And don't bother coming back, Gérard…

Let us all now ridicule Gérard Depardieu, who has accepted Russian citizenship as part of his protest against paying taxes in France.

The man has ruined more movies than anyone in history and has made French cinema unwatchable for 20 years. The only exception I’d allow would be “Jean de Florette,” in 1987, in which he appropriately played a hunchback farmer. I will not forgive him for his fat, slobbish portrayal of Edmond in “The Count of Monte Cristo.” And how dare they let him into the same frame as the incredible Catherine Deneuve.

I call him Gérard Depar-diable. I never understood what the French saw in him. Now they’re probably wondering themselves.

Low cost text input devices

One of my bad habits is scouring eBay for older technology that has become cheap but remains useful (or interesting). This Alphasmart 3000 word processor cost me $7.85 on eBay, plus $8.05 shipping.

It’s a simple device. You type, and it stores the text. To retrieve the text, you plug the Alphasmart 3000 into your computer’s USB port. The computer thinks it’s just a keyboard. Press the “SEND” key on the Alphasmart, and the computer thinks that a fast typist is keying text into your word processing program or whatever program is open and receiving keyboard input at the time.

The Alphasmart can hold eight separate files and up to 120 pages of text (though I’m not sure what their definition of a page is). It has rudimentary editing capability, and a spell-checker. There are later versions of the Alphasmart, also available on eBay for somewhat more money. They have bigger text buffers and a somewhat larger LCD screen. And of course you can still buy them new.

Need to type something in bed, or sitting at the picnic table? It works, and the keyboard is much nicer than any confounded laptop I’ve ever seen. Not to mention that it’s much cheaper and less fragile. I think the biggest market for these devices is in schools, so they’re made to take the sort of beating that fifth-graders can give. Its design clearly was inspired by Apple’s clamshell Newton from the 1990s.

Ridiculous political drama

Here is a fresh, important lesson in how political players and the corporate media collude to generate false, self-serving drama. It’s not difficult to pull back the curtain and see what they get out of it. Political players — especially those with the weakest hand — get to strut in front of cameras and recite their talking points, to build their brands, to reinforce the fiction that Washington is the center of the universe. The media need conflict, urgency, and drama to get people to watch their crap and listen to their dumb-as-rocks talking heads.

Immediately after the election, the political entertainment industry panned their cameras to the so-called “fiscal cliff,” as though it was all pre-planned, which it was. Political players cooperated in all sorts of ways, including running it down to the wire to maximize the drama. But in the end, it wasn’t even close. The legislation passed 89-8 in the Senate and 257-167 in the House. What a silly drama.

It was the same with the election. The right-wing media said Romney would win (apparently believing their own fantasies), and the mainstream media said it was a close horse race. But a small minority of real-world people, thanks to Nate Silver, knew that it was not close, and that Romney would not win. Silver was demonized and marginalized, and the political entertainment industry went right on playing out the election according to their horse-race script. Here’s a test: Did you find, and evaluate the evidence of, Nate Silver before the election? If yes, you get a gold star. If not, you need to rethink your information sources.

The ringmasters of the pig circus will do it again, and then again. We will see within the next day or two what their next dramatic theme will be. They’re shifting the cameras and rehearsing the script even now. The show will go on.

To the ruling elite (and by this I mean all the players in the government industrial complex, not just Democrats), there are many benefits in this arrangement. One important benefit is distraction. By focusing the people on empty dramas, they distract us from the things that really matter. They keep us angry and divided, so that we can’t see who is really eating our lunch.

The cure: to turn off our televisions and read. Everything must be read with great skepticism and an alertness to hidden agendas and conflicts of interest. Those who have a record of being wrong (that category includes almost all our pundit class and all the players who go back and forth through the revolving doors between government and corporations) must be ignored. Anyone who has any kind of power must be assumed to be lying until proven otherwise. Similarly, anyone who is rich must be assumed to be lying until proven otherwise.

Also, keep a long memory. Remember when the whole political entertainment complex ridiculed the idea that there was a housing bubble? Remember when Alan Greenspan, kissing the ass of George Bush, who was running for president, said that the Clinton-era surplus created the danger that we might pay off the debt too fast, and that we must therefore give rich “job creators” a tax cut? The script-writers for the pig circus keep the horse shit flying so fast that we’re not supposed to have time to fact-check or to think back to their lines in last year’s script. Don’t let them get away with it.

Apply a few simple tests of track record and truth, and it’s clear that 99 percent of what we’re fed by our media and by political players is horse shit.

As they roll back the curtain on the pig circus’s next act, pay no attention. What’s important, as always, is somewhere they don’t want us to look.

At the water cooler, instead of talking about the “fiscal cliff” and the drama du jour, review the show. Critique the performances. Ridicule the script. Laugh at the contrived, car-chase ending. Speculate on the setup for the sequel. Then turn off the damned television and don’t fall for it again.

In fact, the “fiscal cliff” legislation passed the House with a significantly greater margin than John Boehner’s re-election as speaker (220 to 192).

Sir Walter Scott

I have had a heck of a time finding reading material this winter. Though the iPad and the Kindle app make it extremely easy to acquire and sample books, I generally start three or four books for every book I finish, just because most books aren’t worth finishing (to my tastes, at least), and I won’t waste time on them. After a brief digression into nonfiction, I settled on Sir Walter Scott.

Clearly Sir Walter Scott is very rarely read anymore. This is odd, since he was a best-selling author in the 19th century and inspired a generation of writers. Universities have very little interest in him, outside the University of Edinburgh. It would be interesting to try to dissect why Scott is so neglected. Could it be because filmmakers have not adapted any of his works for a blockbluster, creating a new literary market? Is it because he is hard to read, with his thick, erudite prose and heavy doses of hard-to-parse dialect? Is it a shortage of romance? An excess of untranslated Latin and French? Rare would be the modern high school student or even college student who would be able to navigate Scott’s prose without lots of notes and professorial assistance.

But I am finding that Scott has all the ingredients I like. As I have frequently mentioned here, I have very little interest in here-and-now fiction. What use are stories about people just like us, living in places just like the places we live in, grappling with the same modern existential issues that we grapple with? No, I want fiction to take me far away, to a real or imagined place very unlike the present world, the world which I read to escape. Scott does that.

He was considered a historical novelist. He wrote in the early 1800s, but most of his stories were set in the past. Whether his history is good history or bad history is of very little interest to me; this is fiction, after all. Scott likes strong Gothic elements and an undercurrent of magic — ruined abbeys, hidden passages, the sea crashing against the rocks, strange victuals in ancient kitchens, haunted houses, old folk tales woven into the narrative. His characters are as vivid as Dickens’, and his conversations snappy (but long). What’s not to like? I have started with The Antiquary, one of the Waverley novels.

In doing some Googling about Scott, I came across a broadside criticism of Scott by Mark Twain, blaming Scott’s novels for the “jejeune romanticism” of the American South. Who knew? And you’ll find lukewarm conversations about whether a Scott revival is merited in the book blog at the Guardian. A persistent Googler may even find some discussion about Scott’s influence on Tolkien.

Unless Hollywood comes out with a Sir Walter Scott blockbuster, I wouldn’t look for a Sir Walter Scott revival. But lovers of English literature and the British Isles who’ve not yet sampled Scott will certainly want to do so.

The illustrations are from The Antiquary.

Goodbye, Professoressa


Corriere della Sera, Milan

I was very sorry to read today in the New York Times that La Professoressa — Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini — has died at age 103.

I posted about La Professoressa back in 2009. Periodically I have checked to see if she was still living. I believe she was going strong until the very end. In several interviews after she turned 100, she said that her mind was sharper than it was when she was in her 20s. She went to work in her laboratory every day. In some interviews, she credited the sharpness of her mind to the substance she shared a Nobel Prize for discovering — nerve growth factor. In Italy, I believe this substance is available in eyedrop form and is sold as a treatment for certain eye ailments. I believe it has not been approved for sale in the United States. A little research reveals that there are supplements available that may naturally stimulate the production of nerve growth factor in the body. One is an Asian mushroom called monkey’s head mushroom. The other is a derivative of an Asian moss called huperzine A. Here is the Wikipidia article on huperzine A.

By all accounts, huperzine A is safe. Whether it’s effective or just another way to spend money on useless supplements is not really known. However, I could not resist trying the stuff, and I ordered some of it a couple of weeks ago. I’ll post something about my experience with huperzine A after I’ve used it a bit longer. It’s interesting that many of the Amazon reviews say that it stimulates dreaming. As far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out on that, but it seems possible.

Meanwhile, farewell Professoressa. You were an inspiration.

People I may know??

Facebook flatters and amuses me sometimes with the people it thinks I may know. Helen Mirren? Not hardly. And today Facebook thinks I may know Susan Sarandon. I have no idea why. I don’t think she shops at the same grocery store I do.

Facebook seems to think that I know pretty much all the San Francisco city supervisors and political muckedy-mucks, and even a few muckedy-mucks and pundits in Washington, like David Frum. That’s no mystery, though. I know a lot of journalists, and journalists — who ought to be keeping their distance — are “friending” their sources. Tsk. Tsk. I did once get an angry phone call from Tom Ammiano after he didn’t like an op-ed I wrote in the San Francisco Examiner. My former boss at the Examiner was married to Sharon Stone. That marriage has ended, but I can see on Facebook who he hangs out with these days. Hi, Sean. I don’t think I know you…

As for Helen Mirren, I’m friends with two writers who obviously know her and other Hollywood types. I frequently get pictures sloshing over of Laura Linney, or Ian McKellen. Unfortunately I never met them, nor would they be interested in being Facebook friends with nobodys like me. Susan Sarandon? I have no idea what the connection, if any, that Facebook is finding might be. But I do see enough material sloshing over from our social superiors on Facebook to know that they are on Facebook, they all know each other, they don’t know us, and they have way more fun than we do.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

There are no spoilers in this post.

Yesterday I went to see “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” I went to the full IMAX 3D version, $12.75 for a matinée. It would be silly for me to try to review it, because I can’t think of a single meaningfully critical thing to say. In fact, most of the reviews I’ve read have been silly, as the reviewers strain to come off as more knowing and more gifted than Peter Jackson. Jackson is a genius. Tolkien was a genius. It would be a criminal act to miss this work of genius while it’s still in IMAX theaters.

I had never been to an IMAX film before, or to a 3D film. The effect was stunning. It gave me vertigo at times, and I had a headache for the rest of the day, but it was worth it. And by the way I very rarely have headaches now that I’m retired. Headaches are for the awful world of work. But it’s a strain to stare at a screen for three hours, neck locked most of the time. When the camera was at a lofty height, looking down, and spinning (imagine yourself in the clutches of a giant eagle), I got vertigo. But that’s probably what the director intended.

I like to try to take stories apart to try to see what makes them tick. Part of the genius of Tolkien’s work is that his stories resist this process. One alternative is to try to look at Tolkien’s life for clues. As most people know, he was a professor of language and early literature at Oxford. He was affected by both World Wars. He was deeply distrustful of modernity and industrialization. A long hike in the unspoiled Alps when he was a teenager apparently inspired his mountain settings and his long treks. He loved languages, and in particular he loved the English language.

Anyway, this is not a review. It’s just a reminder to go see “The Hobbit” on a big screen.

Miso

Only recently did I realize that miso is a living fermented food, like yogurt or sauerkraut. I had observed for many years that recipes usually warn you to add the miso last to soups and not to boil it, but no recipe ever said why, and it had not occurred to me to wonder. I figured it was just one of those things that recipes thoughtlessly repeat though no one knows a reason for it, like not lifting the lid on rice while it’s cooking.

But now I know. Miso is a living fermented food, therefore we must eat it, even if it is salty. But eating miso is not a chore. It makes a great stock for soups. It also enables quick winter soups, because you don’t have to simmer all day to get a proper stock. A friend recommends borscht made with miso. I will try that later today. Miso also makes a great little cup of hot broth. Just add a teaspoon or so to hot water.

The stuff is pricey. I paid more than $9 for a pound of miso yesterday at Whole Foods. Partly I think this is Whole Foods’ high markup. A friend gets the same brand in Asheville for between $6 and $7 a pound. But a little miso goes a long way, and it will keep in the refrigerator for half of eternity. Whole Foods carries about four varieties of miso, I believe, made by Miso Master in Asheville.

A grits tutorial


Home-cooked slow grits with home-laid eggs and fake bacon

Periodically I have breakfast with friends at a roadside family restaurant in northern Stokes. I keep ordering grits, but I continue to get runny — bordering on watery — grits in a little bowl. Now maybe this is actually some folks’ preference in grits. But, to me, that’s not proper grits.

Grits should be thick, like thick mashed potatoes. They should be thick enough to hold a nice mound — never a puddle! — on the plate and support a well of melted butter. They should be served hot, but not so hot that they burn your tongue and ruin your breakfast. Grits should sit for 5 to 10 minutes off the heat after they’ve cooked, to thicken and cool a bit.

As for “quick grits” or — heaven forfend — “instant grits,” don’t even think about it. Proper old-fashioned grits take only 20 minutes or so to cook. As for how much water is required, about four parts water (or slightly less) to one part grits is about right. (But, like rice, grits vary, so there is no universal rule.) Just keep simmering and stirring, with the lid off if necessary, until the grits thicken. Erma Rombauer, in the 1943 edition of Joy of Cooking, boils the grits briefly, then steams them in a double boiler for an hour. I’ve never tried that, but it probably would work great. Grits require close watching, so a double boiler would give the cook a break.

People sometimes express surprise that I, having lived in San Francisco for so long, am a fan of grits. People often think that San Franciscans are too snooty to eat grits. But that’s not true at all. San Franciscans know about food from all over the world, so it would be impossible to keep anything as good as grits a secret. You can get grits for breakfast in lots of places in San Francisco. And I hate to say it, but the grits I’ve had in San Francisco are better than the grits I’ve had in these parts lately. I think it’s the same problem that afflicts all low-price “family” restaurants. They don’t have trained cooks, they can’t afford to use good ingredients because they have to keep prices low, and they cut too many corners instead of giving things the time and attention that good cooking requires. Grits probably “set up” in a slow-moving kitchen, and frequent fresh batches aren’t practical, so runny grits may be the only way to solve the problem in a slow-moving kitchen.

So we country folk, when friends meet friends for breakfast, have a hard time finding the good cookery that city folk take for granted. But we have just as much to talk about, and we live at a slower pace, so a breakfast can run — à la française — up to two hours. And most country restaurants even have WIFI now, because they’re on the main roads where the cables are.