Something to Crow About

Aug. 23, 2006 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

(My 200th Blog Post)

The Big Freeze

From the Freezer Dept.: I received some promo packages of frozen entrees recently and wasn't terribly surprised to learn that the technology hasn't changed appreciably in the quarter-century since I wrote this piece.

                                                                       

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

TROUBLE LURKS IN THE inner aisles of any supermarket. It beckons to me from my safe periphery, where I try to race from dairy case to butcher's display without being lured by those walls of instant brownies, corn chips and the like. But a few nights ago, in both a hurry and a quandary over what to cook, my wife and I boldly selected a couple of frozen-food items proclaiming themselves to be gourmet delights.

You know where they live: usually about dead center in the store, arrayed in stacks in the big white free-standing freezer or in rows behind glassed-in doors. They have names like Le Menu. Many of them promise salubriously low calorie levels.

I was skeptical; my last brush with convenience food was the rash purchase of low-cal Jello Instant Pudding and Pie Filling, pistachio flavor, which, when stirred with milk, hardened into quicksand and tasted like Nutra-Sweetened mucilage (if the mucilage of my kindergarten days had been that sweet, I'd have eaten much more of it). I discovered that the thickened agents include cellulose, so instead of eating the rest I poured it inside the wall of my house.

In the Bath

Keeping it Clean Dept.: Here's a bit of fun. Tom Savoy and Malcolm Kogut and I delivered this ditty at a private party in 2009. It's by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann. As I like to point out, it's the cleanest song we know.

A Boy in the Sun

Attic Treasures Dept.: Can't sleep. Figured I'd indulge in a favorite relaxation exercise. Crept up into the attic to escape possible scrutiny. And found a little booklet wedged in the lathe. Did some poor child in this old house of mine suffer a forced reading of W. E. Geil's blistering screed? Have my own sinful habits caught up with me? I warn you: what follows is very long, and it's puffed up with 1894-vintage passion. And it's (scarily) for real. At least as far as W. E. Geil is concerned.

                                                                        

 

Copyrighted 1894, by W. E. Geil

A BOY IN THE SUN
A Private Talk to Boys

With hints to parents, teachers, and all
persons having to do with the boys
and young men in America.
BY
WILLIAM E. GEIL

“Warn them, that they trespass not.”

Price, 5 cents. Six copies for 25 cents.

                                                                                                                                             

HELLO!

This is for the B. P. & T.

B stands for Boys – busy boys, bee-like boys.

P stands for Parents, preventative and purpose.

T stands for Teachers, tasks and triumphs.

“Teeth pulled while you wait” is on a dentist’s sign in Scotland. Boys sometimes think it nearly as unpleasant a thing to read a book as to have teeth pulled. I’ve tried to make this little book as enjoyable as a custard pie to a hungry boy.

The Fat Man's Diet

Lost Masterpieces Dept.: Many years ago, I wrote a few sample chapters of a tome titled The Fat Man's Diet, which would comprise essays on the joys of being fat, a number of incredibly rich recipes, and mini-biographies of the fat and famous. I sent it to publishers and agents, most of whom ignored it, although I was told by a couple that the book was too confusing. Is it a cookbook? A humor book? What? These are the concerns of the excessively skinny, of course. When the manuscript had sat for several months at the offices of Workman Press, I took the small hope all writers clutch at at such moments. After it had been there a year, I had an anniversary cake delivered to their office (it, too, got no response). After seven years, the proposal finally was returned, rejected, by which time I'd moved on to other manuscripts. Here's the opening section.

                                                                     

I. HORS D'OEUVRES

The Fat Man eases himself into the leather mitt of a wide armchair.  It's not a recliner: it doesn't have to be.  Years of contact with the Fat Man's body have refigured the springs and struts and upholstery to conform to his favorite position. This is where he relaxes, meditates. It's also a favorite place for snacking. The crumbs that hide among the coins beneath the cushion are a testimony to years of gastronomic experimentation conducted in the extremest leisure . . .

Sydney Greenstreet in
The Maltese Falcon

It's the most comfortable chair in the house. Because the Fat Man settles for nothing less than total comfort. His nail-thin wife may perch nervously upon the Shaker torture device she laughingly calls a chair and claim to be comfortable, but the Fat Man knows better. Skinny people fear real comfort. From his sleep-inducing throne, the Fat Man pities them as his eyes droop shut for a salubrious nap.

A rhythmic hammering sounds from the sidewalk. The Fat Man cracks an eyelid to see what's happening. As he suspected: a squadron of joggers, their faces wrought with the misery of physical torture. Look at them. Eyes glazed, these are the nuts who ape those videotapes of emaciated exercise fanatics.

And then skip lunch.

The Goldbergs

I'M TAKING A DAY off today, but that doesn't mean you have to. However, I offer some exciting entertainment -- what Duke Ellington (see yesterday's post) would refer to as "the latest thing."

It's a crowd-funded, open-source recording and score that you may mull over and pass around as you desire, and I can think of few pieces more deserving.

Bach's "Goldberg Variations" was published in 1741. It consists of a theme and 30 variations, and the story that erupted around it decades later suggested that the composer was given the theme by a keyboard prodigy named Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who also may have given the work's premiere.

Modern scholars dispute this because, of course, that's their job.

Pianist Kimiko Ishizaka performs this new recording, which is available at the Open Goldberg Variations site. You can download the recording here, and the score, created by Werner Schweer, has been (and still is) subjected to much peer review. Which seems to amount to fine-tooth combing that which has been endlessly scrutinized, itself a fascinating idea, even if it suggests woodland beasts re-marking their territory.

Piano Reflections

YESTERDAY WAS A BUSY yard-work day, so to relax at night I put on a Duke Ellington disc. Because I want nobody in my house to suffer from music deficiency, there are loudpeakers throughout. My daughter, who is fifteen, was doing schoolwork in the next room. I was startled to hear her humming along with the disc’s opening number, “Who Knows.”

“You gave me a copy of this a long time ago,” she explained. “I have it for bedtime listening. I also have it on my computer and my phone.” Incredibly to me, ever-fearing my tastes are freakish, she says it’s a favorite. Perhaps my own adoration for this record really did work it into my DNA.

The album is “Piano Reflections,” which Ellington recorded for Capitol Records in 1953, during his brief association with that label. I was about my daughter’s age when I was introduced to it, thanks to my friend Harry Minot, with whom I repeatedly listened to the odd, affecting array of Ellington tunes, many of them composed for the recording.