Wow that was fast.

Lot 1's cute former chef

I don’t make it over to Silver Lake / Echo Park much anymore – it lost some of its allure once it got too trendy to find parking. But I’ve had it in mind lately to make a field trip to the new Lot 1 restaurant ever since I got a rave recommendation from a friend of a mine. “ze food is amazing! You weel lof eet!” (she’s French). And it did sound intriguing with items like a simple arugula salad with guanciale and grated jidori egg and a red wine pot roast with fava beans and candied rhubarb, not to mention a chocolate and fleur de sel mousse with olive oil. Simple but creative food – just my thing. Then I saw the Amy Scattergood feature in the L.A. Times about chef Josef Centeno (late of Opus) and his studiply named but delicious sounding lunchtime baco, and thought I would wait a bit for the post-publicity crowds to die down. Oh well, I guess I lost my chance, since Scattergood now reports that Centeno is leaving.

The story goes that he was walking down the street one day and ran into Eileen Leslie, who was putting the finishing touches on her new restaurant, which was ready to go except for the small detail that there was no chef. Enter Centeno and the buzz began, but these sorts of serendipitous events often end in tears – especially when there is a restaurant involved. After several months behind Leslie’s stoves, Centeno reports that “he doesn’t want to cook for awhile.” Ouch.

I know the feeling. What is it about working in a restaurant that can turn you off cooking? My own denouement came when I started as pastry cook at a super hip and much buzzed about mid 90’s Hollywood restaurant. After a few stints here and there, I got a call from a young chef about a new place opening up in a parking lot off Hollywood Blvd. Chef wanted an Alice Waters-y vibe, and I produced tarts and pot de cremes and delicate cakes served with fruit confits, staying as fresh and local as I could and earning raves for a lemon tart I adapted from Chef’s own. It was all very sun dappled and lovely until one morning Chef came into the kitchen, looked over my shoulder, and I caught a whiff of something on his breath – something like sour milk, or perhaps vomit, no, no – ughhh semen. From that point forward, things were never the same. I can’t explain it, and I do feel bad about it, but I felt small and mean and primal – my sensibilities all in an uproar – and well, how do you tell someone you don’t want to cook for them anymore because they smell like blow job? Quarrels and shouting ensued; I started walking out dramatically on a daily basis. During that time, the kitchen shifted focus away from earthly Alice and towards bad boy Marco Pierre White (read Bill Buford’s Heat for a fantastic portrait of this brilliantly annoying enfant terrible), and suddenly the pastry station was all about spun sugar, and one day I walked out in a huff and didn’t come back. All of this – from first phone call to final huff – took about 3 months to transpire. I thought I’d never cook again. While the desire to cook came back quickly enough, the desire to step into a restaurant kitchen again never has.

Here is a ridiculously rich and delicious chocolate tart that Chef taught me. Use the best chocolate you can find. For the baking shell, I recommend Lindsey Shere’s short crust, recipe below. If you are feeling fancy, serve along side some coffee creme anglaise, a strawberry, cut lengthwise several times and fanned out, and a sprig of mint tucked alongside. Or eat a thin slice or two with coffee, as you would a cookie.

Chocolate Tart

Preheat oven to 400^o

Combine, melt and blend in a bain marie or double boiler over simmering water (do not let the water touch the bottom of your pan)

9 oz good dark chocolate, like Valrhona of Callebaut

½ cup butter

pinch of salt

In electric mixer beat on high until ribbon stage:

6 egg yolks

¼ cup sugar

Fold egg & sugar mixture into cooled, but still warm chocolate. (Add just a bit of the egg mixture and blend into the chocolate before adding the rest).

Beat to stiff peaks

2 egg whites

1 tb sugar

fold 1/3 of the whites into the chocolate, then incorporate the rest.

Fill the tart pan, and bake at 400 for 8-10 minutes, until top appears cracked and cake-like but insides remain running.

Lindsey Shere’s short crust

2 c Unbleached all-purpose flour	¼ ts grated lemon peel
¼ ts Salt	1 tb Ice water; plus
1 tb Sugar	1/2 ts vanilla extract
½ cup unsalted butter, not too cold

Mix the flour, salt, sugar and lemon peel in a bowl. Cut the butter in pieces 1/3-inch thick and quickly cut them into the flour mixture until it is the texture of cornmeal. You can do this with a pastry blender or with your hands by rubbing quickly and lightly between your fingers. Combine the water and vanilla and add to the dough until just blended. Gather into a ball and wrap in plastic. Let sit for 30 minutes, then press into a 9-inch tart pan, making sure it covers the bottom and sides evenly. Wrap the shell in foil and set it in the freezer for at least 30 minutes. Bake it blind (no need to fill the shell with beans) in a preheated 375o oven for about 25 minutes, until golden brown.

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The dog days are upon us…

I’ve been away from my blog for a bit – as those of you, my silent readers who never comment – must have noticed. It’s been a challenging 10 days. The temperature has been in the triple digits since last weekend, and the humidity is relentless. The skies are brown from smog and a fire that has been burning north of Santa Barbara since July 4^th. People get on my nerves – they drive like idiots and remind me of the flies that seem to be everywhere all the time now. I take three showers a day and still feel unwashed. If kitchen trash sits for more than half a day, it takes on a lingering stench usually associated with 3 day old dead bodies – this you will be relieved to know, I understand more from instinct than from any actual experience.

As a result, I and my foul temper stay inside with the air conditioner and two fans going (Al, I’m sorry, but I will buy my wind power card at Whole Foods tomorrow, I promise). The shades are drawn and liquids full of electrolytes are at the ready. Every so often I register a change in the atmosphere as an intensification of the headache I’ve had for the past week. I don’t get allergies in Los Angeles, I get headaches; nasty ones that make me feel like my right eyeball is on fire, to be precise. It’s hard to write about my reluctant love of L.A. in such conditions.

In fact, it’s almost more than I can bear to lift an icy glass of Spanish rose to my lips, and nibble on the few organic lettuces that accompany my store bought pissaladerie for lunch / dinner. I can barely rally the strength to focus my good eye on the Fall fashion issues of my favorite glossies. Vogue, is so heavy I can’t even lift it, which is probably a good thing, since the thought of anything except for lightly chilled ocean salt water touching my skin makes me ill – let alone all those lovely tailored lightweight wools and leathers worn over tights and this season’s must have booties.

To be honest, I haven’t even made it past the cover of Details with Clive Owen on the cover – he’s not as moody as he looks – but note to the writer: I do not want to know how what he really wants to do is take his wife to a soccer match. I want to know how he’s pining away moodily after the amazing woman he saw when last he was in Los Angeles, the one that he can’t get out of his mind- with the lustrous pewter and platinum hair, the amazing eyes, and the –lets be honest – gorgeous breasts just recently relieved of 6 excess pounds and now floating perkily under the kinds of summer dresses they could only dream of supporting in years past…oh, oh, where is she?- cries Clive. Staring at a picture of you on the cover of Details, mate. I’ll be back as soon as I add just a smidgen of vodka to my strawberry lemonade…

I actually did leave the house twice this past week, once to go to the beach, which was worth the painful sunburn, and once to go on the oddest job interview of my life. Details follow.

This interview was with a media luminary who I actually admire quite a bit. I won’t name her, but her initials are A.H. and she’s written many books – most recently about being a woman and being bold – and she runs an online media empire. She used to represent hateful things; marriage to and rapacious campaigner for a rich, closeted queer neocon creep attempting to take over my beloved California. And then there was her biography of one of my favorite artists, Pablo Picasso, which focused almost exclusively on his dark personal life – not fair!! Note to all intelligent people: Personal lives of creative geniuses are almost always strange and often sordid –witness this month’s profile of Arthur Miller in Vanity Fair. But she had the courage (and nerve, some would say) to divorce the creep, grab his money and reinvent herself as “a compassionate and progressive populist,” something that appears heartfelt and admirable, or utterly calculated, which just seems like too much work.

Being interested, I arrived ahead of schedule, with sweat dripping down my back from the heat of the drive in an un- air-conditioned car, hoping that maybe this woman would pay enough that I could replace it –maybe with a Prius, like the one she drives. I waited a few minutes to let the Brentwood breezes cool me down a bit, and then I rang at the gate. The door opened, and I was admitted into one of those short front yards peculiar to Los Angeles mansions, after which I walked through an open door into a cool foyer to be guided by The Voice into a large airy office with twenty foot ceilings and floor to ceiling windows that framed her large desk. There were books and comfortable furnishing all around and I just wanted to plop down on the sofa, kick off my shoes, pick something up to read and say – hey, what have you been up to? Can you believe the f***in’ weather? But my Mother raised me, and I walked to my designated seat instead, and commented on the room’s handsome appointments. “Yes, isn’t it comfy?” she said in her luscious, honey soaked accent, and then she took a couple of phone calls. In between, she asked me the same question twice – so you are returning to writing?- and seemed to register my responses, but I can’t really be sure. She then sent me upstairs to meet her other assistant.

On the way up, I spotted a Modigliani. “This is real?” I asked reflexively- and she responded – “no, definitely not”- but you have to agree that a print of a Modigliani nude next to the spiral staircase leading up to the “team’s” office is a pretty interesting choice.

The assistant was a pleasant but humorless worker who gave me the task of cleaning out A’s contacts in Outlook for awhile. The air conditioning was broken in this airless atelier, and my hand kept sticking to the page of duplicate contacts I was supposed to weed out. I did that for about 30 minutes, fact-checking famous names as I went, and that was it. The worker told me that AH would be calling me that night or tomorrow, and escorted me to the door.

Of course it’s several days after tomorrow, and no phone call, but I’ve lived here long enough to know that in Hollywood, actually getting a phone call would be an exception to the rule. I guess I just didn’t realize just how Hollywood A is.

I still wish she had called because I sincerely want to know: what exactly was the point of that particular exercise? Was the Outlook task some kind of timed contact management exercise, perhaps? The worker assured me that it wasn’t a test when I asked her, but she also told me she liked her job, and I wasn’t convinced by her answer to that question either.

There are a number of possible scenarios that explain why I didn’t get a call back; you choose the one you like the best (or add one of your own):

• I’m older than she thought I’d be, and she likes young assistants because they are less expensive, and are also less likely to talk back,

• She’s gay and the sight of me and my previously described breasts distracted her to the point where she knew her life and work would be in ruins if she hired me,

• She was worried that the writer in me might do the same sort of hatchet job on her that she did on Picasso,

• She found my blog through my email address and hates it, and couldn’t possibly hire someone who would write such non-erudite mulch,

• She’s been busy covering the Utah Mining Disaster and Karl Rove and Hillary and she honestly thought the worker was going to call me,

• It was at the top of her list to call with a very attractive compensation package and a puff of fresh air into my otherwise stale life, until she read this post…

Whatever…

Now I’m back on my side of town, and noticing just how decidedly asymmetrical Clive Owen’s face is, and how it shouldn’t add to his allure but it does, and how, in Bourne Identity his face looks positively tidy and symmetrical, and how does he do that? Can he make himself look asymmetrical? If so, he’s even more incredible than I thought! Why does he display his wedding ring so much in his Details photos? Is it the equivalent of the sign of the cross against vampires? Why are all the male models in the rest of the magazine so young and so emaciated? They look like Oliver Twist -more soup please! It’s worse than in Vogue, where the girls at least sometimes try to look of age…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are we now a nation of self obsessed pedophiles?

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It’s the Fourth of July

It’s Fourth of July and anyone in Los Angeles heading to see fireworks had better already be there. I can hear the first crackles and pops from Universal Studio’s display, and if I try, I could maybe see some twinkling star fire above my neighbors’ tree tops. But I’m not of a mind to angle for a better view. Nor did I spend the day eating hot dogs and potato chips at the beach. Too much trouble: too crowded, too much traffic. Way too hot.

I had a vague plan to catch up on housekeeping, errands and reading today. By the time I made it to my local coffeehouse at 10AM, I was “glowing.” By the time I made it to the patio with my coffee and muffin at 10:15AM, sweat was streaming down my back in rivulets. I didn’t have my glasses.  This became a sign to go home and make use of the air conditioning that is eating up the savings from my gas bill; maybe I could get enough housework done so that my weekend can be chore-free. In the car, the radio played Paul Simon singing An American Tune:

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hours
and sing an American tune
Oh, and it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest

I’ve always envisioned this song being sung by a lonely soldier, circa Viet Nam. I thought of a line from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried: “They carried all they could bear, and then some…” It was hard to shake the moment off. It was hard not to break down in tears.

 

A little later I saw high clouds drifting through the sky. A breeze picked up. I remembered hearing someone mention that fire-retardant was being sprayed around areas near local fireworks displays as a precaution against wildfires.

 

In the afternoon, I fell asleep reading House of Meetings by Martin Amis:

 

Yes, so far as the individual is concerned, Venus, it may very well be true that character is destiny. And the other way around. But on the larger scale character means nothing. On the larger scale, destiny is demographics; and demographics is a monster.

 

Later, I ran out to do some errands and encountered two bewildered drunks with red faces and paunchy, hairless bare chests being cuffed and stuffed into a squad car while peope stood around watching. As I pulled up to the curb in front of my house, a pair of runaways approached me. They wanted a ride into Hollywood. They’d been walking all the way from Sun Valley, they said. She had a vein in her leg that was killing her, she said. Four months pregnant, she added. She was bone thin and blue eyed with a wide red mouth under penciled-in black eyebrows. He was skinny too and heavily tattooed. The piercing at the side of his mouth appeared to be bothering him. They looked young and sweet and dumb, and like there was probably a good reason to be running away. I would have liked to give them a lift, but it would have been foolish to do so. You just don’t know what people are up too.

 

Like bad sex, the fireworks at Universal are over after about 20 minutes. The sky is illuminated with a creepy pink fluorescence. Nearby, someone has just shot off a high powered rifle three times. Sirens reply.

Hey baby, it’s the Fourth of July…Dave Alvin

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Wildfires

The Angora Fire in Tahoe jumped the fireline this evening, 3 days in and just when firefighters thought they’d seen the worst. Until last year, I always thought of Tahoe as some hideous frat boy puke fest tourist trap, and there are aspects of South Tahoe (like Harrah’s) that seem like a throw back to mid-70s Vegas, complete with rows of slot machines reeking of cigarette smoke and white trash desperation. Though to be fair, there is some great neon….

I realized how much I’d been missing all these years when I spent a week there last fall while on vacation with my family. We stayed in South Tahoe, and explored as much as we could in such a short period.

Lake Tahoe woke something up in me that had been dormant for a long time – a joy in nature that brought me back to myself after a long time spent adrift. I felt vigorous and free and a little bit wild. Most of all I loved the area around the Angora Lakes and the Desolation, in a way that almost didn’t make sense. It now ranks alongside Pura Ulun Danu Bratan temple in Bali as a favorite place on earth. Granted, we were there mid week and had the place largely to ourselves; I understand it gets pretty overrun during peak times. I vowed to be back soon to spend more time with that terrain. We’ll see what’s left after the fire.

Oddly enough, just last week I uploaded as my header a detail from a picture I took of the Upper Angora Lake. Tahoe had been on my mind a lot, and I like the kind of impressionistic ambiguity of the photograph.

A friend asked me why I was so upset by these fires. I suspect there is more than one answer. There are the obvious reasons: the footage of people and animals fleeing for their lives in the wake of destruction unleashed by careless (or vile) humans, and the sentimental sadness that comes with knowing that something you love is gone forever. But that isn’t really the truth about forest fires – the forest will renew itself, in a way that wouldn’t happen if, say, the land was commercially developed. Wildfires can be seen as an environmental correction. But I don’t suppose that offers much consolation to those who love that land so much that they built their homes and lives around there. Maybe my feelings are in part due to some deeper knowledge that I prefer not to acknowledge – that fire is beautiful in its own right, majestic and intoxicating. Wildfires involve a commingling of a sense of loss with a fear of being mezmerized by the agent of that loss.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from my visit last Fall.

 

 

 

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Gotta love San Francisco…

Where else can you get slow, organic, artisanal ice cream with Rechutti fleur de sel chunks for just $8 a pint?

I was there to see the Vivienne Westwood exhibit at the DeYoung Museum before it came down,and to celebrate my friend Bruce’s birthday. I stayed at the Mosser downtown, did a bit of shopping, got completely exfoliated at the Kabuki Spa (nice spa, good prices, but the front office staff leave a lot to be desired) and squeezed in dinner at Delfina, one of my favorite restaurants anywhere. (hint: if you see seascape strawberries with red wine granita and basil zabaglioni on the menu, don’t hesitate).

Herewith, some reflections:

The Mosser: a serious deal in the heart of downtown SF. BART will take you there from SFO for $5.15 (though I took a cab back out to SFO out of pure exhaustion, which cost $40, including tip). Walking distance to Union Square shopping and in the other direction to Yerba Buena and SFMOMA. Lots of options for public transportation just about anywhere you want to go. I could definitely reduce my carbon foot print by moving back up there. Annabelle’s is next door and offers limited room service. I had great drinks and a perfectly good hamburger in the bar. The room is tiny, but it was super quiet and the custom made bed was incredibly comfortable. I shared a coed bathroom with tub with others on my hall, and a water closet for women only that was vacant every time I wanted to use it. There is a vanity sink, a hair dryer and an iron and ironing board in the room, along with robes. The amenities were decent. It’s like an upscale hostel, and very clean. It was inhabited mostly by musicians (there is an adjoining recording studio) and young European tourists. It worked for me, especially since I got my squeaky clean on at the Kabuki. The pipes groaned in the bathroom, but I’m the kind of girl who thinks that’s charming.

The Vivienne Westwood exhibit: I’d heard mixed reviews about this one, but I have to say I loved it. I wish I’d had time to go back. I’m a huge Vivienne Westwood fan, but even so, I was shocked by how much her aesthetic has influenced contemporary fashion. The BCBG shoes I own are a knock-off of her Gillies. Half the skirts I own reference her Nostalgia of Mud collection. Bubble hems, petticoats, tube skirts, the suit Carrie wore to her Vogue interview in Sex in the City, sky high platforms – tell me, who did it before she did?

I love the cheeky femininity of her models and the pure grace of movement her clothes have when they float down the runway (as seen on wall monitors scattered throughout the galleries.) I love that she shot her models sauntering around the galleries of the Wallace Collection, looking at the portraits they were incarnating.

I took the audio tour, which at first was awkward – something of a misguided attempt to recreate the anarchy of punk pulled together by grandiloquent museum curators more accustomed to Victoriana than modernity. But once the narration got past Viv’s early Sex Shop days and glided into the post-punk collections, they started to get it right, bringing in the experts from the V&A and other fashion historians to create a thoughtful context and to give the woman her due. Its not often that intellect and fashion walk so easily hand in hand these days.

Many of the people visiting the show seemed to be seeking a nostalgia buzz, and they must have stopped paying attention to Westwood after she broke off with Malcolm McLaren circa Bow Wow Wow and the Pirates era. “I had no idea she got into couture,” one woman said, whose multi-colored hair matched her rather unfortunate skirt. But it’s not particularly surprising, considering that at least in the U.S., fashion magazines have de-emphasized her collections in favor of those who design for adolescent archetypes just this side of kiddie porn. Women wearing Westwood’s clothing take up space, and that’s just not done. Anyway, I agree with one of the commentators on the audio tour who called her one of the great modern designers. I think she’s one of the great creative geniuses of the 20^th Century, right up there with Balanchine, Stravinsky and Prince. If I thought I could have gotten away with it, I would have grabbed the black stilettos with the silver spikes at the heels, along with the butter yellow rubber Bettina suit to go with, and oh, yes – the Jungle Dress, and the Nostalgia of Mud skirt with the Peruvian dancers at the hem. Also the bird’s nest hat with the stuffed pheasant, though it would probably just sit in my closet – no one wears hats in L.A.

The Farmer’s Market was just a glint in the eye of Alice Waters when I left San Francisco, or I probably would not have left. Now, if it’s Saturday morning and I’m in SF, I’m at Ferry Plaza with my friends who go to work with an admirable efficiency, collecting their week’s groceries from their favorite farmers in record time. This week, I had a mission,which was to forage for ingredients for that night’s birthday dinner for bff Mary’s husband Bruce. I collected pullet eggs, apricots and raspberries for a faithful version of the Pavlova dessert I wrote about a few weeks back. Again, sooo easy, and a real crowd pleaser.

The drink of the evening was the Sazerac, the famously sublime New Orleans potion of rye whiskey, herb saint / pernod and Peychaud bitters; I’d like one right now, please. Bff Mary is one of the best home cooks I know, and she started things off with these great little nibbles of chicken marinated in pomegranate molasses and cumin. Then a lentil salad with spinach, bacon, sour cherries and blue cheese. Then her wonderful “lamb pops,” served this time with couscous. The recipe for the couscous came from the Epicurious website, and called for chopping all the vegetables into uniform ½ inch bits, and then cook them with the couscous. I had the idea that it would be a more rustic accompaniment for the lamb to chop the veggies into randomly sized chunks and then roast them to bring out their sweetest and add a hint of smoke. Instead of just saying this, I made some snide comment to the effect that the Epicurious recipe was a little “too Nob Hill for me.” Not that I really even know what that means, but I agree it sounds pissy. I’m not a food snob. The cocktails made me say it.

Bff Mary’s lamb pops

3 racks of baby lamb, chined and frenched

Salt and pepper to taste

Several sprigs of rosemary

Olive oil

In a roasting pan, salt and pepper the racks of lamb and drizzle with olive oil

Tuck sprigs of rosemary here and there

Let sit for 6 hours at least, or overnight

Heat oven to 450, roast for 20 minutes. Let sit for about 15 minutes more.

To serve, cut the rack into individual “pops.” Mound the couscous in the center of a serving platter, and arrange the lamb pops around it.

 

You can use any couscous recipe you like, even the one from Epicurious. I like Paula Wolfert’s “Couscous with Seven Vegetables in the Fez Manner” from Couscous & Other Good Food From Morocco.

 

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Still horse crazy after all these years…

Now that Matt Lauer has moved onto his infomercial for the travel industry, I can turn to a different, and personally more satisfying obsession: HORSES!

Last night, I saw a PBS documentary on Proud Spirit, a horse sanctuary in Arkansas. I realized just how horse crazy I still am.

It all began when I read Black Beauty. This is who and where I wanted to be when I was about 7 years old:

Since a real pony and a change of environment weren’t in the cards, I started obsessively collecting books and plastic horse models.

But I didn’t really meet one until I went to Vermont to visit relatives of my mother’s, who raised Morgan horses. I was 7 or 8 at the time, and those horses were very tall! Also, I had never been near a stable before and wasn’t used to the smell of horse manure. There were a lot of men around, stable hands who seemed kind of aloof. Needless to say, the reality of this first encounter did not match the fantasy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t meet my next horse until my family moved to a suburban neighborhood just this side of rural, and there was a field with a cranky pony living in it who bit my thigh when I tried to feed it roses. The bruise, really a huge blood blister, covered most of my thigh and hip. But even so I liked that pony; I could see he had a point of view. I didn’t find myself around horses again until I moved to Santa Barbara, and got it in my head that I wanted to ride English style. I took lessons for a while but never really got the hang of it, or rather I never got over the fear of being thrown.

 

I did befriend one horse, a quarter horse named Port, who had a reputation for being arrogant, but for some reason he liked me. He had the most beautiful canter, but he did not like to gallop. I used to groom and exercise him and ride him around the ring until the lessons got too expensive and I had to stop. Oddly enough, I somehow got on the subject of Port at dinner the other night, and then when I came home and saw the PBS documentary on horse rescue, my memories all started to come back to mingle with feelings of love and the fear, and then revulsion, when they started talking about Premerin ponies.

 

 

Fantasy meets reality, indeed.

 

 

 

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Who in the #@%!! is Matt Lauer?

  I wasn’t going to weigh in on the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, but after 3 days of watching NBC’s Today Show host Matt Lauer’s petulant, reactionary coverage, I just have to join the fray.

Take this exchange on Tuesday between Lauer and Omar Samaha, whose sister Reema had been murdered:

Lauer: is there anything but anger in your heart for this young man who committed these crimes?

Samaha: Angry? I can’t even say I’m angry yet…There’s nothing that’s going to bring my sister back…and that’s bottom line to me…we’re not the only ones…its important the community is coming together because we are all family here.

I was impressed by Samaha’s reply and the way he dodged, unwittingly or not, Lauer’s vulgar leading question. When Lauer turned back to face the camera, I wasn’t sure if the anger in his expression was due to the story he was covering, or the fact that Samaha didn’t utter the words he wanted to hear.

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This morning as the details of Seung-hui Cho’s psychological profile came more clearly into focus, Lauer found it important to stress, at least twice, that Cho was not depressed, that he was psychotic. He spat the word “psychotic” out with an edge of disparagement in his voice, as if Cho had chosen psychosis over the more palatable diagnosis of depression as some sort of lifestyle choice.

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At the turn of the 20^th Century authors such as Theodore Dreiser illuminated the harsh realities behind the fiction of the American Dream. In Dreiser’s novel “An American Tragedy” which was based on a true 1906 murder case, the protagonist ( Clyde Griffiths) is found guilty of drowning an ex girlfriend whose murder he pre-planned but did not actually commit. In Dreiser’s fiction Clyde Griffiths was victim of a confrontation of class, money and a need to possess something he thought had been promised to him. Provocative at the time, this theme became a well known and often retold perspective on life in America. At the turn of this century, we are seeing the new, less personal but no less sorrowful ‘American Tragedy,” a confrontation of disenfranchisement, glorified gun culture and misplaced rage being increasingly played out in front of our collective eyes through the media. Instead of great authors revealing the truths of our culture through fiction, we have glowering numb-skulls like Matt Lauer spinning fiction, conjecture and blame before the truth can even unfold.

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It seemed to me that it would be at least three days before the information I needed to know to begin understanding this case would come to light, and I wasn’t wrong. Beyond the obvious conjectures about his issues with women and disdain for the rich, the details of Cho’s psychological profile are very sad indeed. Multiple complaints of stalking behavior filed by VT coeds, teachers, counselors and acquaintances (he appears to have had no friends) worried about his behavior and his lurid writing, an involuntary stay in a mental hospital during which he was assessed as an imminent danger to himself or others and then released ( a complicated mess of free will and privacy rights), parents who seem to be invisible, the ease with which he was able to lie on his application and purchase his handguns from a dealer who thought he looked like a clean cut college kid; all of these indicators, and still he slipped through the cracks so easily. Like his Columbine mentors before him, Cho is the face of the new American Tragedy, and as things currently stand, we should brace ourselves to see much more of it in the future.

 

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On and about L.A.

 

 

 

 

 

Rock and roll, baby girl. You can do it. It’s all in your head.” …so said a street drifter in Beverly Hills as I was hurrying blindly towards my car. Silly as it may seem, those words did cheer me up, and they made me aware of just how much I was in my head at that moment – I hadn’t even see the guy as I walked past. As it turns out, it was a beautiful late afternoon, the air smelled of blossoming tress and there was plenty to observe on the boulevard: people sitting and talking in cafes, Japanese teens with mullet haircuts dressed head to toe in Chanel, a pug with a bejeweled collar sniffing the air…

Speaking of sniffing the air, I turn my attention now to an article that appeared in last Wednesday’s L.A. Times food section and sent a chill or horror down my spine. Russ Parsons wrote about the future of farmers’ markets, which is to say that they may become a thing of the past. Why? Because, as Howell Tumlin, executive director of the Southland Farmers’ Market Assn., is quoted as saying, “As a business model, farmers markets couldn’t be more inefficient.” Farming is generally a lean operation, and farmers are spending so much time driving to the various markets scattered all over the southland (Parsons counts close to 100) that they have little time left over for their fields and groves. remember my first lesson in farmers’ market economics, when my favorite farmer confessed that he was selling all his fresh shell beans directly to area restaurants, rather than holding back a few pounds for people like me. Hey, I thought, what about me? Do I now have to go to restaurants and pay their jacked up prices for something I take so much pleasure in cooking at home? But when you look at it from the farmer’s perspective, you just have to understand. What if I don’t show up that week? What if a pound or two doesn’t fit my budget? The restaurant is a bird in the hand. And I am not the safest bet, even I have to admit (I should say, however, that they do bring fresh shell beans to market more and more often, perhaps because the restaurants have made them so popular). Though so far I have lost only one favorite farmer to the full time restaurant supply trade (and they do show up in the summer with their surplus of magnificent heirloom tomatoes), my friend Mary has had to say good-bye to several beloved farmers, because of the economics of selling at Ferry Plaza in San Francisco, which started up as a block of vendors and has now turned into a foodie mecca, replete with permanent shops and restaurants selling everything from gourmet chocolate to olive oil to Christmas cakes imported from Emilia-Romagna, Italy – all at premium prices. My market isn’t nearly so grand. In fact it’s a little funky, as befits its Hollywood neighborhood, which at 8AM on a Sunday, is barely getting over last night’s after hours party when the farmers roll in with their trucks. What will happen if the farmers’ markets lose their farmers to Econ 101? No one is proposing that they sell exclusively to restaurants and grocers, though Whole Foods is making a big push towards local and sustainable, and sports banners with profiles of the farmers they buy from in their produce aisles. There are several concepts being floated, one of which is Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA. Customers are charged an annual fee, and in return receive weekly produce deliveries. As the Times points out, this model demands that customers share financial risk with the farmer. For instance, a killing freeze like last winter’s might mean more beets than berries. Too much rain, and the rapini might not arrive on cue. After years of weekly visits to farmers’ markets, I’ve already learned this lesson, so no problem there. But while I will happily participate in a CSA, I would be profoundly sorry to see the farmers’ market go. Especially in a city like Los Angeles that is short on community, the Hollywood Farmers’ Market is a community I’ve belonged to for 15 years. Every Sunday morning I drive into Hollywood and buy my food for the week (“bean church” a friend once called it). I‘ve watched kids grow, farms come and go and expand, and I’ve even mourned deaths. The elderly Asian woman whole doled out her luscious Persian mulberries in little tubs, only two per customer, and whose family may have sold her farm, is missed every summer. Dee Dee Throgmartin, an original vendor who threw over her Hollywood career to farm some acres in Riverside and who brought garlic, heirloom vegetables, topical political banter and plans for cheese making to market when cancer got the better of her, is a great loss to the community. I’ve watched trendy vegetables become commonplace. I’ve seen celebrities bagging vegetables without their make-up on. I’ve even adopted kittens from a rescue station at that market. I’ve also watched a street fair vibe infiltrate the market that I’m not crazy about and I try to ignore (I hate the smell of processed lavender oil and patchouli canceling out the smell of greens). But I can’t argue about the stalls serving delicious street foods from L.A.’s multitude of ethnic communities; Salvadorian pupusas, spicy Thai pancakes, Korean kim chee. After my shopping, I love to get some breakfast, and watch the trannies mingle with the Hollywood types sporting their in vitro twins in designer prams.

Can I get that with a CSA?

 

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Lousy day for an egghunt

It’s a dreary Easter here in Los Angeles, chilly and overcast. I, however am enjoying the fact that my first post is arriving on a favorite holiday that I love for a lot of things not having to do with the bible stories about the bloody crucifiction . When I was younger it was all about the new dresses and the chocolate; as I’ve gotten older I appreciate the coming of spring, including the fingerlings, peas and asparagus I got at the market this morning. I plan on roasting the asparagus and the potatoes separately in a little olive oil, the peas in some butter that has been infused with mint, and serving them with a leg of lamb based on Russ Parsons’ recipe in the L.A. Times last Wednesday. During dinner, I’ll put a strawberry crisp in the oven, and it will be hot and bubbling just in time for the final season premiere of the Sopranos.

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