The 82 Hotel

My United States

2010-07-23T14:18:00.000-07:00

Ran into the video for Liam Lynch's "United States of Whatever" via one of the YouTube chains where people lip-synch to it. Lynch was the director of Sarah Silverman's brilliant "Jesus is Magic" concert movie and is a pretty funny songwriter in his own right.

I checked out his "Hard Being God" song on the basis of the title alone, and it should be called "It's Hard Pleasing God." The man upstairs is disillusioned with His creation and disappointed in human evolution ("You guys aren't what I was really aiming for"). So he plans to wipe us out ("Sometimes I'm hardcore") to be eaten and replaced by a new master race of insects. In my opinion He rhapsodizes a little too much about what an improvement they'll be. Whatever.

Birthday Pull-ups

2010-06-06T23:47:00.000-07:00

Consistent practice (the Evil Russian's 5 sets of 5 heavy reps) finally increased my pull-ups to the magic number of 5. I've even been adding 10 or 20 pounds using a dip belt. My goal was to be able to do 10 bodyweight wide-grip pull-ups in a row by my birthday, June 6, so this morning my sons and I hit the bar in the park near our place. Ideally I would have taken a week off my back training before attempting a PR (personal record) but I've been working consistently since April. I managed eight fairly strict reps, then a couple of reps that didn't quite make it over the bar. One good thing about recording the attempt was I got to see some of my bad form: my shoulders are raised and I move my legs too much. We'll try it again in another month.

Here's the Pistols!

2010-05-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

In my continuing quest to challenge my muscles using increasingly difficult bodyweight exercises, I've been building up to doing Pistols, tricky one-legged deep squats. After weeks of doing negatives (meaning descending slowly then falling on my ass) I've finally gotten the hang of balancing, and my legs and knees have gotten strong enough to push me back up. They're hard! I hold a 10 pound dumbbell (meaning one leg is lifting 182 pounds) and I tucker out at about 4 per leg.

Update 6/15: Here's me doing 5 Pistols on my right leg holding 20 pounds.

Mexican Guitarristas Rule

2010-05-16T15:21:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I saw Roderigo y Gabriela on the Lopez show and they rocked the house. Gabriela's rhythm guitar work is even more jaw-dropping in this clip, especially around 1:20 in. The fact that a technique has a name (like triplets) doesn't mean it's not impossible. Personally, I think playing with your knuckles is cheating, as is knowing more than 3 chords.

Body by The Evil Russian

2010-05-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

When the holiday weight did not come off as easily as in past years, I knew I had to do more than walk around the block. According to the scale at the mall I was the heaviest I could remember: 190 pounds in February 2010. Not quite a contender for the Biggest Loser show, and most of the visible fat was conveniently located in my spare tire, but it was time for a weight-loss regimen suitable for somebody in his 40s.

I was teaching a nutrition topic to my Chemistry class; defining carbs, fat, protein and so on. Whatever my shortcomings, when I get interested in something I dive in and don't come up for air until I get my answers. I took out stacks of books from the libraries in my area, and scoured the internet for up-to-date info on nutrition. Books like Eat This, Not That helped my students and me do the math and figure out which restaurants to avoid. Dr. Michael Eades' blog is a chemistry class in itself, but it (and Eades' books) taught me what really makes you fat and convinced me to try the "slow carb" regimen. Handy nutritional tips can be found all over, like Men's Health magazine and its website. I decided to cut way back on my intake, eat small meals and healthy snacks more often and to listen to my body to see what it really needs. I have a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal every morning, quinoa with all my other meals, lean meat, lots of legumes, very little sugar, bread and pasta and no soda. I snack on Greek yogurt, nuts and popcorn, and I have an avocado every day. I find as long as I'm getting all my nutrients I'm not hungry. I give myself a "splurge day" on Saturdays, ostensibly to keep my metabolism from slowing down to adjust to the famine conditions, but mostly so I don't feel completely deprived.

So I was reducing the caloric intake, but I knew I could improve the weight loss by increasing the output, namely exercising. I like walking, hate running and loved riding my bike until it got stolen last year. I hadn't worked out since 1998 when my wife and I joined a gym together and got in great shape. I read Tim Ferriss' blog entry in which he built the "four hour body": he worked out for 30 minutes, twice a week for a month. Whether or not he really got in a full-body workout in a half hour doing such slow reps, there's no arguing with his results. I took it as a suggestion that I could get in shape without dropping hundreds of dollars and spending two hours a day in a gym.

But which exercises would be the most effective in terms of time and energy? For a few weeks I did quick circuits with various exercises, lunging, squatting, curling and pressing with dumbells, getting my heart rate up and burning off a bunch of calories. It was great for my ADD, switching exercises every 30 seconds or so, but it felt aimless. Then I read Power to the People by Pavel "The Evil Russian" Tsatsouline, who doesn't hide his contempt for "booby-builders" in favor of those training for strength, like powerlifters. In Power to the People Tsatsouline recommends only two exercises for full-body strength development. For the lower body, he prescribes the deadlift, and for the upper body the side press, an archaic lift seemingly resurrected from the circus strongmen of the early 1900s. Could a strong, fit body be built from such a meager diet of movements? Where are the seated calf raises? The reverse curls? Not having a weight set or circus nearby, I searched for my own short list of exercises.

In the basement of our building there are a variety of dusty old stationary bikes and a decent weight bench lacking decent weights. But there's also a seemingly brand-new pull-up tower with handles for dips. What did the Evil Russian say about pull-ups? "Knock off your silly seated rows and

lat pull-downs. Focus all your energy into pull-ups." I decided to do pull-ups for my back, shoulders and biceps, and dips for my chest, shoulders

and triceps. Concentrating on these two bodyweight exercises, I could build my upper body better than getting lost among the 900 machines at the 24-Hour Fitness.

Speaking of bodyweight exercises, in another of Pavel's books, The Naked Warrior, there's a one-legged squat variation called the Pistol. I decided the

conventional one-legged squat would meet the weight needs of my leg muscles, since doing the Pistol bends the lifting leg too far for my 43-year old knees (my left knee disliked the Pistol from the first rep). I've concentrated on performing one-legged squats with perfect form (it takes pretty good balance) and I've definitely felt it in my quads, hams and glutes.

My first day in the basement was not promising. I couldn't do a single pull-up. How was I going to do the standard 8 to 12 reps I used to do on the lat pulldown machine? The Evil Russian favors heavy, low rep training, five reps being the ideal. According to his experience, this promotes myofibrillar hypertrophy (dense, strong muscle). High rep training promotes the more cosmetic but weaker sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, which Pavel calls "bloated, soft and useless muscle." If you can't lift the weight, he and others recommend using negatives (the lowering of the weight) to build strength. I used a chair to help myself up to the top of the pull-up, then let go of my legs and lowered my weight using only my lats. The dips went better, and before long I was holding a 10-pound dumbell between my legs to increase the weight. And so it went, day after day, for the month of April. Pull-ups, dips, squats (all following Pavel's up-fast, down-slow instructions), and whatever core exercises I liked. I walked almost every day, even sprinted a few intervals once, and rode my new bike once a week or so. Soon the pool in our complex should be open for the season.

The results so far, after around 2 months on the program: At the end of February I weighed just over 190 pounds, my spare tire spilling over my 34 inch waist pants. On April 27, at 173 pounds, I was fitting comfortably in 32 inch waist pants. The picture on the left was taken March 7, on the right, May 11th. I can now do 5 unassisted pull-ups, and I do dips holding 40 extra pounds. Let's just say my wife is very appreciative of all the effort.

The True King of Rock and Roll

2009-02-19T20:24:00.000-08:00

Why oh why don't we get performances like this on TV anymore? Little Richard, self-professed King of Rock and Roll, covers the Killer and, well, kills it. I can't believe he has enough energy to get through this song, let alone a concert full of woos and yeahs.

Wild Cultures

2009-02-09T07:21:00.000-08:00

Since learning to bake bread 5 or 6 years ago I've always held sourdough to be the ultimate achievement in bread baking. In that time I perfected my pizza dough recipe (using instant yeast), and could use the same dough to make a pretty good loaf of white bread. While the exploits of Adam-real-last-name-unknown in Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential might have been exaggerated, it at least went along with what I had read about the use of pre-ferments (poolish, biga) to improve the taste and texture of bread. My preferred method is to mix the dough and leave it for a long, long proof in a cold fridge. Fermenting dough before baking, however, is really just an attempt to partake of a bit of the sourdough process without adopting it completely.

Part of the problem with the whole topic of sourdough is the name. The bread baked from a "sourdough" starter doesn't have to be sour. Peter Reinhart prefers to call it "wild yeast" to be more exact. For thousands of years bakers had to rely on the single-celled fungi that are in the air, in the flour, even on our skin, to leaven dough. But this process was (and remains) as much an art as a science. Some bakers learned how to cut corners by borrowing the foam from beer brewers for its yeast. In the 1860s the Fleischmanns figured out how to cultivate and dry "brewers yeast" and revolutionized the baking industry.

But, convenient as commercial yeast makes baking, it's not the same animal (ok, plant) as wild yeast, and there are purists out there who claim this shift was the beginning of the decline of bread. There are studies to suggest that they have a point: one indicates people with Celiac disease can safely eat wild-yeast bread, and another suggests that because of the increase of lactic acid and the reduction of simple carbohydrates produced by the sourdough process,wild-yeast bread could be of benefit to diabetics. Accomplished bakers like Ed Wood, a scientist living in Idaho, recommend using wild yeast exclusively and avoiding "contaminating" your bread with commercial yeast. Dr. Wood worked with National Geographic on a project concerning a bakery on the building site of the pyramids in Egypt. He successfully captured the still-abundant yeasts from the site, and they are among the international cultures you can buy from his company, Sourdoughs International. His book, Classic Sourdoughs, is a classic of its own for its straightforward and sensible approach to this seemingly complicated field.

A few weeks ago I was bitten by the sourdough bug again, and borrowed every book available through my library system on the topic. There's plenty of contradictory advice from writers on just about every step in the process, from starting the culture and keeping it active, to making the dough. Everybody has their own opinion concerning the proper method of capturing wild yeast for your own culture, with some authors complicating the process with grapes or pineapple juice. I don't doubt these procedures work, but I followed the method that had worked for me before. I simply combined a little flour and water into a ball of dough the size of a golf ball, put it into a jar, covered it with plastic wrap and left it on my counter for a few days. After "feeding" it with a little more flour and water and leaving it for a few more days I could tell from the air bubbles that my yeast colony was active.

From there I had to find out how much starter I needed to have in order to make a loaf of bread. Some bakers use only a tablespoon or two and build it up from there, others use as much as two cups. Again, I don't doubt this or that recipe, but I just needed an easy template to work from. Classic Sourdoughs seemed to have the easiest: every recipe starts off with wild-yeast culture in liquid or sponge form (thinner or thicker consistency, respectively), to which you add a little flour and water and let it proof for 12 hours. You "build" it up again with more flour and water, and let it proof for 8 more hours. Then you add the rest of the ingredients (salt, other flours, sometimes oil or eggs), form your loaves and let them rise for another 1 - 4 hours until fully proofed. Bake, cool and eat. There is nothing difficult about any step in the process, but it takes a bit of planning ahead.

With small alterations, this is the formula for everything from San Francisco sourdough and rye bread to sourdough pancakes and cinnamon rolls. I've made the San Francisco recipe (great, but not sour), pizza dough (the crust came out nice and soft, but my wife thought it was bland compared to my usual recipe), and Middle Eastern pitas (I used whole wheat flour - delicious with a little tang). Wood's method doesn't require thrice-daily feedings like some authors, making me think some people don't trust their starters to get the job done. I would only add to his method what I learned from Peter Reinhart: the finished dough can be put in the refrigerator to build more flavor or simply to wait until you're ready to bake it! I did this with the wild-yeast pizza dough and it worked fine. Now I'm looking forward to trying his rye bread and pancake recipes, too.

Imaginary Numbers

2009-02-06T15:19:00.000-08:00

When you're a rich successful math tutor like me, you're forever the target of con artists and scammers. Just post an ad to "lessons" on Craigslist.org and you'll get a bunch of scam emails like this one from "Mr. Jones Tammy," subject line "Inquiry In Your Lesson:"

Good Day Glad to tell you that,my son will be coming to the United State for holiday.Will be more than glad if you can have private lessons with him everyday from 2pm-3pm or your suitable time(1 hour per day from Monday-Friday for two weeks making a total of ten lessons.If you can make it,kindly get back to me with the cost of your teaching for two weeks in the dates of 15thFeb-29th Feb .He will be coming to your house for 1 hour each day for two weeks.I have someone that will always drive him down to your house His name Jackson, he is 15 years old I will want you to calculate 1 hour per day from Monday-Friday for the whole 2 weeks and get back to me.Looking forward to read from you.
Best Regards
Mr Jones Tammy

Yes, it was all formatted as above. I decided to mess with Mr. Jones Tammy and wrote him back saying simply, "$600." I received a reply saying he has an acquaintance in the US who owes him money, so this acquaintance will send me a check for $3,400! I'm supposed to immediately rush to Western Union and send the balance (taking out my 6 bills and an extra hundred bucks 'cause he's very generous and it's imaginary money anyway) to the person taking care of "Jackson" in the US. I honestly can't believe anybody ever falls for this, and when I meet Jackson I'm going to tell him that.

The Pale White Queen of Chess

2009-01-24T12:50:00.001-08:00

Perpetuating the myth that all women chess players are hot is the new Women's Chess Champion, 24-year-old Alexandra Kosteniuk from Russia. Who knew they played chess over there? She was a grandmaster at the age of 14 and last year she beat China's Hou Yifan in Nalchik, somewhere in Russia, to become the first Russian to hold the women's championship title since the fall of the Soviet Union. Because of some of her "fashion" modeling portfolio, Kosteniuk has been compared to Anna Kournikova, but she points out that she has in fact won individual events, a feat that has eluded Kournikova. Her rating is 2516, making her the 690th best player in the world, well behind former women's champ Judit Polgar at #36. Kosteniuk hosts a charming chess instruction video webcast at chesskillertips.com. [Insert "positions worth analyzing" joke here.]

The Number Devil in All of Us

2009-01-02T15:09:00.000-08:00

When I was a math teacher, one day I was helping my students check a column of numbers of the form n² - 1 to see if any were prime. I impressed them by quickly factoring the whole list: I rattled off some big ones like, "Nope, 18² - 1 is 17 x 19, 19² - 1 is 18 x 20," and so on, and most of the students caught on to the pattern: n² - 1 = (n - 1)(n+ 1). It's a specific case of the formula which should be known to anybody taking the SATs: (a + b)(a - b) = a² - b².

I knew the formula could be used for multiplying two numbers conveniently placed on either side of a nice round number, like 88 x 92 = (90 - 2)(90 + 2) = 90² - 2² = 8,100 - 4 = 8,096. What I didn't know until recently was it could be used for squaring big numbers:

Start with the formula
a² - b² = (a + b)(a - b)

Add b² to both sides and you get
a² = (a + b)(a - b) + b²

Now instead of squaring a number like 27 by multiplying it by itself, you can use a nice round number, in this case 3o, which is 27 + 3. Use this to solve 27².

27² = (27 + 3)(27 - 3) + 3² = 30 x 24 + 9 = 720 + 9 = 729.

The way I would have done this previously is to use the formula
(a - b)² = a² - 2ab + b²
27² = (30 - 3)² = 30² - 2(30)(3) + 3² = 900 - 180 + 9 = 720 + 9 = 729.

What Arthur Benjamin uses in the video below to solve 57,683² is the related formula
(a + b)² = a² + 2ab + b²
(57,000 + 683)² = 57,000² + 2(57,0000)(683) + 683²
Which one could argue is simplifying the job a bit, but each term of the above expression still makes me reach for my calculator.

Some folks get really good at using these binomial expansions to square big numbers. I was impressed by the job Art does in this video introducing his calculating tricks.

He made a couple of mistakes (the square of 722 is actually 521,284) but his performance is a great bit of publicity for his terrific book Secrets of Mental Math. Learning a few "tricks" can certainly serve to lessen math anxiety, so try it out!

Happy B'day, AHC

2008-12-18T15:09:00.001-08:00

Add this story to the list of wonderful "WTF?" experiences we have throughout our lives. Obviously developmentally challenged and/or insane New Jersey father Heath Campbell still can't get the crappiest local supermarket cake decorated to his specifications even after easing up on last year's request for a swastika on son Adolph Hitler Campbell's cake. So many questions:

Why his son's full name on the cake? If my wife had caved and allowed me to name our firstborn son Bruce Springsteen Farrell, the cake still wouldn't say "Happy Birthday Bruce Springsteen Farrell (yes that Bruce Springsteen)."
I saw pop Heath on TV: yes, he has swastika tattoos, but he also has Pebbles Flintstone and Winnie the Pooh. The liberal media conveniently overlooked his Gandhi and Adam Sandler tattoos.
I absolutely love how Heath invokes the new tolerant spirit in our Obama nation with his plea to be accepting of stupid and/or racist people.
Heath does some serious backpedaling in interviews on the issue of his racism. Why not embrace your bigotry if "Adolph Hitler" and "Aryan Nation" appear in your kids' names?
I think they should refuse to write Honszlynn on a cake, too. What a horrible name. My name may be boring, but I don't have to spell it every f'ing time I interact with a teller or salesperson. The kid will not only have to surpass Dad in terms of being literate, but she'll probably have to learn half the NATO phonetic alphabet: "Hotel, Oscar, November, Sierra, Zulu..." Not to worry: Honszlynn will probably sport a nametag at all her jobs.

Our Avenue Makes The News

2008-11-26T18:39:00.000-08:00

"Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." - John Donne

Yesterday around 10 in the morning a cop parks her car in the middle of our street outside our kitchen window. I went out and noticed there were more police cars up the street, and the cops were kneeling beside their vehicles with their guns drawn. I heard the policewoman tell a neighbor there was some incident going on in a house. I managed to get out to tutor a student at 10:30, but when I tried to get back home the police had blocked off my street completely, and wouldn't let me past the police tape! There were news helicopters buzzing around above us, and when I went to pick up my son from school the other parents were all in a tizzy about it. They figured it was a bank robbery (there are three banks where my street intersects a busy thoroughfare) but my wife was still holed up at home and had learned there had been a house invasion and there were hostages involved.

I took my son downtown to avoid the whole situation and waited until it was time to pick up my other son, around 12:30. By that time the "police activity" was over (according to a recorded message my wife got over the phone) and the gunman was dead. But before he went he shot a hostage, a 24-year old mother as she frantically passed her two kids out the window to the police. My wife heard the flurry of gunshots (10 or so) and she was still feeling nervous hours later.

When my boys heard about the incident they went into their art therapy mode, the younger one drawing pictures of himself using his superpowers to defeat the bad guy and the older one writing a letter to God (OK, Santa) expressing his disapproval of robbers.

It's unusual that our street makes the news. Now the story comes out that there was a link between the gunman and his victims: he was an unstable stalker. (Where are the stable stalkers?) I don't think that makes it any easier to process. Now I think about the kids who live in fear of this kind of brutality day in and day out, in Congo, Iraq and probably not far across the Bay Bridge.

Just Enjoy The ...Tomato Song

2008-11-08T08:22:00.000-08:00

This morning I was bonding with my boys by watching VH-1 just like I used to with my dad. Muna and Aidan really enjoyed "The Show" by Lenka (who's sure to appeal to fruit flies too young to remember Feist). To be more specific, they enjoyed the tomato puppets that appear in the video for 5 seconds about a minute and a half in. I have to admit they are entertaining, and according to imdb.com they haven't done anything else. A little later I was thinking about how much those puppets must have cost. All I know is if Rigor Mortis and the Standstills had paid more than 100 bucks for them (in 1980s dollars), we would have made the whole freakin' video about the tomatoes.

Just Like Old Times

2008-11-05T15:52:00.000-08:00

I don't use the word "evil" lightly, but California's Proposition 8 joins such discriminatory laws as the Chinese Exclusion Act and the anti-miscegenation statutes enforced by many states over the years. What century is it? I can't even get my mind around the evil and hypocrisy that got this prop passed.

I did compartmentalize lots of the propositions in this election, and voted against ones I otherwise would have supported were it not for the taxation or debt that would have been required. I'm all for helping sick kids, but two billion dollars is two billion dollars.

Had this been a pro-gay marriage initiative with some ridiculous outlay of funds for survivors' estates or whatever, I would have said, "Shea and Noriyko, I love you guys, but I can't see spending all that money on the Gay Marriage Monument (formerly Treasure Island)." But Prop 8 had no economic impact one way or the other. It was an exercise in hatred, pure and simple.

Many churches supported the measure, and their sheep-like followers lined up obediently to take away the rights of their neighbors. Now I ain't church-goin' folk, but I know a little. The hateful ignorance of these "Christians" is in direct opposition to the commandments Jesus said were the most important of all:

The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12)

Certainly anything Jesus stated as simply and directly as these two commandments should take precedence over the old adulterer-stoning guidelines of a thousand years before. But if the literal-minded lemmings need old school commandments, how about "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart." Have we progressed at all?

The religious people in question should be ashamed of their bigotry, since our grandkids will shake their heads at the ignorance and hatred that supported Prop 8, the way we can't even imagine how whites owned human beings or how fear-mongering labor unions got Congress to ban immigration from "undesirable" countries.

Jon Stewart joked about all the Mormon money coming into California to support Prop 8, "'Cause if there's one value the Mormon church has always held dear, it's that marriage must be between one man and uh..."

Solid Proof

2008-09-18T13:43:00.000-07:00

In my dream the other night I was unusually alert, and I wondered if I was dreaming. I ran at the wall and bounced back. "I guess not," I said.

At Least He Had A Plan

2008-09-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

What kind of lefty friends do I have who don't alert me to such articles? Naomi Klein's Baghdad Year Zero in Harpers 4 years ago.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197

McCain doesn't use the honey metaphor anymore. I wonder why?

I Could Totally Do That

2008-08-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

Watching the Brazilian women's volleyball team beat up on Russia this morning was a great way to start the day, and this video of an easy point they scored in 2006 raised a bunch of questions in my mind:
It's not that she hit the net. It was nowhere near the net. She hit the pole that holds the net.
How unskilled do you have to be not to make the Uruguayan team? Is volleyball like jury duty there? Maybe they just shouldn't field a national team if they're not confident about their talent pool.
Ms. Galusso certainly doesn't seem like she's going to be jumping up and blocking shots at the net. Shouldn't she concentrate on her killer serve? What is her forte?
Maybe she's more of a beach volleyball player and serving on a floor threw her.
I couldn't tell you word for word, but I have a pretty good idea what the commentators were saying.
Why did the Brazilians congratulate each other after such a gimme? Is that nicer than just standing there and laughing?
The Brazilian lady preparing to serve next is #13 Sheilla Tavares de Castro and I'm almost positive her serve cleared the net. She's bringing the hurt for Brazil right now in Beijing. I'll be tuning in.

Update 8/21/08: I saw gold medal-winning beach volleyballer Kerri Walsh hit the net on a serve against Brazil, so I guess it happens. Even the aforementioned Sheilla Castro hit the net with a weak serve in the 3rd set of Brazil's match against Italy. But it didn't hit the pole holding the net! Plus, Sheilla had 14 points in that match, which she ended with a rather violent spike. If anybody can direct me to Ms. Galusso's highlight reel I'll apologize.

Fourth of July - Brit Bashing Day?

2008-08-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

Last month a Peace Corps friend of mine joked that her British husband would be spending the Fourth of July drinking gin and tonics and hiding from the inevitable anti-British backlash one associates with the holiday. It inspired me to write a sketch about an otherwise sensible Brit describing his misconceptions about how we Yanks celebrate our Independence Day. It's called The Fourth of July and I posted it on the sketches page at my site.

The Dress Code Sketch

2008-08-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

I've posted a sketch entitled The Dress Code on my site at http://www.farrellpolymath.com/sketches.htm. I post sketches occasionally to www.zhura.com so people can view them, rate them and leave comments. That's where the folks at the Improv Asylum in Boston saw The Ex-Tutor and decided to perform it. I have a few more in the works, so stay tuned!

Haale Rocks City Hall

2008-07-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

Last night the free concert series in City Hall Square in Redwood City featured Persian-American Stanford-grad Haale (pronounced HAH-leh) performing her "psychedelic Sufi trance rock." It was a complete coincidence that I ever heard about the concert. I was taking the boys to the city last Friday on the train and decided to leaf through one of the free rags at the train station. They had a story about her and mentioned the Bay Area shows. I checked her out on Rhapsody and was blown away by her music, especially "Ay Del" from her EP Paratrooper. She's like Niyaz with electric guitars and cello. I'm serious: the blistering solos on the songs are played by a cellist using a distortion box.

I drove down and checked out downtown Redwood City, which I haven't explored for a while. They're trying to revive it from its 70s decay: the huge megaplex is new and shiny, and there are some nice restaurants and shops moving in. I arrived early and saw Haale and her band setting up. Good as her music is, it doesn't hurt that she's gorgeous. But even after the sun went down she never took off her sunglasses.

The set was taken from her two EPs and new album No Ceiling:

1. Baz Hava
2. Middle of Fire
3. Chenan Mastam
4. Off Duty Fortune Teller
5. Navayee
6. Floating Down
7. Hastee
Intermission
8. Home Again
9. Ay Del
10. Mast

11. (Persian Chant)
12. No Ceiling
13. A Town On The Sea
14. Ay Dar Shekasteh

After the show I bought a CD and talked with Haale a little. I noticed that occasionally she wasn't fretting the guitar, so I asked her what tuning she uses. She tried to explain, but finally I just asked what the strings were tuned to, low to high. She uses an open C tuning (C-G-C-G-C-E) on her guitar to get that droning sound. I made a mistake and commented that "Ay Del" wasn't on her set list anymore, and she said, "We played it!" She patiently explained "Home Again" and "Ay Del" are played together, which explains why the second one seems to start rather abruptly when I've listened online. It must have seemed like I didn't even recognize my favorite song of hers, but come on, I'd only heard it for the first time the day before, and it's in Persian. It' s a poem from Attar:

"The Beloved is always ready and standing at the door

Open the window of your heart, be ready and alert for the Beloved."

I had to compliment the percussionist Matt Kilmer for sounding like such a full percussion section with so few instruments. Haale's music doesn't easily fit into any established categories; it's an unusual musical experience but ultimately rewarding.

The Origins of "Mau Mau"

2008-07-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

There is much disagreement as to the origin of the name of the Kenyan peasant uprising which came to be known as the Mau Mau. It has no literal meaning in Gikuyu, the language of the tribe which led the rebellion. When I lived in Kenya I heard many unconvincing acronyms like "Mzungu Arudi Uingereza, Mwafrika Apate Uhuru," Swahili for "White man return to England, African get freedom."

The historical literature is divided. The only complaint I have with Edgerton's Mau Mau: An African Crucible is his take on the origin of the name. He gives too much credence to the theory of a Gikuyu "pig latin" for "uma uma," meaning "get out, get out," supposedly heard as the police broke up an oathing ceremony. Edgerton also calls it "plausible" that the term came from a mispronunciation of "mumau," the Gikuyu word for oath.

Compounding the problem is the fact that the movement was intensely secretive, with no manifesto, written records or public relations effort. Edgerton maintains the supposed public head of the Kenyan independence movement, Jomo Kenyatta, was never a member of the Mau Mau and was in fact opposed by many members of the Mau Mau before and after independence. This would explain (for example) why no Mau Mau veterans ever regained their land or received any benefits (two widows did), and why former Mau Mau detainee J. M. Kariuki was abducted and murdered by the police under Kenyatta's dictatorship. Lucy's mother still maintains her silence 45 years after taking her oath.

The rebellion was a largely tribal undertaking, and serious business among Kikuyus is conducted in a sort of code, inscrutable to outsiders. But Karari Njama was a schoolteacher and therefore one of the educated (in the Western sense) members of the rebellion. In Mau Mau From Within, he writes, "To the best of my knowledge, the members of the Movement never used this term when talking amongst themselves about their Society.... It was simply never accepted by the Africans involved in the Movement as being anything more than the white man's name for their association."

So when and why did the white settlers come to use the term? Njama considers many origins, but traces it to a trial in Naivasha in May, 1950, of a group of Kenyans, mostly Kikuyu, who were accused of taking the oath. One of the accused identified the elders who administered the oath as the "Kiama kia Mau Mau."

Njama quotes another informant: "Mau mau was not a widely known word among Kikuyu. Its only meaning was 'greedy eating,' sometimes used by mothers to rebuke children who were eating too fast or too much. In my location..., however, it was also used occasionally when talking about certain elders who, when called to hear a case by the chief, were more interested in the few shillings or goats they would receive than in dispensing justice. These elders often magnified the seriousness of the case they were hearing in order to get from the guilty person a fine of a goat or lamb, which they would then slaughter, roast and eat... as if they were merely carrying out traditional Kikuyu legal practices. Earning a reputation for being greedy, these elders were sometimes called the 'Kiama kia Mau Mau,' or 'Council of Greedy Eaters.' It is my belief that the man who used the term 'Mau Mau' at the Naivasha Trial was referring to the men who administered the oath as bad elders, who wanted only his initiation fee and the feast of a goat...."

So the white people heard the oaths were administered by the "Mau Mau Council" and thought it was the name of the movement. By August, 1950, the rebellion was being referred to as Mau Mau in all the white press, so the timeline is accurate. The whites had a history of misinterpretations and mispronunciations in Kenya (including the name of the country itself), and Lucy considers this explanation plausible. For an interesting depiction of Kenya during "the Emergency," check out the movie "Kitchen Toto" if you can find it.

Matters Of State

2008-07-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we jetted over the ridge to Half Moon Bay, where it's at least ten degrees cooler and the boys enjoyed a record-breaking three and a half hour romp in the still-freezing Pacific. On the way we were stuck behind an SUV with Utah plates. I couldn't help but notice that state gets an unfair advantage by adding an exclamation point to its name, which should be brought to the attention of someone of authority. Does Utah think it's so exciting, important or emotionally significant that it warrants some possibly unconstitutional punctuation? On top of that is the plate's command to "Ski Utah!" which I would ordinarily ignore but the exclamation point makes it persuasive to the point of coercion. We're definitely going this winter.

I would also like to see the research supporting the "Greatest Snow On Earth" claim.

They're Putting Me On

2008-06-26T20:25:00.000-07:00

A sketch I wrote will be performed at the "You Wrote It, LIVE" event at the Improv Asylum in Boston's North End. It's called "The Ex-Tutor," and I have to admit it was inspired by all the years I've been a math tutor and ex-tutor. I'd love to see my star pupil/actress in the role of Ashley, and I'd love to see myself in the role of getting paid to write this silly stuff. What else can I do with a brain that's incapable of being serious?

Update: Here's the video of the performance. The cast was awesome. They departed from my script at the end, but I really enjoyed it!

Nine Heavens

2008-06-25T16:25:00.000-07:00

The long-awaited new Niyaz album just arrived! Nine Heavens is a 2-disc offering: one disc of their electronic updating of Persian-Turkish folk songs, the other disc containing unplugged versions of the same songs. I started with the unplugged disc and it's intense. Niyaz belongs to a much-needed but little-appreciated niche between New Age and world music. Imagine Persian music, slowed down slightly to groove to our American ears, with heavy African drumming. Or don't.

They're fronted by singer Azam Ali, the workaholic who for years made exotic, Middle-East-influenced electronica with the new age duo Vas. She's released two solo albums and her haunting voice was featured to great effect in the soundtrack to the movie 300. Loga Ramin Torkian, the composer from the mathematically-named world group Axiom of Choice, plays every instrument known to man with a string on it and would be the only saz player worth hiring even if he weren't Azam's baby daddy. Grammy-nominated electronic musician/producer Carmen Rizzo rounds out the lineup again. Let's hope they get nominated for this album and the Grammy doesn't go to Enya again.

The songs are Persian, Urdu or Turkish folk songs, updated for the 21st century with pounding drums and electronic effects. The lyrics on the first album were taken largely from Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi, but this time other poets like Khwaja Mir Dard (Urdu - 18th century) and Amir Khosrow Dehlavi (Persian - 13th century) get the trance rhythm treatment. Niyaz is the Persian (and Urdu) word for "need" or "yearning," symbolic of the mystic longing for one-ness with the Beloved, God, the Higher Self, Reality. So far the song that really stands out is "Ishq - Love and the Veil," from a poem by Khwaja Mir Dard:

I was the veil that hid the face of my beloved
Once awakened there was no longer a veil

Is mysticism inextricably religious? To many people religion is a set of rules and a conditioning machine. To me all religions originated in somebody's experience of the reality beyond the ego, no matter how they were misused after that. I believe the mystic poets when they say terms like "love" and "heaven" refer to realities hard to describe to us folks still in the prison of Shah's story (see my previous post). How ironic that I got this terrific album with an Amazon gift card from my atheist brother.

Sorry that the only videos available from this incredible group are over a year and a half old. Here's them performing "Allahi Allah" live. It's my favorite song off their first album. Even my bro could get behind some of the lyrics: "Walk the ways of Truth / Don't hurt another / Say the name of the One." Niyaz write that their hope is to "elevate the mass perception towards Iranians and people of Middle Eastern descent during such tumultuous times." I agree more people should be hearing their message.

Prison Psychosis

2008-06-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

My contribution to my brother's discussion group. It's from Idries Shah's Caravan of Dreams. Just don't use the m-word.

Prison

Visualize a man who has to rescue people from a certain prison. It has been decided that there is only one promising way of carrying this out.

The rescuer has to get into the prison area without attracting attention. He must remain there relatively free to operate, for a certain period of time. The solution arrived at is that he shall enter it as a convict.

He accordingly arranges for himself to be apprehended and sentenced. Like others who have fallen foul of this particular machine in this manner, he is consigned to the prison which is his goal.

When he arrives he knows that he has been divested of any possible device which could help in an escape. All he has is his plan, his wits, his skills and his knowledge. For the rest, he has to make do with improvised equipment, acquired in the prison itself.

The major problem is that the inmates are suffering from a prison psychosis. This makes them think that their prison is the whole world. It is also characterized by selective amnesia of their past. Consequently they have hardly any memory of the existence, outline and detail of the world outside.

The history of our man’s fellow-prisoners is prison history, their lives are prison lives. They think and act accordingly.

Instead of hoarding bread, for instance, as escape provisions, they mould it into dominoes with which they play games. Some of these games they know to be diversions, others they consider to be real. Rats, which they could train as a means of communication with the outside, they treat instead as pets. The alcohol in the cleaning-fluid available to them they drink to produce hallucinations, which delight them. They would think it sadly wasted, a crime even, if anyone were to use it to drug the guards insensible, making escape possible.

The problem is aggravated because our malefactors have forgotten the various meanings of some of the ordinary words which we have been using. If you ask tem for definitions of such words as “provisions,” “journey,” “escape,” even “pets,” this is the kind of list which you would elicit from them:
Provisions: prison food.
Journey: walking from one cell-block to another.
Escape: avoiding punishment by warders
Pets: rats.

“The outside world” would sound to their ears like a bizarre contradiction in terms;
“As this is the world, this place where we live,” they would say, “how can there be another one outside?”

The man who is working on the rescue plan can operate at first only by analogy.

There are few prisoners who will even accept his analogies, for they seem like mad babblings.

The babblings, when he says, “We need provisions for our journey of escape to the outside world,” of course sound to them like the following admitted nonsense:

“We need provisions – food for use in prison – for our journey – for walking from one cell-block to another – of escape – to avoid punishment by warders – to the outside world – to the prison outside...”

Some of the more serious-minded prisoners may say that they want to understand what he means. But they do not understand outside-world language any more...

When this man dies, some of them make of his words and acts a prison-cult. They use it to comfort themselves, and to find arguments against the next liberator who manages to come among them.

A minority, however, do from time to time escape.

I've always been fascinated by psychology, and this story reminded me of a few things. One was the excellent memoir No Picnic on Mount Kenya, written by an Italian who was imprisoned in British East Africa during WWII. He found the prison psychosis affecting his fellow prisoners so unbearable he decided to escape and climb Mount Kenya with equipment made from articles found in the POW camp! Just as unbelievable is the fact that the map they used (at left) was the label from their prison rations.

I was also reminded of the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which 12 college students volunteered to be imprisoned in the basement of the university's psychology building to study the psychology of imprisonment. The simulation became so real for the volunteer prisoners and guards that the experiment was abruptly terminated. Many prisoners had completely assumed their prison identities, had forgotten they were students and that they had volunteered for the experiment, that they had the option of ending their involvement at any time.

I suggested we leave, but he refused. Through his tears, he said he could not leave because the others had labeled him a bad prisoner. Even though he was feeling sick, he wanted to go back and prove he was not a bad prisoner.
At that point I said, "Listen, you are not #819. You are [his name], and my name is Dr. Zimbardo. I am a psychologist, not a prison superintendent, and this is not a real prison. This is just an experiment, and those are students, not prisoners, just like you. Let's go."
He stopped crying suddenly, looked up at me like a small child awakened from a nightmare, and replied, "Okay, let's go."

This transformation on the part of the prisoners, guards, and Dr. Zimbardo, the "superintendent," had taken only 6 days. Could we "non-prisoners" possibly be suffering from a similar psychosis or hemianopia?

Love, Love, Love

2008-06-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

Caught Eureka's own Sara Bareilles on Letterman a few weeks ago and can't get her song Bottle it Up out of my head. As in Love Song, Sara spices her jazzy pop with a dollop of frustration with how some people want to guide her career (already?). If I'm not mistaken, she "borrows" the "love, love, love" melody, slowed down, from the Beatles' All You Need is Love, but redeems herself with lyrics like: "Soon as you start to make room for the parts that aren't you it gets harder to bloom in a garden of love."

Bottle It Up is one of those rare love songs on the charts that's not talking about the same old I-love-you-why-don't-you-love-me drama. There are a couple of songs on Sara's album that mention Love but are obviously referring to a whole nutha level. So the reference to the Beatles song is appropriate. Lately I've been experiencing a lot of coincidences related to the concept of Love. I have Sara to thank for reminding me of all the Sufi poets who wrote hundreds of years ago of their gardens and the importance of Love:

He who would know the secret of both worlds
Will find the secret of them both, is Love.
-Fariduddin Attar (12th-13th century)

Farewell to the Originator

2008-06-02T13:54:00.000-07:00

The music world is noticeably less cool today. Ellas "Bo Diddley" McDaniel, one of the originators of rockabilly and rock and roll, is dead at 79. His music was covered or "adapted" by everybody from Buddy Holly and The Rolling Stones to U2 and The White Stripes. The energy produced by his signature rhythm in this 40-year-old video (using only two chords!) could steamroll over the entire current generation of waif-rockers.

Even though he got lots of mileage off his Bo Diddley Beat, he was also an innovator in hiring women musicians for his band. Above, "The Duchess" plays rhythm guitar in an evening gown. Bo certainly got a lot more lip service than money over the years, as white artists sold more copies of his songs and many neglected to give him credit. At least when George Thorogood ripped off Bo's "I'm a Man" and called it "Bad to the Bone," he hired Bo to star in his video. And the Beat wasn't used in all his songs. In fact, I'm a big fan of the New York Dolls' cover of his "Pills," for which they did give him credit. Rest in Peace, Ellas.

Field of Weems

2008-05-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

Ewan MacGregor and fellow Glaswegian Craig Ferguson butcher their lines, crack up, and still deliver the funniest sketch on TV this year. Two words: hobo orgy.

East Coast - West Coast

2008-05-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

Muna, Aidan and I took a short trip to Boston to see my brother Steve get married. Lucy claimed she had too much schoolwork and work-work to come. We took the red eye, which lived up to its name. Aidan was the only one to get any substantial shut-eye on the plane, even sleeping through the landing! I guess sharing a bedroom with a snorer like Muna will either make you a deep sleeper or kill you. The trip was very short, but the boys got up to New Hampshire to see their Granny and shot down the Pike to Framingham to see their cousins Kyle and Kenzie. I got to meet the bride's mother and brothers, and got to know Gabe a little better. Except for one overcast day, the weather was warm and sunny, meaning we were there in that short spring window between too cold and too hot. It may have been comfortable for me in my suit, but it was hardly what you'd call kilt weather.

Steve's wedding at the inn which used to be the Framingham Town Hall was small and intimate and acknowledged our Scots heritage. Steve wore our family's tartan and hired a bagpiper to annoy the guests. Gabe's mother asked me in her thick Hungarian accent, "Where's your skirt?" At least that's what I think she said. Here the bride is naturally feeling shame at the realization that now she's married to Steve. The food was without a doubt the best I've ever had at a wedding: real Indian cuisine from naan to dal to tandoori chicken, which my boys love. I finally met Steve's old buddy Asif, who Steve's known for twenty short years. Asif made the trip all the way from England, and we got a chance to chat. We'll have to keep in touch.

Asif, who's an Imam, presided over the ceremony and wrote a moving tribute. I'm surprised my atheist brother allowed anything resembling religion in, but it was very appropriate. Not surprisingly, St. Paul's old reading on Love was replaced with a very beautiful passage (p. 43) from Pierre, a novel by Herman Melville, Steve's current favorite author. My favorite line: "Endless is the account of Love. Time and space can not hold Love's story." Both Steve and Gabe have been married before, but seeing them together makes me agree the story is indeed endless, and they're lucky to have found one another. She laughs at his jokes and he hides his ridiculous Heart fixation when she's around.

Of course we had to hit the Natick Mall to replace our tattered Boston paraphernalia: I switched from the blue Sox hat to the red one, and Muna got one, too. Aidan was somewhere else misbehaving so he didn't get one, but we placated him with some Ben & Jerry's. Here are all the cousins dangerously raising their blood sugar levels. I pretended to have the will power to resist ordering anything, but was secretly crying inside when the kids all finished off their goodies and didn't leave me so much as a cone wrapper to lick.

On the plane ride home I reread The Alchemist all the way through. Just like the visit, I didn't want it to end.

Harmony - Not the Crappy Guitar, Either

2008-05-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

I was very impressed with this story (attributed to Jung) from the book Do Less, Achieve More by Chin-Ning Chu:

The Rainmaker
There was a village that had been experiencing drought for five consecutive years. Many famous Rainmakers had been called, but all had failed to make rain. In the villagers' last attempt, they called upon a renowned Rainmaker from afar. When he arrived in the village, he set up his tent and disappeared inside it for four days. On the fifth day, the rain started to fall and quenched the thirst of the parched earth. The people of the village asked the Rainmaker how he had accomplished such a miracle.
The Rainmaker replied, "I have done nothing."
Astounded at his explanation, the villagers said, "How can that be? After you came, four days later, the rain started."
The Rainmaker explained, "When I arrived, the first thing I noticed was that everything in your village was out of harmony with heaven. So I spent four days putting myself into harmony with the Divine. Then the rains came."

Chu uses the story to frame her lessons on living a more productive, successful and inspired life, but I couldn't help but be struck by how our American village is out of harmony with everything, even with itself.

Years ago I read (and reread) the early 20th-century Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan's brilliant book The Music of Life, which first inspired me to look for the harmony in life inside and outside myself. It's a lesson I certainly haven't mastered, but I've kept coming back to it over the years. Our society has precious few role models for creating harmony, and music might be the only good metaphor left in our competition-obsessed culture.

All humans seem to need the beauty and harmony of music of some form or another, and up to a certain time composers, like the Rainmaker, were in harmony with the Divine, or the Universe, or Mother Nature, or whatever you call it. The composer and musician knew the effect of their music on the listener, and knew their responsibility was to create harmony. Maybe we all have that responsibility, and like the villagers, we've fallen down on the job.

Pete's Pizza Secrets

2008-05-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Lately everybody has been marveling at the concept of no-knead bread, and there's a similar idea by the writers of the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, but the commonest complaint I've read about both methods is they have no taste. The experimenters at Cook's Illustrated went so far as to adapt the no-knead recipe by putting in vinegar and beer for taste!

My (flat-) bread of choice is pizza. Five years ago or so I started making it from scratch. I was a teacher with a free summer at the time and I was looking for a challenge. I used to knead the dough by hand, using the recipe from the Scicolones's Pizza: Any Way You Slice It!, a great resource for crust and sauce recipes. Then I scored a free brand-new Cuisinart from somebody emptying their storage area and I found a book at the library on how to mix dough in a food processor. Charlie Van Over's humbly-named The Best Bread Ever contains both the best bread recipe and the best pizza dough recipe I've ever found. Since the "kneading" is done by the Cuisinart in under a minute, they're also the easiest recipes I've ever found.

It's the classic four ingredients: flour, salt, yeast and water. They're mixed in the food processor per Charlie's instructions (there are temperatures you have to measure before and after mixing), and the dough is put in a ziploc bag to rise (Why dirty up a perfectly good bowl?). Then it's in the fridge for 1 to 4 days. This is the secret to delicious pizza crust: the dough slowly ferments in the fridge as the yeast break down starches into sugars and develop flavors as only one-celled fungi can.

I flatten the dough, add pasta sauce (homemade or store-bought), Trader Joe's Quattro Formaggio cheese blend, toppings like caramelized onions, peppers, mushrooms, sausage or pepperoni and occasionally some herbs. I slide it on my cheap quarry tiles at the hottest my oven can go for 9 minutes and it's done. People rave about the pizzas, and I'm no chef. Get Charlie's book from the library and do it yourself!

South of the Border

2008-05-03T22:02:00.000-07:00

Back in the late '90s, when I had a cable package that included The International Channel, I used to watch the subtitled Korean Top 20 Video Countdown every week. It was fascinating; a window into a faraway land, but I didn't actually like any of the songs. It was usually a mix of soulful singers and wannabe rappers or more often both in one cheesy boy or girl band. Then I saw this video. Jaurim was easily the best artist I ever saw on the Korean Top 20, and one of the most interesting bands of the late '90s anywhere. A Jaurim album easily goes from breezy pop to Evanescence-style alt-rock with folk and reggae thrown in, too. When I'd find myself in San Francisco I'd hit Turbo Records in the little Koreatown near The Fillmore and ask the confused clerk for the new Jaurim album. I have no idea what any of the songs mean, and that's the way I like it. I think "Hey Hey Hey" translates pretty literally, though. The guitarist Lee Sungyu is the master of understatement, the incredible bassist Kim Jinman is the John Entwistle of Korea and the vocalist Kim Yoonah has quite a range, from pop chirruping to belting it out. There's nothing quite like them anywhere.

A Faire Afternoon

2008-05-03T17:55:00.000-07:00

The boys and I just got back from the Maker Faire at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. Quite a collection of creative people were assembled, purveyors of everything from rockets, robotics and electronics to beads, calligraphy and knitting. I think the best thing about setting up there would be the interaction with other inventors, getting inspired by their ideas; the worst thing would be getting stuck with a booth next to the guy who makes "music" on an amplified rake.

Muna and Aidan made rockets and set them off outside, they played with magnets, bicycle wheels, wind tunnels, marble roller coasters and LEDs. They saw robot insects, robot crabs, robot dogs, robot birds, and real goats for some reason. We ate the most expensive hot dogs I've ever had and some pretty good kettle corn, too. I've never been to a fair on the West Coast that had fried dough. Why is that? It's definitely not the health issue: every place out here has funnel cakes. So what do I have to do, mix some dough and set up the stand myself? I'm tempted to start up my homemade pizza biz (there was no pizza in the whole fairgrounds) and charge five bucks a slice. Anyway, I had to steer the boys clear of most tables that said, "Do not touch," but they still seemed to have fun. They even had a brush with greatness:

Now I know who the big limo outside was for. On arriving home, I asked them what their favorite part was. Muna's was making the rocket, and Aidan's was meeting R2D2. When Lucy came home, Aidan shouted, "We rode a bus!" Yes, we rode a school bus from the free parking to the fairgrounds, but it wouldn't have made the top 10 memories of my day. Cheap thrills, indeed.

Another Gem from an Anderson Soundtrack

2008-04-29T12:07:00.000-07:00

Lucy and I watched The Darjeeling Limited a few weeks ago. We enjoyed it, but it's hard for me to like a movie as much as I liked the director's earlier Rushmore . Anderson's choice of classic songs for his soundtracks is as sharp as ever, and this song from the closing credits has been stuck in my head ever since. I even remembered enough of the français I learned from Monsieur Lachance to be further charmed.

It's sung by NYC-born Joe Dassin, who had a string of hits in his adopted France in the 70s, and who recorded songs in a half-dozen languages just to show off. I was going to attempt a translation, but there's a saying that translations are like spouses: the most beautiful ones are seldom faithful, and the most faithful ones are seldom beautiful. My favorite lines are the first and the last:

I was strolling along the avenue, my heart open to the unknown.
At dawn all the birds were singing to Love.

À tout à l'heure!

Where's Jonesy?

2008-04-23T20:04:00.001-07:00

The host of LA's quirkiest radio show has gone missing. Steve Jones, the Sex Pistols' guitarist and the reason I bought a Les Paul way back when I had time to play, hasn't shown up for work this week at 103.1 FM. Monday and Tuesday his fellow Pistol Paul Cook filled in, and his accent is so close to Jonesy's that I could at least pretend. Today the guest host was Janeane Garofalo, who was entertaining with an accent all her own, but it just wasn't the same. When "work" consists of clocking in at noon, putting in two grueling hours of playing any songs you want, chatting with celebrity guests and occasionally strumming a guitar, it's not exactly a chore to show up, Steve. Want to trade for a week?

I don't know whose idea it was to give a punk legend his own radio show where he plays music, good and otherwise, from all corners of the musical map from '50's crooners to this week's alternative band, but it's refreshing to hear a playlist you can be certain was not faxed from the station's marketing department. Even if he does play a bit too much Elton John for my taste. Hey, it's his jukebox, and I hope he returns soon.

http://indie1031.com/jonesy`s_jukebo.php

Scientific Apes vs. Religious Apes

2008-04-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

There's a new book suggesting Science-with-a-capital-S has become another religion, demanding unthinking adherence to its commandments. Certainly many of the people who do more writing about science than actual science are guilty of trying to create such adherence (with themselves as the voice of authority, naturally), but who is this new Prometheus whose mission it is to free humanity from the shackles of our Darwinist overlords? Self-professed crank David Berlinski, author of such books as A Tour of the Calculus and the new The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions.

I had the opportunity to hear Berlinski speak, at Kepler's Books some 8 years ago, and he certainly marches to his own crazy drummer, I'll give him that. The article about his new book on Slate.com mentions his "peculiar, mischievous style," which didn't make his book on calculus (sorry, "the calculus") very enlightening, even to a math geek like me. At Kepler's, the crowd from nearby Stanford kept him busy defending his essay The Deniable Darwin, which doubts the solidity of the theory of natural selection and which is now proudly posted on the Intelligent Design website. I could tell he had no time for people who weren't smart enough to agree with him, and his style was more condescending than mischievous.

The debate will rage forever, though, because the animal nature we possess (whether or not you believe it's accompanied by an angelic nature) makes us divide everything into Us and Them. Uninspired by religion and lacking the curiosity to be a scientist, Berlinski is trying to create a new skeptic pecking order (with him at the top, of course) because we all know to criticize something is to magically rise above it.

Welcome to the 82!

2008-04-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 82 Hotel! In the future you can come here to read my rants - I mean opinions - about books, movies, music and the news, my top ten lists and maybe even an entertaining skit or two. The real 82 Hotel is a restaurant/cafe in Naro Moru, Kenya where I spent many a Saturday lunchtime eating a plate of karanga na chapati, beef stew with chopped up flatbread in it. So think of my blog as your oasis of so-so food in a bustling town on the Equator.

The picture isn't the real 82, but it's close. I'd totally hit Oyugi's Cafeteria, though, because of the words "soda baridi" (cold soda) on the blue column. After an hour of walking you're not put off by concerns about decor and hygiene. Catch you next time!