Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Vicissitudes of a Night Owl on a Tuesday

'Tis the day before St. Patrick's, and ever since I woke up at two-ish it has not been precisely springlike, but the cloud ceiling and light quantity are discernibly higher than they were a month or so ago. Last night I stayed up until around 6:15, then shivered miserably to sleep because the featherbed blanket had unfolded itself and I didn't want to bother doubling it up again so that its virtue of insulation would take effect. ("'Tis the voice of the sluggard," etc.) What was really irritating was when the feet tingled and itched as they warmed up again.

During the night itself I had amused myself among other things with updating Firefox to the 3.6 version, then troubleshooting for what must have been a good hour as YouTube's videos refused to load. After downloading and re-downloading Adobe Flash Player 10, restarting Firefox and the entire computer, etc., it turns out that I just had to click on the dormant Shockwave Flash in the list of plug-ins.

In the future there might be a music blog post, but in the interim I'll just say that I've been concentrating on violin music and that yesterday I went on a cello spree, and what especially leapt out at me were Yehudi Menuhin's recording of Bach's Concerto in E major, David Oistrakh's of the Concerto in a minor, Jacques Thibaud's and Jacqueline du Pré's of Maria Theresa von Paradis's (or von Weber's or whoever's) siciliana, and Jacques Thibaud's of Tomaso Antonio Vitali's famous chaconne. Besides I am fond of Pau Casals's versions of Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei and Camille Saint-Saëns's Swan, and also bookmarked the first Bach cello suite (Mvt. 1-3), even though we do have CDs of them and I played them often whilst doing homework or slacking off during the first year of university.

Besides I've been on an art spree. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's website has an art history timeline, named after one Heilbrunn, which provides thumbnails and actually useful informational blurbs of a large selection of the museum's holdings. They are classified by region, time period, etc., and what I just do is to click on a certain time period and go through all of them. During the night I went through the 20th and 21st century stuff, which was especially interesting to me because it feels peculiar to see what someone has decided are the important products of the times I've lived through.

The black-and-white photography sticks in my then befogged mind best, especially because I like what I've seen of Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, Eugène Atget, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. I was pleased when I recognized a photo of a cowboy leaning against a wastebasket on a New York street and smoking a cigarette in tight jeans, plaid shirt, belt, and a Stetson, because that one came up in a nytimes.com slideshow about an exhibition of Robert Franks's oeuvre.

Then there was fashion from the Costume Institute. I don't like flapper fashion very much, though as an aesthetic I can appreciate it as well as any other, because I like couture that celebrates curves, etc., rather than obscures them and because its limpishness is annoying. So Paul Poiret, whether his fashion is technically flapper or not, was not my cup of tea; neither was most of Coco Chanel's stuff, to which I perhaps shockingly prefer what Chanel turns out under Karl Lagerfeld in the present. On the other hand I thought that the Christian Dior frocks destroy the argument that fuller figures were in vogue in the day of Marilyn Monroe, etc., because the cuts and sizes suggest corsets and diets and a slender Grace Kelly rather than steak and muscles and a subtly plump woman. But maybe the patrons really wanted something that tiny-waisted, or people were thinner back then in general.

I kind of liked the Balenciaga and Madeleine Vionnet, and with the Givenchy it was difficult to imagine Audrey Hepburn out of the dresses. Speaking of which I think the adulation accorded to that actress on the grounds of her style is irritating. When people like Victoria Beckham tamely imitate it I'm disgruntled. Frankly I would not weep if I never heard of Breakfast at Tiffany's or saw the dumb cigarette-in-holder/pearls/sunshades photo again. And the "little black dress" is an obnoxious cliché; to quote and paraphrase Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, if the construction of that phrase could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity. The reason I like Audrey Hepburn is admittedly because she is beautiful but also because of her grace and interesting life and, above all, sensibility.

After that I went through the 1400-1600 A.D. period and was surprised to find that I didn't like the offerings from that time very much. Then I roamed through Wikimedia Commons in search of an illustration for an incipient Lighthouse blog post on Jane Austen's Persuasion. One problem is that I have an ideal portrait of Anne Elliot before my mind's eye, with gentle and intelligent eyes in a slender oval face, but I can't think of an actress or lady in a painting/lithograph/whatever who embodies that. Besides portraits of the time are often commissioned, and then they're of apparently self-important or blowzy or self-dramatizing (two words: Emma Hamilton, against whom I've had one of my one-sided feuds for years) women who are utterly unsuited. But I did come across portraits of well-known figures like the actor David Garrick, whom I've often heard about but never expected to see almost made alive again in a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds(?), and then hit the motherlode and was forced to reevaluate my stance on Caspar David Friedrich when I stumbled on the category of "Romantic paintings."

But what I'm mainly looking for is an illustration for a blog post about John Keats's "Pot of Basil," which I've been wrestling with for weeks and probably needs to be written afresh. Two or three Pre-Raphaelites had a field day with the poem, but I am not especially fond of the Pre-Raphaelites, since I think that their hyperstylized, immaturely moody saccharineness shows a weakspined unwillingness to cross lances with reality much like that of science fiction writers who, rather than sensibly learn to get along with other people as they grow older, prefer to premise their books on the nearly summary extinction of humanity.

Anyway, having been a total snob and trodden on many a foot, I'll just mention that J. presided over a batch of homemade marshmallows again, and we've eaten lots of them on their own and as a creamy melting mass on a cup of hot chocolate. J. uses beetroot syrup (Zuckerrübensirup) instead of corn syrup, so the marshmallows have a faint brown tinge and a nice distinctive flavour. Another option is to toast the marshmallows at our coal stoves, which works quite well as long as the coals are burning red and cleanly and not passively emitting gasolinish fumes.

Friday, March 12, 2010

A Recipe for a Non-Surprise

With a grand effort I could probably find something intelligent to talk about, but in its absence I might as well share the latest evolution of a recipe for "pudding surprise." (I pronounce the "surprise" with a pseudo-French accent but that is, of course, purely an affectation.)

First of all I should own a debt to Aunt N., who used to make pudding surprise for us children when we came over every Saturday back in the early '90s. The constant in her recipe was the pudding and the sherry-soaked biscuit at the very bottom, generously soaked, but I think she enriched it with sliced bananas and other improvised ingredients too.

Since I don't know exactly what she did, and other ingredients are at hand here in Germany, I've turned the recipe into something like this. (The optional steps are in italics.)

1 package ladyfinger biscuits
1 jar cherries (Sauerkirschen/Schattenmorellen)
4 pkg. vanilla or chocolate pudding
+ ingredients listed on package (milk, sugar)
1 pkg vanilla sugar, or regular sugar
sherry
bittersweet chocolate or cocoa powder or both

Prepare the pudding as described in the instructions on the package; you could add a teaspoon or two of cocoa powder to the recipe. Since the milk takes so long to heat the rest of the pudding surprise can be prepared in the meantime.

First, drain the cherries, reserving the juice.

Then, neatly lay out as many ladyfinger biscuits as desired on the bottom of a large dish (I prefer a glass bowl); because of the dimensions of our bowl I put in two layers and there are always some left over.

Carefully pour over the sherry enough to wetten the entire surface of the biscuits, and after that add as much and let as much splash down into the bottom of the bowl as you like. (To prevent the alcohol from evaporating too much, I put a large plate over the bowl, but I doubt this makes a difference.)

Then I spread all of the drained cherries over the biscuits, and pour over enough of the juice to ensure that the biscuits soak well.

After that I sugar the cherries to concentrate the flavour; if you have a package of vanilla sugar you might as well use up the whole thing, otherwise I refer the question of quantity to the individual cook's excellent judgment.

When the pudding is finished, I pour it over the biscuits and cherries. The last time I made it I stopped part-way through, laid down another layer of ladyfinger biscuits, and then poured on the rest, but this is of course entirely optional. The biscuits are less dense than the pudding so they eventually rise to the top like a baleen whale surfacing from the briny deep, unless ingeniously soaked or weighed down for instance by cherries, but last time I didn't care.

Lastly I chop the chocolate (what I did last time is to leave it in the plastic packaging and vigorously whack it crosswise with the back of a heavy carving knife so that it fractured into little pieces, before taking it out) or spoon the cocoa powder into a sieve, or both, and distribute it lightly but evenly over the pudding. This is a trick to prevent a tough skin from forming; it isn't 100% effective but it's still helpful.

I like to eat and serve it hot.

The End.

Monday, March 08, 2010

The Evening of the Little Gold Man

After spending the night before at the computer, then going to sleep in the late morning, I woke up just as the customarily painfully embarrassing Academy Awards red carpet interviews of the Pro7 channel ended. Then Papa and Mama gradually returned to the corner room and Gi. finished preparing a generous quantity of popcorn. On the television the coverage switched to its American counterpart, with the ex-supermodel Kathy Ireland (whose greyish dress was taller than most of the ambient humanity), an entertainment writer named Jess Cagle, and Sherri Shepherd of the talkshow The View. The actors who ventured within reach of their professional claws obligingly reeled off the clichés about being excited and feeling honoured "to be here" and wanting to enjoy each moment as it comes, and succeeded in pretending as if they feel happy when total strangers are clamouring for their attention like badly raised two-year-olds, and in this case demanding gracious responses to a shopworn set of officious questions. ("Who are you wearing?" = *groan*.)

Then the Academy Awards began as the nominees for best actor and actress took to the stage and stood there in the circus ring sight of the spotlights and cameras and auditorium hoi polloi. Once they had flocked back into their seats in the privileged front ring, Neil Patrick Harris emerged back centre stage and began a musical number most of whose lyrics I couldn't distinguish, whilst the ostrich feathers and (figurative) monkey suits of multitudinous dancers hearkened back to Old Hollywood showbusiness glamour. Then we were introduced to the hosts, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, who dutifully made reasonably polite and amusing jokes about or around the different acting nominees. They came across as relaxed and likeable, in my view, and it was nice not to have to wince either at a seriously off-colour or cruel joke, or at excessive attempts at ingratiating themselves with the audience.

The first pair of awards went to the best supporting actor and best supporting actress. Christoph Waltz won the first for Inglourious Basterds, and possibly his visible discomfort beforehand had sprung from the fact that being broadcast in the guise of a Nazi on a gigantic film screen is not anyone's idea of a shining moment. His speech was a jewel of succinctness and finely worked metaphor, and it wrapped up before the procrustean 45-second time limit so the orchestra music did not ignominiously cut him short. Mo'Nique, white flowers adorning her hair in hommage to her distant predecessor Hattie McDaniel, then won the best supporting actress award for playing a monstrous mother in Precious; this was equally expected. After her acceptance speech the cameras cut to Samuel L. Jackson, presumably to capture the "moved African-American" reaction, which he duly noted and rewarded with a mocking grimace into the camera. (Upon which my high opinion of him climbed another amused notch.)

After that came the techy awards, like screenplay and film editing and sound, and the awards for the little and foreign films. Avatar and The Hurt Locker divided the lion's share between them. I was happy whenever the latter won because of my one-sided feud against James Cameron and against Avatar. (Presumably I will call off said feud in due course, as has happened in the past with such entities as Tom Cruise and Richard Gere, but it is enjoyable to provisionally dislike people I've never met and films I've never seen.) The film's pop culture impact is obvious, but that doesn't prevent me from giggling when people describe it as "Pocahontas acted out by Smurfs."

Intermittently there was a tribute to John Hughes, a director who made films about teenagers in the 80s/90s and of whose oeuvre I have seen The Breakfast Club and Home Alone, whilst it is practically impossible to avoid hearing about Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Pretty in Pink. There was also a montage in honour of the horror film, where every few seconds one of us would remark, more or less, "That's not a horror film. That's more of a thriller." (Like Jaws and Psycho.) I looked away for most of the time since the horror genre is not at all my cup of tea. There was also a resumé of honorary awards that were presented in a different ceremony, and one of the recipients was Lauren Bacall. The sight of her elegantly accepting the standing ovation that came the way of her and a fellow honoree was uplifting (especially since The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not and Murder on the Orient Express (1974) are much beloved in this household), even if the momentary doubt if many younger actresses are in her league was not so much so. As for the Na'vi skit that introduced the best makeup category, it went on too long in my view.

Finally we arrived at the mighty four awards for best actor, best actress, best director, and best film. Five actors assembled on the stage to pronounce a laudatio (as these things are called in Germany) for each best actor nominee: Michelle Pfeiffer for Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore for Colin Firth, Vera Farmiga for George Clooney, Colin Farrell for Jeremy Renner, and Tim Robbins for Morgan Freeman. It was terribly awkward at moments, for example when Vera Farmiga harped on Clooney's looks. But I liked the two last tributes, though I suspected that despite the film they both acted in Renner and Farrell (whom I rather like as far as his personality is discernible) don't know each other sufficiently to give the requisite profound insights into each other's artistic and personal merits. (Which was also a problem with Julianne Moore and Colin Firth.) Jeff Bridges won, of course, and it was amusing when this exponent of a showbiz family took the stage like a seasoned denizen of the West and cheerfully drawled unaffected thanks to all the relevant parties, interspersed with celebratory whoops and languid ", . . . maaan"s.

The formula was repeated with Michael Sheen speaking for Helen Mirren, Peter Sarsgaard for Carey Mulligan, Forest Whitaker for Sandra Bullock, Oprah for Gabourey Sidibe, and Stanley Tucci for Meryl Streep. I didn't recognize Forest Whitaker and was even more puzzled to find out that he had directed one of Sandra Bullock's romantic comedies, Hope Floats. Either way I had no idea who was going to win. Gabourey Sidibe or Carey Mulligan or Helen Mirren looked likeliest, since from what I've read Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia Child is an enjoyable gig rather than an impassioned dramatic role, and Sandra Bullock's films are popular but have neither artistic pretensions nor great range.

But . . . Sandra Bullock won, and her speech was so characteristically warm and normal and funny that my surprise that she was considered good enough even to be nominated was forgotten. In any case the films she has been in are consistently watchable — I've watched a lot of them, from Miss Congeniality through Two Weeks' Notice to The Net — though The Proposal and All About Steve sound borderline. (She won a Razzie award for All About Steve, also for "worst screen couple" with Bradley Cooper, which reverse accolade she gracefully accepted in a speech available, if only sporadically audible, on YouTube.) But I haven't seen her performance in The Blind Side and had only assumed based on one or two reviews that the film on the whole is nothing special. It was nice, too, that the family on whose experiences the film is based were in the audience and that she gave them a satisfying "shout out."

At last the evening ended as Kathryn Bigelow was declared Best Director and The Hurt Locker was crowned as Best Film with tremendous speed. Needless to say I was muchly pleased (and from the critics' film reviews I reread post facto the award was also pretty well deserved). So the whole thing did take about four hours but it was time well spent, and even if it hadn't been, all's well that ends well!

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

The Astronomer

Undeterred by the paucity of material, I will probably write a new blog post later today. But for now here is the fruit of my latest poetic mood, in second draft form. The rhythm and rhyming are incidental, the excess conjunctions will have to be weeded out later, and I had two philosophical stanzas towards the end which need to be replaced or totally discarded eventually and have therefore been left out here. What can't be changed is that the whole poem is a cliché. The scene is an indeterminate Italian town roughly during the Renaissance and the protagonist is (obviously) Galileoesque.

* * *

Spirally he treads the steps
between the quadrant of the stony walls
where the torches’ twisted circle
flickers in the gusting evening wind.

The streets are dappled by the moon
and here and there an estranged sheen
points to eave or weathercock
or the shining fissure of glassed window.

The rim of hills lies weighty
and the church’s domes rise firm
as beyond the sea the seeping sun
leaves behind its trace of green.

The noise of day has ceased to be
though the wavering drone of revelry
may fill the taverns and trickle into streets
and furtive carts may straggle by.

So the hollow suffering of the wind
the creak and groan of distant door
and the muffled shuffle-shuffle
of his slippers are the only sounds he hears.

He rises in the tightwalled tower
with much less ease than long before,
the cobwebbed corners not alone
in bearing marks of bygone years.

But at the top the hobbit’s door
opens to a familiar scene
of crabbed table, chair, and bookshelf
pens and ink and telescope.

Its darkness yields to candlelight,
the startled glimmer of the mice’s eyes
as they abandon leather tomes
and seek a different stuff to nibble.

With disregard he sets his candle
close beside the telescope
and pats the coppery sheath, its dents,
and lifts his sleeve to wipe the lens.

He sets ajar another casement
snaking moonlight passes in
and with it breezes coolly ruffle
the parchment and the plumy quill.

What forces stir the light and wind,
which might controls the roaming stars,
what forces bring their lustre near
and bend the glass to such far sight?

[. . .]

He ponders but he cannot know.
For now he holds himself content
to watch the passing of the stars,
to find the laws which govern them,

To ask the questions, and to wait
until the end, to hear the truth.

(Written Feb. 22, 2010)