Two Dishes But To One Table

The Label on a Cheese

Look at the 25 tiny words that form the margin on any label from Murray's Cheese (254 Bleecker St) and you'll find an explosion of sensual stimuli. 

Ripe, powerful, herbaceous.
Rich, tart.
Decadent, crumbly, farmstead.
(Obviously this is not just an ode to cheese but a philosophy of life as well!)
Pervasive, stinky, lingering.
Bold, savory, vibrant, luscious.
Sweet and mushroomy.
( I feel like I'm reading a shorthand for every significant moment of my 39 year life.)
Delicate, buttery, tangy -- are we repeating ourselves yet?
Lingering.
Toasty, biting.

Nutty.

Aged.

3/30/05 11:49 am

Crete VI

In ten days I didn't see a single "Greek Fisherman's Cap".

A Mural Near Bleecker Street

Walking 6th Ave  I see a mural:
" Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time." -Marion Wright Edelman

I feel good about the Village, about the Liberals. 
And what about the GOP?
I used to think of the GOP as the Punishers. 
Now,in the spirit of this mural I want to add Shirkers to the description of GOP. 

Shirkers.
No responsibility. 
No citizenship.
No sense of community. 

The  shirkers and punishers party, in full harmony with the Me Decade -- a decade that is 25 years long already.

A worldly party, endorsed by an alternate  Christ that never overturned the moneychangers tables, a zealots' Christ holding a sword and willing to cast the first stone, that can pass the rich into heaven easier than a camel can pass a thread through its ass.
Those people have a lot to answer for and I don’t think they’re going to have to answer to me.
3/30/05 10:57 am

Crete Trip V

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On this trip I struggled as usual with how to pack the least amount of things possible.  One mistake was only taking the shoes on my feet and not packing a backup.  They became sweaty and could never dry out.  By the sixth day they smelled so bad that I was trying to find Lysol in the Greek supermarket.  I couldn’t take them off in the car because everyone in the whole vehicle could instantly smell them. 
On the other hand, something I almost left at home came to massive utility: a music player.  Just as a cheap doughnut doesn’t fully come into it’s own without a cup of hot black coffee, a mixtape of tunes doesn’t fully bloom until heard in a lonely place.  The music device paid for itself several times over.  A trip, by songs:

1.    Tossing and turning with jet lag on a $10 bunk with people coughing and snoring nearby I unzip my backpack for headphones and soon am nodding out to the Minutemen “Don’t Use Shower.”
2.    Sitting alone on top of a dramatic 45-foot castle wall at night I find company in They Might Be Giants “Nightgown of the Sullen Moon.”
3.    Staring for long minutes at beautiful, iridescent algae, swaying with the surf (albeit with someone’s dirty syringe floating by) and I love it all the more for Tortoise “Tin Cans and Twine”. 
4.    All alone, post-shower, pre-night on the town, pogoing around the Greek bunk room like a fool with Mudhoney “Touch Me I’m Sick”
5.    Very zombied out with boredom, fatigued, passing through customs, but buoyed by GBH “Give Me Fire.”

The tuneage was a vital spice.  I really recommend never leaving it behind on long trips.  With the headphones, the most simple or banal scene becomes a compellingly juxtaposed audio-video experience.  A lot of the most Greek scenes had no music to accompany them since my range of music taste is not very broad (see above songs) but the things that were very Greek didn’t need my golden oldies.  Sheep clogging a highway, or soccer fans absorbed in the 4-0 loss of Olympakos to Newcastle, or pensioners taking an 8 AM coffee near the Ottoman pump house, or a crane operator trying to figure out how to pluck a sailboat out of the harbor without hitting the high voltage lines. . . none of this needs any more sound than it is already making.  On the other hand, I did enjoy the contrast of watching five mustachioed old men painting a small boat while I listened to the five members of Wu-Tang Clan proclaim “Shame on the Nigga”.  As they debated strategies for fixing the boat’s tiller all I could hear was “Hut one, hut two, hut three HUT! Old Dirty Bastard, live and uncut . . .”

. . .

This is the only sign

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In a similar, Naomi Klein vein:  Despite numerous offers, no Coldplay song has ever been used in a commercial.

Crete Trip IV (long)

During my ten-day stay I formed tentative impressions of three cities on Crete.  Such casual research will really tell more about the observer than the observed but I offer it here anyway.  Here is a comparison of three cities on Crete:
--Agios Nickolaus
--Heraklio
--Hania

AGIOS NICKOLAUS – THE VISTA
Not charming.  This is developed for tourism.  There’s nothing to tell me I’m not in Mexico or Cuba.  There is a dramatic lake in the exact center of downtown.

AGIOS NICKOLAUS – THE PEOPLE
The people are lacking flavor, kind of small town.  Bored teenagers dominate the scene.  This is the Peoria of Greece.  The former US Air Force Base left a crassness here.  They are accustomed to serving foreigners and it feels just like that: they’re serving you.  It’s not exactly pleasant.  Mass tourism stole something from this place.

HERAKLIO – THE VISTA
Pleasing, sort of old.  It immediately looks like the E.U. but with a Greek twist on everything.  Looks like modern Turkey.  Huge Venetian walls from 1500 AD ring the downtown.  The waterfront has many cannon emplacements for killing Turks and Genoans.

HERAKLIO – THE PEOPLE
Urban, lively, modern.  The intelligentsia are in the cafes.  The number of good bookstores is amazing; they could call Iraklion ‘the city of books’.  It’s obviously a university town.  This is the Toronto of Greece.  The paradigm is “we are almost Athens”.  Life is (for Crete) very fast paced,  i.e. the lunch siesta is kept to a strict 3 hours and then back to work.  They’ve entered the 21st Century (or at least the latter 20th) in a healthy, legitimate way.  They have self-respect and treat foreigners as peers.  Orientalism is just a leit motif, Brussels and the E.U. are in the air.  I think the #1 getaway for locals is a weekend in Athens.

HANIA – THE VISTA
Orientalism abounds.  Minarets are everywhere.  One minaret even still has its crescent moon on the peak.  Lots and lots of public benches.  Many old 19th Century statues of Greek Patriots.

HANIA – THE PEOPLE
Men of all ages finger their prayer beads.  The mood is Asiatic rather than European.  Though the town is large you half expect an occaisional donkey cart to appear.  Though reasonably modern, they retain their traditions and it makes them beautiful.  There is supposedly a University here but I think the “town” dominates the “gowns”, unlike in Heraklio.  The year feels like 1960.  These people understand the West and can do the Western thing but everything is underpinned by their intact Hellenic traditions.  I think the #1 getaway for locals is a weekend back in their village.

But are my impressions accurate at all?  I welcome feedback.

Because as a traveler in faraway places, perhaps I only see aspects of my own home.  This is the case in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.  There comes a point when Kublai Khan suspects something is fishy about Marco Polo’s tales of far away cities and he challenges Marco.

“There is still one city of which you never speak,” the Khan said, “Venice.”
Marco Polo smiled.  “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?  Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.”

British Vandal Supreme

Was Banksy in New York recently?
Yes!
How can you tell?
He snuck around Supergluing his own framed works in the city's four most famous museums.

Extra Credit Question From 2001

This is a funny question.  I was looking through some of my old tests that I had written.  This question was given to my 11th Grade Physics students based on a homework assignment they had previously turned in. I just took the data the kids submitted as homework, scrambled it, and asked them to reassemble it on the test.  I think many people got partial credit on this one.

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Extra Credit – Matching (4 points)

There is a Java applet at www.berkeley.edu which can create color mixes on your computer monitor. See if you can match the color description with the “recipe for creating it.

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You must write the appropriate letter from the third column into the first column. For example if you think Christmas tree green is “B”, write B in the blank box in front of Christmas tree.

 

                                                                       

write answ   here	looks like this		recipe of primary   light colors
	christmas tree green	A.	1.00 Red and .40 Green
	eggplant skin (eggplant is   a vegetable, also called obergine)	B.	green =   1.0     red=0.93   blue=0.18
	Homer Simpson's skin	C.	1.0 Red+0.71 Green+0.39   Blue=
	orange	D.	green = 0.42 red =0.18    blue0.60
	Won-Ron's skin	E.	0.5 Blue + 0.5 green + 0.5   red
	Cassie's purple teddy bear	F.	1.00 Red+0.73 Green+ 0.85   Blue
	cement gray color	G.	0.73 Red+ 0.10 Green +   0.85 Blue
	NEHS' uniform shirt	H.	0.14 red +0.36 green

Thanks to JC, Won Ron, Wanshu, Giulio, Jennifer Cheng and Carlyn for the colors. 

. . .