Happy Halloween!

My favourite holiday is this one. My daughter is a make up artist and that is her face above as a zombie. She showed me all these amazing make-up tutorial videos...

Supergroup: Monsters Of Folk

This supergroup is made from some really wonderful wonderful bands like...Bright Eyes...Coner Oberst...My Morning Jacket




Some of the most well-known supergroups include: 1960s groups Cream, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Blind Faith; 1970s groups Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Humble Pie, Cactus and Bad Company; the 1980s & 1990s groups The Firm, Traveling Wilburys, Dokken, Asia, Power Station, and The Highwaymen; 2000s groups A Perfect Circle, Audioslave, Velvet Revolver, and Zwan.

Maybe the most famous supergroup ever is...the album "Super Session" with Al Kooper, Stephen Stills, Mike Bloomfeild...and earlier...the Million Dollar Quartet...

DJ Spooky

Stagg turned me on to this really cool interview of DJ Spooky talking about making his new album.

p.s. I have responded to more comments about "the future" in the previous post...and will check back to that set of comments...

Inevitable Rising Gas Prices Makes Our Lives Better!

You know, people are funny. We can discuss how driving is bad for the environment...and is a waste of our money...but people will still keep driving.

But...a savvy armchair anthropologist will know that all human activity, including rituals, are directly a response to economic and earthly factors.

When gas costs too much humans will stop driving.

People drove 1 billion less miles in 2008 compared to 2007.

Your bathroom cabinets are made from oil. Your wind protective jacket is made from oil. Your digital camera is made from oil. Your computer keyboard is made from oil.

$4.00 a gallon was the stick that broke the American carmakers.

$6.00 a gallon over 4000 lives will be saved. That is more people saved than died in the World Trade Center bombing. These lives will be saved because less people will be driving and less vehicle accidents will occur.

$7.00 a gallon people will abandon the suburbs. 10,000 lives will be saved from less car crashes and less air pollution. We'll save 30 billion on obesity related diseases. People will lose weight.

$8.00 a gallon gas will crush the airline industry.

$9.00 outsourced jobs market will disolve. The job economy in U.S. will expand for green jobs and it will be cheaper to make a computer in America than ship it from China. Jobs will return to home soils.

$14.00 a gallon Walmart will be abandoned "ghost boxes".

$18.00 a gallon high-speed railroads will serve our travel needs.

$20.00 a gallon we just don't do oil anymore. People who will do the least amount of adjusting in the future are those who already live more sustainable lives. Where you live largely determines how you live. Buying solar panels for a house at the far edge of the suburbs, for instance, won't alter how the future affects you. Moving to a walkable neighborhood where groceries, your kids' schools, your office or a train are all within several blocks-that's a change you'll profit from and a place where the future will be kinder.

The mounting cost of gas will dictate cultural changes, housing changes, civic changes, education changes--it will leave nary a spot on the globe, or how we live, unchanged. Not all of the change we face is gloomy. In fact, many people's lives, including many Americans' lives, will be improved across a panoply of facets. We will get more exercise, breathe fewer toxins, eat better food and make a smaller impact on our earth. Giant businesses will rise as entrepreneurs' intrepid minds elegantly solve our society's mounting challenges as gasoline prices inevitably rise, changing the world economy and our lives forever. The world's next Google or Microsoft , the next great disrupter and megacompany, could well be conceived in this saga. It could be a battery company, a breakthrough solar outfit or a radically innovative vehicle manufacturer. This revolution will be so widespread and affect so many that it will evoke the Internet's rise in the late 1990s.

But this revolution will be even bigger than that. The Internet allowed us to buy a book online, to peruse information at will and with speed. The rising price of gasoline, however, will reshape your house, your car, your town, your stores, your job, your life. America has never seen so great an innovation spur as escalating petroleum prices. This tale will bring with it all the global impact of a World War and its inherent technology evolutions--minus all the death. Some people even welcome oil's coming paucity and expense as one of humankind's grand experiments. And, in fact, it will be so. The future will be exhilarating.



Related Links:

1) Interview with author Chris Steiner
2) Los Angeles Times
3) YouTube interviews...
4) Newsweek
5) The book $20 A Gallon on Amazon. A great interview here too.

Some Busking Paintings

Thought I'd take some close up pictures of the small paintings going out for busking. Stagg has posted some of his on his blog too. I don't usually make small paintings. Frankly...I make really big paintings and I am usually kind of a bitch about it...I just plain prefer to work really large scale. But....I have to admit...making some small paintings for busking has been quite a fun project for me after all. Stagg and I are knocking out the paintings. He tends to be prolific and I tend to be well...I work at quite a different pace. BUT...I am a monster fast painter if I want. I used to do contract work of murals and specialty paintings for like twenty years. i can paint anything. I'm an utter animal. But...I do tend to prefer to poke about and day dream when I paint. But I've applied my work ethic of mural painting to these small paintings. It's really been a hoot. Stagg and I actually are running out of space knocking these things out...and it feels every bit as fun to me as making a large painting! (remember I'm making fucking wallpaper...and it's like a 100 feet long so far...so putting my heart and soul into a small painting was a real attitude adjustment for me ha ha). Most of these paintings are less than 18" and many are about 12".

Okay...above can you see a glow on the wall behind the painting? I was aiming for one of those 90's cars where they had the neon border under the chasis. Remember those?

I just laid this painting on the scanner. The scanner doesn't translate flourescent paint...so the scratchy grey in this image above is actually flourescent orange. You can get an idea of the small scale of these paintings by the brush stokes in this detail. The canvas is built to be hung across a corner...so the back frame is beveled. I doubt in a million years i would hang a painting across a corner of two walls. I just don't get that, heh. BUT I painted it so the beveled frame would have some function visually. I just made this one and haven't had it outside. I have no idea if it will attract anyone. Should be interesting.

There...maybe you can see the effect of the flourescent paint reflecting on the wall in the above picture?

This painting above is dear to me...because it is made from a prop from one of my short films. No one seems interested in it, which is kind of a relief. I mean...part of me doesn't want to let it go for less than $100. The thing is "business wise"...objects are worth what people will pay for them. It's not personal, that's just the way people function. Artists included. So far...no one wants this piece of historical artifact for $10 nevermind a $100 heh heh. So, We were taking this out for a few weeks with no interest. I'm putting it off the market until the day I think I can get $100 for it. I also think...people want the paintings done on the small canvases. (the painting made from a prop is painted on hardboard). People tending to buy paintings on canvas makes sense because it is the traditional format that peple are familiar with, plus...they are ready to hang. With paintings on boards the buyer would have to deal with a frame or a more challenging device for hanging. We should probably stick to small cananvases...we haven't sold anything that wasn't on a canvas. Not rocket science...just a pattern recognized so far. Busking has a traditional history and format...plus variables one picks up with the actual experience of being outside talking with people.

This one is just plain silly with my manga chick on it. So far..it's not like we can predict what will appeal to one person or another. People seem to like flowers. I had made a painting with collaged together words, like a made up word...and one of the words was "happytastic"...and I thought no way anyone else is going to find that funny. I mean in a lot of ways my paintings are not far removed from my "opinions" ha ha ha...so you know, I am aware I annoy some people, heh heh. But the "happytastic" painting was outside for about 5 minutes and snatched up. Go figure. I didn't even get a picture to archive it. I thought I'd have lots of time to take a picture later.

Stagg Update

Stagg is doing WAY better. The acupuncturist was really impressed when came for his second visit and he just looked like almost completely better. I've updated this post as I just wanted to let visitors who might have popped by know he's doing better...

Cheesehead Land

I am not crazy about big stores. But...because the store above is empolyee owned I was excited to go and check it out. It's such a big store...I don't know if this picture will capture it. You might have to click on it to see how strangely huge this store is...my hands were sore after we walked around from pushing the cart so far...and my feet hurt! But it was very interesting, like visiting another planet. A planet with a lot of cheese! I was really impressed that this store had one of the biggest organic sections I've ever seen. I got lots of amazing Wisconsin organic cheese and yogourt for even more amazing prices. Mmm...yogourt...

Word

This blog is no stranger to struggle for gay marriage rights. Come on people...let's get this together. We need medical health support for all citizens. We need to show tolerance and love by supporting gay marriage. And we need to stop eating so much fucking corn. And we have alternatives to driving with oil.

Up with people!

Artist Made Car

Competition

Where's Stagg?

Can you see Stagg? Click on the image to see him better. To see the awesome busking spot we found go to his blog.... More pics there...

Hip Hip Hooray! A New John Irving Novel

Irvine Welsh on Irving...

C'mon...Let's Dance!

Check this out...new song by Duck Sauce...now thats smootttthhhh


Above is A-Trak from Montreal...and below is Van Helden from Boston. What a great collaboration to make NY-based Duck Sauce!

Attention Cat Lovers

You have to see my friend Rauf's pictures of his kitten...wonderful! I am so glad he has such a gorgeous and funny room mate!

Music Mashups

Flyer for Bootie, the first bootleg mashup club in the United States, launched in San Francisco in 2003.

I am addicted to mashups. I pretty much only play mashups when I've got iTunes going in the studio and house. We have a few mashup cds and I always look around on the internet for more mashups.

A mashup is a song or composition created by blending two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another.

Here is a really good mashup with John Cougar Mellancamp and 50 Cent.



And here is a really smooth very effective mashup of Jimi Hendrix and Snoop Dogg...I LOVE it!





I was looking for the mashup of Steppenwolf and Madonna...and I found this whack video. someone calls it the worst video ever, but I thought it was really funny.


No images here but this is an awesome mashup of Wu Tang Clan and Johnny Cash.

Related Links:

1) Mashups...bastard or "bastard pop" history at wiki
2) team 9
#) Good Blimey

The Skylark Bookclub: Next Book!

Zowie, It's my turn to select a book for our reading club. The YouTube movie Kymatica is a pretty tough act to follow but I have chosen Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

Ishmael is interesting for a number of reason. It's got a huge cult following especially in the 1990's by alternative, environmentally and ethically savvy young people. (Pearl Jam's album Yeild was dedicated to the novel). I was always amazed in the Vancouver book store I used to work in how quickly the book would be ordered and would sell. This novel is not the most fancypants "literary" novel...it's no McCarthy or De Lillo...but it's much more accessible and probably more enjoyable to read. Plus, it's a novel that tends to really get under the skin of humanist and compassionate thinkers. (I'm not saying anyone is an asshole if they don't like this novel...but it does tend to attract and interest people who are concerned about "how to live" and how to "do the right thing")

One time I was serving some politicians at a bar I used to work at. They were from the Green Party and NDP. They were having an informal meeting and I said I wouldn't vote for any of them unless they had read a couple books I really wanted them to read. They asked me which books, one of them was Ishmael...and all of them had read the novel. Well...of course they had! heh heh...silly me...

(now some of the other books on my list were pending...)

20th Anniversary Of The Best Tv Show Ever!

Tonight is The Simpsons annual Halloween episode. One of my favouite themes on the program.

Agent Mulder: 'We want you to recreate your every move the night you saw this alien.'
Homer: 'Well, the evening began at the gentleman's club, where we were discussing Wittgenstein over a game of backgammon.'
Mulder: 'Mr Simpson, it's a felony to lie to the FBI.'
Homer: 'We were sitting in Barney's car eating packets of mustard. Ya happy?'

Related Links:

1) Vanity Fair article, "Simpson Family Values" and 10 Best Episodes
2) Guest stars on the show...including Dick Cavett, Meryl Streep, Kathleen Turner, Sonic Youth, Donald Sutherland, Stephen Jay Gould, Paul Newman, The Ramones...well...it's gotta be the most amazing guest show list maybe that any show...
3) 300 reasons The Observer loves The Simpsons.
4) The Simpsons in the classroom...teaching satire...
5) A little ditty about Thomas Pynchon on The Simpsons and other revenges...by Matt Selmann
6) Pynchon’s stance has been interpreted as an act of rebellion against a certain type of literary criticism, championed by Sainte-Beuve, which interprets literary works through biographical study of the author. His refusal to be “observed by the Public Eye” has also become a thorough repudiation of American celebrity and the corporate forces behind it. In contemporary America, where most Americans would sell their souls to star on reality TV, Pynchon stands almost alone, rejecting the attention, fame, and money which he could easily attain, metaphorically pissing on the corporate boardroom table, like his character, Roger Mexico, near the end of Gravity’s Rainbow. But each of Pynchon’s books blends gravity with levity, and the master seems to have spoken to us to deliver one simple commandment: never take The Simpsons, or Thomas Pynchon, too seriously. From here...

Video Mash-Ups

Every Single God Damned Shit Fucking Dude. This is brilliant you must watch it...

Cool Rules: Anatomy Of An Attitude

The chart above is from a book called Cool Rules: Anatomy of An Attitude by David Robbins and Dick Pountain. To read the above chart Cool, click on the image.


What do Humphrey Bogart with a cigarette, Bertholt Brecht, Marlene Dietrich's cheekbones, Billie Holiday, James Dean, Lenny Bruce's irony, Eldridge Cleaver, Chrissie Hynde, heroin and gangsta rap all have in common? They are, for lack of a more precise word, cool.
Cool is by no means solely an American phenomenon, although its modern manifestation was incubated among black American jazz musicians during the 1930s and 1940s and finally injected into white youth culture during the 1950s by Elvis Presley and rock 'n' roll.

Whichever way you spell it, it's as well to remember that the word cool is not merely another way of saying 'good'. It comes with baggage - an alternative set of values which are often profoundly in conflict with official values. For example it is not very smart for a political party to carelessly promote Cool Britannia when it is also committed to a policy of reducing drug abuse. Creative directors in advertising have by now an almost perfect understanding of the power of Cool to sell products to young people, profound enough that they seldom need to brandish the raw word itself (which could be construed as rather Uncool). Indeed they have become so expert at suggesting the attitude through surrealistic imagery and veiled drug references that many television advertisements are now all but incomprehensible to anyone over 30. The agencies understand that to be perceived as Cool demands precisely such a conspiratorial pact with their target viewers, and it is highly significant that Levi Strauss has regained its lost ground with the cryptic but hugely popular 'Flat Eric' advertising campaign, featuring a battered old car (take that Jeremy Clarkson), no words and a stuffed toy with attitude. From What is Cool? NYTs


Related Links:

1) Cool Aesthetic, Wiki page
2) Obituary for one of the authors,David Robbins of Anatomy of Cool
3) Read Cool Rules online
4) Italian Sprezzatura
5) Flâneur

Python

Monty Pyhton were on Regis and Kelly this morning and they were so funny and silly and like teenagers or something. I've tried to find it on YouTube but no luck yet...so here is a clip from their show...and from the best sit com ever...Fawlty Towers...and Terry Gilliam's new movie trailer...The guys are promoting a new IFC documentarry called "Almost The Truth: The Lawyer's Cut"

AFI : CRASH LOVE : MEDICATE

AFI : Now Playing : MEDICATE

Shared via Cell Phone

I love AFI's new album. It's called "Crash Love" which I think is such a cool title.

Perfect music for Halloween! And great music for lying in bed and staring at the ceiling...or dancing. Now that's an accomplishment!

Jim Carroll, R.I.P.

I didn't know till now that Jim Caroll had passed away.

Jim Carroll was an author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician. Carroll was best known for his 1978 autobiographical work The Basketball Diaries, which was made into the 1995 film of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Carroll.

On September 13 (the day his death was announced), it was stated that he was at his desk working when he died.



8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain by Jim Carroll

1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance

Pills and powdres only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift

Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese whiz and guns

Whose triggers are shaped tenderly into a false lust
In timeless illusion

2/
The guitar claws kept tightening, I guess on your heart stem.
The loops of feedback and distortion, threaded right thru
Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverbrating
In your mind

And from the stage
All the faces out front seemed so hungry
With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding

From where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving

And instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth's own blood
And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds

3/
You should have talked more with the monkey
He's always willing to negotiate
I'm still paying him off...
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings

Your will could have sped it up...
But you left that in a plane
Because it wouldn't pass customs and immigration

4/
Here's synchronicity for you:

Your music's tape was inside my walkman
When my best friend from summer camp
Called with the news about you

I listened them...
It was all there!
Your music kept cutting deeper and deeper valleys of sound
Less and less light
Until you hit solid rock

The drill bit broke
and the valley became
A thin crevice, impassible in time,
As time itself stopped.

And the walls became cages of brilliant notes
Pressing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you

5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"

The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun

6/
And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that's where the pain came from
That's where the demons were digging

The world outside was blank
Its every cause was just a continuation
Of another unsolved effect

7/
But Kurt...
Didn't the thought that you would never write another song
Another feverish line or riff
Make you think twice?
That's what I don't understand
Because it's kept me alive, above any wounds

8/
If only you hadn't swallowed yourself into a coma in Roma...
You could have gone to Florence
And looked into the eyes of Bellinni or Rafael's Portraits

Perhaps inside them
You could have found a threshold back to beauty's arms
Where it all began...

No matter that you felt betrayed by her

That is always the cost
As Frank said,
Of a young artist's remorseless passion

Which starts out as a kiss
And follows like a curse

New York Times tribute.

Avatar

Latin Music USA

PBS has an awesome special on Latin music this week. If you can't see it on tv then just do not pass go do not collect $200 just order the dvd at the link here! It's that good.

2 Tone

The rise of the British National Front and the racist rhetoric of former Conservative politician Enoch Powell preyed on the paranoia and resentment of economically marginalized whites. An apparently drunk Eric Clapton fanned the flames, cautioning a 1976 Birmingham audience that England was in danger of becoming "a black colony" and encouraging support of Powell, which in part prompted the formation of Rock Against Racism. In the spring of 1978, the organization drew 100,000 demonstrators to a rally headlined by the Clash in London's Victoria Park. From SPIN Magazine

2 Tone music was a really exciting time in music. I saw The English Beat and Madness a couple of times each when they played The Concert Hall in Toronto back in the day. There were a number of us punks and misfits who thought Eric Clapton was a cunt back then. Actually, maybe I never really got over that comment he made about race...I can't stand that "unplugged" album he made that was so massively popular in the 90's. YAWN. This months SPIN Magazine has an article that I thought Four Dinners would enjoy and not know about in England. Here you go Four Dinners...click here...

(P.s. 4 Dins, if this isn't the whole article I'll scan it for you next week after I get my scanner up and running...)


:)



And of course there was this amazing song about one of the biggest cunts in the world...Margeret Thatcher..

Happy Thanksgiving!

I love this holiday.

Mohawk protestors thwarted an attempt to deliver a new police station building to Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory on Thursday.
Confrontations between the protesters and police including the Tyendinaga police force and the OPP earlier in the day lead to a temporary closing of York Rd. By 4:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon however, the scene around the York Rd. location was more like a family picnic after police presence had ended.
“We want the band council to get its priorities straight,” Dan Doreen, spokesman for the protestors, said, “Our kids can't drink the water at the Quinte Mohawk School. We have been protesting this police station for over a year now.”
Chief Maracle of the Mohawk Territory was not available for comment to The Pioneer.
The protestors claim that there has been a lack of consultation in the community over the purchase of the new portable building. Initial plans were to deliver the building about a year ago. Protests at the time successfully delayed the delivery.
The buildings have been temporarily stored at the 10-Acre Truck Stop west of Belleville for the Thanksgiving weekend.

Protest Video

Aspic, Headcheese and Other Nightmares

My grandmother could suspend any food in clear geletin. It was some kind of badge of honour for her. She absolutely loved a food unit called headcheese. It's not cheese. It's head parts floating in strange thickened jelly. My grandmother was really skinny but she still managed to suffer from gout. I loved telling people my grandmother had gout and teasing my grandmother about it because it was always something I associate with medeval robber barons or some wealthy royalty in the Rennaisance.

I always checked "behind the curtain" when my grandmother was cooking because she was evil in being able to make the most repulsive sounding body parts and food taste amazing. And I used to try and avoid any scary food I thought she was smuggling into my system.

The scariest thing my grandmother cooked...who I must really qualify was an amazing chef...but like a lot of great chefs they love making scary food...

Sorry...about tangent ...but the scariest thing my grandmother made was a real party favourite with her girlfriends and her when they played bridge. When my grandmother had a bridge party the dreaded jelly salad was not far away. Jelly salad. Doesn't that just sound wrong? My grandmother had one ridiculous recipe she made which had avacados, lime jello, marshmellows and god knows what else. I'm not making thisup. It was something she found in a magazine in the 1960's. I ate it...but it was hideous. And my sister and I have been known to fall on the floor laughing remembering this hideous salad. Some day I'm going to surprise my sister and show up at her door with this nightmare party favour.

And this bloody salad came to my memory this week when we met up for book club this week. We all met up at a friends house to discuss YouTube movie Kymatica. (click on hyper text to watch all 9 segments. We had a potluck dinner together before our discussion, very nice). I made some pesto...but I also made some deviled eggs. I had the clear container especially designed above for transporting deviled eggs. Yeah, really, they make containers for deviled eggs. It was funny because I took public transit and everyone was staring at these deviled eggs and smiling. When I got downtown to transfer a homeless guy asked "Are those deviled eggs?" I said, "Yep" and he said" I love deviled eggs" And I said, "Well you better have one then". I thought of my grandmothers crazy jelly salad because I wasn't sure if my container was for transporting deviled eggs or setting aspic. It's probably for eggs because it's so huge and thin...but I could easily imagine that Green jello/avacado/marshmellow salad in it. Shudder.


Aspic is a dish in which ingredients are set into a gelatin made from a meat stock or consommé. It is also known as cabaret.
When cooled, stock made from meat congeals because of the natural gelatin found in the meat. The stock can be clarified with egg whites, and then filled and flavored just before the aspic sets. Almost any type of food can be set into aspics. Most common are meat pieces, fruits, or vegetables. Aspics are usually served on cold plates so that the gel will not melt before being eaten. A meat jelly that includes cream is called a chaud-froid. Historically, meat jellies were made before fruit and vegetable jellies. By the Middle Ages at the latest, cooks had discovered that a thickened meat broth could be made into a jelly. A detailed recipe for aspic is found in Le Viandier, written in around 1375.
Aspic is an ingredient rather than a dish. Aspic, made from clarified stock and gelatin, is used for many things; it can be used as a binder to hold other ingredients together in terrines, or sealers in such foods as pate en croute.



Deviled eggs
The origin of deviled eggs can't be attributed to one specific person, company, date or town. It is a culinary amalgam of history and taste. The concept of deviled eggs begins with Ancient Rome. Spicy stuffed eggs were known in 13th century Andalusia. The name is an 18th century invention.

Not long after the Ancient Greeks and Romans domesticated fowl, egg dishes of all kinds figured prominently in cookery texts. Eggs were eaten on their own (omelets, scrambled) and employed as congealing agents (custard, flan, souffles). The ancestor of deviled eggs? Ancient Roman recipes for boiled (to various degrees) eggs served with spices poured on top:

"Boiled eggs. Are seasoned with broth, oil, pure wine, or are served with broth, pepper and laser."
--Apicius: Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome, edited and translated by Joseph Dommers Vehling [Dover:New York] 1977 (p. 180)
"Soft-boiled eggs," The Classical Cookbook, Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger [J.Paul Getty Museum:Los Angeles] 1996 (p. 177)
---features pine kernels, lovage, celery leaf, fish sauce, honey, white wine vinegar, and black pepper

"Pine nut sauce for medium-boiled eggs," A Taste of Ancient Rome, Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa, translated by Anna Herklotz [University of Chicago:Chicago] 1992 (p. 47)
---features medium boiled eggs, pine nuts, vinegar, honey, pepper & lovage

The first recipes for stuffed, hard-boiled were printed in medieval European texts. These cooks stuffed their eggs with raisins, cheese and sweet spices. Platina's De Honesta Voluptate [15th century Italian text] instructs cooks thusly:

"28. Stuffed eggs
Make fresh eggs hard by cooking for a long time. Then, when the shells are removed, cut the eggs through the middle so that the white is not damaged. When the yolks are removed, pound part with raisins and good cheese, some fresh and some aged. Reserve part to color the mixture, and also add a little finely cut parsley, marjoram, and mint. Some put in two or more egg whites withspices. When the whites of the eggs have been stuffed with this mixture and closed, fry them over slow fire in oil. When they have been fried, add a sauce made from the rest of the egg yolks pounded with raisins and moistened with verjuice and must. Put in ginger, cloves, and cinnamon and heat them a little while with the eggs themselves. This has more harm than good in it."
---Platina: on the Right Pleasure and Good Health, Critical edition and translation of De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine, Mary Ella Milham [Medival & Renaissance Texts & Studies:Tempe AZ] 1998
The Making of Stuffed Eggs, An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century, translated by Charles Perry

The practice of hard boiling eggs was popular in Tudor England: "By the later sixteenth century the boiling of eggs in their shells in water had become a common practice. Prepared thus they were more digestible that roasted eggs; but less so than poached eggs, which always earned the highest praise form the medical men."
---Food and Drink in Britain, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago Publishers:Chicago] 1991 (p. 144) From The Food Timeline


Speaking of scary...that is our dinner above simmering away. It's poached chicken in za'atar and beer. Just throw together sumac, ground black sesame seeds, kosher organic sea salt and thyme. Yum!

Related Links:

1) Hideous recipe for Green Jelly Salad...
2) Avacado lime jello recipe, gag...
3) Jello-Salad
4) More scary Granny recipes...

Las Vegas Anniversary

Yep...a year ago today Stagg and I woke up in Las Vegas and went downtown to the courthouse and got our marriage licence. I've got better pictures than these two, which we took obviously later at a Vegas chapel...where Bon Jovi got married...but I need to get ink for scanner...it won't even scan right now if I don't have ink. So here are two photos from the catalogue where I ordered the fancy copies without the word "proof". However, I'm rather fond of the word "proof" tamped all over the pics...


Casino hopping...

This is the woman who helped us find wedding rings at SEARS. No shit, we got our wedding rings at SEARS.

Front "yard" of the threshold Stagg carried me over...I love this courtyard entrance...

Back "yard"...we have a fire escape we often sit outside on and here is the view...

Um, that is me on the balcony of our hotel one morning in Las Vegas wearing a "bride" baseball cap...

Canadian Porn!

Now...this is what I call good fucking eh tv. Battle of The Blades is a little bit like that old movie (written by Tony Gilroy btw) The Cutting Edge where a figure skater is paired up with a hockey player. One of the best segments was watching the guys try to skate with picks. Hilarious!

Battle of the Blades is a Canadian figure skating reality show and competition that airs on CBC Television. It is broadcast from in front of a live studio audience at the historic Maple Leaf Gardens.
Premiering 4 October 2009, the series resembles the international reality show Dancing with the Stars. A number of former NHL players are paired with prominent female figure skaters and perform routines.
The show is hosted by Hockey Night in Canada's Ron MacLean and four-time World Figure Skating Champion Kurt Browning.
The judges for competition are Sandra Bezic, Kelly Hrudey, and Dick Button.

Anne Frank In Archival Footage

Oh what a beautiful piece of film. Thank you to a friend in Alberta who sent me this today. Anne Frank can be seen on a little balcony above the street watching a newly married pair of neighbours walk out into the street. I am so amazed...look how vibrant the street is and busy and full of life. The date is July 22, 1941. It's so incredible to see the life force and people moving so freely in the Amsterdam street. It's impossible and heart breaking to me to imagine how different things will be in such a short time in the future from this very moment.

This video can be found at the official Anne Frank YouTube page. Isn't YouTube AWESOME!?

Why Carl Jung?

Carl Jung is a massive figure or "rite of passage" for many art students. Whether one comes to any conclusion about Jung's thoughts or theories...an art student would be unlikely to have not encountered a teacher or fellow student who wasn't exploring Jung's ideas.

Carl Jung gave respect to feelings and dreams and the inner life of the human being. If only for that contribution to the practice of studying or observing the human condition he is a remarkable thinker.

For me Jung was interesting because he articulated something that I only felt intuitively as a child in museums and art galleries. This is that patterns, themes, content and form seem to have common elements around the world. I love folk lore and Jung gave oral narratives, non-agricultural based artwork validity in many ways. Jung respected artmaking and storytelling from all kinds of cultures, social classes and pre-literate or non-verbal languages. Although I haven't given a lot of thought to Carl Jung in many years...I am very curious about this new publication of The Red Book. I absolutely love the trailer for the book above how it is made with seriousness and with a little fun anecdotes thrown in.The publication of The Red Book is a book lovers wet dream and any book geek will likely be pretty excited about this event. The video cure does capture the feeing of an momentous event or spectacle. I hope visitors check out the video above...it's really quite well done and a lot of fun! Here is the Amazon link for The Red Book




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Here are some note from Wikipedia for those not familiar with this ever-controversial figure Carl Jung.


In 1913, when he was 38, Jung experienced a horrible "confrontation with the unconscious". He saw visions and heard voices. He worried at times that he was "menaced by a psychosis" or was "doing a schizophrenia". He decided that it was valuable experience, and in private, he induced hallucinations, or, in his words, "active imaginations". He recorded everything he felt in small journals. In 1914, Jung began to transcribe his notes into a large red leather-bound book, which he worked on, on and off, for sixteen years.

When he died, Jung left no instructions about what to do with what he called the "Red Book". His family eventually moved it to a bank vault in 1984. Sonu Shamdasani, a historian from London, for three years tried to convince Jung's heirs to publish it—they generally said no to every hint of an inquiry about it, and as of mid-September 2009 only about two dozen people had seen it. But Ulrich Hoerni, Jung's grandson who manages the Jung archives, decided to publish it. When money ran low, the Philemon Foundation was founded and raised more.

In 2007, two technicians for DigitalFusion, working with the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, painstakingly scanned one-tenth of a millimeter at a time with a 10,200-pixel scanner. It was published on October 7, 2009 in German with "separate English translation along with Shamdasani's introduction and footnotes" at the back of the book, according to Sara Corbett for The New York Times. She wrote, "The book is bombastic, baroque and like so much else about Carl Jung, a willful oddity, synched with an antediluvian and mystical reality."

The Rubin Museum of Art in New York City will display the original and Jung's original small journals from October 7, 2009 to January 25, 2010. According to them, "During the period in which he worked on this book Jung developed his principal theories of archetypes, collective unconscious, and the process of individuation." Two-thirds of the pages bear Jung's illuminations of the text.


Jung had many friends and respected colleagues who were Jewish and he maintained relations with them through the 1930s when anti-semitism in Germany and other European nations was on the rise. However, until 1939, he also maintained professional relations with psychotherapists in Germany who had declared their support for the Nazi régime and there were allegations that he himself was a Nazi sympathizer. In his work 'Civilisation in Transition, Collected Works Volume X', however, Jung wrote of “… the Aryan bird of prey with his insatiable lust to lord it in every land, even those that concern him not at all."[

There are writings that show that Jung's sympathies were against, rather than for, Nazism. In his 1936 essay "Wotan", Jung described Germany as "infected" by "one man who is obviously 'possessed'...", and as "rolling towards perdition", and wrote "...what a so-called Führer does with a mass movement can plainly be seen if we turn our eyes to the north or south of our country." The essay does, however, speak in more positive terms of Jakob Wilhelm Hauer and his German Faith Movement which was loyal to Hitler.

He would later describe the Führer thus: "Hitler seemed like the 'double' of a real person, as if Hitler the man might be hiding inside like an appendix, and deliberately so concealed in order not to disturb the mechanism ... You know you could never talk to this man; because there is nobody there ... It is not an individual; it is an entire nation." In 1943, Jung aided the United States Office of Strategic Services by analyzing the psychology of Nazi leaders.

In an interview with Carol Baumann in 1948, Jung denied rumors regarding any sympathy for the Nazi movement, saying:
It must be clear to anyone who has read any of my books that I have never been a Nazi sympathizer and I never have been anti-Semitic, and no amount of misquotation, mistranslation, or rearrangement of what I have written can alter the record of my true point of view. Nearly every one of these passages has been tampered with, either by malice or by ignorance. Furthermore, my friendly relations with a large group of Jewish colleagues and patients over a period of many years in itself disproves the charge of anti-Semitism.

A full response from Jung discounting the rumors can be found in C.G Jung Speaking, Interviews and Encounters, Princeton University Press, 1977.

Jung recommended spirituality as a cure for alcoholism and he is considered to have had an indirect role in establishing Alcoholics Anonymous. Jung once treated an American patient (Rowland Hazard III), suffering from chronic alcoholism. After working with the patient for some time and achieving no significant progress, Jung told the man that his alcoholic condition was near to hopeless, save only the possibility of a spiritual experience. Jung noted that occasionally such experiences had been known to reform alcoholics where all else had failed.

Rowland took Jung's advice seriously and set about seeking a personal spiritual experience. He returned home to the United States and joined a Christian evangelical Re-Armament movement known as the Oxford Group. He also told other alcoholics what Jung had told him about the importance of a spiritual experience. One of the alcoholics he brought into the Oxford Group was Ebby Thacher, a long-time friend and drinking buddy of Bill Wilson, later co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Thacher told Wilson about the Oxford Group, and through them Wilson became aware of Hazard's experience with Jung. The influence of Jung thus indirectly found its way into the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous, the original twelve-step program, and from there into the whole twelve-step recovery movement, although AA as a whole is not Jungian and Jung had no role in the formation of that approach or the twelve steps.

The above claims are documented in the letters of Carl Jung and Bill W., excerpts of which can be found in Pass It On, published by Alcoholics Anonymous. Although the detail of this story is disputed by some historians, Jung himself made reference to its substance — including the Oxford Group participation of the individual in question — in a talk that was issued privately in 1954 as a transcript from shorthand taken by an attender (Jung reportedly approved the transcript), later recorded in Volume 18 of his Collected Works, The Symbolic Life ("For instance, when a member of the Oxford Group comes to me in order to get treatment, I say, 'You are in the Oxford Group; so long as you are there, you settle your affair with the Oxford Group. I can't do it better than Jesus.'" Jung goes on to state that he has seen similar cures among Roman Catholics.

Literature
-Jung had a 16-year-long friendship with the author Laurens van der Post from which a number of books and a film were created about Jung's life.
-Hermann Hesse, author of works such as Siddhartha and Der Steppenwolf, was treated by Dr. Joseph Lang, a student of Jung. This began for Hesse a long preoccupation with psychoanalysis, through which he came to know Jung personally.[54]
-James Joyce in his Finnegans Wake, asks "Is the Co-education of Animus and Anima Wholly Desirable?" his answer perhaps being contained in his line "anama anamaba anamabapa." The book also ridicules Jung's analytical psychology and Freud's psychoanalysis by referring to "psoakoonaloose." Jung had been unable to help Joyce's daughter, Lucia, who Joyce claimed was a girl "yung and easily freudened." Lucia was diagnosed as schizophrenic and was eventually permanently institutionalized.
-Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man can be read as an ironic parody of Jung's "four stages of eroticism."
-Jung appears as a character in the novel Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker. He appears as the therapist of Tashi, the novel's protagonist. He is usually called "Mzee" but is identified by Alice Walker in the afterword.
-Morris West's 1983 novel The World is Made of Glass investigates Jung's relationships with a mysterious woman patient, Toni Wolf, and Emma.
-Miguel Serrano had a long standing friendship with both Jung and Hesse, which he recalls in El Circulo Hermetico or Record of Two Friendships.
-Robertson Davies alludes to Jung's ideas in his novel Fifth Business and writes frequently of Jung in his letters.

Art
-The visionary Swiss painter Peter Birkhäuser was treated by a student of Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, and corresponded with Jung regarding the translation of dream symbolism into works of art.
-American Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock underwent Jungian psychotherapy in 1939. His therapist made the decision to engage him through his art, leading to the appearance of many Jungian concepts in his paintings.

Television and film
-Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, one of art cinema's most renowned filmmakers, brought to the screen an exuberant imagery shaped by his encounter with the ideas of Carl Jung, especially Jungian dream interpretation. Fellini preferred Jung to Freud because Jungian psychoanalysis defined the dream not as a symptom of a disease that required a cure but rather as a link to archetypal images shared by all of humanity.
-Jung and his ideas are mentioned often, and sometimes play an integral role, in the television series Northern Exposure. Jung even makes an appearance in one of the character's dreams.
Television programs have been devoted to Jung; for example, in 1984, an edition of the BBC documentary Sea of Faith was about Jung.
-Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket makes a mention of Jungian beliefs when the protagonist, Joker, mentions the duality of man he was displaying by wearing a peace button with 'born to kill' written on his helmet.
Jung and his ideas are referenced in the anime Serial Experiments Lain.[citation needed]
-In the American TV Series "Frasier" the main character, Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) and his brother, Niles Crane (David Hyde Pierce) are both psychiatrists. While Frasier is a disciple of Freud, Niles bases his therapies on Jungian principles.

Music
-An opera, The Dream Healer, based on the book Pilgrim by Timothy Findley, centres on Jung's efforts to bridge the known and unknown aspects of the human mind.
-Jung appears on the cover of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the top row, between W.C. Fields and Edgar Allan Poe.
-Peter Gabriel's song "Rhythm of the Heat" (Security, 1982), tells about Jung's visit to Africa, during which he joined a group of tribal drummers and dancers and became overwhelmed by the fear of losing control of himself. At the time Jung was exploring the concept of the collective unconscious and was afraid he would come under control of the music. Gabriel learned about Jung's journey to Africa from the essay Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams (ISBN 0-691-09968-5). In the song Gabriel tries to capture the powerful feelings the African tribal music evoked in Jung by means of intense use of tribal drumbeats. The original song title was Jung in Africa.
-On the cover of The Police's final album, Synchronicity, which was named after Carl Jung's theory, Sting is seen reading a book called "Synchronicity" by Carl Jung.
-The British composer Michael Tippett was one of the first composers to use Jungian archetypes[citation needed] as the basis for characterisation in his operas, such as The Midsummer Marriage and The Knot Garden. The notion of the Jungian reconciliation of opposites pervades the whole of Tippett's output.
-Mentions of Jung's work in Tool's song Forty-Six & 2

Superstar

This is my favourite Sonic Youth song.



From YouTube:

Todd Haynes [Far from heaven, Safe] burst upon the scene two years after his graduation with his now-infamous 43-minute "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" (1987). Seizing upon the inspired gimmick of using Barbie and Ken dolls to sympathetically recount the story of the pop star's death from anorexia, he spent months making miniature dishes, chairs, costumes, Kleenex and Ex-Lax boxes, and Carpenters' records to create the film's intricate, doll-size mise-en-scene. The result was both audacious and accomplished as the dolls seemingly ceased to be dolls leaving the audience weeping for the tragic singer.

Unfortunately, Richard Carpenter's enmity for the film led to the serving of a "cease and desist" order in 1989, and despite the director's offer "to only show the film in clinics and schools, with all money going to the Karen Carpenter memorial fund for anorexia research," "Superstar" remains buried, one of the few films in modern America that cannot be seen by the general public.