on Keeping Kosher!

Many of my friends wonder why I keep Kosher, and are confused by the Kosher laws.  I thought I'd clarify some things here:

One of the most basic acts you can do as a living organism is eat.  Most people take this act for granted, almost as unimportant.  According to Bridget Murray of the Monitor on Psychology, our reliance on fast food is a “toxic food environment” that is responsible for “expanding America’s waistline”.  Keeping Kosher is a way to make the very basic act of eating into something purposeful, sacred, or momentous.  A person has to think about everything they put into their mouths and figure out if it is Kosher.

In our modern society, the most conscious thought about food comes when we decide what item we’re going to order off the McDonald’s menu.  We don’t think about what is in the food.  For instance, did you know that the majority of McDonald’s menu is made of corn?  To paraphrase New York Times writer Michael Pollan, Americans are unconsciously eating corn because our “chicken nuggets are made from corn fed chickens, breaded using corn meal, thickened using cornstarch and then fried in corn oil, while the dipping sauce and soda is sweetened using corn syrup.”  We are eating corn without any conscious thought of actually eating corn.  Although corn is a Kosher item, this process of unconsciousness is the exact opposite of what it means to be Kosher.

The word Kosher comes from the Hebrew word Kashrut, which means “laws for eating”.  When something is Kosher it follows a set of dietary laws.  These laws are set out in the book of Leviticus, which is followed by Jews in the Torah, Christians in the Old Testament, and Muslims as a precursor to the Koran.  Muslims extended these laws to create the laws of Halal.

The website: www.okkosher.com states: “We are what we eat. We know that the food we eat is absorbed into our flesh and blood.  Both mind and heart is affected.”

Many people think that in order for something to be Kosher, a Rabbi must bless it.  This is absolutely not true.  As long as the food follows the Kosher rules, it will be Kosher.  A Rabbi may be called in to certify that the preparation of package foods meets all the requirements.  You may have never noticed, but on nearly every package of food, from your sugar packets and potato chip bags, to your milk cartons and coffee cans, there are little marks to let you know if it is certified as Kosher.  These symbols are tiny, but once you notice them, you’ll begin to see them on nearly every kind of food.  The typical symbols are the Circle K, the U or Circle U, the letter D or the word Parve.  The K and U are certification laboratories whereas the D stands for dairy and the word Parve means it is neutral, neither meat nor dairy.

When my friend and I went out to dinner recently, she pulled out a Weight Watchers card and began to count points.  It seemed very complicated.  She used some points to get her entrée, but then subtracted points for something; added points for something else and then concluded that she would be unable to eat dessert that night.  A few weeks later we went out to eat again but this time, she didn’t have the little card.  I asked her if she was off her diet, and she explained that she had simply memorized the point system so she didn’t need the card.  That’s how the Kosher laws are; they seem complicated at first, but after a short time they become second nature.

The Kosher laws are broken into three parts:

The first Kosher category is foods that are specifically Kosher or not Kosher.  All fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, etcetera are Kosher if they’re not poisonous.  There are certain foods though that are strictly never Kosher; these are the forbidden foods and consist of certain animals.  All animals that have fingers or toes are not Kosher, such as dogs, monkeys, bats, people.  All lizards and reptiles are not Kosher.  Most birds, however, are Kosher, except for birds of prey such as owls, eagles, or hawks.  Animals that have split hooves are Kosher, such as cows, sheep, goats, and deer, but those with solid hooves, like horses, are not Kosher, and neither is the milk from such creatures.  Fish are Kosher as long as they have fins and scales, so sharks, whales, or eels are not Kosher while salmon, tuna and bass are.  Pigs are specifically called out as not Kosher, as are Ostriches (for some unknown reason) No shellfish are Kosher!

The second part is foods that are only partially Kosher.  For instance, a cow is Kosher, but the meat must not come from the hindquarters where the sciatic nerve is.  Most internal organs are not kosher.  Wheat flour, baking powder, bread, are either leavening products or are made using leavening products.  Leavening means that it causes bread to rise.  They are all Kosher except during the holiday of Passover.  This is why Jews eat matzah crackers during Passover; they don’t contain any leavening products.  Another consideration is that the animal must be healthy.  A sick animal, with abscesses in its lungs or sores on its body is not Kosher, even if it meets all the other criteria.

The Third part is foods that need to be eaten a certain way in order to make them Kosher.  You cannot eat dairy immediately after, or at the same time, as meat.  This rules out cheeseburgers, tacos, chicken Parmesan.  If you’re planning on eating a dairy dessert, such as pudding, you have to wait at least three hours after eating a meat dish, although Orthodox Jews may wait until the next day. Orthodox Jews are very strict about the laws and will even have separate stoves so that meat and dairy are never prepared together.  A commercial Kosher kitchen is usually divided into two completely separate kitchens for this same reason.  Orthodox Muslims follow many of these same strict rules.

As I mentioned earlier, there are definite religious reasons why someone would want to keep Kosher.  Observant Jews keep Kosher because it is a commandment in the Torah.  Muslims keep Kosher or Halal because it is both a commandment in the Torah, and a commandment in the Koran.  Many Christians nowadays are keeping at least partially Kosher because they are trying to connect with Jesus the man.  Jesus was an observant Jew and would have kept Kosher at all times.  The famous last supper could have been a Passover meal where he and his disciples would have eaten Matzah.  He would have refrained from eating dairy and meat together, and he would certainly never have eaten a pork chop or a shrimp cocktail.

There are other reasons why someone who is not very religious at all would want to keep Kosher.  One of the most fundamental parts to the Kosher laws, which I have not told you about yet, is that in order for a “Kosher” animal to truly be considered Kosher, it has to have lived a normal, healthy life for that animal, and then killed in the most humane way possible.  For this reason many people keeping Kosher refuse to eat Veal.  Many will only eat free-range chickens and beef that are free from steroids.  Many animal farms are cruel to their animals, keeping them in tiny, filthy cages, or injecting them with chemicals and then sending them to a vicious slaughterhouse.  The laws of Kosher forbids cruelty to animals such as removing limbs while it is alive, or by killing a mother’s young in front her.  Having meat that is certified Kosher ensures that the animals lived a full, healthy life, free of chemicals or inhumane treatment, and especially a painful death.

An animal’s life on one of our modern day food-farms can be horrible. According to the Sierra Club on their official website, “[chickens] are bred to have such heavy breasts that many are unable to stand, and die of thirst because they are unable to reach water…To artificially boost milk production, cows are often injected with hormones that cause crippling loss of bone mass and produce painful infections… The Humane Slaughter Act, passed in 1960 by the US Congress, has no provisions for awarding fines or penalties, is generally not enforced by the US Department of Agriculture, and is routinely ignored…Industrial animal production for food represents a systematic violation of nature.”  None of these methods are Kosher.

One may ask, can you pick and choose which rules you are going to follow?  An Othodox Jew or Muslim may answer “no”; but there are many difficulties in trying to keep Kosher in these modern times.  According to the website, Jewfaq.org, only 17% of Jews keep their meat kosher.  First of all, there are many rules that at first glance seem hard to follow; they outlaw many foods that you may have been raised on or have grown accustomed to, such as tacos or cheeseburgers.  Secondly, when you go out to a restaurant, how do you know if they are serving Kosher meat?  Does McDonald’s certify that its cows lived a good life and were killed humanely?  Does it make sure the meat doesn’t come from the hindquarters?

What if a friend asks you over for dinner?  Should you tell them you keep Kosher and then try to explain all the rules to them?  Are they ever going to ask you back?

Personally, I find eating Kosher to be simple.  The rules are really not that long or difficult to follow once you’ve gotten used to them.  And as far as restaurants go, I try to only order things that fit in with the majority of rules, like vegetarian plates.  However, there are times when I order meat from a restaurant and you just have to assume that it will simply not be Kosher; that it will be cooked on the same grill as someone else’s order of shrimp.  The world won’t end if you eat something non-Kosher, and your friends can make you dinner without worrying it will offend you.

According to a recent blog post I read, the Kosher McDonald's in Buenos Aires is the only one found outside of Israel.  This blogger had tried out the meal and found that the beef was far superior to any other McDonald's she or he had ever eaten at.

In conclusion, keeping Kosher is a discipline, like counting points in a Weight Watchers diet plan.  It’s a method of changing the act of eating from something that you don’t think about to one that has a lot of meaning.  It’s about not eating things unconsciously.  Every single time I put any food in my mouth, I think about whether or not it’s Kosher.  I look for the little marks on the packages.  With every piece of meat I wonder if the animal had a good life or if it was miserable or suffered a brutal death just to feed me.  By following rules for eating, you can do what your ancestors did; or you can do what Jesus would have done; or you can do what is humane and ethical.  It’s an interesting way to think about food, all the time.  That’s what Kosher means.

on language

Robert and I have been taking a sign language course recently.  The actual class isn't the usual ASL (American Sign Language) with it's French sentence form [Store go to I] and emphasis on exact structure; instead it is on PSE (Pidgin Signed English).  This is a common form of sign language used prevalently in the deaf community.  It follows standard English sentence structure [Me go to store] but cuts out a lot of needless words.  If a word doesn't directly communicate an idea or concept it can be excised.  The interesting thing, to me, about ASL and PSE is that it is a real language with dialects and constantly evolving words/signs.  In New York for instance a person may sign the word for "parents" by using the letter "P" and touching the forehead then the chin indicating father and mother respectively.  In the Midwest we just use the actual signs for father and mother together (an open hand with the thumb touching the forehead and then the chin).  There are signs that I learned as a child which are now considered "old signs" and are no longer used.  Some signs have gotten simpler, and other signs are brand new.  A friend told me yesterday that the old sign for computer was by taking both index fingers and transcribing circles, like the old tape reels on IBM computers.

This fluidity and evolution of language is caused by younger generations wanting to communicate easier with their peers.  I wonder if there are older signers out there bemoaning the "loss" of their old, outdated signs.

Sometimes a language evolves or is lost because of an invading language.  Many Native American languages have become lost or disused due to the obvious surrounding American-English language.  The same has happened to Aboriginal languages in Australia, and some African dialects.

Just this morning I read that the language called Polari, or Pulare has fallen into disuse and may be lost forever.  This was a language created (supposedly) by carny-folk and public theater workers in Britain as a way to converse without the general population understanding.  In the 40s and 50s it became a popular language for covert gay men.  It started as a mixture of guttural Italian and Romanian (Romany) and then got added to with Backslang (backward words) and Cockney rhyming slang.  Morrissey's song Picadilly Pulare from Bona Drag (Bona Drag means Good Clothes in Polari) has a chorus that says "So bona to vada, your lovely eek and your lovely riah!" which means: So nice to see you, your lovely face and your lovely hair.  Riah means hair because it is simply backwards, while eek means face because face backward is ecaf and said short becomes ec, or eek.  Many Polari words have made it into mainstream modern gay culture such as "Basket" for a man's crotch bulge, "Drag" for clothes, specifically women's clothing, and "Camp" for enthusiastic wittiness and over the top performing.  However, the language itself is no longer used and will eventually disappear altogether.

The controversy around Ebonics was especially contentious a few years ago.  Many claimed that this was just "lazy speak" by select American people of color and not a language that should be allowed, embraced or taught.  However, understanding how language actually evolves it is clear to me that this could end up, or already is, a legitimate dialect, just like a rich Southern Drawl, or Cajun.  My sister's mother-in-law says she is afraid of Klons.  It took me quite a while to understand that Klon is Pittsburghese for Clown.

Bad Scientists, you get no pudding!

I posted part of this post in Great Lakes Green Pages blog earlier this year.

You’d have to be living under a rock if you haven’t heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It’s a giant mass of swirling trash floating in the Pacific Ocean in an area called the Great Pacific Gyre. Even Oprah has shown videos of dying animals and floating garbage, highlighting the desperate need to clean up this massive floating island of garbage rumored to be twice the size of Texas and over 300 feet deep! A search of the internet will continually display one or two photos of floating garbage, usually from below, or a poor dead baby bird that was fed plastic by its parents. There are hundreds of maps, diagrams and schematics showing how the ocean currents can trap floating debris. Greenpeace’s website even has an animation with arrows which depicts the ocean currents.

The one thing that’s missing, to really drive the concept home, is an aerial or satellite photograph. In fact, Wikipedia specifically states: “Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography.” The existence of the Eastern garbage patch was predicted in a 1988 paper published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, based on Alaskan researchers who found tiny particles of plastic suspended in the water of the North Pacific Ocean. They then extrapolated that other areas of the ocean, where ever currents caused a looping pattern, would trap these plastics and eventually form a giant floating island of trash. However, this was just a hypothesis, they hadn’t actually found such an island.

Later, Charles Moore, a sea captain and ocean researcher, wrote a series of articles in which he claimed to have sailed through a massive garbage island in the Pacific Ocean during the Transpac sailing race. No one else in the race came across this island, which is odd since it is rumored to be twice the size of Texas. Moore took no photographs of this phenomenon either, perhaps because he was in a race. However, Moore’s articles received instant media attention.

Wikipedia offers up a reason why there are no corroborating photos: “The size of the affected region is unknown, as large items readily visible from the deck of a boat are few and far between. Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite images.”

Then what are all those photographs of floating garbage on the internet actually of? Turns out these are photos of other floating plastic debris in lakes, rivers, and bays which are used to illustrate what floating garbage would look like. According to the experts, this is exactly what a large floating island of garbage would NOT look like…evidently. On the DailyKos.com website, an image showing a giant field of plastic bottles has been made up of smaller images to create a “holistic” view, with the disclaimer that the image was “not taken at sea”.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I DO believe it exists; it makes all the sense in the world. We are a filthy species, spreading our toxic waste over the entire globe without a care. Despite my belief, I really don’t like the prevalence of doctored photographs, or photos taken somewhere else with no direct link to this phenomenon. I don’t need more diagrams showing me how the Carolus effect, or Ocean Gyre, or prevailing currents work. I understand how they could generate a giant mass of plastic. But, for my sake people, stop generating fake photos as this only helps the naysayers and disbelievers (they’re out there!). I’d love to have a video taken below the surface by divers, or photos showing a huge ship’s wake filled with churned garbage.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is really a huge soup of molecule sized plastic particles suspended in the saline water. It isn’t even visible to the eye; only to microscopes and other scientific equipment. The unfortunate thing is that the people generating media attention couldn’t grab enough interest by calling the area the Great Suspended Polymer Molecule Gyre. It just wasn’t catchy enough. The plastic comes from garbage so it was just a hop and a jump to the new title. 

All the graphs, charts and molecular diagrams in the world couldn’t get Oprah’s attention. 

Suddenly photos surfaced of large chunks of floating debris, and of poor exploded baby birds. This got attention. The problem, of course, is that all of the photographs have been faked or “re-appropriated”. I think this does a real dilemma a great disservice. It reminds me of the Tyrannosaurus debate: we don’t have a single full skeleton of the creature, so scientists used bones from other dinosaurs to make up the missing areas. This doesn’t discount the fact there were Tyrannosaurs running around, but it sure looks mighty suspicious and gives fodder to the Creationist Museum.

Now we have the new discovery by NASA scientists: alien life on Earth!  Well, even though the local news is calling it "alien", of course it's not from anywhere other than the Earth itself...so really the word alien here is meant to mean: "something dissimilar to the normal life".  It is said to be a bacteria that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA.  The only form of life on the planet to use a different element in its DNA.  Wow, the implications are truly startling.  If you're not being blown away right now, you don't understand how friggin' important this discovery really is!!!  

However, their rush to go to press, and NASA's constant fear of being redundant or non-funded has cause these scientists to be...well...less than scientific.  They didn't publish these discoveries in any reputable report or magazine, they simply did a press release in order to "get the information out there as quickly as possible".  However, now that the most celebrated and honored biology scientists are questioning the severely unscientific methods used in the tests, the NASA scientists are claiming they will only argue the merits and points in a scientific journal, not in any other public forum.  The chief problem biologists are having with the NASA methodology is that NASA used water to wash the DNA and water itself has phosphorus.

C'mon scientists, don't make science into a joke!  Above all the scientific process must remain sacrosanct and perfect in order for the results to be taken seriously.  Too often, in a rush of publicity or fame, or simply in order to quickly convince a congressman that something terrible is occurring or about to occur, scientists don't follow prescribed scientific methods.  I'm very disheartened.  I really want there to be strange life forms out there, or even here on Earth.  Please scientists, help me to believe!

Circular Absurdity

I had posted this as my Facebook status a while ago, so many of you may have already seen it.  However, I felt I should post it again in my blog because this is where I first used the phrase "Circular Absurdity" to describe something so completely mind-boggling that your mind spins and won't get out of the loop.

One day my sister and I went to a local craft store.  My sister makes greeting cards and other crafts, extremely well.  In the back, near the cake decorating kits was a wall of "geese costumes".  These are little matching clothes people put onto their plastic lawn geese.  The clothes can make their geese look like pilgrims for Thanksgiving, or Uncle Sam for the Fourth of July, or even an elf for Christmas.  I find this practice to be completely bizarre, but at least I understand it.  My mind can wrap itself around this strange custom.

One of the costumes on the wall was of a goose.

Yes, that's right.  You can dress your goose up as.......a goose.

It even had an orange felt-beak.

My brain still turns to mush every time I try to figure this one out.

Hence the definition of "Circular Absurdity".

Foods from my childhood

My whole family had a very sweet tooth.  In the 70's we were allowed to buy one candy of our choice each whenever we were at the store.  My father would put his in the refrigerator while my sister and I gobbled down our treats.  Then, a while later, my father would pull his out of the refrigerator and eat it.  When we complained he would say, "it's not my fault you ate yours so quick".  And of course he was right.  Soon we were allowed to buy two candy choices, one for right away and one to savor later.  My sister's favorite items were penny-candies because she kept pennies in her little purse.  She'd buy a lot of wax lips and such, which had very little flavor and were like chewing on a candle.  However, I did like the little wax straws or bottles filled with sweet liquid.

My favorite candy bar was the Abba-Zaba bar.  It was made with white taffy lightly strewn with nuts and had a peanut butter center.  You could flatten it out (to make it more chewable) with your fingers to the size of a pancake and the peanut butter would ooze out.  Delicious!  If you didn't play with it first, it would remain tough like those filling-pullers Super Sugar Daddies (the caramel and sometimes chocolate bars on a paper stick).

For some reason our little rural town was a test market for General Mills and other cereal manufacturers.  We were able to eat Chocolate Crunch Berries long before anyone else in the country tried them.  I fondly remember the Cap'n Crunch line our local market was testing out.  It had the regular Cap'n Crunch which featured a punch out cardboard model (inside were the plastic masts and sails) of the Cap'n trusted ship The Guppy.  The Crunchberries had a different ship; same with the chocoberries, but the one I liked the most and enjoyed the cereal flavor too, was the Vanilla Whale.  It was the Cap'n's nemesis and the box had the biggest ship in the line...a whaler complete with harpoon.  Not exactly very P.C., especially since the Vanilla Whale was cute, with big eyes and long eyelashes.   My father really liked the two flavors (blueberry and red-rasberry) of Baron Von Redberry and his enemy for which I can't remember the name.  We seemed to be the only ones eating it though since it sat and sat on the market's shelves.  When we brought home their last two boxes of the cereal and opened them for breakfast in the morning, they were filled with silk and a whole bunch of little worms.  We got our money back that day.

I loved Frankenberry, Count Chocula, Boo Berry and then Fruit Brute.  If I can remember the premise correctly, Fruit Brute was a little mild mannered accountant who would change into a crazy werewolf that could only be calmed down with the fruity cereal.  Either that, or the cereal would cause him to become the wolf.  I can't remember. 

My father and I were Sci-Fi nuts (and Medieval things too), so of course we loved outer space.  We enjoyed the wonderful nutritious Tang instant orange flavored drink that the Astronauts ate.  Then came the Space Food Sticks.  They were delicious, especially the peanut butter ones.  They were a bit expensive, but they were very nutritious.  I can still remember their particular taste and have never quite found a reasonable facsimile.  There's a nutrition bar out there (I think it's the Tiger brand) that is peanut butter flavored, and it comes kind of close.

At one point in our candy-loving days we were no longer limited to two choices at the store.  Each time we came home from the market we'd have quite a large number of different bags of candy.  We'd chose the types we most loved, then our second choice and then we'd even pick candy we liked but really didn't love.  This would all get dumped into a large ceramic bowl on the living room coffee table.  Right after dinner we'd all pile  onto the couch in front of the t.v. and start snacking.  It's really no wonder my father ended up diabetic.

For whatever reason, my parents grew concerned about the amount sugar we were consuming.  They probably saw some kind of story on 20/20 or 60 Minutes.  So my father promptly replaced the large bowl of candy with a huge bowl of carob flavored protein tablets.  Unfortunately I was the only one who really liked them and would eat handfuls every day.  They lasted quite a while because Dad had bought a gigantic barrel-like bottle of them, and neither he nor my mother touched them.  I think I ate those tablets nearly every day for a year before they were completely gone.  And then I missed them.

More toys from my childhood

Fisher Price was the master of playsets long before Lego started creating large scale fantasy settings and that uber-expensive Playmobile started cranking out fully fleshed-out scenes.  My cousin Michael had many of the Fisher Price playsets including the Sesame Street set (which my sister also had) and the Main Street USA set (with the dentist chair which even had a spit bowl) and this castle.  The tower where the dragon is sitting had a trap door which would send a little character down a slide to the "dungeon" (the little yellow lift gate at the bottom).   

I actually had two of these at different times.  I don't know what happened to the original one, I think my mother gave it away, but at one point I clearly remember my grandmother giving me one that had the Exxon label at the top.  The little gas tanks were cool, but of course the main attraction was the little lift planks which would propel your Hotwheels or Matchbox car into the waiting elevator.

My sister had this toy, the TreeTot family.  The top was spring loaded so you could hit the button under the handle and the whole tree canopy would lift up to reveal a four room house complete with elevator in the trunk.  There was a swing, a garage, and even a dog house which looked like a bush.  The people would fit perfectly in Fisher Price playsets, but I don't think they manufactured this particular toy.

For those that couldn't afford official Star Wars merchandise, there was the "Star Team" action dolls.  Obvious rip-offs of C3PO, Darth Vader and R2D2.  I only had the robots and didn't like the green-headed guy.  However, the little robot actually lit up and had a revolving interior mechanism and concealed tank-tread tracks on the bottom.

Not only did this stuff stink, it tasted extremely salty.  How do I know what it tasted like?  Well, of course I tasted it since it was non-toxic!  Duh!  For the most part there was nothing you could do with this toy except put it on someone who really didn't want it on them.  I believe it predated the Nickelodeon shows.

I have no idea why this toy fascinated me.  I didn't own it, but one of my friends did.  It was just a plastic oval about foot across filled with two different colors of sand (blue and white).  As you shook it, or turned it in your hands the sand would make sea-like patterns.

Now this toy I really loved.  It belonged to our next door neighbor Susan, two years my junior.  However, eventually she ended up giving it to my sister.  I loved how the entire kitchen was compressed into this six sided toy.  Each appliance could be "motorized" and lit up by turning the entire "karosel" into place and turning a dial.  The oven had three roasting chickens on spits that would turn.  There was even a washing machine/dryer with a spin cycle.  I'm not sure how the room around this Karosel Kitchen would be arranged, but it's still an intriguing design!

When I was about five or six my father took me to visit one of his good friends.  The Adams family (with only one "d") had children that were much older than me.  There was a girl who ended up becoming our babysitter for a while and told me an awful lot about sex.  One of her older brothers who was no longer living in the family home had collected a huge amount of Hotwheels track.  For some reason they gave me the whole shebang.  The photo above is not mine (I downloaded it from the Internet).  I had tons more than this including a service station that you could wind up and it would add speed to the cars passing through it.

A friend of mine told me that his mother used to use one of the long orange plastic tracks to whip him.  Such a bad memory for such a wonderful toy!

At one time I had a really wonderful gift; it was a vinyl-over-cardboard suit case that when opened revealed a molded plastic city with streets and bridges and a tunnel with a few buildings, a lake and park, and a couple skyscrapers (which would pop up and had snaps to make them square).  It was the right scale to use my Matchbox and Hotwheels cars, but was an off-brand.  I played with this city for a very long time.  One year my parents told me they were going to buy me another city-in-a-suitcase that was three times the size and I waited in anticipation.  When the Holiday arrived they brought out a giant box which I assumed was the new suitcase.  It turned out to be empty.  I was terribly disappointed but then my father wheeled in my new bicycle.  I acted extremely surprised and delighted, but I really had wanted the city-in-a-suitcase.  We lived on a dangerous logging-road and a steep hill.  There really wasn't anywhere to ride the bike.

a few true stories from a strange world

My sister and I were very hungry and on our way to some important destination, so we popped into a drive-through.  I can't remember if it was a DQ, Wendy's, BK or McD's, but that's not important anyway.  We pulled up to the illuminated menu board and speaker where a friendly female voice asked us to "please go ahead with your order" before we had any time to actually look at the board.  My sister managed to blurt out, "Ummm, I guess we'll have..." when the speaker suddenly crackled and said, "thank you, please drive forward".  My sister looked at me in bewilderment.  She leaned her head out of the car and said, "excuse me, but..." and the speaker repeated, "thank you, please drive forward".  Again my sister tried, "I'm sorry, but"; "thank you, please drive forward."  Finally my sister was able to scream out "we haven't ordered yet!", to which the speaker answered, "please go ahead with your order".

cherished memories

One wonderful year I was given a gift I actually asked for.  I had asked, and asked and kept my mind locked on this one toy.  The Micronauts mobile exploration lab.

I didn't know that Mom & Dad would not only get me the expensive toy, but also three wonderful little Micronauts to man the expeditions!  I had the clear plastic one at the right of the photo above. The other was green painted metal with spring-action pop-out wings, which I pretended was the clear guy's best friend!  I can't remember their names, if they even had them.  However, their enemy was Acroyear (or at least I figured he was their enemy): 

Of course, looking back, Acroyear was probably a hero based on the architypical Japanese designs.  My Acroyear was more of a minty blue color than this green version.  Ah how I loved these little guys.  These were my first action figures.

When Star Wars came out I was getting an allowance for doing chores around the house and helping to take care of my little sister.  It amounted to only a couple of dollars every two weeks, so I had to really save up in order to buy the action figures of R2D2 and C3PO.  My mother, for some reason, was furious.  To her I had wasted my money on two tiny chunks of plastic.  She had no idea what they meant to me; how much the movie itself had affected my brain.  She made a dramatic show of throwing them into the trashcan in back of the garage, and forbade me to dig them out.  Of course as soon as possible I retrieved them.  They are still a treasured possession.

The next year my parents gave in and bought me the huge Millennium Falcon.  It would take quite a few years though for me to get all the figures to go inside of it.  

In 1977, the same year StarWars debuted, our family went to Disneyland for the first time.  I was 12, my sister Ginger was 4.  I was able to buy a Darth Vader helmet with my savings, along with a large map of the theme park (I've always loved maps, especially ones that feature buildings so prominently).  My sister bought a large stuffed Al from the Country Bear Jamboree along with a small Mickey & Minnie.

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My favorite movie of all time! (part 3 of 3)

In the final third of the movie, Fellini decided to take some liberties with the story.  This part of the book is really fragmented, so it's not a completely unreasonable decision.

At the dinner with Trimalchio, the host decides to read some of his own poetry only to have a drunk Eumolpo make fun of it.  Outraged, Eumolpo is thrown into the kitchen oven, only to be "saved" by Encolpio.  They are both thrown out and languish in the field outside.

I adore Fellini's eye for light and drama.  Many scenes in the Satyricon are forcefully homoerotic by nature.

Abruptly Encolpio, Ascylto, and Gitoni are captured on thrown onto a slaver ship.  The owner of the ship, Lychas likes to wrestle to the death and catches Encolpio spying, so decides to wrestle him.  As he is about to finish Encolpio off, Lychas is entranced by Encolpio's beauty and decides instead to marry him.

Nero was accused of publicly marrying a young boy named Sporos.  Petronius was a good friend to Nero and yet this scene was in the original manuscript.  Perhaps Nero had a good sense of humor about his affairs, or the detractors created the charge.  Sporos was indeed at Nero's side throughout his life and even at his death, so it's not inconceivable.

In a nod to realism, Fellini has the seamen kill a whale.  It's the little details like this that makes me love Fellini so much.  It has nothing to do with the plot, but it makes the setting more realistic.

There is a major regime change and the old Emperor has evidently been dethroned.  Those patrons who were  supportive of the old regime are now on the outs with the new one.  In a scene directly from history, a rich couple sends off their children and slaves to another land and then take their own lives.  In Ancient Rome it was better to die by your own hand than to be killed or enslaved.  It was all about honor and the law.  With their suicide, their descendants are allowed to inherit instead of everything going to their killers or the new Emperor.  Armies march and loot is taken from temples and cities in the only real montage of the film.  Lychas ship is boarded and he is killed and evidently the slaves are set free.  Ascylto and Encolpio escape and come upon the near empty villa of the suicides.  I don't know where little Gitoni went, because he never shows up again.

Ascylto and Encolpio have a three-way with a black slave girl in a very tender scene.  The film garnered much attention for this scene considered too risqué for many theaters.

In a scene that wasn't in the book, the two boys come upon a thief who talks them into kidnapping a local demi-god, a hermaphrodite child who is reportedly able to cure sickness.  The idea is that they could ransom the child, or use him/her to accumulate wealth.  However, the hermaphrodite is sickly and soon perishes, spoiling their scheme.  The thief turns on the boys and they have to escape.

In keeping with the fragmented nature of the book, Fellini now suddenly skips to where Encolpio is forced into a maze and made to fight the Minotaur.  When Encolpio is finally face to face with his doom, the Minotaur pulls off his mask to reveal a handsome man who laughs at the boy.  Then, to his horror, there is an entire population laughing at him.  The King explains this is a special holiday where everyone must laugh, and to kick it off there must be a very big prank pulled on an unknowing pawn, hence the Minotaur vs. Encolpio.  To make it up to Encolpio, they provide him a beautiful woman for him to make love to.  Encolpio is quite proud of his sexual prowess, but can't actually do the deed in front of whole town.  This makes him a laughing stock again and he is embarrassed.  In order to "get his groove back" he and Ascylto journey to a special brothel where sexual healing is practiced and they meet up again with Eumolpo.  Nothing seems to work though and Encolpio is beginning to worry that his "sword will be forever blunted".  They then travel to see a witch who can supposedly cure him.

Through the use of hallucinogenics and trickery, Encolpio is indeed cured, but as he declares his victory, Ascylto is killed outside by the ferryman.

Encolpio is saddened and decides to take off on a ship full of ex-slaves to whereabouts unknown.  As the book ends (due to not having the actual end of the book) so the movie concludes.

Many people have hated this movie because of the fragmented scenes and the strange way Encolpio gets away from each situation simply by being cute.  Even more are put off by Fellini-esque directions such as the "breaking of the fourth wall", the "ugly" beautiful people, or the bizarre soundtrack.  However, this will remain one of my all time favorite movies, forever!

My favorite movie of all time! (part 2 of 3)

The Satyricon has come to us mostly in fragments, but the largest and most intact part is called the "Dinner with Trimalchio".  It is where our young hero Encolpio tags along with his poet friend Eumolpo to a fabulous dinner at an incredibly rich patron's house.  The author Petronius pokes fun at Roman tradition by having Trimalchio be a super-rich but super-superstitious person who flaunts his money, has no real friends, and throws these ridiculously over-the-top lavish dinners.

As a tradition, Romans would bathe before a meal.  This usually consisted of simply washing one's hands, but in the book and in Fellini's film, the bathers are all in a mass bath, jumping up and down.  Only one of Trimalchio's over-the-top gestures to appease the "luck Gods".

During the dinner Trimalchio provides entertainment for the guests which includes a short poetic Greek play in the Homeric tradition.  He also has his belches read by a "reader" who proclaims there will be much wealth to come.  The dinner begins with a reading of all the wealth and lands Trimalchio owns.  He jokes that he owns lands that he has never visited, nor will ever visit; in fact, he doesn't even know where some of this land is.

Why use napkins when you can simply wipe your hands in the hair of a slave?  This was supposed to bring good luck to those who did it.

Trimalchio is so self-centered he is having a giant mosaic of his face created on the dining room wall.  This is one of Fellini's excessive sets, but done to terrific authenticity.

The dining room is an authentic recreation.  The patron lay down around the center runway where food and some entertainment was staged.  The food was so extravagant and ridiculous in the book, Fellini decided to go even further by making most of it unintelligible.  At one point the chef brings in a giant, bloated pig.  Trimalchio is angered because the pig looks cooked, but ungutted.  The crowd wants him to spare the chef's life, but Trimalchio still wants to have him killed.  However, when the pig is cut open, all sorts of cooked meats spill out to the crowd and Trimalchio's amusement.  It was a clever trick played by the chef. 

Again, Fellini likes his characters to break the "fourth wall" and suck in the viewer.   During the dinner Trimalchio pays creepy, undue attention on his young nephews while his wife kisses another woman.  He demands that she gets up and entertains the guests with a dance that ends up being a bit too overtly sexual.  He is angered at her and humiliates her in front of everyone. 

The dinner is concluded by a quick trip to Trimalchio's mausoleum.  He lays down in the grave and everyone pretends to be distraught over his passing.  He is even moved himself at the world's loss of such a great man.  He gives coins to the guests he feels best displayed sadness.

End of part 2 of 3.

My Steampunk Art

Some of you may have already saw this stuff.  It was a phase I was going through, which really isn't over yet, I just don't have the same amount of time to devote to it.  If you're not familiar with Steampunk, the concept is:  What if current technology had been invented when we were still using steam engines for our main power source?  Movies such as "The Golden Compass", "Delicatessen" and "City of Lost Children" are considered to be in this style.  Whenever you see a lot of rivets, tubes, pipes and gauges mounted to modern technology, it's probably Steampunk.

This is the punishment device from Franz Kafka's "The Penal Colony".  The operator would type in the crimes of the prisoner (I show the input on the back side of the device), the prisoner would be strapped down to the porcelain table (with little built-in troughs) and then the myriad needles would lower down and "write" the crimes into the prisoner's skin.  The story was about cruel-and-unusual punishments and whether or not they are actual crime deterrents, moral, etc.

The upper image is of a DVD Player (the "the Light Disk Optical Reader") and the lower one is of a "Boom Box".

This is my revisioning for the HGWells Time Machine as first envisioned by the George Pal design team.  If you had read my book "The Beatnik, The Gunslinger, and the Movie Star", this is the Master Chronometer George uses to flip back and forth through time.

My favorite movie of all time!

When most people see Fellini's Satyricon for the first time, they are confused.  The story seems to skip major plot lines and jump around a bit. This is because the actual story, written around 50AD has only three major portions surviving (out of possibly 80 books).  It was like a soap opera for the Romans.  Each installment was waited for in great anticipation and it was very popular.  Fellini created incredible sets and costumes and embellished the story a little to make it his own version.

In the first scene, the college student Encolpio tells us that his young lover Gitoni has gone missing.  Encopio's roommate Ascylto is at the baths, and is telling us that Encolpio pretends to be pious when in fact he's a whore.

The lighting in these scenes is dramatic.  Fellini, as you will notice, liked to have the action in his scenes take place in a corner, typically the right hand one.

Turns out that Gitoni had gone with Ascylto, but always needing money, Ascylto sold Gitoni to an old actor.  Encolpio rushes to the theater to take back Gitoni.

Encolpio is on the left, Gitoni on the far right and the actor is in between.  The crowd doesn't like the play which makes fun of Caesar so they demand the actor gives the boy back to Encolpio.  Encolpio and Gitoni go back to their flat in the poor section of Rome, but they get lost.  This is the maze-like section of Rome that burnt down during the great fire only a few years after the original manuscripts were written.  At one point the boys come across a group carrying a toppled statue's enormous head, presumably of a past and disfavored Emperor.  An old woman directs the boys to their flat, but actually she sends them into a huge brothel where all sorts of crazy things are happening. 

Once back at the flat, the boys make love.  However, in the morning Ascylto returns to find them in bed and he starts a fight with Enclopio.  Ascylto says he'll move out, so they begin to divide up everything.  Ascylto then points to Gitoni and asks how they will divide him.  It is decided that Gitoni will decide whom to go with. Of course Encolpio thinks he'll stay because he's in love and Ascylto sold him once, but Gitoni ends up going with Ascylto and Encolpio is devastated.  Suddenly an earthquake occurs and in one of my favorite scenes, the entire district crumbles, including the wall of the flat.

The earthquake scene is made more dramatic by the panicking horses.  There is one little still that I love: an old woman is crouching in the corner of her tumbling room with a look of sheer panic.  It is awesome.  Fellini liked to find people in the streets and put them into his films.  He didn't want traditionally beautiful people, he wanted people with distinctive faces, crooked noses, gnarled teeth, strange eyes.  He called these people beautiful because they were real and had such strong traits of humanity in their visages.

Another of Fellini's famous methods was to put extras into the frame of the scene who look directly at the camera.  This "breaking of the fourth wall" was to invite the viewer into the scene by making them a part of it.

 

And then suddenly, without segue, Encolpio is at an art gallery with his poet friend Eumolpo.  This is, of course, the way the book flows too since there are many scenes we have lost.  This fragment is about Eumolpo commenting on the lack of real quality in art; how it's mass produced or without character.  It's very much apropos today when people buy art simply to match their interior palette and not on the merit of the art itself.  In the wall of the art gallery is a large open hole where a scaffold of workers slowly moves by.  The sets for this film were brilliant and expensive and of course Fellini kept going over budget as he'd change things constantly.

This is only the first third of the movie and so I'll continue the rest later.