THE MISTRESS’S TORCH SONG

The Mistress in her studio, wielding her acetylene torch.

The Mistress is hard at work in her studio these days, getting ready for a trunk show she’s hosting next week. Hand-made necklaces, pendants, brooches, and earrings - that kind of thing.

Quite the artist, she is.

She has a few Hitchcock-inspired designs. Quick: what movies are these based on?








Take a peek below the fold for more.

A galaxy of necklaces.



Cat necklace detail.



Jacob’s Ladder.

WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S II

Being a sequel, of sorts, to this post.



SWMBO’s Momma and stepdad David at home with Tony Curtis, February 2008.

A VISIT TO THE BARN

The Mistress says hello to a Feline Resident out at the barn.

This past Sunday, while I stayed back at the house in Denton helping Morris William with the Smoked Brisket mentioned in the previous post, the rest of the gang went down to Krum, where Rebecca (Mrs. Morris William) keeps her ever-increasing stable of horses.

Both the Mistress of Sarcasm and Gilad had a chance to ride Con Man, the daddy of the Mistress’s erstwhile horse, Mi Anam. Even nephew William joined in the fun.


William, the Bareback Rider.

Every well-equipped Horse-Barn has at least one cat, the better to keep the vermin under control. And where there’s a cat, sometimes you will find a kitteh or two. And the Mistress could not resist cuddling with one of those little fuzz-balls.

Meanwhile, I relaxed in the 100-plus degree heat back at the Casa de Morris William. I smoked a Cohiba as the brisket smoked...and Toby, the Family Dawg, kept me company.


Toby, the Family Dawg.

Toby is the sweetest-tempered dog I have ever known. Morris William and Rebecca took him in after he had been abandoned by his abusive and obnoxious owners...and he has been in Dawg Heaven ever since, living with a family that loves him. He towers over Madison, our 22-month-old niece, yet is gentle as a lamb with her and her brother William.

Which is why I had no compunction about sneaking a few pieces of brisket to him...

SMOKIN’

Outside the cabin, smoking some meat.

“I was outside the cabin, smoking some meat. There wasn’t a cigar store in the neighborhood!” - Groucho Marx as Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding, in Animal Crackers

I was outside on the patio, smoking a Cohiba Esplendido. Havana. There may not have been a cigar store in the neighborhood, but no matter. One of Morris William’s friends had smuggled a few of these bad boys in on a recent trip, and he had set one aside for me.

As I smoked my cigar, I kept a weather eye on the humongous chunk of beef brisket sitting in the smoker out back. It was getting close to being ready. Just an hour or so more...

We had found whole briskets on sale at Super Target a few days prior, down in Foat Wuth. As we looked at each other, then at the meat, a single Idea-Based Light Bulb appeared in the air above our heads. Barbecued beef brisket! It was the kind of thing Billie Bob, my late father-in-law, would have endorsed wholeheartedly as a Family Gathering Dinner Entrée. Morris William grabbed one, and we eventually managed to wrestle it into his kitchen.

Yesterday, I trimmed some (not all) of the fat off of the enormous Beef-Chunk. You want some fat; it keeps the meat moist as it slowly cooks over hot smoke. But a whole brisket has a lot of fat. You don’t need it all.

I seasoned the trimmed-up (but still enormous) brisket with an improvised rub, using the ingredients on hand in an approximation of Billie Bob’s classic blend. It sat all night, tightly wrapped, in the bottom of Morris William’s fridge, awaiting its day-long exposure to hot charcoal and mesquite smoke - an exposure that began at about seven o’clock this morning.

Morris William kept the firebox (the smaller compartment on the left in the photo below) stoked with charcoal and big chunks of water-soaked mesquite wood, filling the entire neighborhood with fragrant smoke. Some folks prefer to use hickory, or a hickory-mesquite blend (in the style of Billie Bob hizzownself), but the pure mesquite turned out just fine this time.


The Infernal Smoke-Generating Device.

After nine hours, the meat was ready to come off. In the meantime, we had prepared a small pile of cheese-stuffed jalapeños...the hottest damn jalapeños I’d had in years. Just sitting in the kitchen, they were giving everyone violent coughing fits. Smoking them did little to tame their incendiary heat.

The metal jalapeño holder is a device I first saw at Laurence Simon’s place. A useful kitchen gadget if you like to roast your innards with mass quantities of capsaicin.


Stuffed Jalapeños...hotter than the hubs of hell, as they say here in Texas.

The Mistress fixed up a bowl of guacamole, picking up tips and hints from the Guacamole Queen herself - She Who Must Be Obeyed. The results were espetacular.


Makin’ ’mole with the Mistress. Mmmm, mmmm.

Morris William had heated up some barbecue sauce to serve alongside the meat. Texans do not apply the sauce while the meat is cooking, preferring to slop some on to meat that has already been sliced or chopped. To jack things up even more, we had an assortment of Tabasco products...including a fiery habanero pepper sauce. Morris William do love his Tabasco.


An assortment of Tabasco sauces.

With the meal laid out and the finished brisket resting happily on a cutting board, I began carving slices. The deep red smoke ring - and the tender meat - together furnished evidence that we had created a Meaty Meal any Texan would be proud to eat. Better: a meal Billie Bob himself would have been proud to eat.


The finished product.

We begin our return trip to Atlanta at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow. The consequences of eating cheese-stuffed jalapeños prior to a 13-hour car trip are best left to the imagination. Just three words:

Screaming. Monkey. Butt.

[But, ohh, it was worth it.]

REMEMBERING POLLY

SWMBO’s sister Polly, 1958-1975.

I’m not normally in the habit of blegging, but that makes any occasion when I’m willing to do so just that more important. So consider this your Fair Warning: The purpose of this post is to get you, my Esteemed Readers, to unlimber your wallets.

Those who know She Who Must Be Obeyed, either in person or through reading the various screeds on this site, know that she lost her younger sister Polly a little over 33 years ago. It was a tragic loss, not just because Polly was only sixteen, but because of the repercussions her death had on the family dynamic.

When your sixteen-year-old child is suddenly taken from you - a grief the depth of which I cannot conceive, thanks to a happy failure of my own imagination - your life is permanently changed. When your sixteen-year-old sister is gone forever, a part of your soul is gone forever as well.

I’ve written about Polly and her untimely loss before, most notably on the thirtieth anniversary of her death. But there’s a lot I haven’t shared about her.

Polly was born and raised in Fort Worth, attending Paschal High School and the religious school at Temple Beth-El. She was an active member of the Alton Silver chapter of BBG. A passionate and talented dancer, she studied with the TCU Ballet.

At the time of her death, her friends, who constituted a significant proportion of the Jewish youth of Fort Worth, planted a tree and dedicated a plaque in her memory at the Dan Danciger Jewish Community Center, located off Old Granbury Road. Since the closing of the JCC, the plaque has been in the care of a long-time member of the community pending the creation of a permanent memorial.

That permanent memorial is now becoming a reality.

Led by Bro-in-Law d’Elisson, Polly’s family and friends are building a Memorial Garden at the Sonnenschein Chabad Jewish Center of Fort Worth. The Garden, designed by Mrs. Etta Korenman, is located behind the Chabad Center, close by the playground facilities. Once completed, it will be a place where the Jewish youth of Fort Worth can play and learn.





The Garden is under construction, and just a few more dollars in donations are needed to make it a fully-realized part of the Local Landscape...and to ensure that funds are available to maintain it on an ongoing basis. And that’s where the blegging - “blog-begging” for you noobs - comes in.

If you have a few extra bucks rattling around in your pocket, there is certainly no shortage of Worthy Causes towards which to put ’em. You have the various victims of natural disasters - Burma and China come to mind. You have medical research trying to find a cure for everything from cancer and heart disease to painful rectal itch. And political candidates are only too happy to take your money, the better to purchase airtime with which to sell their vaporous Snake Oil to the greater commonweal. But you could also use those dollars to create a little oasis of peace, beauty, and spiritual tranquility...at the same time honoring the memory of a bright, lovely girl who never lived to go to her senior prom...who never got to see her nieces and nephews, or have children of her own...whose absence still aches in the hearts of the family she left behind.

If that sounds like a worthy use of your dollars, then get out your checkbook and write a check to Chabad of Fort Worth. On the memo line, note that it is for Polly’s Garden.

Send that check to:

The Sonnenschein Chabad Jewish Center
c/o Aaron Boardman
4516 Embercrest Drive
Fort Worth, TX 76123

All donations are greatly appreciated, regardless of amount. Contributions to Chabad of Fort Worth are tax-deductible, by the way, although you should consult a tax expert for the sake of good order. And you don’t have to be Jewish to contribute.

We’re hoping to be able to complete work on Polly’s Garden in order to be able to hold the official dedication on her 33rd Yahrzeit (the anniversary of her death according to the Jewish calendar), one week from tonight. So if you’re going to whip out that wallet, faster is better.

If you have any questions, please e-mail me [elisson1 (at) aol (dot) com] or Bro-in-Law d’Elisson [moshesbro (at) sbcglobal (dot) net], and we’ll be happy to answer them to the best of our ability.

MS FOUND IN A BASEMENT

[Being the Verbatim Transcription of a letter from Morris William (SWMBO’s younger brother) to his mother, written from summer camp in July, 1979 at the ripe age of thirteen.]

Dear Mom, Hows life?
Everything here is fine.
this is for Rootie [the family dog - Ed.]:
Arf Arf Arf Arf Arf? Arf Arf
arf arf Rootie Arf. arf Arf Arf
Arf mom & dad arf. Hows
dad. you need to send
me some pool clogs the other
ones broke. Well thats about
it
       Love,
         Morris William

ON THE ROAD AGAIN...

This morning at the Butt Crack of Dawn™, we - She Who Must Be Obeyed, the Mistress of Sarcasm, Gilad, her (extremely patient) boyfriend, and I - will pile into the SWMBOmobile for the day-long drive to the Dallas-Foat Wuth Metroplex in Texas.

For the next week, we’ll be dividing our time between Denton and Foat Wuth, zooming up and down I-35W with a certain metronomic regularity as we shuttle from the Momma d’SWMBO’s household to that of Morris William, SWMBO’s younger brother, and back.

Since our eminently squeezable nephew William and his equally squeezable (and even more mischievous) sister Madison are in Denton, I suspect we will be spending a lot of time there. SWMBO loves squeezing them babies. You’d think she were in the Baby Oil business...

The drive should be interesting. Both Gilad and I are Frank Zappa fans, and I have an iPod full of Zappa tunes. I suspect SWMBO will want to kill us after hearing “Zomby Woof” for the eightieth time.

Posting will continue after a brief travel-related hiatus.

Update: We arrived safely in the southwest corner of the Dalworth metroplex after a 14-hour marathon drive, during which SWMBO provided 100% of the pilotage. Iron Woman, she is.

Driving time proper was about 12 hours 30 minutes, but we stopped a few times for the obligatory Eat, Pee ’n’ Get Gas Breaks. We even had a chance to see this guy in his Worky Stomping Grounds as we ate a massive West Georgia breakfast.

Gilad, who moved to Tennessee a few months ago from the Left Coast, is (we are happy to report) no longer a Waffle House or Crapper Barrel virgin.

FROM THE ELISSON ARCHIVE

The Mistress of Sarcasm and She Who Must Be Obeyed have spent the last three days in a frenzy of Basement-Organizing Activity.

This is no lightweight job. We’ve lived here in the latest incarnation of Chez Elisson for hard on to ten years...and the basement is the Final Frontier, the last repository of Random Accumulated Crap. Getting it in some semblance of order is no job for the faint of heart.

In three days, there has been an astonishing amount of progress as the Mistress and SWMBO have relentlessly attacked the Mountains of Miscellany. You can now walk around down there without tripping over twenty thousand separate obstacles.

Once we Garage-Sale some of the more useful detritus and have Mr. Trash-Man haul off the remainder, we’ll have a reasonable amount of space down there.

We’ve found all kinds of interesting things that haven’t seen the light of day in years. Old laboratory glassware. Darkroom equipment. Hundreds of Sunday newspaper comics sections. Magazines from the 1980’s. Anybody remember Cuisine?

And we’ve found Old Photographs.




Here’s one of Anna, the Grandmomma d’Elisson, flanked by her two children. On the left is nine-year-old Uncle Phil; on the right is the Momma d’Elisson, who is all of three years old in this photograph taken sometime in mid-1931.

Anna was unusual for the time. A strawberry blonde, she drove a car...and she was an athlete, playing both golf and tennis. Back then, none of these were typical Motherly Activities...at least, not amongst Our Crowd.

She could lob a mean oath, too. A useful talent in Sheepshead Bay, back in the day. Or now.

I sure miss her. She was, as they might say, a pistol.

BEST BIRTHDAY EVER

Or among the best, anyway, according to the Mistress of Sarcasm, who celebrated her 26th birthday yesterday.

The day started off with a Pancake Breakfast, courtesy of She Who Must Be Obeyed. SWMBO is a dab hand at making flapjacks, and while she rarely trots out her Mad Pancake Making Skillz these days, they are as sharp as ever.

When the girls were little, SWMBO would top off their plates with special pancakes made in the shape of their initials. I was delighted, therefore, to see that she had resurrected the old tradition, making Initial Pancakes for both Elder Daughter and the Mistress...and Gilad as well. Some butter, warm maple syrup, and a medley of fresh berries completed the picture. Wotta meal.

As breakfast wound down, Elder Daughter presented the Mistress with several gifts she had purchased in Japan and kept stashed away for the occasion. Among them was this box of candies, each a tiny sculptural artwork in sugar. That’s Japan for you: They create miniature masterpieces, we create Milk Duds.



Artistic confections from Japan.

We chowed down on Texas-style barbecued beef brisket, lovingly smoked by Yours Truly the evening before using our new smoker, a liberal dose of mesquite, and Billie Bob’s Top Secret Beef Rub. Bill - SWMBO’s late Daddy - was a brisketeer par excellence, and I’m happy to report that the aroma and taste of the Mistress’s Birthday Brisket brought back some sweet memories.

The ladies, accompanied by Gilad (the Mistress’s Very Significant Other), ran off to spend a few hours in Roswell. When they returned, they did so with a few armloads of Accumulated Swag.

Dinner consisted of a night out at Seasons 52, one of our favorite local eateries...and site of my infamous Lamborghini Lust. We had an excellent time, with Gilad and I basking in the luminous presence of all three of my Ladies.



The Mistress of Sarcasm and Gilad.



Me and my girls.

As we drove home, bellies full and spirits high (but not DUI!), the Mistress pronounced it the Best Birthday Ever. And I could do naught but agree.

FRIDAY RANDOM TEN - MISTRESS OF SARCASM EDITION

The Mistress of Sarcasm.

What with the Mistress of Sarcasm’s birthday coming up Monday, She Who Must Be Obeyed had the bright idea of posting this week’s Friday Random Ten using the music from the Mistress’s iPod.

Why not, I thought. My Esteemed Readers are probably sick to death of seeing the same stuff here, week after week. Frank Zappa. Ben Folds. The Beatles. Hookalakah Meshobbab. This way, they’ll finally be exposed to some quality music.

Thus, here followeth a Scattershot Selection from the Mistress’s very own Little White Choon Box. Let’s see what’s playing today:

1. Lover, You Should Have Come Over - Jeff Buckley
   
   
2. King Kong - Daniel Johnston
   
   Daniel Johnston is living proof that insanity and talent can coexist in the same individual. His music has an offbeat charm...and he’s pretty much a complete whacko. Check out the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston for more about this exceptional musician.
   
   
3. Alone Down There - Modest Mouse
   
   
4. He Keeps Me Alive - Sally Shapiro
   
   
5. Lucky Ball and Chain - They Might Be Giants
   
   
6. Shampoo Suicide - Broken Social Scene
   
   
7. Not If You Were The Last Dandy On Earth - The Brian Jonestown Massacre
   
   
8. Picture Book - The Kinks
   
   
9. Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Grievances - Daniel Johnston
   
   
10. Gnossienne #1 - Erik Satie
    
    

It’s Friday. What are you listening to?

DAD’S DAY

Father’s Day was a week ago Sunday, on June 15.

The following day, as I was preparing for my Semi-Annual Rubdown - a Swedish massage having become an essential part of our Beach Ritual - the Massage Therapist asked me whether I had enjoyed Father’s Day.

“Of course,” I answered. “One of my daughters - the Mistress of Sarcasm - is here at the beach with us, so my day was Extra Enjoyable.”

As indeed it was. I can’t wait for her Big Sister to return home from her trip to Uganda. Summer Kampala, as it were. Both of them will (keyn ayin hara) be here this coming weekend...which will make next Sunday the best kind of Father’s Day of all.

PLEASE SAW MY LEG OFF

George Carlin, 1937-2008.

A few weeks ago, the Missus and I were wandering the aisles at CostCo, picking up a few hundred dollars worth of “necessities.”

It’s amazing how difficult it has gotten, lately, leaving CostCo without having dropped at least a C-note or two. All those things that suddenly seem so...important to own. Like that side of beef...or the 55-gallon drum of extra-virgin olive oil...or the case of Château Cockamamie. Don’t act so damn superior. You know what I mean.

But this time, what caught our Collective Eye was a DVD boxed set: the complete first season of “Saturday Night Live.”

We couldn’t resist. Perfect to have at the beach in the event of inclement weather...and a reminder of some of our early days together. The first time either of us recalls watching SNL was on the weekend we traveled to Foat Wuth in February 1976, there to have me Meet The Family. It was the Momma d’SWMBO’s birthday, which provided the perfect excuse to invite me along.

That weekend turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable. SWMBO’s family clasped me to their bosom as if I were one of their own. Her parents were friendly without being overly intrusive; her brothers were...well, brothers. The elder of the two was sixteen at the time and was appropriately sullen, while the younger, at age nine, was mischievous, rigging up a three-foot-long straw in order to suck up my Adult Beverage while we were out to dinner.

As for SNL, it was strangely entertaining, a show that was, clearly, still struggling to define itself. Desi Arnaz, of all people, was the host that weekend. I seem to recall that Andy Kaufman put in an appearance.

Thus it was that when we saw the DVD set at CostCo, we snapped it up. A chance to relive these distant memories, oh, boy!

Watching the first show - hosted by George Carlin - it was striking how inchoate everything was. Some of the familiar elements of today’s SNL were already in place, but it had something of the feel of a variety show.


Carlin, meanwhile, was brilliant. We had already been thoroughly familiar with his material back when the show originally aired; now, it (mostly) still sounded remarkably fresh despite its age. Some of the routines were variations on older ones Carlin had been performing since he reinvented himself as a counterculture comic, riffs that had been cracking us up since the early 1970’s.

Carlin’s comedy, in later years, took on what seemed to me to be an increasingly bitter, cynical edge...but that never diminished his appeal to me. He became, in a way, the Counterculture Comedy Curmudgeon, a man with a highly refined Bullshit Detector. His various film performances (e.g., as a priest in Kevin Smith’s Dogma) weren’t so much acting as they were Being George Carlin On Screen...but that was OK, too. You knew what you were going to get.

When I found out this morning about Carlin’s death, I was shocked...and saddened. Heart failure? WTF? Having just watched his performance on the debut edition of SNL, thoughts of him and his work were still fresh in my mind, making the sudden loss all the more jarring.

Godspeed, George.

Oops. Given your well-known cynicism on the topic of religion, that’s a poor choice of words. How ’bout these, which effectively sum up my feelings when I found out you were defunct?

Shit!
Fuck!
Piss!
Cunt!
Cocksucker!
Motherfucker!
and Tits!

[The post title, in case you’re curious, is from a Carlin routine which had to do with phrases people were very unlikely to say. “Hand me that piano,” for example.]

AND NOW, THE NEWS...

What’s going on at Chez Elisson today?

It’s a little quieter, now that Aunt Marge and Uncle Phil have returned to South Florida after a week-long visit. Phil is thirty years my senior, but you’d never know it. He and Marge are active, outgoing peeps, the kind you never get tired of spending time with.

Tuesday afternoon we wandered about the High Museum of Art, checking out a remarkable exhibition - Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of the images in the exhibition are familiar, almost iconic, while many others have never before been shown. They are sobering, taken both as a whole body and individually, reminding you of just how shabbily people are capable of treating other human beings. Hosing down peaceful demonstrators, setting dogs on them, burning buses, murdering people, and gathering in mobs to shout at schoolchildren...it’s an unfortunate part of this country’s history that needs to be remembered and taught. Those of us who lost relatives in the Holocaust can appreciate the consequences of a social policy that designates certain people as being less than fully human.

We’ve still got a ways to go, as regards the treatment of minorities...but as a nation, and as a region, we’re light-years ahead of where we were fifty years ago.

But back to Current Events.

She Who Must Be Obeyed is knocking around town with the Mistress of Sarcasm, who is here with us recuperating from a back injury she suffered at Tybee Island last week. (Memo to self: When jumping from a 20-foot-high dock into deep water, be sure to avoid landing on the back or stomach. Yeowch!) The Mistress will be joining us on our upcoming vacation trip to Destin, the annual week of Sun ’n’ Fun in the steaming sands of the Florida Panhandle. We head out first thing Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, Elder Daughter is enroute from Los Angeles to Detroit, from where she will fly to Amsterdam and then onward to Kampala, Uganda, where she will spend two weeks on a film shoot. Perhaps she will run into some of the exotic Local Fauna. Oh, wait: Zimbabwe and Uganda aren’t exactly close to one another...

And it’s a Special Day for SWMBO and me: today is our thirty-first wedding anniversary.

It’s a strange thing. We’ve been together for a long time, but somehow, the Missus finds a way to make every day seem new. Maybe it’s a new haircut, or some whacked-out private joke between the two of us, or...I don’t know what. But I’m looking forward to the next thirty-one with as much enthusiasm (if maybe not as much Raw Energy) as I did the first.

I loves me my SWMBO!

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

This morning, as She Who Must Be Obeyed and I awoke to the distant rumble of thunder in Savannah, we heard the sound of a baby’s wail coming from somewhere on the floor below.

That sound triggered a flood of memories for us no less effectively than did the aroma of Marcel Proust’s madeleine for him. Remembrance of Things Past, indeed.

For it was 29 years ago today that we became parents. Yes, indeedy: it’s Elder Daughter’s birthday!

We remember it so well. SWMBO’s water breaking sometime around midnight - fortunately, we had fortified her side of the bed with a deck of towels for just such a possibility - and the quick dash to the local hospital. My ditty-bag, packed with a half-dozen Forever Yours (now known as Milky Way Midnight) bars, in case I needed fortification. My Intravenous-Bottle Mishap. Nurse Jo “Jo Jitsu” Mutter, squeezing SWMBO like a tube of toothpaste in the final moments of labor. The squalling, red-faced, vernix-encrusted Thing of Beauty that emerged at 8:33 am after a long, sweaty night. Elder Daughter (then Only Daughter) had arrived. It was love at first sight.


Elder Daughter’s first day on Planet Earth: May 11, 1979.

And two days later, She Who Must Be Obeyed celebrated her first Mother’s Day as an honoree.

There have been many Mother’s Days since then, and with both girls out of the house and on their own for several years now, it is an increasingly rare treat for SWMBO to enjoy their physical presence on this day. It was therefore especially sweet to be able to spend the weekend with the Mistress of Sarcasm...and to look forward to SWMBO’s next birthday, when Elder Daughter will be with us to celebrate.

As for said Elder Daughter, I miss her dreadfully after having spent close to a fortnight as her Constant Companion enroute to, in and around, and enroute from Japan. She’s an accomplished young woman, this daughter of ours. The course she just taught at Washington D.C.’s “Learn-a-Palooza” on How To Dance at a Party was the most heavily-attended of all 74 events on the schedule...she produced an amazing show two months ago at the D.C. Arts Center in her spare time... she has met with the Ministers of Education of both Egypt and Morocco within the last three months...and she conquered her fear of heights long enough to ride a mountain ropeway gondola with Mt. Fuji looming over the horizon. Can you tell I’m a Proud Daddy?



Elder Daughter riding the Hakone Ropeway, April 22, 2008. “I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer...”

And so: To Elder Daughter, on the conclusion of her 29th trip around the Sun, the happiest of Happy Birthdays to you, and may you enjoy many, many more (bis hundert-tzvantzik yoor), all in good health.

To She Who Must Be Obeyed, the apple of my eye, the light of my life, a happy 30th Mother’s Day. May our children continue to give you every joy, a joy that is evident whenever you hear their voices on the phone, whenever you hold them in your arms. And may you continue to have sweet memories of those early days of motherhood.

[They may come in handy in a few years, when I’m back to wearing diapers.]

THE MISDIRECTED BIRTHDAY GIFT

You may recall the story I posted a couple months back about the Misdirected Birthday Gift: how the The Resident Geniuses at UPS inadvertently swapped address labels, sending my stepmom Toni’s silver pendant off to Alabama while sending her an object clearly not intended to be her birthday gift.

Funny thing is, it took a full day for Toni and Eli to figure out that they had received someone else’s shipment by mistake...and even then, only with the gentle assistance of UPS, who by then had figured out that they had screwed the pooch. The only other logical explanation would have been that I had completely lost my fucking mind. I guess that was, to them, a more likely possibility.

Here ’tis: the Misdirected Package. A Buffalo Helmet!


Eli sports the Famous Buffalo Helmet.

Which, in turn, put me in mind of this familiar fellow...



Who could only be attending a meeting of these guys:



This is a real lodge in Saint John, New Brunswick, in case you were wondering. I’d drive past it every day on my way to the office during my two-week sojourn there in June 2006.

What can Brown do for you? Why, provide hours of confusion and amusement!

TWENTY YEARS

The Momma d’Elisson at age 20, in a photograph taken roughly 60 years ago.

Twenty years ago today - as reckoned by our civil calendar, anyway - I joined a vast club, a club with an almost universally reluctant membership: the Motherless Children’s Collective.

This year, owing to the vagaries of the Hebrew calendar, I’ll be observing my mother’s Yahrzeit beginning at sundown Wednesday, April 16. Three days before the onset of Passover, as always. But this time, it will be in a traditional Japanese inn - a ryokan - in Kyoto, a perfect place for the contemplation of Beauty and Inward Thoughts. Jews may be thin on the ground in the ancient capital city, but I will still be able to manage an Eil Malei Rachamim, if not a Kaddish.

Today being the anniversary date by the secular calendar, I feel the need to be a little maudlin, for which forgive me.

Mom was an active, intelligent woman, and she would have been proud of her granddaughters. That, perhaps, is what pains me the most, after all these years - that she never got to see the young women Elder Daughter and the Mistress of Sarcasm have blossomed into...and how much of her is in them.

In twenty years, the sense of loss gets a lot duller, though it never goes away completely. It’s like an old scar that aches when the weather changes, as if to say, “Now, you ain’t gonna forget me, Bub, are ya?” And you don’t forget. You could never forget. But life goes on, because it must.

Oy. This business of being maudlin? Definitely not Momma’s style. If she caught me writing this post, she’d kick my ass.

A NIGHT IN CASABLANCA

Marx Brothers fans will recognize the post title as the name of one of the Brothers’ latter-day filmic efforts. Released in 1946 by United Artists, its title was similar enough to that of the well-known 1942 Bogart-Bergman film that - according to the popular legend - Warner Brothers threatened the Marx Brothers with a lawsuit. The legend goes on to say that Groucho responded with a threat of his own: to sue Warner Brothers for the use of the name “Brothers,” on the basis that they were brothers before the Warners were.

The truth is somewhat less exciting - but at least as entertaining.

The title suggested itself to me when we spoke to Elder Daughter earlier today. She was about to board a Washington D.C. - New York flight, after which she would fly nonstop to - where else? - Casablanca.

From one White House to another, you might say.

And I had, in my mind’s eye, a picture of the conversation that would ensue sometime early tomorrow morning, Morocco time, when Elder Daughter is interviewed by the Moroccan immigration officer upon her arrival there:

Immigration Officer: What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?
Elder Daughter: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Immigration Officer: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.
Elder Daughter: I was misinformed.

Elder Daughter plans to return a week from today. Just enough time to recover from her jet lag and get ready for a voyage to even more distant horizons the following week!

Update: Arrived safely and all is well...keyn ayin hora.

ANOTHER EVENING WITH ELDER DAUGHTER

After sitting through the first day of a two-day course on Late Career Financial Planning (with topics such as “Cat Food: Occasional Treat or Dietary Mainstay?”), I drove into Silver Spring to pick up Elder Daughter at her workplace.

She’s an associate producer with the Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership, a not-for-profit corporate arm that donates technology and teacher training to under-resourced communities throughout the world. They also produce educational documentaries for the learning centers they set up, focusing on a range of subjects from math, science and health, to history, culture and media literacy. Here’s a video that illustrates the kind of stuff she does:



Did I tell you I’m a proud daddy, having a daughter who takes the imperative of tikkun olam - repairing the world - so seriously?

We headed down into the District and ate at a hole-in-the-wall Jamaican place, snarfing down plates of jerk chicken and curry chicken roti and washing it all down with pineapple-ginger juice. It was delicious. I can only hope that I will not suffer the painful aftermath that occasionally attaches to the consumption of jerk chicken.

Afterward, we returned to Elder Daughter’s place, where I stayed long enough for her to thrash me in three games of backgammon. (How sharper than a serpent’s tooth to have a thankless child child who can beat you like the gong in a J. Arthur Rank production.)

Driving back to my hotel, I listened (appropriately enough, considering our Evening Meal) to the Easy Star All-Stars Dub Side of the Moon, a reggae homage to Pink Floyd. Hillsides sparkled with a thin layer of freshly-fallen snow. The Washington Monument was a searchlight-washed alabaster spike, the coppery full moon in total eclipse riding in the sky above it. I regretted not having my camera with me.

Cold. Cold as the proverbial witch’s tit. But I didn’t care. I was warm inside, and it wasn’t just the jerk chicken working its magic on my viscera. I had spent a few hours with a beautiful and talented young lady, and on her account I was suffused with Fatherly Pride. A good, good feeling.

[The eclipse photo above is a pastiche combining my November 2006 shot of the Washington Monument with Sissy Willis’s striking image of the blood-red moon at totality.]

PUTTING ON TH’ TRAINING PANTS

Les flageolets, les flageolets,
Pour vôtre coeur, la bonne santé.

- Old French Proverb

At 3:15 yesterday afternoon, I was perched in my dentist’s chair, making the acquaintance of Mr. Permanent Crown Restoration. Less than five hours later, I was having dinner with Elder Daughter, almost within shouting distance of the White House. Modern Aerial Bus Technology never ceases to amaze me.

I’m here in the general vicinity of the Nation’s Capital to take a training course at the local Big Outpost of the Great Corporate Salt Mine. It’s my first visit to this particular facility, a place once as inaccessible to me as the surface of the Moon. That’s because this used to be the headquarters of one of the Great Corporate Salt Mine’s competitors, and contact with competitors in our industry is permissible only under tightly controlled and unusual circumstances. But then came the Merger, and the formerly untouchable became, well, touchable.

It’s a little like having a family living down the street from you and being told you can’t play with their kids or go into their house. And then, one day, your Dad announces that he is marrying the Widow Woman who lives in that house, and that the kids you weren’t allowed to play with are now your step-siblings. Now you get to check out all the stuff in their basement.

This place, unlike our Sweat City headquarters, is packed with fine art and museum-quality Industry Artifacts. And it’s huge. I’d call it “Battlestar Galactica,” except that name has already been snarfed up to describe another competitor’s headquarters.

But a conference room is a conference room, no matter where you are...and a two-day training session will test your sitzfleisch. The good thing is, I’ve checked my eyelids for pinholes several times, and I haven’t found a single one yet.

Last night, I met Elder Daughter at her D.C. digs, just a few blocks from DuPont Circle. We walked up into Adams Morgan to snag dinner at one of the local French eateries, the cold wind sharpening our appetites all the way.

Elder Daughter recommended the salade Niçoise, so we split one. You can’t go wrong with a salad that includes lettuce, tomatoes, sliced boiled potato, hard-cooked eggs, tuna, tiny Niçoise olives, and the odd anchovy fillet.

I challenged E.D.’s adventurous spirit by recommending that she order the ris de veau - calf sweetbreads. Sweetbreads were a favorite of the Momma d’Elisson, but I resisted ever trying them until they landed on my plate at Chez Panisse, the Berserkely-based temple of American food-worship, twenty-four years ago. They were delicious...and last night, Elder Daughter tasted them for the first time and enjoyed the hell out of them, despite their being Mysterious Organ Meats. (Thymus and/or pancreas, in case you were wondering.)

Meanwhile, I had the cassoulet, the quintessential French comfort food. Simply put, cassoulet is the Gallic equivalent of cholent, the fragrant (and fragrance-inducing) Jewish sabbath bean dish. To describe a cassoulet as a Bean and Meat Stew - which it is - is to do the dish an injustice. This version was rich with sausage, lamb, duck confit, and flavorful, long-simmered flageolet beans. I will leave the question of whether it was wise to eat a plateload of cassoulet before spending a long day in a confined space as an exercise for the reader. Discuss amongst yourselves.

On the way back from the restaurant, E.D. cracked me up with her spot-on Eartha Kitt impression. I’d better start developing some resistance to her sense of humor (which strangely resembles mine), or I’ll be pissing my pants all through Japan in a couple of months.

A SUNDAY IN BROOKLYN

It’s a random December Sunday in the late 1950’s...a perfect day to visit Eli’s parents, the Grandparents d’Elisson.

We - me, my brother, Mom and Dad - pile into our 1954 Dodge, the one with the two-tone paint job, for the thirty-mile drive. We thread our way through the streets of Massapequa and get on the Southern State Parkway, headed west. I’m not sure what fascinates me more, the dashboard of the car or the familiar scenery as it flies by. Stone overpasses, road signs with white letters on a black background.

We slow down for the tollbooth and Dad flings a dime into the exact-change hopper.

The road bends south here as we transition from the Southern State to the Cross-Island Parkway. A few miles and we turn west once again, this time on the Belt Parkway.

We pass Flatbush Avenue and cross the old-style drawbridge near Floyd Bennett Field. Once in a while, we have to stop when the bridge needs to be raised. Before the bridge operator does so, he pulls a metal gate across the roadway. No railroad-style crossing arms here. Not yet.

Passing Sheepshead Bay, we see the familiar skyline of Coney Island to our left. The Wonder Wheel. The Parachute Ride. And to our right, a mob of subway trains - the Belt takes us right alongside one of the main switchyards. Two footbridges over the parkway announce that we’re approaching our destination.

We get off at Bay Parkway, and minutes later we’re there at Bay 26th Street. It’s a four-flight walkup, and already I can smell the aroma of Grandma’s food wafting though the hallways. And not just her cooking, but everyone else’s as well, combining to create a miraculous pong unique to Brooklyn.

While we wait for dinner, there’s lots to do. I grab the Sunday Mirror and pull out the color comics section: a rare treat. At home, we get Newsday, which doesn’t publish on Sundays...and the New York Times, my parents’ Sunday paper of choice, has no Funny Pages. So I devour them when we’re in Brooklyn. Dick Tracy...the Teenie-Weenies...Pogo...Smokey Stover...Dondi...Joe Palooka...Out Our Way...Mickey Finn. I read ’em all.

There’s a hi-fi, too, with a record player and radio. I love the way the turntable cantilevers out from its cabinet. We pull out South Pacific - a hefty stack of 78’s - and stack the thick shellac discs on the turntable. I watch, fascinated, as the tone arm swings out and each disc drops in its turn.

I look out the bedroom window, past the fire escape, at the Sinclair station on the corner of Bath and 21st Avenues. There’s something reassuringly comforting about that green dinosaur on their sign.

Since it’s a nice day, we go out for a walk, down to Bensonhurst Park at the corner of Bay