “It’s just humus.”
Just humus. Anybody who’s had humus knows it’s as close to cement as food gets. For me, an afternoon humus dalliance is like a mob hit on my dinner appetite. But given the quality of much of the other food here, I’m always happy for a humus sit-down. Play your cards right and you can get "other salads" in the mix: four kinds of eggplant, tomatoes and cucumbers, beets, etc. But a serious humus place doesn’t waste time on such fripperies. Get in, get your fix, get out. Come back tomorrow.
So typically I’d rinse my face, change my shirt, and sleepily join my dad for the newest in the humus arts. And we’d get to the humus mecca, and it would be closed. The humus artisan is a delicate flower who may close up at a moment’s notice. Our confection of hunger and excitement would deflate, and we’d stand before the shut eatery moping and willing it to reopen. Or thinking up alternatives. But mine were always out of date.
“What about the Elvis place?” I’d say, remembering fondly the hole in the wall whose interior was plastered with Elvis posters and photos.
“Eh, he’s no good any more,” my father would say. Then, brightening, “But come. We have a new one in Makhne Yehuda that’s even better.”
“What about Ta’ami?” I’d ask, already salivating. “It’s just up the street and we won’t have to drive.”
“Weeeell, he’s OK,” my father would allow, searching for a reason not to have to settle for passe humus. “But I think he’s putting too much soda in the humus these days. Come, we’ll go to, to ... em, what’s his name? I don’t know, he doesn’t have a sign, but the humus is the best in Jerusalem!”
“Wait. I thought this place was the best in Jerusalem.”
“They both are, but I've been hearing very good things about the Arab in Makhne Yehuda. He makes the humus fresh every two hours. And the pitot are right off the fire. Nu, let’s go. Yalla!” (Yalla is what people say to donkeys and children and anybody else whom they wish to motivate into action. It’s an Arabic word that’s been fully absorbed into the Hebrew vocabulary.)
And we’d get to the gifted Arab’s fluorescent alcove in Makhne Yehuda, and we’d stand in line with the other devotees, impatient for our portion and pointedly ignoring the clock’s inevitable ticking to the dinner hour. And when we would finally sit down, we would get our steaming pitot and humus within minutes and we would apply the one to the other and eat it warm and creamy and seasoned perfectly and we would sit back chewing happily and it would be very very good. It would be amazing.
How is humus served? Many, many ways. The classic style is spread out on a six-inch circular plate, with the edges spackled up to almost an inch in height and then tapered down to almost flat but raised again a little in the very center, the circular trough or moat drizzled with olive oil and perhaps a few bits of parsley and/or dashes of paprika. Popular variations on this theme include:
All of the above with a small lagoon of tahina in the center moat
All of the above with a few dozen stewed chick peas in the moat
The humus, as described above, with stewed mushrooms in the moat
The humus, as described above, with stewed ful or fava beans, either mashed or intact, in the moat
The humus, as described above, with any of the preceding adornments surmounted by a hard-boiled egg.
And let’s not forget the must-have humus accessory: the pita. Shall I compare thee, Israeli pita, to your American namesake? No. Hoss ve halleela, which translates roughly from Arabic to “heaven forbid.” The pitot here are light and fluffy and chewy and have an incredible fresh bread flavor. Only old or store-bought pitot are leathery and dull like the falafel gloves we’ve gotten used to in the States.
And the slightly less de rigueur humus accessory is the skhug, a fiery chimichurri-like mix of chili peppers, garlic, cilantro, salt, and olive oil. This element is key for me. There's a story in skhug too. Next time.
Why is humus a major topic now? That’s a good question. Perhaps people are just happy to focus on something trivial that spans racial and political divides at a time when larger, more dangerous and intractable issues are inescapable.
*
The humus fanaticism here is very chowhound, very like the kind of aimless yet earnest discussions my friends in L.A. have about pizza or Manhattans. And it's the only fanaticism in Israel I can support. Best of all, it crosses the major divide: My center-rightist uncle finds some of his favorite humus in Arab restaurants.
Last week, my cousin Zadok, who’s visiting from the US, went to a hotly tipped humus spot in Jerusalem. Hotly tipped by Momo, the family expert. Zadok shared a table with a British ex-pat who's lived here for 2 or 3 years and says he knows where to find the best humus and falafel all over Israel. Later, Momo visibly bristled when Zadok said he had a list of the ex-pat’s favorite spots. “Yes? What are they?,” Momo challenged. He had to agree that most of the guy's choices were sound. I'm trying to get Zadok to set up a dinner or lunch meeting so I can interview the guy for an article about humus. Apparently he says the best in Jerusalem is on the Via Dolorosa in the Old City. Yes, that Via Dolorosa, right on the way to the holiest of holy places in Christianity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Yet humus is not a recent trend. My dad and his brother have been debating the merits of different humus spots for decades now. Maybe they were just ahead of the curve. Whenever I came here in my 20s and 30s they couldn’t wait to take me to the newest humus place. Just like nightclubs, the humus hotspots change every few months. I’d be unpacking, still unshowered after 25 hours in transit, and my father would lope into the room. “Let’s go for some humus!”
“Now? I just got here. Well … I am kind of hungry,” I’d say, listening keenly for a growl in the vicinity of my stomach. “What about dinner?”
“Dinner’s later,” dad would say. “It’s just humus.”
Just humus. Anybody who’s had humus knows it’s as close to cement as food gets. For me, an afternoon humus dalliance is like a mob hit on my dinner appetite. But given the quality of much of the other food here, I’m always happy for a humus sit-down. Play your cards right and you can get "other salads" in the mix: four kinds of eggplant, tomatoes and cucumbers, beets, etc. But a serious humus place doesn’t waste time on such fripperies. Get in, get your fix, get out. Come back tomorrow.
So typically I’d rinse my face, change my shirt, and sleepily join my dad for the newest in the humus arts. And we’d get to the humus mecca, and it would be closed. The humus artisan is a delicate flower who may close up at a moment’s notice. Our confection of hunger and excitement would deflate, and we’d stand before the shut eatery moping and willing it to reopen. Or thinking up alternatives. But mine were always out of date.
“What about the Elvis place?” I’d say, remembering fondly the hole in the wall whose interior was plastered with Elvis posters and photos.
“Eh, he’s no good any more,” my father would say. Then, brightening, “But come. We have a new one in Makhne Yehuda that’s even better.”
“What about Ta’ami?” I’d ask, already salivating. “It’s just up the street and we won’t have to drive.”
“Weeeell, he’s OK,” my father would allow, searching for a reason not to have to settle for passe humus. “But I think he’s putting too much soda in the humus these days. Come, we’ll go to, to ... em, what’s his name? I don’t know, he doesn’t have a sign, but the humus is the best in Jerusalem!”
“Wait. I thought this place was the best in Jerusalem.”
“They both are, but I've been hearing very good things about the Arab in Makhne Yehuda. He makes the humus fresh every two hours. And the pitot are right off the fire. Nu, let’s go. Yalla!” (Yalla is what people say to donkeys and children and anybody else whom they wish to motivate into action. It’s an Arabic word that’s been fully absorbed into the Hebrew vocabulary.)
And we’d get to the gifted Arab’s fluorescent alcove in Makhne Yehuda, and we’d stand in line with the other devotees, impatient for our portion and pointedly ignoring the clock’s inevitable ticking to the dinner hour. And when we would finally sit down, we would get our steaming pitot and humus within minutes and we would apply the one to the other and eat it warm and creamy and seasoned perfectly and we would sit back chewing happily and it would be very very good. It would be amazing.
How is humus served? Many, many ways. The classic style is spread out on a six-inch circular plate, with the edges spackled up to almost an inch in height and then tapered down to almost flat but raised again a little in the very center, the circular trough or moat drizzled with olive oil and perhaps a few bits of parsley and/or dashes of paprika. Popular variations on this theme include:
All of the above with a small lagoon of tahina in the center moat
All of the above with a few dozen stewed chick peas in the moat
The humus, as described above, with stewed mushrooms in the moat
The humus, as described above, with stewed ful or fava beans, either mashed or intact, in the moat
The humus, as described above, with any of the preceding adornments surmounted by a hard-boiled egg.
And let’s not forget the must-have humus accessory: the pita. Shall I compare thee, Israeli pita, to your American namesake? No. Hoss ve halleela, which translates roughly from Arabic to “heaven forbid.” The pitot here are light and fluffy and chewy and have an incredible fresh bread flavor. Only old or store-bought pitot are leathery and dull like the falafel gloves we’ve gotten used to in the States.
And the slightly less de rigueur humus accessory is the skhug, a fiery chimichurri-like mix of chili peppers, garlic, cilantro, salt, and olive oil. This element is key for me. There's a story in skhug too. Next time.
Why is humus a major topic now? That’s a good question. Perhaps people are just happy to focus on something trivial that spans racial and political divides at a time when larger, more dangerous and intractable issues are inescapable.
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Thursday, July 28, 2005
The Holy Land in Words and Images
Lord Zim's been unfaithful to his own blog. Witness the perfidy and thrill to the exotic sights over at another website.
Why aren't these images here? Blogger software. That's why.
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Why aren't these images here? Blogger software. That's why.
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Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Dear Luke Fans
Thank you for visiting my humble blog. I regret to inform you that no, you will not find any photos of my beautiful blonde girlfriend here. Yes, she is beautiful, but no, she is not available for your inspection. You might try Luke's other website for that kind of thing. You still won't find her.
What you will find here: many diversions of a non-blonde nature, among them strange little anecdotes, rants, mini-reviews, and the occasional really weird thing. Best of all, it's free!
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What you will find here: many diversions of a non-blonde nature, among them strange little anecdotes, rants, mini-reviews, and the occasional really weird thing. Best of all, it's free!
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Like Other Bloggers (and Why I Hate Best Buy, Part 2)
Ok, so, like, I had a really hard day? Like, Best Buy kept on treating me like dirt after weeks, no, months of bullshit? So, like I went and just bought my new Mac elsewhere without waiting for that worst of all possible corporations to return my money? After they lost my Mac in the mail, refused to send another for a week, then claimed to have sent a new one and then called back a day later to say oops, our bad -- we're out of stock! Surprise -- we didn't actually send it after all! You'll just have to keep waiting, even though you've made it clear that you'll be out of the country as of Monday. What? No, of course we don't ship overseas. No, you can't have your money back. No, we won't make an exception even though we've provided exceptionally bad service for almost a year. No. No. No. No.
I've told the story so many times, stretching back to Best Buy's first PC repair errors way back in November, that I just can't talk about it any more. The series of blunders defies credulity. I get wild-eyed and logorrheic, furious and foamy-mouthed and finally just ... just ... hateful. I have had some bad retail experiences, but this undercuts them all. In fact, I switched back to a Mac this week partly to get away from Best Buy's so-called "Geek Squad," just the useless collection of losers and misfits you'd expect to try to sell you software and services you don't need. They exaggerate PC dangers to get ignorant people worried, then they foist gobs of remedial products on the unsuspecting. And everything takes two weeks to fix.
(I know this is boring. But it beats taking out my aggression in other ways.)
Want to buy my $1000 Best Buy store credit at a discount? Email me.
Any good news? Why, sure. K is busy with lots of jobs lately, even if she's so busy she isn't sleeping much. She's sleeping now though. And my pal S is organizing a goodbye dinner for me. And I have my health. And Borat. And we went to a classic LA party at Geisha House tonight, where we met old friends and new, as the gossips might write. Except they'd name names.
At the party, a MediaBistro event to celebrate a new book, K and I ran into a striking number of friends and then met semi-famous "porn blogger" Luke Ford, who impressed me by having our names and even my aggrieved mini-report on the accident (see below) live on his blog before I'd even turned on my new computer. This post, shapeless and pointless though it is, was inspired by his swiftness and completeness.
And then, en route to a post-party snack, as we waited on Sunset for a red light to change, an absolute imbecile named LaToya (honest!) in a rented car and a tacky/(divine) brown spandex outfit rear-ended the Alfa. She was too dumb for words. She lied about whose car it was, named a fake insurance company for which she had no proof, laughed at K's neck pain, failed to apologize for wrecking my bumper, scoffed at the clear evidence that she had in fact wrecked the bumper, and even used her camera-phone to shoot the damage she'd caused. Hooray for Hollywood.
OK, back to a cheerier note. So what's all this about a Mac? Yep, driven in part by my desire never to set foot in Best Buy again, I've switched back to a Mac after seven years as a reluctant Friend of Bill. I hear they don't crash as much as they used to. But why is there no forward delete button? And why does Blogger function so very differently on a Mac? Where are all the helpful controls?
Re the title of tonight's post. Mr. Ford directed me to the blog of his ex, Tiffany, who delves in excruciating detail into such areas as waxing, breakfast fare (Hello, Bridget?), and neurotic fantasies. When I started this blog, such as it is, I promised to avoid the neverending stream of details about my personal life. But maybe I was wrong! I've been wrong so many times. From now on, you can look forward to a daily list of what I use for shampoo, what I've eaten, whom I've seen, what I've seen, whom I've -- uh, how I've felt, where I've been, and who's run into my car. Etc. I mean, isn't that -- and Valerie Plame -- what blogs are really all about?
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I've told the story so many times, stretching back to Best Buy's first PC repair errors way back in November, that I just can't talk about it any more. The series of blunders defies credulity. I get wild-eyed and logorrheic, furious and foamy-mouthed and finally just ... just ... hateful. I have had some bad retail experiences, but this undercuts them all. In fact, I switched back to a Mac this week partly to get away from Best Buy's so-called "Geek Squad," just the useless collection of losers and misfits you'd expect to try to sell you software and services you don't need. They exaggerate PC dangers to get ignorant people worried, then they foist gobs of remedial products on the unsuspecting. And everything takes two weeks to fix.
(I know this is boring. But it beats taking out my aggression in other ways.)
Want to buy my $1000 Best Buy store credit at a discount? Email me.
Any good news? Why, sure. K is busy with lots of jobs lately, even if she's so busy she isn't sleeping much. She's sleeping now though. And my pal S is organizing a goodbye dinner for me. And I have my health. And Borat. And we went to a classic LA party at Geisha House tonight, where we met old friends and new, as the gossips might write. Except they'd name names.
At the party, a MediaBistro event to celebrate a new book, K and I ran into a striking number of friends and then met semi-famous "porn blogger" Luke Ford, who impressed me by having our names and even my aggrieved mini-report on the accident (see below) live on his blog before I'd even turned on my new computer. This post, shapeless and pointless though it is, was inspired by his swiftness and completeness.
And then, en route to a post-party snack, as we waited on Sunset for a red light to change, an absolute imbecile named LaToya (honest!) in a rented car and a tacky/(divine) brown spandex outfit rear-ended the Alfa. She was too dumb for words. She lied about whose car it was, named a fake insurance company for which she had no proof, laughed at K's neck pain, failed to apologize for wrecking my bumper, scoffed at the clear evidence that she had in fact wrecked the bumper, and even used her camera-phone to shoot the damage she'd caused. Hooray for Hollywood.
OK, back to a cheerier note. So what's all this about a Mac? Yep, driven in part by my desire never to set foot in Best Buy again, I've switched back to a Mac after seven years as a reluctant Friend of Bill. I hear they don't crash as much as they used to. But why is there no forward delete button? And why does Blogger function so very differently on a Mac? Where are all the helpful controls?
Re the title of tonight's post. Mr. Ford directed me to the blog of his ex, Tiffany, who delves in excruciating detail into such areas as waxing, breakfast fare (Hello, Bridget?), and neurotic fantasies. When I started this blog, such as it is, I promised to avoid the neverending stream of details about my personal life. But maybe I was wrong! I've been wrong so many times. From now on, you can look forward to a daily list of what I use for shampoo, what I've eaten, whom I've seen, what I've seen, whom I've -- uh, how I've felt, where I've been, and who's run into my car. Etc. I mean, isn't that -- and Valerie Plame -- what blogs are really all about?
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Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Kentucky Fried Customer
Lord Zim regrets that he is about to launch into an aggrieved customer tirade against a major corporation. He knows this is a tired subgenre of bloggery, but he is unable to resist.
I will not bore you with all the reasons I hate Best Buy. My story is much too sad to be told. And it takes about 20 minutes when I do tell it. No, I'll just say that the nightmare of bad products and apathetic, inflexible customer service I have received from Best Buy has plumbed new depths in my life as a consumer. If you must buy anything electronic, go anywhere but Best Buy. Don't become one of the countless disappointed people I've watched walk away from the "Customer Service" desk seething and cursing.
The prices are high, the selection is limited, the service is slow and slapdash, and the policies are written to take advantage of you. In fact, the CEO announced last year that the new corporate mission is to superserve the Top 10% of customers -- and let the rest rot. So unless you plan to drop ten large on a new car stereo, they don't want your business. Buy at Fry's, buy at Amazon, buy at Buy.com ... just don't buy at Best Buy.
But that's not the point of this post. This is: I was writing to a friend about the Kafka-esque experience I had on the phone yesterday with Best Buy (I spent at least two hours trying to find out where they lost my new laptop and why they won't send me a new one).
When I clicked "send" on my email client, the spellchecker offered to substitute "KFC" for Kafka.
Now ain't that America? Land of the chains.
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I will not bore you with all the reasons I hate Best Buy. My story is much too sad to be told. And it takes about 20 minutes when I do tell it. No, I'll just say that the nightmare of bad products and apathetic, inflexible customer service I have received from Best Buy has plumbed new depths in my life as a consumer. If you must buy anything electronic, go anywhere but Best Buy. Don't become one of the countless disappointed people I've watched walk away from the "Customer Service" desk seething and cursing.
The prices are high, the selection is limited, the service is slow and slapdash, and the policies are written to take advantage of you. In fact, the CEO announced last year that the new corporate mission is to superserve the Top 10% of customers -- and let the rest rot. So unless you plan to drop ten large on a new car stereo, they don't want your business. Buy at Fry's, buy at Amazon, buy at Buy.com ... just don't buy at Best Buy.
But that's not the point of this post. This is: I was writing to a friend about the Kafka-esque experience I had on the phone yesterday with Best Buy (I spent at least two hours trying to find out where they lost my new laptop and why they won't send me a new one).
When I clicked "send" on my email client, the spellchecker offered to substitute "KFC" for Kafka.
Now ain't that America? Land of the chains.
*
Thursday, June 30, 2005
The Weak in Science
In the spirit of self-improvement, I subscribed a few months ago to Science Magazine's weekly roundup of scientific developments. Having jousted with several of those emails now, I can safely assert that they are not to be trifled with. Not only is "This Week in Science" responsible for some of the strangest verbiage to cross my screen, its seemingly random collections of words generally do, unlike the spam-borne gibberish they resemble, reveal meaning after sufficient examination. Just not always to me.
Until lately, those emails had started off gently, with a text block touting a resume enhancement service. Today, that accessible little ad gave way to something a touch more challenging:
And just as I start to dwell on the notion that there are people painfully, infinitely smarter and way, way more educated than I, as suggested by this particularly dense nugget ....
I'd be lying if I said I read the entire email every week. One of the reasons I don't is that these paragraph-long abstracts are all you get without paying a hefty monthly sum for full access to the Science website. (Like full access would do me much good.) So on the rare occasion that I do slog through the jargon to arrive at some thin understanding, that's where it stops. Nanocomprehension.
But that's OK, because part of me thinks all this talk of nanoscience and computer chips is pure hokum, that we're laboring under an all-pervasive cloud of disinformation, that everything we call silicon is actually powered by well-trained fleas. But whenever I try to talk about this theory, broaching, say, the notion that quarks and space travel are fictions, people look at me like I'm even more of an imbecile than they had suspected. So I keep it to myself. I'll trust you to do the same. Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be Liberal Arts majors.
In any case, every once in a while the newsletter shows me something interesting that even This Old Brain can grasp, like that stuff about wildlife corridors. Yet another reason not to mow the lawn or trim the hedges. Proof positive: It may appear a little stand-offish in its emails, but Science really does exist for the betterment of men.
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P.S. "Soil-dwelling myxobacteria move by a process termed gliding motility, which requires the surface expression of cellular protrusions, the type IV pili. More than 25 years ago, Myxococcus xanthus motility mutants lacking pili were shown to be phenotypically complemented by direct contact with motile neighbors. (p. 125) now identify the mechanism of the contact-mediated, nongenetic complementation of this type of motility. Complementation appears to be effected by the transfer from one cell membrane to another of the TGL protein, which is required for the construction of secretin pores, which in turn allow for the synthesis and retraction of the pili required for motility."
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Until lately, those emails had started off gently, with a text block touting a resume enhancement service. Today, that accessible little ad gave way to something a touch more challenging:
WESTERN BLOTTING with Blot-EXLet me just say that if I am leaving money in my Western blot gel, I want it back. All of it. And make sure someone dries it off first. Wait, there's more. Here's a URL:
Are you leaving money in your Western blot gel?
Drastically enhance your performance in protein recovery
up to 90% and get all your proteins back.
Elchrom Scientific's Blot-EX offers you
500% transfer efficiency in less time compared to leading competitors
Blot-EX is NON acrylamide and non-toxic!
For more information visit:If that's not challenging enough, check out this abstract on a study of Greenland's ... um, of Greenland's ... uh, ice? Mind you, I read the New Yorker's terrifying "The Climate of Man" series (all three parts!), so this stuff isn't wholly alien to me, but, uh ....
http://www.elchrom.com/sciencemagazine
---------------------------------------------------------------------------My own orbital obliquity is better now, thanks. I think it's because I'm going to the gym more often.
The Value of Excess
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The surface air temperature record of Greenland has been reconstructed mostly from analyses of the isotopic composition of H and O of the water in ice cores. A number of other factors besides average temperature can influence those proxies, however, such as the seasonality and origin of precipitation. (p. 118) measured the deuterium excess of ice from Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) samples in order to constrain the source and seasonality of the precipitation for the last full glacial cycle. Earth's orbital obliquity is an important control on the latitudinal temperature gradient between the source and site of precipitation, and moisture sources shifted to the south during cold periods.
And just as I start to dwell on the notion that there are people painfully, infinitely smarter and way, way more educated than I, as suggested by this particularly dense nugget ....
---------------------------------------------------------------------------(hello? is this mike on?) ... something entirely comprehensible and interesting pops up, reminding me why I subscribed to this crazy email in the first place. May I present the lovely, the talented ...
Phosphorylation Rheostat
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The modulation of the activity of proteins by phosphorylation has often been described as a binary switch, but (p. 142) show that finer rheostat-like control can also be achieved. The transcription factor Ets-1 exhibits a graded DNA binding affinity that depends on the number of sites that are phosphorylated. Ets-1 exists in conformational equilibrium between a dynamic conformation that binds DNA and a well-folded inhibited state. Increasing phosphorylation progressively shifts the equilibrium toward the inhibited state and thus fine-tunes the level of activity. The phosphorylated region, which serves as the allosteric effector, is predominantly unstructured and flexible, and probably acts through transient interactions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Habitat Corridors Promote Conservation
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As wildlife habitats become more fragmented by human land use, wild plants and animals encounter increasing difficulties in dispersal between patches of suitable habitat. If the patches are small, then local extinctions may ensue. To mitigate this problem, conservationists favor networks of corridors to provide links between patches, but how effective is this approach? In a replicated, landscape-scale study of the role of habitat corridors in the southern United States, (p. 146; see the news story by) followed Eastern Bluebirds as they carried native wax myrtle seeds from bushes in a central source patch to one of four surrounding receiver patches in a matrix of mature pine forest. The birds carried substantially more seeds to the corridor-connected patches than they did to the others. The authors were able to build a predictive seed-dispersal model at the landscape scale from individual-based observations on the movements of birds.
I'd be lying if I said I read the entire email every week. One of the reasons I don't is that these paragraph-long abstracts are all you get without paying a hefty monthly sum for full access to the Science website. (Like full access would do me much good.) So on the rare occasion that I do slog through the jargon to arrive at some thin understanding, that's where it stops. Nanocomprehension.
But that's OK, because part of me thinks all this talk of nanoscience and computer chips is pure hokum, that we're laboring under an all-pervasive cloud of disinformation, that everything we call silicon is actually powered by well-trained fleas. But whenever I try to talk about this theory, broaching, say, the notion that quarks and space travel are fictions, people look at me like I'm even more of an imbecile than they had suspected. So I keep it to myself. I'll trust you to do the same. Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be Liberal Arts majors.
In any case, every once in a while the newsletter shows me something interesting that even This Old Brain can grasp, like that stuff about wildlife corridors. Yet another reason not to mow the lawn or trim the hedges. Proof positive: It may appear a little stand-offish in its emails, but Science really does exist for the betterment of men.
*
P.S. "Soil-dwelling myxobacteria move by a process termed gliding motility, which requires the surface expression of cellular protrusions, the type IV pili. More than 25 years ago, Myxococcus xanthus motility mutants lacking pili were shown to be phenotypically complemented by direct contact with motile neighbors. (p. 125) now identify the mechanism of the contact-mediated, nongenetic complementation of this type of motility. Complementation appears to be effected by the transfer from one cell membrane to another of the TGL protein, which is required for the construction of secretin pores, which in turn allow for the synthesis and retraction of the pili required for motility."
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Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Stick Shift
Dear Reader,
How are you? I am fine. Los Angeles is beautiful this time of year, and I wish you were here.
I'm just writing to suggest you visit my highly focused new blog, PaCarazzi! See it over there on the left, topping the list of links?
PaCarazzi! is a summery sort of fun blog, just the thing when you're looking for a light read of little consequence. So unlike LordZim. PaCarazzi! is all about that weird L.A. confluence of stars and cars -- overpaid showoffs and their expensive toys and the precious moments we too can share when they parade around in public. Don't take my word for it -- go take it for a test drive.
See you soon, and don't forget to write!
Love,
Lord Zim
How are you? I am fine. Los Angeles is beautiful this time of year, and I wish you were here.
I'm just writing to suggest you visit my highly focused new blog, PaCarazzi! See it over there on the left, topping the list of links?
PaCarazzi! is a summery sort of fun blog, just the thing when you're looking for a light read of little consequence. So unlike LordZim. PaCarazzi! is all about that weird L.A. confluence of stars and cars -- overpaid showoffs and their expensive toys and the precious moments we too can share when they parade around in public. Don't take my word for it -- go take it for a test drive.
See you soon, and don't forget to write!
Love,
Lord Zim
Saturday, June 25, 2005
The Hubbard MBA
Now that Scientology is in the news again thanks to that impending celeb nuptial you read about in other blogs, K writes that a friend of hers has
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been trying to do some sub-contracting laser etching work for a Portland-based company for months now. They've been playing phone tag and canceling meetings etc. They finally connected on the phone yesterday and the guy said that if Scott wanted to work with them, he needed to take a course at the L. Ron Hubbard school of management! Scott apparently stifled a laugh and asked if that was really a requirement. The guy sounded offended and ended the call. Hmmm, no $5 mil either!Wow. The illustrated Cruise vs. Lauer. It's just too good not to share with the LordZim regulars.
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Friday, June 24, 2005
Vest-Pocket Movie Review: 'Penguins'
Just saw a screening of "March of the Penguins," thanks to film buff extraordinaire Karie Bible and her Filmradar free passes.
It's moving and predictably adorable (awww -- baby penguins!) and impressive in many ways. A seal gets to stretch his instrument and play against type. They make great noises, those birds. Speaking of noises, the music and Morgan Freeman's narration are a little mawkish and manipulative, but the cinematography and pacing are spectacular. And the costumes, of course, are impeccable.
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It's moving and predictably adorable (awww -- baby penguins!) and impressive in many ways. A seal gets to stretch his instrument and play against type. They make great noises, those birds. Speaking of noises, the music and Morgan Freeman's narration are a little mawkish and manipulative, but the cinematography and pacing are spectacular. And the costumes, of course, are impeccable.
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Friday, June 17, 2005
Welcome to the New Weekly Format
All the brevity of a daily post, none of the challenges of a weekly roundup. It's LordZim Lite!
Well, that famous West Coast toy company finally paid me -- four months after the first time I invoiced them. Finally saw "Gattaca" this week. I see why it got mediocre reviews but has become a near-cult movie. Speaking of mediocre reviews, I tried to watch "Lemony Snicket" last night but just couldn't stand more than about 20 minutes (and I used to like the books). The art direction was all that kept me hanging on, but even that was unequal to the star's powers of repellency.
Uh, allergies? Yes. And how. *sniffle* *honk*
Reading New Yorker doyenne Lillian Ross's "Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism." The art of letting interviewees hang themselves without any narrative assistance.
In the drinks dept., Willie Nelson's small-batch bourbon, Old Whiskey River, seems to be winding down. It's a closeout item at Studio City's Flask Liquors. Across town, Jorge, formerly the best bartender in L.A., is no longer tending bar. He has left the Edendale Grill and is now managing Taix, that antique French restaurant on Sunset in Echo Park. When I voiced consternation at the loss of his mixological powers, he referred me to Luis, the white-haired, steel-eyed fixture behind the bar, who assembled a perfect perfect Manhattan. While the restaurant is a taxidermied relic, replete with silk flowers and dozens of eerie oil paintings, the bar room itself is in the cave-like vein of the Dresden, though less spacious. Part of Jorge's mission is to attract more of those free-spending 20-somethings, which shouldn't be too hard, given that the Echo (Spaceland's little sister) is just across the street.
See? This is why I've stopped blogging. Ho-fucking-hum. To blog, perchance to scream.
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Well, that famous West Coast toy company finally paid me -- four months after the first time I invoiced them. Finally saw "Gattaca" this week. I see why it got mediocre reviews but has become a near-cult movie. Speaking of mediocre reviews, I tried to watch "Lemony Snicket" last night but just couldn't stand more than about 20 minutes (and I used to like the books). The art direction was all that kept me hanging on, but even that was unequal to the star's powers of repellency.
Uh, allergies? Yes. And how. *sniffle* *honk*
Reading New Yorker doyenne Lillian Ross's "Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism." The art of letting interviewees hang themselves without any narrative assistance.
In the drinks dept., Willie Nelson's small-batch bourbon, Old Whiskey River, seems to be winding down. It's a closeout item at Studio City's Flask Liquors. Across town, Jorge, formerly the best bartender in L.A., is no longer tending bar. He has left the Edendale Grill and is now managing Taix, that antique French restaurant on Sunset in Echo Park. When I voiced consternation at the loss of his mixological powers, he referred me to Luis, the white-haired, steel-eyed fixture behind the bar, who assembled a perfect perfect Manhattan. While the restaurant is a taxidermied relic, replete with silk flowers and dozens of eerie oil paintings, the bar room itself is in the cave-like vein of the Dresden, though less spacious. Part of Jorge's mission is to attract more of those free-spending 20-somethings, which shouldn't be too hard, given that the Echo (Spaceland's little sister) is just across the street.
See? This is why I've stopped blogging. Ho-fucking-hum. To blog, perchance to scream.
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