I Don't Want Any More of Your Snack, Mobyfinger

Last night, Mike and I watched Jackie Brown, which I think is a great movie. I like any movie where the woman kicks butt and wins in the end, but this one I think is really good and well-cast. Except for Samuel L. Jackson's ponytail, I believed all of the characters.

It was on channel 36, so it was dubbed and cut up for commercial breaks. I had to laugh out loud at the fantastically imaginative substitutes for unacceptable words. I wish I could remember more of them. Here were a few of my favorites:

Melon-peeler (Picture Samuel L. Jackson saying, "You tell that melon-peeler I want my money.")
Motorscooter
Mortgage broker
and the mysterious
Mobyfinger

I'm going to see if I can find some kind of database of acceptable dub-stitutes. Otherwise, I'll have to make my own.

I Must Confess

Ok, so if anyone read the post about the Progressive Adventist Culture before I caught this, I am totally 'fessing up. I was wiki-ing religious leaders and somehow mixed up the Adventists and the Mormons when I made the comment about Joseph Smith that I changed to Ellen G. White. Yeeeesh. Just admitting that is like fingernails on a blackboard to me. Cringe.

Granted, they are both relatively modern Christian derivatives based on dubious revelations from their modern day prophets and prophetesses, but that is no excuse. Golden tablets from angels do not equal a rock to the head. A badly researched reference is a badly researched reference. My apologies to all Mormons and Adventists I may have unintentionally offended. As for the ones I may have intentionally offended, well, I have no excuse for that at all.

In other news, I learned something cool today while watching the History Channel at the gym: the ancient Greeks discovered tons of dinosaur fossils, some of which were stashed as offerings at the temples, even at the Acropolis (where I have actually been). They found so many that most of them were just tossed. What is so cool about this is that it was very probably the basis for their mythological creatures. In some cases, seismic activity had scrambled the skeletons so much that it was probably pretty common to find the front half of something mixed up with the back half of something else. Why not half man half horse? A triceratops looks a lot like a great big something with a long tail-- maybe a lion-- with the head of a bird, because of the beak. Voila, the griffin! This was the factual evidence they were finding, and they interpreted it to the best of their ability at the time.

I always just assumed that those fantastical animals were inventions of creative imaginations. I had never heard that there was a connection between the Greek myths and dinosaurs. It is really no different from, though not as technologically enabled as, our current imaginings of dinosaurs. When I heard that, something delightful just snapped into place. A fundamental bit of knowledge about mankind and the history of the creatures on earth was put in like a little puzzle piece.

Which reminds me, have you heard about the exhibit that puts dinosaurs in Noah's Ark? Yeah, I'm not kidding.

Inevitable

Yep, I bought myself a little tub, and I have a rolling composter on the way from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply. I don't know what I'm going to do with the compost quite yet, but I do know that no one will have to eat Kitchen Scraps Soup any time soon.

Somewhere a few months back I came across a Mario Batali quote about part of his success being due to his Italian food-frugality. He mentioned that nothing goes to waste, and they put all of their kitchen scraps to use in stocks. I'm a saver. All it took was a little bit of encouragement, and my compulsive side and my cheap side quickly blanket-rolled my practical side and stuffed it in a neatly-labeled Zip-loc.

Already guilty of harboring the dismantled carcasses of more than a few roast chickens in my freezer, I immediately began saving every little snip, stem and leaf. Dead tomatoes, broccoli stems, onion tops, chard bottoms, the woody stalks of asparagus. In addition, I saved the dregs of bottles of wine for reduction sauces of the future, and all of the egg yolks left over from my dubiously successful Angel Food Cakes. (Custard, anyone?) I'm also storing a nice vertical selection of organic tomato sauce from the summer before we moved here. That was over a year ago. We left the skins on the tomatoes, and every time I think about opening one up, I'm afraid it will taste bitter and we'll waste pasta trying to eat it. But I digress.

Compost is the ultimate saver's dream. So, I cleaned all of the limp produce out of the fridge and mixed it with its frostbitten counterparts from up north. Now I just have to wait for the composter to come. Hopefully nothing explodes or takes over the Earth before then. When it finally becomes dirt, maybe I'll just throw it on my little garden. Provided the gophers leave me something to throw dirt on by then.

Eat Me

Have you seen the new M&M commercials? Is it just me, or are M&Ms with hair a bad idea? Somehow my brain could accept them with little arms and legs, but the hair is ookie.
Hair + food = hair in mouth = bad.

On their site "Planet M&M's" (sic) you can create your own custom-designed candies, and even make a virtual candy that looks like yourself. (That's delicious yellow peanut me above.)

I have to hand it to them for creativity. This is only one of the many games/activities available on Planet M&M. A) it's pretty ridiculous that someone spent this much time (can you even imagine the hours logged?) creating such an interactive site for a $1.00 candy. B) it's pretty damn smart that someone just got me to spend time hanging out with their product. I don't spend 3 seconds looking at an ad in a magazine (unless it's for something I really need, ok?) but in spite of the fact that I think that hair on candy is gross, I remembered their commercial, I sought out their website, and I made myself into a candy-coated chocolate.

As my wine marketing instructor (and founder of Balzac Communications) Paul Wagner would ask, "Yes, but DOES IT SELL CANDY?" I don't know, does it?

How Would Jesus Dance?

Great poster, eh? Nice art, cool, vibrant colors. This poster, posted at my gym, is for a musical performance at Pacific Union College, in Angwin. It is a "religious" school. The official looking ratings box at the bottom says this: "WARNING: This show is rated PAC (Progressive Adventist Culture) and contains dancing as a form of healthy expression." Whoa! Dancing! WITH singing?? That would be so far beyond my conservative ken as to be shocking. I cannot go.

Can Adventists watch American Idol as long as the contestants don't dance? What about Dancing with the Stars? Do they secretly covet the mambo in the privacy of their own homes? Can they they themselves dance in the privacy of their own homes, or only if they are married? I have many questions.

Here's what I do know: if you hire young Adventists to work for you in a restaurant, they always get Fridays and Saturdays off without question, and are often seen taking part in the forbidden activity (don't make me say it again) in the city somewhere between sabbath sundowns, and now and again also somehow manage to be hungover on Sundays. Hmmmm.....I could get used to that Progressive Adventist Culture.

I am not particularly reverent, especially in the face of the convenience of religous hypocrisy. I had to laugh out loud at this poster, and at the same time, I could see that this is how religions and societies get changed. One decade, it's PAC, but the next generation will be saying, "Remember how our grandparents thought it was sinful to dance?" See ya, Ellen G! Pretty soon, they'll be drinking Coca-Colas and wearing jewelry, too!

Another Baby Wanders Into My Trap

Beautiful Swiss Chard

What's Going On in the Garden

Memorial Day

Image: Devon DeLapp

Today is a very busy day for my 81-year-old grandfather. Prior to today, he's mapped the military graves in his local cemetery, re-checked and adjusted the map where there were errors, noting the location of each and every serviceman's grave. Volunteers will help him mark each of those graves with a flag. The cemetery has been well-maintained and manicured. The wildly variable Tahoe weather means that in some years, snow has to be dusted from the graves to find the ones to mark, and in others, my grandpa has to wipe the sweat from his brow as he goes from plot to plot. There will be a memorial service.

My grandpa has served in the military since the mid 1940s. He caught the tail end of WWII and was in Korea and Vietnam. He met my grandmother, Rose, while in the ROTC at UCLA. She was an airplane rivet driller. Her short stature allowed her to get into the wingtips, where she'd drill the holes for the riveters to follow. She also waitressed at a little restaurant where she slipped extra pats of rationed butter between my grandpa's pancakes when no one was looking. My grandpa still relishes melted butter on just about anything he can have it on, but especially on baked goods and "hotcakes".

Grandpa retired decades ago, but he has never stopped serving his country, and more importantly, his fellow soldiers. He doesn't always agree with the conflict at hand, and his wish is that no one would ever have to go to war again, but he supports the men who are out there doing the job, and understands the difficulties they face when they return. He still works with his local veterans administration to support the young men coming back from Iraq.

My grandfather has a love for language. One of the things that he says that he learned from serving all over the world, during wars and peace, was that people are the same. People have hopes and dreams and children and pain, and we are all the same. He has no patience for bigots, racists, or small-minded religious leaders. One of his greatest pleasures is to extract a few words from his mental library and communicate with someone who isn't expecting it. An Indian might receive a "namaste" or he might tell someone the time in German, or Russian, or thank them in Chinese, or Spanish. He's pretty sharp. Relaying these tales is one of the few times he'll let his pride show, because he so loves the look of surprise on their faces. It gives him so much joy to be able to connect.

When the movie "Platoon" came out, I had to go see it for a college class. I had no idea what I was in for. I wept through the whole thing, and I thought of my grandfather. As soon as the movie was over, I called him, crying, and thanked him for going through what he went through. He's not the type of guy that glorifies the war. You won't hear him telling stories of his own heroism, or making it sound like it wasn't so bad. Though he has received three Purple Heart medals, he doesn't mention those either.

Once in a great while, when we're on the phone, he'll feel like talking about something, and will tell me about something that happened to him, such as being blinded and having his back broken at the same time, crawling to safety and being helicoptered out of a dangerous situation. I listen intently, I take notes (he doesn't know that I do this) trying to soak up all of the details, but I can never remember them precisely enough. What I do know is that there were horrors that he will never talk about, and that he can never entirely forget. He went through those things because he had a sense of duty to his country, and to the people he was with. He has tried to make sense of things as best he can over the years.

Once, I sent him the lyrics to this Little Steven song called I Am A Patriot (later released by both Jackson Browne and Pearl Jam):

I am a patriot,and I love my country
Because my country is all I know
I wanna be with my family
People who understand me
I got no place else to go...
I am a patriot

I ain't no communist
And I ain't no socialist
And I ain't no capitalist
And I ain't no imperialist
And I ain't no democrat
I sure ain't no republican either
I only know one party, and its name is freedom
Listen to me, I am, I am, I am...
I am a patriot, and I love my country
Because my country is all I know

He liked it. I think it spelled out how we both feel, and why I cry when I hear the National Anthem. It always reminds me of my grandfather, whom I love dearly, and who, in his quiet way, is a huge hero. He doesn't always believe that his government is right, but he always believes in his country, and in spite of all that he has seen, he still believes in the good of people. Right now, we're just about as embarrassed as a country can be by its leadership or lack thereof, but it is, and always will be Home. In the midst of the barbecues, beers, or whatever sunny pursuit I happen to be enjoying later today, I'm going to put my hand over my heart and thank those people, men and women, who were willing to put themselves in the service of their country, right or wrong.

Where You Look Is Where You Go

image copyright denz zani

As I mentioned, we went surfing in Hawaii. Our instructor, Nate, was awesome. He had been teaching surfing long enough to be patient, cool and encouraging, but not long enough to be burned out. As we grinned and sloshed awkwardly out on wave after wave, one of the things he repeatedly coached, besides "Paddle, paddle, paddle!" and "Push up, then get up!" was

"Where you look is where you go."

It really stuck in my brain. My mother, the spiritualist minister (and junior high school teacher) has been sending inspirational emails about being positive and affecting positive change in our lives. I suspect she sends these to me in part because she sends them to my sister, and she doesn't want it to look like she's just sending them to my sister. At this point in our lives, my sister needs a little more encouragement about positivity than I do. I'm hip to this whole thing, but for me, this little phrase really nailed it in a precise way.

What it means in surfing is that if you look at your feet, you will fall down. If you look at the beach, you will go forward. What it means in life is that if you focus on the negative, you will go there. If you focus on the positive, you will go there. As Peggy Hall puts it in the Yoga for Surfers video : "Picture yourself doing it, and you will." (I highly recommend Yoga for Surfers II, a sweat-inducing 30 minutes that stretches and uses every muscle in a short time period. I dare you not to be pleasantly sore.) Ok, so the position she's referring to is one I'm not sure physics allows considering the current dimensions of my body, but I get the idea. It's that simple.

Life is that simple. The head leads the horse, physically and mentally. You don't have to be a Pollyanna. Just picture the best, coolest life that you can imagine, keep that picture in your mind, and believe that you deserve it. Then go there.

PS- While wiki-ing Pollyanna, I discovered the Pollyanna Principle, which is the tendency of people to believe positive things said about themselves. I think it would make a great band name.

Clarification

If there is anyone out there who found me because they were searching for Tamara Landry, with a y, please move on, these are not the droids you are looking for. Tamara Landry is/was a porn star of dubious achievement in the early 1990s. I am Tamara Landre, with an e, related to the not-so-famous Gilbert Landre, who lived in Skagit, Washington, about 100 years ago. He was my grandfather's grandfather's brother. This August, we are going to visit his log cabin, which is still standing, and is a designated historical structure.

Hitting the Bag Jackpot

Ok, I know pretty soon you'll be saying, "Enough with the shopping bags already, Tamara!" but just one more, ok? These dinky things fold inside-out into their own little pouches, come in a couple of neat modern prints, and unfold to approximately 12" x 18". Small enough to tuck in a small purse, big enough and not-dorky enough to save you from that giant department store plastic bag they are going to try to give you at Macy's or Nordstrom. UN-fortunately it is made out of rayon/polyester by overstressed children living in the smoggy suburbs of some unnamed Chinese city. The company "Three Wishes" is probably some made up thing, too. (If it doesn't exist on the internet, it doesn't exist, right?) I bought mine at Mr. Moon's in Calistoga, but I'm sure there are other bags just like this. If you can't get one, call me, and I'll go buy you one. $8. I'm going to go try it out at Ann Taylor right now. After I buy a compost bucket.

Sights of Seattle, etc.

This awesome picture (which I did not take) was posted on Neatorama. (Later I'll tell you about my fondness for fence-eating trees.) Apparently, someone chained their bike to a tree many years ago, and never came back for it, so the tree eventually ate it.

Interestingly, it happens to be on Vashon Island, Washington, where my friends Karen and Lars and their two dogs, Inky and The Colonel, live. Worth a pilgrimage on our next visit. I had a chance to see Lars and Karen while I was in Seattle. Here's Lars in a cool bar called King's or King Hardware, in Ballard: He's very handsome, but can't resist making faces for the camera--so unlike any of my other friends. Just above his head is a taxidermied bobcat. The walls were filled with diverse taxidermied wildlife of the great white north. One wall was devoted almost entirely to wintry northwest landscapes, from skillful oils to paint-by-numbers. I loved it. Actually, I just love Seattle. One, because so many people I love are there, and two, because it is chock full of weird little places like this. I love to walk and explore in the neighborhoods. It's a fantastic food town, so I know there's a great local beer, cup of coffee, or tasty treat in store for me wherever I go. As I mentioned, I brought home piroshkies, but I also brought home beautiful alderwood-smoked Copper River salmon. The fish display at the local Whole Foods made me swoon. The fresh salmon display looked like pyramids of silver ingots on ice. Sorry, no picture of that, but I can still picture it in my mind. (I didn't have a real camera with me, so most of these images are from my phone.) More later on Seattle.

Cool

Check out this video on Neatorama.

Aloha Kako

(Aloha Kako=Hello Everyone) A bit on Hawaii:

We had such a nice time, I was sad to leave. It was one of the few vacations I've had where I thought about absolutely nothing. I actually forgot the days of the week. The day we went surfing, I had to write the date on a piece of paper, and I honestly could not resurrect it in my brain. I knew our anniversary was a few days earlier, and I know what that date is, but I couldn't remember how many days had passed since. That is a good vacation. Nothing was stressful, everything was low key and dreamlike.

Some people put Hawaii down as a tacky, Vegas-like tourist destination, with no redeeming features. I see those Bubba Gump's elements, but I also see a beautiful, wild and rugged place that is clinging to its unique and increasingly endangered cultural heritage. The ocean is such a wonderful world there, so different from the cold, murky and great-white-shark friendly seas closest to us here in Northern California. I love to snorkel. I can spend hours in the water, just swimming around seeing who lives where and what we they are all doing down there.

To start with, we rented a biodiesel car from Bio-Beetle. All of the biodiesel on Maui is recycled restaurant oil. With a little effort, they could (and should) improve their office, which happens to be conveniently situated near the recycling center and which is home to more than a few rescued, neutered feral cats, but the car itself was clean and new, and they were very nice and mellow people. It sure felt good to drive around the island knowing that we were not only getting 40+ mpg, but also recycling and greatly reducing our contribution to global warming. Temporarily. It gave us a chance to test-drive the Jetta and see if we liked it. We may sell the Subaru eventually in favor of a recycled-fuel-burning car like this one.

I don't know if you can tell how miniscule the surf is in this picture (1-2 feet) but this is what it looked like when Mike and I surfed (me for the first time) a few days earlier. Our instructor was really, really nice. If you go to Maui, and you want to try this, go here and ask for Nate. We thought Mike was nice, too, but Nate was our guy, and he took good care of us. It was a fun time. We took a "private" lesson, so there were just the two of us with our instructor, and we caught a lot of waves. He even showed us how to paddle in ourselves, and I caught two or three under my own power. Beforehand, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to do it, or worse, that I wouldn't like it. Unfortunately for our bank accounts, I loved it and can't wait to do it again. I have a lot to learn. I may just have to gear up and get on my carveboard again this weekend. Don't worry, I'll wear my kneepads this time.

A torch ginger flower at the Keanae Arboretum. We had a great time poking around among the flowers and tropical plants. We got caught in a rainstorm and hid under some closely-spaced palms until it let up. Leaf, also at the arboretum after the rainstorm.

The view from our condo.


Sunset on Napili beach. On our last night there, we walked out to the beach. There was no moon, and a million bright stars were gleaming and twinkling. Just as I felt the cool sand under my feet, I looked up and saw a big shooting star, which rocketed, white, like a comet, for a long time, and then burst into actual flames and had an orange tail before it disappeared.

I was so amazed that all I could do was draw in my breath and point at it with my rolled up beach mat. I didn't even make a noise loud enough for Mike to turn around. I just kept going *gasp* point, *gasp* point. In my head I was saying, "oh my gosh! a shooting star! oh! it is still going! oh! it actually burst into flames! oh! I've never seen that!" but I had to explain it all out loud to Mike after it happened. Sort of like I just did. It was cool, and it made me feel less bummed about leaving the next morning.

Most of the people on this beach are naked.