Saturday, October 31, 2009
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggidy Jig!
I was away again, but now I'm back. Thanks for the thoughtful comments, and thanks somebody for remembering that I was a big fan of Billy Vera's great radio show on KCRW in the late Eighties, early Nineties. (He used the show as voice training and went on to a very successful voice-over career, smart move.)
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Mr. Fred's Poetry Corner: Pick and Shovel
Do you like the short form?
Pick and shovel,
Bag of lime,
Lots to do before I sleep.
Start digging early,
Watch your time,
Secret that I long to keep.
August 2007?
Pick and shovel,
Bag of lime,
Lots to do before I sleep.
Start digging early,
Watch your time,
Secret that I long to keep.
August 2007?
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Restaurant Review: La Gaettana (Phuket Town, Phuket, Thailand)
352 Phuket Road, Tel: 076-250-523
This is a hard place to find. It’s in a very narrow shop-house, fifteen feet across at the most, and the entrance is set back from the sidewalk and lavishly decorated with plants. Look for the plants I suppose.
The place is swarming with help, and they are very helpful indeed. If a lady only touches her shoulders, saying nothing, someone brings over a shawl. Plates and silverware are changed in between courses, and home-made sherbet is served in between courses as well.
The owners name is Gianni, he is on hand one hundred percent of the time. He’s very helpful too. The menu is idiosyncratic. For “Pasta,” for instance, it just says “We feature a variety of home-made and dry pastas, available with a variety of sauces.” If you express an interest in pasta, Gianni asks you: long or short? fresh or dry? we have gnocchi today. The frontispiece of the menu features a photograph of Gianni, about age four, sitting on his father’s knee with his mom standing besides them. Mom and dad are smiling; Gianni is not. He’s still a very, very intense man.
Very serious about the food at his restaurant, that’s for sure, and that works out well for his clientele. We started out with Smoked Duck Carpaccio with basil and two kinds of lettuce, it was great. Then some gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce, very light and delicious. Finally some sea bass with white wine and lemon-grass sauce, with some perfect little cubed, roasted potatoes. I’m no Galloping Gourmet, but I’d be surprised if any place else could have done it better. The bread was great too, served with home-made herb butter.
The bill came to about $65 (Bhat 2,300), and that included a Bombay gin and tonic, two glasses of house red wine (Italian or Spanish? Gianni had asked me), and a Limoncello.
This is a hard place to find. It’s in a very narrow shop-house, fifteen feet across at the most, and the entrance is set back from the sidewalk and lavishly decorated with plants. Look for the plants I suppose.
The place is swarming with help, and they are very helpful indeed. If a lady only touches her shoulders, saying nothing, someone brings over a shawl. Plates and silverware are changed in between courses, and home-made sherbet is served in between courses as well.
The owners name is Gianni, he is on hand one hundred percent of the time. He’s very helpful too. The menu is idiosyncratic. For “Pasta,” for instance, it just says “We feature a variety of home-made and dry pastas, available with a variety of sauces.” If you express an interest in pasta, Gianni asks you: long or short? fresh or dry? we have gnocchi today. The frontispiece of the menu features a photograph of Gianni, about age four, sitting on his father’s knee with his mom standing besides them. Mom and dad are smiling; Gianni is not. He’s still a very, very intense man.
Very serious about the food at his restaurant, that’s for sure, and that works out well for his clientele. We started out with Smoked Duck Carpaccio with basil and two kinds of lettuce, it was great. Then some gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce, very light and delicious. Finally some sea bass with white wine and lemon-grass sauce, with some perfect little cubed, roasted potatoes. I’m no Galloping Gourmet, but I’d be surprised if any place else could have done it better. The bread was great too, served with home-made herb butter.
The bill came to about $65 (Bhat 2,300), and that included a Bombay gin and tonic, two glasses of house red wine (Italian or Spanish? Gianni had asked me), and a Limoncello.
Mr. Fred's Poetry Corner: Crying
I've been neglecting this wonderfully entertaining feature for too long now, and it's got to stop. So get ready, my double dozen! It's poetry time!
The petulant, angry crying of a child
Fascinates us, the child perhaps wishing
To remain at some enterprise beyond adult sanction.
It irresistibly draws our attention, all of us,
Even other children find
That they cannot avert their eyes.
A child, however, who moans
In wailing desolation, shames us,
We turn away, not wanting to be reminded
Of a pain that we all carry,
Yet cannot express so freely.
Yesterday I heard a young child crying,
Holding nothing back, inconsolable,
A desolate, wailing sound.
Better for me, I thought,
To cry like that,
Better than humming
Sad songs to myself.
April, 2009
The petulant, angry crying of a child
Fascinates us, the child perhaps wishing
To remain at some enterprise beyond adult sanction.
It irresistibly draws our attention, all of us,
Even other children find
That they cannot avert their eyes.
A child, however, who moans
In wailing desolation, shames us,
We turn away, not wanting to be reminded
Of a pain that we all carry,
Yet cannot express so freely.
Yesterday I heard a young child crying,
Holding nothing back, inconsolable,
A desolate, wailing sound.
Better for me, I thought,
To cry like that,
Better than humming
Sad songs to myself.
April, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Baseball Cheats
For years, fans and commentators have been bemoaning the fact that baseball stats have been skewed by steroids.* The benchmarks that were honestly set by greats like Babe Ruth and Roger Maris have been raised with chemical assistance by famous scofflaws who shall remain nameless due to the risk of enhancing their unearned fame.
I watched a couple of Yankee v. Angels games in the last couple of days and I swear I was thinking about pitchers cheating at baseball. I was recalling that in the good old days, maybe it was the domain of the pitchers to cheat. Lots of famously successful pitchers were also famous for concealing a small reserve of Vaseline in their gloves, or spitting on the ball, or scuffing the ball with a bit of sandpaper, or cutting it, any of which techniques increase the movement of the ball, giving the pitcher more of an advantage over the batter. I wondered if the pitchers had gotten religion while the hitters were losing theirs.
So today, I see a video of Mariano Rivera spitting on the ball. Nothing new under the sun, as they say. Whitey Ford (a “spitter”) would be proud.
*Corked bats notwithstanding. That era seemed to come and go pretty fast. Too many embarrassing, explosive equipment failures, no doubt.
I watched a couple of Yankee v. Angels games in the last couple of days and I swear I was thinking about pitchers cheating at baseball. I was recalling that in the good old days, maybe it was the domain of the pitchers to cheat. Lots of famously successful pitchers were also famous for concealing a small reserve of Vaseline in their gloves, or spitting on the ball, or scuffing the ball with a bit of sandpaper, or cutting it, any of which techniques increase the movement of the ball, giving the pitcher more of an advantage over the batter. I wondered if the pitchers had gotten religion while the hitters were losing theirs.
So today, I see a video of Mariano Rivera spitting on the ball. Nothing new under the sun, as they say. Whitey Ford (a “spitter”) would be proud.
*Corked bats notwithstanding. That era seemed to come and go pretty fast. Too many embarrassing, explosive equipment failures, no doubt.
Someone Having Fun With Fish
On my boat trip to Ko Phi Phi I had an opportunity to snorkel, on which I passed. I have always found that these things do not repay the extra effort involved, expecially when you can watch from comfort and experience 90% of the wonder of it without the hassle. From comfort, I took this picture.
Glenn Beck Condemns Communistic Maoist Volunteerism
Go check it out, I trust you to find it.
Meanwhile, a little perspective. President Obama graduated from Harvard Law School, not only that, but he was the president of the law review, near or at the top of the class. He could have gone to any of the really, really big time law firms where they pay that really, really big time money. But what did he do? He went into public interest law. According to Fred, if you forgo a huge income to work for chump change, there is a “volunteer” component to your job. Maybe Mr. Obama was getting paid, but he was volunteering too, volunteering to lose money every year in order to accomplish something besides selfish financial gain.
So if he says that it is a good thing to volunteer to help people less fortunate than you, he has walked the walk in righteous preparation to talk the talk; he has paid for a license to ask you to consider the idea.
Just for a little contrast here, I recall President George W. Bush, in the floundering, directionless time before 9/11, saying that Americans really needed to volunteer more, needed to work with faith-based community organizations to help the less fortunate (who may otherwise have looked for recourse to government programs, which of course he wanted to do away with all together). I recall, clearly, am I the only one? that W. suggested that every American commit to providing 4,000 hours of volunteer community service over the course of their lifetimes. That’s two years, full time. I remember becoming furious almost to the point of hurting myself that this selfish, chaos-worshiping, greed whore was asking people to do volunteer work to facilitate his cutting of government programs.
Agree with me now, or regret it later, that George W. Bush has never, to this day, done a single day of volunteer work, nor a single hour, has never, in fact, done anything that was not driven by naked self interest. So he had not one little license to ask anyone to do anything that they would not get paid for, he had not lifted one little finger off the table to walk the walk before he so disingenuously talked the talk.
But who gets condemned as a Maoist? A Maoist no less! You can’t make these things up. Glenn Beck, whom people unaccountably watch on TV, the better to hear the wonderful things he makes up, now believes that any attempt to offer Americans the opportunity to use their time to help those less fortunate than themselves must be motivated by a desire to turn America into some kind of Red-Guard-Great-Leap-Forward-Maoist-Little-Red-Book-Communistic-Bullshit-Nightmare, just the kind of thing that Mr. Obama has been preparing for his whole life, the kind of subversion that Mr. Obama has worked so hard for and for so long.
This must be a dream, but I seem to be awake. I am awake, aren’t I? Or is this what happens when you’re in a coma, or after you die. It all seems so real! But it all happens everyday, people say these things, the Glenn Becks of the world, and they are only called to account by the odd, very odd, news personality of little import, or so-called blogger of no import at all, crazy, isolated people like me.
Meanwhile, a little perspective. President Obama graduated from Harvard Law School, not only that, but he was the president of the law review, near or at the top of the class. He could have gone to any of the really, really big time law firms where they pay that really, really big time money. But what did he do? He went into public interest law. According to Fred, if you forgo a huge income to work for chump change, there is a “volunteer” component to your job. Maybe Mr. Obama was getting paid, but he was volunteering too, volunteering to lose money every year in order to accomplish something besides selfish financial gain.
So if he says that it is a good thing to volunteer to help people less fortunate than you, he has walked the walk in righteous preparation to talk the talk; he has paid for a license to ask you to consider the idea.
Just for a little contrast here, I recall President George W. Bush, in the floundering, directionless time before 9/11, saying that Americans really needed to volunteer more, needed to work with faith-based community organizations to help the less fortunate (who may otherwise have looked for recourse to government programs, which of course he wanted to do away with all together). I recall, clearly, am I the only one? that W. suggested that every American commit to providing 4,000 hours of volunteer community service over the course of their lifetimes. That’s two years, full time. I remember becoming furious almost to the point of hurting myself that this selfish, chaos-worshiping, greed whore was asking people to do volunteer work to facilitate his cutting of government programs.
Agree with me now, or regret it later, that George W. Bush has never, to this day, done a single day of volunteer work, nor a single hour, has never, in fact, done anything that was not driven by naked self interest. So he had not one little license to ask anyone to do anything that they would not get paid for, he had not lifted one little finger off the table to walk the walk before he so disingenuously talked the talk.
But who gets condemned as a Maoist? A Maoist no less! You can’t make these things up. Glenn Beck, whom people unaccountably watch on TV, the better to hear the wonderful things he makes up, now believes that any attempt to offer Americans the opportunity to use their time to help those less fortunate than themselves must be motivated by a desire to turn America into some kind of Red-Guard-Great-Leap-Forward-Maoist-Little-Red-Book-Communistic-Bullshit-Nightmare, just the kind of thing that Mr. Obama has been preparing for his whole life, the kind of subversion that Mr. Obama has worked so hard for and for so long.
This must be a dream, but I seem to be awake. I am awake, aren’t I? Or is this what happens when you’re in a coma, or after you die. It all seems so real! But it all happens everyday, people say these things, the Glenn Becks of the world, and they are only called to account by the odd, very odd, news personality of little import, or so-called blogger of no import at all, crazy, isolated people like me.
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