ON BROKEN MEATS AND OTHER DELECTATIONS

“A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats...” - King Lear, Act II, Scene 2

Back in the day, it was a serious insult if someone accused you of eating broken meats. Leftovers, hamburger, whatever you wanted to call it - if you ate that kind of crap, you were lower than the proverbial Whale Shit.

Nowadays we do not contemn the eater of broken meats... especially if those meats have been ground up and compressed into a sausage casing. You can hide a lot of sins that way.

Steve Graham’s recent post about chorizo sausage amused me. Here’s a guy who has written what he claims to be the world’s unhealthiest cookbook (Eat All You Want and Die Like a Man), yet manages to be horrified at the idea of eating a sausage that contains a hog’s salivary glands.

I guess everyone has their limits when it comes to food. Me, I won’t eat brains. Or gonads - unless they’re from a sea urchin. Or tripe, or chitterlings. But things like tongue and sweetbreads (the thymus and/or pancreas glands) don’t faze me at all. I suspect that many people’s unwillingness to eat certain organs may have to do with the functions those organs perform in the living beast (chitterlings, kidneys) - or is the result of our knowledge that we have those parts, too, and we don’t want anyone eating them (testicles and other Reproductive Organs).

Eggs. Bird eggs are tasty enough. Chicken eggs are what I mostly eat in the egg department. But I’ll happily eat fish eggs... that there’s what the fancy-pants peepuls call “caviar.” Howsomever, I won’t eat milt - fish sperm. The idea kinda skeeves me out. And ant eggs - very popular in parts of Mexico - don’t hold the slightest appeal for me.

But back to sausage. Sausage is one of those foods that was invented as a way of preserving and making palatable a whole raft of Nasty Animal Parts... all those assholes and elbows. Sometimes the nastiness is well hidden, other times not: Just ask Houston Steve about his experience in France when he tasted of the dreaded andouillette. Yeef!

It requires a certain suspension of disbelief, a wink and a nod to oneself, to pretend that sausage is anything but Horrible Meat. Of course, there is a spectrum of Meat Product Vileness that runs from the innocuous frankfurter to the heavy hitters: andouille, chorizo, and those Head-Cheesy-looking things. Take it from me, though - if you’re a third-grade teacher planning a class trip, think twice before you take those kids to the bologna factory. It’ll scar ’em for life.

Oh, and as for some of the things I won’t eat, take a peek below the fold. If you dare.

ON BUBBAS AND TIPPERS

Anyone who has lived in the Southern United States is familiar with the term “Bubba.” It’s a popular nickname in this part of the world, one that also functions as a term of endearment. Elsewhere, it finds use as a mildly pejorative synonym for “redneck”: “My brother-in-law is such a bubba, when we served corn on the cob at the Fourth of July picnic last year, he saved the cobs to wipe his ass with.”

Bubba is frequently the sobriquet of an elder brother... which makes perfect sense, because “bubba” is exactly how a small child might pronounce the word “brother.” Similarly, elder sisters in this part of the world were often called “Tipper” - a childish mispronunciation of “sister.” The most well-known Tipper in recent years is Tipper Gore, the former wife of Al “Father of the Internet” Gore and champion of the concept of slapping warning labels on music with offensive lyrics.

There’s another folk etymology out there for Tipper: that it derives from the 1940 song “Tippy, Tippy, Tin.” But that’s a load of crap, because the name predates the song by a long shot. Others claim that it comes from the Irish word tabar, meaning “well.” But I tend to believe in Occam’s Razor in these matters: the simplest explanation is probably the right one.

So Bubba and Tipper are really Brother and Sister. Makes perfect sense to me.

[I learned all this from Recondo32 at the recent Hysterics at Eric’s, for which a Fedora-Tip is due.]

A LITTLE FAITH - HAVE SOME

I will confess it: I’m not a big fan of author Mitch Albom, the sports journalist and writer who hit the big time in 1997 with his inspirational best-seller Tuesdays with Morrie. I could tell you that this is due to my native cynicism, which causes me to eschew the mawkish and sentimental... but that’d be mostly bullshit, as I am the type who gets a lump in his throat at the end of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Really.

More likely, it’s because Albom writes warmhearted books that touch upon themes of life, death, and life after death... themes that practically cry out for a few big-eyed puppies or sad-faced clowns by way of illustration. There’s nothing wrong with all of that; it’s just not what you’ll generally find in the ever-growing pile on my nightstand. Give me a book about murderous Nazi dwarves, or slavering insectile aliens who quote Ogden Nash while they drain the Earth’s oceans of salt, or a collection of David Sedaris stories about oversized turds and sneering Parisians any day.

Here’s the kind of stuff Mitch Albom writes:

Tuesdays with Morrie
A reporter - Albom - reconnects with a dying college professor, with whom he has a weekly series of conversations about big-eyed puppies Life and Death. Nonfiction.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Eddie, a lonely 83-year-old wounded war veteran, makes his living repairing rides at an amusement park. He is killed while trying to save a little girl from a falling ride. Upon awakening in the afterlife, he learns that heaven is not a land of fluffy clouds, but a place in which your life is explained to you by five people who were in, who affected, or were affected by, your life. (What happens after you hear the explanation is left to the reader’s imagination.)

For One More Day
What would you do if you could spend just one more day with someone you’ve lost? Charley “Chick” Benetto is a retired baseball player... and a divorced alcoholic who is estranged from his adult daughter. He returns to his childhood home where the burdens of his unfulfilled dreams and miserable life compel him to attempt suicide, whereupon he he meets his mother, who despite having died eight years prior, welcomes him as if nothing ever happened. “You never call, you never write, you never put a rock on my headstone...”

Have a Little Faith
The story begins with an eighty-two-year-old rabbi from the author’s old hometown asking him for a favor: to deliver his eulogy. Two interwoven stories of two different men of faith - one an ex-convict and former drug dealer turned minister, the other the aforementioned rabbi - from whom Albom learns the difference faith can make in people’s lives. Nonfiction.

Not an oversized turd or insectile alien in the lot... but mawkish platitudes warm sentiment aplenty.

I read Tuesdays with Morrie back in 1998, about a year after it came out. Gawd only knows what I was thinking. Touching, heartfelt... pfui. It made me imagine a motivational poster... something with big-eyed puppies or sad-faced clowns. Something like this:


“Hey, kid - want some advice? Don’t buy any green bananas.” [Click to embiggen.]

After that, I took a break from Albom. I didn’t read either of his novels, and I normally would not have read his latest nonfiction opus, Have a Little Faith... except for the fact that the eighty-two-year-old rabbi profiled in the book - one Albert Lewis - is someone I had actually met. As it happens, he was my rabbi’s father.

So I read the book. How could I not? Having a personal connection to the subject of a best-seller is not something that happens every day. The Missus and I had only met our rabbi’s Av (daddy) a few times, yet along with many other members of our congregation we felt a certain kinship with the man, the subject of many a d’rash (sermon). And the book wasn’t too bad, despite its expected surfeit of Albomian sentimentality. The cover design was also a nice touch, intentionally evoking the appearance of Albert Lewis’s old prayerbook, crammed with handwritten notes and held together with rubber bands.

Now the book has been adapted for the small screen, a Hallmark Hall of Fame Teevee Movie that will be aired Sunday, November 27 - Thanksgiving weekend. This means that our rabbi will have the unique experience of seeing his very own father portrayed by Academy Award-winning character actor Martin Landau. How cool is that? Take a look:



I can’t look at Martin Landau without thinking of one of his great roles, that of a washed up Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. At one point in the film, recreating Lugosi’s “Scientist” character from Glen or Glenda, he intones, “Pull the string! Pull the string!” in a hilarious Hungarian accent. In synagogue, when I am functioning as gabbai (a sort of choreographer, go-getter, and general Man About Shul), I often find myself instructing the person who is to draw the Ark curtain to pull the string! in that same dopey accent.

Here’s our Rabbi Lewis - Rabbi Shalom Lewis - holding a sign bearing his father’s name - a prop from the Hallmark production.



At the end of the day, I’ve gotta hand it to Mitch Albom. Sentimental? Sure - even a bit mushy, perhaps. I may not be his biggest fan, but even cynics like me can appreciate a little warmheartedness, especially when it touches - however peripherally - our own lives.

COLOR ME SHOCKED

Georgia is the last state in the South that forbids the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Last year, after numerous failed attempts, an initiative ended up on the ballot that would do nothing more than allow each local jurisdiction to vote on, and act upon, the matter. So, for example, the city of Roswell could put the issue of Sunday booze sales in front of the voters so that they could decide the issue.

That initiative passed, but not without the usual opposition from conservative church leaders and liquor store owners. The first group wanted to preserve that last of the old Sunday blue laws - “It’s the Lord’s day; keep it special!” - and the second wanted to avoid the necessity of staying open seven days a week to compete with supermarkets and warehouse outlets.

Even the Governor weighed in with a bullshit argument: “If you want to drink on Sunday, you should plan ahead.”

What a stupid restriction. You can buy alcohol at any licensed restaurant or bar after noon on Sunday, but you can’t buy a bottle of schnapps at the local Booze-Right for home consumption. Which alternative is more likely to put you on the road with a load on?

For those who argue that “it’s just one day a week,” I would say, “Why?” Why not restrict alcohol sales to a thirty-minute period immediately after sundown on Saturday? It makes the same amount of sense and is just as arbitrary and ridiculous.

Yesterday, numerous localities tossed the matter in front of the voters... and, with perhaps a single exception, overwhelmingly voted in favor of Sunday package sales. Overwhelmingly, as in 70% or more for, less than 30% against. Color me shocked. (Not really.)

Our little corner of the world did not vote on the matter, so we will live with the status quo ante for the time being. But it’s only a matter of time before the local merchants get tired of losing business to the stores in Roswell and Alpharetta just up the road.

HOME(TOWN) COOKING

Rapini - broccoli rabe - with sausage and orecchiette pasta.

Massapequa, New York - my hometown - was chiefly notable for being the stomping grounds of Alec Baldwin and his clan of acting brothers; celebrated comedian Jerry Seinfeld; and popular joke-butt Joey Buttafuoco, who enjoyed a brief period of notoriety on account of his involvement with underage girlfriend and would-be murderess Amy Fisher in the early 1990’s. It was also the summer residence of one Carlo Gambino, boss of the eponymous Cosa Nostra crime family.

Massapequa was also notable for its ethnic makeup. Typical of many areas on the south shore of Long Island, it had large populations of both Italians and Jews. It was not for nothing that it was called “Matzoh-Pizza” by local wits.

Last week, I paid culinary homage to both facets of my old hometown’s personality.

Tuesday, with She Who Must Be Obeyed having had dinner arrangements elsewhere, I did what I usually do when I’m on my own: I prepare something the Missus doesn’t especially care for. In this case, I had a pile of broccoli rabe sitting in the fridge, a vegetable that SWMBO generally disdains owing to its bitter edge. For me, however, that bitterness only adds to the vegetable’s appeal.

Broccoli rabe (AKA rapini) pairs up very well with hot Italian sausage. I elected to cut a few calories and go the chicken-based sausage route, adding a few extra shakes of red pepper flakes to kick up the heat index. Sautéeing freshly washed rapini with some minced garlic and red pepper flakes kept it crisp-tender while taming its fearsome bitterness. Along with all this went some orecchiette pasta, a bit of chicken broth (reduced along with a cup of the starchy pasta cooking water) and a finish of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano. It was a meal like you might find in Apulia... or Massapequa.

* * *
The week rolled by and before we knew it, it was Friday. Following in the footsteps of Elder Daughter - who became an accomplished bread baker during her summer Farm-Sojourn in Massachusetts - I decided to bake a challah.

I had tried baking challah a few times before, always with less-than-satisfactory results. My first loaf was flavorless; my second, wet enough to require baking in a pan, was overly cakey and sweet. This time, however, I adjusted the sweetening downward a tad, using a 50:50 blend of sugar and honey, and was careful to use enough salt. I also took pains to add enough - but not too much - flour, adding a few minutes of kneading after the first rise.


Challah à la Elisson: for perhaps the first time ever, I manage to bake a pretty decent loaf of bread.

Whatever I did must have worked. For once, this loaf was a bready home run: the right flavor and texture that cried out for you to tear off just one more little hunk. How good was it? Usually, our store-bought loaves survive Shabbat dinner mostly intact - this one was pretty much demolished. Easily the best loaf of bread I have ever baked. (Actually, the only really decent loaf I’ve ever baked.)

It was a challah that might have been at home in any Brooklyn bakery... or in Massapequa.

* * *
As a coda to the week’s Foody Activities, we joined a group of friends at the local Tibetan place - yes, there is actually a Tibetan restaurant in the neighborhood, strategically tucked away behind a Shell station - where I stuffed myself with (what else?) yak meat, served up in a hearty stir-fry with scallions, baby bok choy, and gaboons of cumin and cilantro. For afters, we all repaired to Chez Elisson, where I cranked out a load of ice cream flavored with matcha green tea.


Matchless Matcha Ice Cream.

It was a dessert that would have been perfectly at home in Kyoto... but probably not in Massapequa. “Green tea ice cream? Yo, I gotcher green tea ice cream right here!”

HYSTERICS AT ERIC’S, 2011 EDITION

Eric’s backyard in late October: no finer place to be.

It has become an annual tradition amongst a certain set of Online Journalists - most, but not all, of whom are based in the southeastern United States - to travel to the wilds of McMinn County, Tennessee sometime around late October. That’s when Eric, the Original Tennessee Renaissance Man, opens his home to said Online Journalists for a weekend-long birthday celebration.

What started out as a blogmeet, a sort of combination drunken debauch and mutual admiration society, has evolved into a very personal gathering of friends. The Missus and I have shown up five out of the past seven years (we were barely on Eric’s radar screen in 2005 and couldn’t make it in 2007) and we enjoy it more every year.

There are traditions. Breakfast at the Tellico Junction Café; shooting pool; a roaring, crackling fire in the backyard; Eric’s grilled country-style ribs; impromptu guitar-picking concerts by the Elderly Brothers; poetry recitations; the bittersweet leave-taking on Sunday morning. Occasionally there will be other activities: shooting, rocket launches, the inflation of the Ceremonial Rubber Sheep. But the best part is the conversation... the being together.

The roll call:

Jimbo
Erica
Bou
Denny
Big Stupid Tommy
Jerry
Recondo32 and Georgia
John Cox
Teresa
Rube
Anna
Richard
K-Nine
Princess Fiona (mistress of the painless flu shot!)
And, of course, Elisson (dat’s me!) and SWMBO.

It was great meeting Rube and Anna for the first time - they’ve been part of the Blown-Eyed Jawja Blodgers orbit since the Wreckyll in Jeckyll back in April 2005, but since they live in London, they don’t make it to this side of the pond too often.


Drink enough whisky, and the campfire might just start looking like this.

I won’t try to write a detailed recap - Erica’s monumental post pretty much captures it all - but it is a tradition of sorts for me to memorialize the event in verse. This time, I’ve gone completely off the reservation. Enjoy.

Hysterical (apologies to Allen Ginsberg)

I saw the best minds of the blogosphere destroyed by Facebook,
  tweeting hysterical shortposts,
dragging themselves through Etowah streets at dawn,
  looking for a jack and tow truck,
Q-tipheaded bloggers burning for the ancient heavenly connection
  to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who got stuck on subways for the endless ride to holy Brooklyn
  on the F-train after too much whiskey and wine with K-Nine,
a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists sitting around a
  backyard fire, escaping the pooltable doom and gazing at the moon,
  yacketayakking screaming laughing whispering facts and memories
  and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals
  and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for two whole days and nights
  with brilliant eyes, meat for supper cast on the hot grill,
who came from somewhere in South New Jersey leaving a trail
  of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
who lit cigarettes in backyard backyard backyard camping in snow
  on lonesome hills in grandfather night,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking
  jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Bostonian
  to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task,
  and so took car to Englewood,
who sang all night rocking and rolling their lofty incantations
  which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked porcine animals’ ribs sausage steaks bacon
  & kugel, dreaming of a biscuit gravy kingdom,
who drove crosscountry sixteen hours to find out if I had a vision
  or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who lived in Boston, who journeyed from Boston,
  who came back to Boston & flew on the plane,
who fell on her knees in Eric’s garage, hopelessly attempting a pushup
  but finally making a ridiculously long bank shot on the eight-ball
  for her redemption,
who came from Florida and stopped to see the Flambina on the way
  and who has her hands full with teenager teenager almost teenager,
who brings waffles and bacon to the masses and knows the ineffable
  secret of all that is smothered, scattered, chopped,
  channeled, and paneled,
who carries satchels of assorted hats & weaponry and plays
  dress-up with miscellaneous bowlers and kepis and vests,
who schlepped all the way from London to endure
  a whisky-soaked evening & to meet new friends,
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with
  a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse
  the catalog the meter & the Wordpress platform,
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor bloggy prose
  and stand before you speechless and intelligent and
  shaking with joy, pilgrimaging yet again to wish
  happy birthday to the original Tennessee renaissance man.


Eric is never crazy about having his image plastered all over the Internet, but this photo by Richard (and mildly photoshopped by Yours Truly) captures his soul in a way that really speaks to me. Happy birthday, ya hammerhead!

THE PERILS OF THE KITCHEN

Don’t let all those slick Food Network productions fool you: Cooking is hazardous work.

Most professional chefs, I’ll be willing to bet, boast an impressive array of slice marks and burn scars. Any working environment that involves sharp objects and high temperatures is going to leave its marks.

Houston Steve learned this the hard way. Sunday night, as he was preparing a chiffonade of cilantro, hacking up the tender leaves with a big honking chef’s knife, one of the cuts missed the target by a wee bit. “Hmmm,” he thought. “That felt more like meat than cilantro.”

Indeed it did, for he had sheared through the very tip of his left thumb, nearly severing it. Bet that made for a messy cutting board.

A quick trip to the local emergency facility and things were stitched up nicely. Alas, the injury meant that Steve could not play in the following day’s golf tournament... an especial shame in view of the fact that the event was held at his own club, with him being the chief organizer. Instead of swatting the White Dimpled Ball, he was relegated to sitting in a golf cart and harassing the foursomes as they came through...


“See my thumb? Gee, I’m dumb!” Barry and Houston Steve (with bandage) give us a big Thumbs Up.

Lest I sound all snotty and sarcastic, let me be the first to say that I have no business getting cocky. With all the cooking I do, there but for the grace of Gawd go I. Of course, not drinking a brace of Martinis before commencing to cook might help. Heh.

Speedy recovery, Steve-O.

TODAY’S TRIVIA QUESTION

Most Wednesdays, the Minyan Boyz will convene at the local Caribou Coffee for breakfast. The menu there is by no means extensive, but in addition to the expected array of coffees, they offer a fine multi-grain hot cereal - an excellent meal with the addition of a few golden raisins and sliced almonds. Better yet, they know me well enough to have my order waiting for me before I even step up to the counter.

It ain’t Cheers, where everybody knows your name, but I’m perfectly happy if they know what I’m going to eat.

Those jolly Caribou folks like to post a trivia question every day, the correct answer to which will save you one thin dime (!) on your order. They’re generally not too challenging, meaning that I’ll know the answer four times out of five. The one they put up yesterday was especially amusing...



Having trouble? Here’s a hint: The answer is contained within the question.

WEREWOLVES OF ALABAMA

[On our drive back from Tennessee a few days ago, John Cox pointed out that Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” and Lynryd Skynryd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” share the same bass line. True dat... and the lyrics kinda sorta work well together, too!]

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Carry me home to see my kin
He was lookin’ for the place called Lee Ho Fook’s
I miss Alabamy once again

Well I heard Mr. Young sing about her
You better not let him in.
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
Werewolves of London again.

Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Aaahoo, werewolves of London
Aaahooooo

In Birmingham they love the governor
Lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair.
Now Watergate does not bother me
Huh, I’d like to meet his tailor.

Aaahoo, werewolves of London
Aaahooooo
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, I’m coming home to you

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walkin’ with the Queen
And they’ve been known to pick a song or two
Lord they get me off so much
Doing the Werewolves of London.
Now how about you?

Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Aaahoo, werewolves of London
Aaahooooo

Aaahoo, werewolves of London
Aaahooooo
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, I’m coming home to you
(And my hair is perfect.)

SKULLPOP

A bottle of Crystal Skull vodka accompanied by a brace of matching shot glasses.

When I saw this at Eric’s place this past weekend - one of a plethora of birthday gifts showered upon the Tennessee Renaissance Man - I could not help but think of Kevin Kim’s book, Water from a Skull. Not that there was water in that skull-shaped flask...

... and not that our activities had a whole lot to do with spirituality. Rather, they had a whole lot more to do with spirits... of the distilled sort.

Given that Hallowe’en was just around the corner, how could you not love a glass skull full of vodka? No wonder they call it “skullpop”!

Probably a good thing Dax wasn’t there this year, if only because I’d hate to think of the trouble he could get into with that skull.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

Submitted for your approval... a few more-or-less familiar faces from the recently concluded Hysterics at Eric’s.



[The last one would never have occurred to me. Tip o’ the Elisson fedora to the lovely (and obviously imaginative) Anna for suggesting it!]

EREV KOL KEDOSHIM

Well, if it were our holiday, that’s what we would call it.

But no. It’s just plain Hallowe’en.

Today I got to spend most of the day in a Golfer Costume, whacking a small white ball around the eighteen holes of the Standard Club. Now I’m trying to write a post while fielding a myriad of interruptions by prepubescent children (and some postpubescent ones, too) ringing the doorbell and asking for candy with the Ritual Invocation that is at once both request and veiled threat: “Trick or Treat!”

She Who Must Be Obeyed took the whole Hallowe’en Getup business much more seriously:


SWMBO and a few of her colleagues dressed up as the Addams Family.

As for me, I’ll just work my way through my Ridiculous Headgear collection as I answer the (incessantly ringing) doorbell. Right now it’s the Top Hat.

AND NOW, LIVE FROM TENNESSEE!

Liveblogging from the Straight White Compound in Tennessee...

Video chat by Stickam.com

BAPTISM BY SNOW

The Mistress of Sarcasm took this photo of her back yard Saturday as a rare October snowfall pounded the Northeast.

The Mistress of Sarcasm has been residing in the State of Connecticut for all of two weeks... and she is now enjoying (heh!) her first snowfall of the season.

There are four inches already on the ground, with another 10-15 expected through the remainder of the day and night. Hoo-hah!

Meanwhile, here in the Volunteer State, it’s sunny and in the low sixties. As much as I love a good snowfall, I am rather pleased to be here, where the forecast calls for pleasant climes and gently falling bloggers.

Update: The Mistress’s power is out... which means her Skype, heat, and water are out as well. Current predictions are for the outage to last several days. At least the roads are clear enough for her to make an escape - thank Gawd for small favors!

WAFFLES AND CHOCOLATE

My first trip to Europe was to a little country that’s packed with big flavors.

I speak of Belgium, a sliver of a land wedged between the Netherlands, France, and Germany. Oh, yes, and Luxembourg. Can’t forget Luxembourg.

That first trip was a week-long business-related jaunt back in 1979, done at the behest (and expense) of the Great Corporate Salt Mine. I divided my time between Antwerp and Brussels... and, as luck and the calendar would have it, the week was neatly divided in twain by a holiday that fell right in the middle of the week. That gave me a day to visit the medieval towns of Ghent and Bruges.

Belgium has a somewhat stodgy reputation, but it’s pretty much undeserved. The Belgians are not as dour as the Swiss, and not all the women look like potatoes. And, between the Flemings and the francophone Walloons, they know their food and drink. If you’re a lover of waffles, chocolate, beer, or French fries (which actually originated in Belgium, where they are typically served with a dollop of mayonnaise), then a visit is certainly in order.

Beer! These guys drink more beer per capita than anywhere else in the world and produce more different styles of beer than anywhere else. Sure, you can get your Pilsner-style lagers in Belgium, but what’s the point when there are gaboons of artisan-brewed goodies like lambics (gueuze, kriek, framboise, et al.), wheat beers, Trappist beers, dubbels and tripels?

Chocolate! You can’t throw a rock in Brussels without hitting a chocolate shop. And they’ve got the goods. Neuhaus, Corné Toison d’Or, Leonidas, even Godiva (the real Godiva, not the Campbell’s Soup-owned version) - and they are all of them excellent. I’ve never had better chocolates than the ones I’ve had in Belgium... not even in Switzerland.

Waffles! Thick ones (Brussels-style), thin ones, stroopwafels with their layer of caramelized sugar syrup... good Gawd.

The Belgians are said to serve French-quality cuisine in German-size quantities. Many local favorites, like carbonnade Flamande and waterzooi, are stewlike affairs: quintessential peasant food. But there’s Haute Cuisine, too. I had one memorable meal at La Couronne, a restaurant in the Grand-Place of Brussels, complete with fine wines, langoustines, and thinly sliced agneau de printemps... another time, at lunch, an ethereal side dish of asperges blance en sauce mousseline sauce that might have even been worth the $30 the Salt Mine paid for it.

The Grand-Place - the living, beating heart of Brussels - is considered by many to be the most beautiful town square in Europe, besting even Moscow’s Red Square. Its combination of Gothic, Baroque, and Louis XIV styles is remarkably harmonious. On that first visit back in 1979, my arrival coincided with the appearance of the Flower Carpet - a 19,000 square foot array of colorful begonias that decorates the Grand-Place for several weeks in August every other year - and so the square was even more striking than usual.

Walking around the town square of Antwerp in the late evening and watching the locals at the sidewalk cafés snarfing down their platters of moules frites (mussels and French fries) - in the summer, there’s still plenty of light even at 10:00 pm - I was captivated by the sights, smells, and feel of it all... like a smaller, more intimate version of the Brussels Grand-Place.

I haven’t been to Belgium since 1992, and it’s about time I went back. Those waffles and chocolates are calling.

MORE NUTTY HEADGEAR

Over the years, I’ve worn all kinds of crazy chapeaux. Everything from Glengarry bonnet to pith helmet to Hornèd Buffalo Hat to colanders of every description. (Not to mention my signature Panama.)

And just to show you how ecumenical I am after the previous post, here I am sporting a Knights of Columbus helmet.


Sweet.

LOST AND FOUND

Yours Truly, in chubbier days, attired for morning prayers in tallit and tefillin.

Every weekday morning, observant Jews prepare for morning prayer by wrapping themselves in a fringed garment (tallit) and donning phylacteries (tefillin), small leather boxes containing sections of Scripture handwritten on parchment and affixed to the arm and forehead by leather straps.

Traditionally, a young man receives his first tallit and set of tefillin when he becomes a Bar Mitzvah - at the age of thirteen. (In some communities, unmarried men do not wear the tallit, a convenient way of letting people know they’re available.) If the young man is religious, he will use these ritual objects routinely; if not, he will set them aside to be trotted out at rare occasions. And when they are used frequently, they become more familiar and personal than other personal adornments such as watches and rings.

Because they are so personal, these ritual items are rarely, if ever, lent or borrowed. Wearing someone else’s tefillin, while perfectly acceptable, would feel weird... like wearing someone else’s jockey shorts. And deliberately walking off with someone else’s tallit and tefillin would be completely beyond the bounds of civilized behavior: unthinkable. Which makes it all the more strange that, about eight months ago, my minyan buddy Barney’s tallit and tefillin disappeared.

Like many of us minyan regulars, Barney stores his Ritual Devices, neatly packed up in a velveteen sack, in a cubby adjacent to our synagogue’s small chapel where weekday services are conducted. The cubbies are unlocked: who would ever think to borrow or (gasp!) steal someone else’s tallit or tefillin? But one day, his were gone. Just up and disappeared, they did.

Barney was massively irritated, but he refused to buy new tefillin. They’re fairly expensive, but that wasn’t the issue. He was convinced they would eventually resurface, and to replace them too soon would be almost like an act of disloyalty.

Sure enough, they showed up in their old, familiar place... right after Yom Kippur.

It was easy enough to figure out what had happened.

Someone had come to morning minyan one day and had - probably completely inadvertently - grabbed Barney’s bag instead of his own. But unlike Barney, this was a one-time-a-year synagogue attendee, someone who did not realize his mistake until Yom Kippur rolled around and he had occasion to open the bag. Embarrassed, he must have quietly stuck it back where he had found it without saying a word to anyone.

This morning, as I led the morning service, I could see Barney standing in the rear of the chapel, donning his tefillin for the first time in eight months. He was smiling... no doubt happy to be reunited with his Old Friends. I smiled too.

QUICK, HENRY - THE FRIT

In the last few weeks, the flowers near our front doorstep have been growing in mad profusion. The combination of nectar and warm weather makes a powerful attractant for bees and butterflies.

Yesterday, I managed to catch a couple of shots of this handsome fellow:





I remembered enough from my childhood butterfly-chasing days to identify him as some sort of fritillary... but what kind? A little research established that he was a Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillæ), also known as the Passion Butterfly on account of its larval-stage diet of passion flowers.

Butterflies. They’re pretty enough, to be sure, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: However beautiful it may be, a butterfly is still a fly.

Update: Friday Ark #358 is up at the Modulator. Stop by and check out the Miscellaneous Fauna!

PICTUREPHONE

Way back in my Snot-Nose Days, I visited the New York World’s Fair.

No, not the one that ran from 1939 to 1940: I’m not that damn old. This was the 1964-65 version.

There was a lot of impressive stuff at that World’s Fair... if, as I was at the time, you were easily impressed. There were the architecturally adventurous pavilions - if you’ve seen Men in Black, then you’ve seen the New York State pavilion, with its flying saucer-like towers. There was the Unisphere, a stainless steel globe that symbolically portrayed the Unity of Mankind On Earth. Kum-Bay-Fucking-Ya.

There was the General Electric Carousel of Progress, offering glimpses of American families past and future as they went about the business of chewing up the Earth’s resources in pursuit of the ideal, electrically facilitated Middle Class Lifestyle. So popular was this exhibit that it was picked up lock, stock, and barrel and carted off initially to Disneyland and thence to Walt Disney World, where it may be seen unto this very day.

There was the “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” show at the Illinois pavilion, in which a robotic Honest Abe stood up from his chair and began speechifying. I recall that, to my sixth-grade perception, it was shockingly, eerily realistic. The show eventually evolved into the Hall of Presidents attraction at - you guessed it - Walt Disney World.

There were Brussels waffles - humongous, thick, floor mat-sized confections served with strawberries, a scoop of ice cream, and a hefty dollop of schlag. Good Gawd.

And there was the Bell Telephone pavilion, where you could see a demonstration of AT&T’s futuristic Picturephone technology. The boxy, kludgy Picturephone was a bust - there were only a handful of public Picturephone booths, and the cost was a jaw-dropping $16 for a three-minute call - but at least people knew it could be done.

Fast forward four-and-a-half decades.

Nobody back in 1964 would have dreamed of devices like laptop computers, iPads, and smartphones that each carry more computing horsepower than Mission Control did back during the days of the moon shots. But here they are... and we also have this:


Using the magic of modern technology - a MacBook with built-in webcam and free Skype software - The Mistress of Sarcasm converses with the ’rents while cuddling sweet Bernadette.

Sometimes I wonder about our modern technology and whether it is, on balance, a Good Thing. But not when the Missus and I can carry on a conversation with the Mistress of Sarcasm and see every facial expression, every grimace and grin, despite her being at a thousand-mile remove. Hooray for Skype!

THE HOLIDAY SEASON

For most Americans, the holiday season is just around the corner, with Hallowe’en batting leadoff, followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’d be accurate to call it the Fourth Quarter Trifecta, but then I would be mixing my baseball and horse racing metaphors, wouldn’t I?

In our ridiculously commercialized society, this year-end concatenation of celebrations manifests itself in the form of decorations, costumes, and holiday sales. Hallowe’en, the Mack Daddy of costume-driven events, seems to be in some sort of demented feedback loop with our country’s pop-cultural fascination with zombies and vampires. (Ya gotta love a holiday that celebrates Candy and Grue in equal measures.) Meanwhile, the cooking mags all feature turkey recipes, and Christmas decorations have already begun to appear in the malls. It’s a festive mash-up! It’s ThanksChristmaWe’en!

It’s unfortunate, is what it is. When all of those late-in-the-year holidays get conjoined, each one of them loses a bit of what makes it special.

We Red Sea Pedestrians believe in a concept called l’havdil - differentiation. We differentiate between the sacred and the profane, between the Sabbath and the six days of Creation... and we differentiate between our own holidays, so that each one’s individual identity is preserved.

Here’s an example. One of the central ritual observances of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is the sounding of the shofar - the ram’s horn trumpet. During Elul, the month preceding the holiday, the shofar is sounded every weekday at morning services, a form of spiritual preparation for the Jewish New Year. But on the day before Rosh Hashanah, the shofar is not sounded, so as not to diminish the special nature of the holiday.

For the same reason, we don’t eat matzoh (unleavened bread) before Passover when we are required to consume it. (Also because matzoh is famously constipating.)

If we were in charge of the year-end holidays (which we’re not), the Thanksgiving stuff would appear only after the pumpkins, candy, and costumes were all put away... and Christmas decorations would be kept under wraps until after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the official shot signaling the beginning of the Christmas season. But that’s just us.

Speaking of holiday seasons, our has just ended. The parade of Jewish holidays that began end-September with Rosh Hashanah, moving on through Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and winding up this past Friday with Simchat Torah, is now over... at least until Chanukah rears its exaggerated-out-of-all-proportion-to-its-importance head in late December.

I enjoy Simchat Torah. I like the comically informal Torah service, during which we clown around, wear ridiculous headgear*, and march around the synagogue with all the Torah scrolls. I am always moved by the last passages of Deuteronomy, when Moses ascends Mount Nebo to die, but not before gazing out upon the Promised Land that he will, himself, never enter... and by the reading of the creation story from Genesis that immediately follows it in our never-ending cycle of study. And the enormous quantities of single malt Scotch don’t hurt a single bit. But that’s all over for another year.

May we all be here to greet the next Holiday Season, whichever one you choose to observe!

*This year I wore three different hats: a jingly harlequin cap, an antique top hat, and my Warrior Dash souvenir buffalo helmet.  (Alas, no colanders.)  Too bad we don’t take photographs on holidays... at least, not in synagogue.