Oscar Menu 2012

Menu for Oscar Night Sunday, February 26, 2012

Beverages

Bordeaux for “Midnight in Paris,” which has a pretentious wine snob who might not fully appreciate this Bordeaux

Tropical juice (spritzed) for “The Descendants”

Sweetened Southern Style Ice Tea for “The Help”

Appetizers

Soft pretzels inspired by “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”

Cracker Jacks representing “Moneyball” (“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks!”)

Carrots with bean dip for “War Horse”

Salad

Butter lettuce and vinaigrette for basic French salad

Entrees

Quiche for all three movies that took place in France

Persian lentil/raisin/rice dish with yogurt-cucumber sauce for “A Separation”

Desserts

The not-for-human-consumption Hostess Cupcakes for black-and-white film “The Artist” also represented by the white and black top of the chocolate pie

Petit Écolier for “Hugo,” our French boy in Paris and in memory of my grandparents who were there in 1920, the era “Midnight in Paris” goes back to

Banana cupcakes with lilikoi (passion fruit) frosting for “The Descendants”

Chocolate pie (without the secret ingredient) for “The Help”

Live Entertainment

The 84^th Oscar Telecast, Billy Crystal hosting

A sing-along with Whitney Houston following the telecast

A ukulele performance by Judy Winn-Bell and Steve Hayashi

Oscar Food Feb 2012

What's missing from the Oscar food table is the sickeningly sweet Southern style iced tea.  More about the meaning of things after I finish responding to essays.

Oak Desk

I loved that oak desk, but to make room for floor to ceiling bookshelves, Jeff told me I'd have to get rid of it, so I put an ad on Craigs list, and someone said she and her boyfriend could come for it on Thursday, a day that worked for Javier and me, so they got it.  I wanted them to know about Nicole Krauss' desk in Great House, but the printout on that stayed here with me.  I got a nice thank you e-mail from him yesterday and sent him the link to lots of references about how the desk connected stories and lives.  I didn't mean this as a link between us but rather as an item that affects lives.

One of the things we found at the very back of the desk was a Doonesbury cartoon from 2004.  Gary Trudeau has an "IN MEMORIAM" and lists all of the people (our soldiers, the ones who are counted) who have died in the war.  That was only 2004--just a year and a couple of months after our attack, invasion, and occupation of Iraq.  Now we want to do more of the same in Iran--once again an aggression  "justified" by those weapons of mass destruction which threaten our nation, the only nation in the world that has ever use nuclear weapons against civilians. 

News, Continued

In Sunday's paper there's a sad item in the News of the Day from Across the Nation.  It's about the Memorial service for the cousins of our friend Evelyn--her cousin and her cousin's husband.  They were the only ones not found after the capsizing of the Costa Concordia--among more than 4000 people.  No, wait.  I'm mistaken.  They're the only Americans missing.  That's a less staggering fact but still sad.  Jerry and Barb Heil.

"U.S. relations  (with Egypt) at 30-year low as 19 Americans head to trial."  At a 30-year low?  What happened in 1982? Is that a reference to Israel's returning the Sinai to Egypt?  The Camp David accords were signed in 1978 and the alliance with Egypt became "a cornerstone of the U.S.-backed regional order."  Now that the criminal proceedings are beginning against 19 Americans and others, our foreign aid to Egypt--$1.5 billion--will be in jeopardy, and what will the Egyptian military do without it?
These 19 American+ defendants have been charged with operating local offices  which the powers that be in Egypt thing are "handing out cash to sow chaos in the streets."

I always love Earthweek:  A Diary of the Planet.  This past Sunday reported on the bald eagle population in Florida, which was almost wiped out in the 190s because of DDT.  But now they're on the rebound, and there are so many that they're now facing danger from power lines and heavy traffic.  Imagine!  "Caution:  Eagles flying."  From this column I also learned that elephant seals can go to depths of up to 5600 feet, but now they're having to go deeper still in search of food because of higher ocean temperatures.  They need to reach cooler waters but are reaching their physiological limits in the southern Indian Ocean.  And what about whales?  Humpback whales in the southern Indian Ocean sing different tunes from their counterparts in other places.  They have "unique vocalization."  As for rabbits, there's a "hopping explosion" in Australia.  These cute rodents are "crop-ravaging."

Interracial marriages are now "a record 1 in 12" according to a Pew Research Center study. 

There's news about Whitney Houston's memorial service, and my students are including her on a contact assignment their doing interviewing a native English speaker on musical preferences.

"Iran prepares site to develop more enriched uranium"  Doesn't this sound like our "discourse" on Iraq in 2003? 

A restaurant Jonathan's aunt and uncle introduced us to, Thanh Long, was featured in the 49 mile S.F. Food Tour on Sunday.  That's where Javier and I walked one day, feeling very youthful and strong until we found out that Jonathan jogs that distance in the morning when he visits.    But I love that restaurant and I like the way the reporter Jon Bonne writes about its being at "the ocean's edge and the demilitarized zone."  He says that's just a false image.  It has "its own little misty version of Venice Beach.  I hadn't realized that this restaurant opened in 1975. 

I'm also really interested in the concept of taking our city a square mile at a time for food!  I wonder what square we're in.  I think I'll leave this blog and ask Jon Bonne at jbonne@sfchronicle.com

What's in the News

The newspaper in print (I hate to read online) is a part of my day--the beginning two hours with my six cups of tea, pint of warm milk, orange juice, and the vitamins that Javier got for me.  Like my dad and my mom in her later years, I talk back to the newspaper, too, underlining and making margin notes.  It's definitely an inter-active activity.  So...Because I like to tear out pages to keep and maybe line my trunks with--Think of what an excavation project that would be years later--but I know I'd better put them in the recycling bin instead, the only hope of my doing what I'd better do is at last citing them here for safekeeping.  So...

Tony Bennett appeared several times in the Sunday paper, following the Valentine's event I went to last Tuesday.  Mike Kepka The City Exposed has the headline "The key to our hearts" and shows Tony Bennett at a gathering right before he came out to be seen and heard (but speaking, not singing) by us.  He also appears in "Parting Shots from the Chronicle Editorial Board under the Good Week section:  "S.F. nostalgia. along with a picture of him and Mayor Ed Lee as he accepted the key to the city with the SF Girls Chorus behind him on the steps of City Hall. .  I first caught a glimpse of this event in the planning stage in a Leah Garchik column at the end of January:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/30/DDPB1MTEFL.DTL

I think I've already cited the Eastwood 'halftime' ad debate from Feb. 10

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/09/MNH71N4QQC.DTL&ao=all

Also going back into my little pile of clippings is David Sirota's "We're shopping like there's no tomorrow," January 27, 2012  It's on what he calls the "normalcy bias--"a cognitive phenomenon whereby many who are faced with imminent disaster instantly convince themselves that everything is fine."

http://www.sunjournal.com/news/columns-analysis/2012/01/31/david-sirota-action-needed-counter-normalcy-bias/1147894

"Let Fidel write" is a short letter from Tom Miller of Oakland saying that Castro is an "astute observer of the U.S. political scene" because Castro said of the Republican presidential primaries "The greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been." 

Ben Gazzara's obituary appeared (along with "State sued over shark fin ban") on Feb. 4, 2012.  I loved him!  And updating the article on shark fin ban, a Feb. 17, 2012 headline reads "Obama picks up food from restaurant with shark fin on its menu."  That's the Great Eastern restaurant, which is "among a handful still serving shark fin soup, a delicacy that has been outlawed in California."  They sell it for $48 a bowl. 

In the realm of "higher education," there's the article from North Dakota that their university there (Dickinson) has become a diploma mill.  

 http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/02/11/audit-north-dakota-university-awarded-unearned-degrees/

"Student rediscovers lost Malcolm X speech" is interesting because it mentions the student paper's editor Richard Holbrooke, who went on to become a diplomat, the U.S. ambassador to Germany and then to the UN and then President Obama special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan.  (He died in 2010 at age 69.)  In 1961 he was using the student newspaper to examine race relations.   An article written by someone named Katharine Pierce got Malcolm X's attention, and he wound up speaking at Brown (the part, then called Pembroke College, for Women).  

A letter to the editor by Judith Keenan is headed "Nothing like a bookstore," Feb. 11, 2012, and I agree.  She's mentioning Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, but I think of Green Apple. 

I still haven't read the Datebook section from Feb. 12-18 on "The Cult of Beauty," at the Legion of Honor--showcasing the Victorian avant -garde.

From Feb. 16 there's "Iran claims it's getting close to making nuclear fuel," and beneath that article from Nairobi, Kenya comes the statistic "5 children starve to death per minute."  

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/15/MNB01N7V4U.DTL

On the next page there's an article "Coalition regrets air strike killed 8 Afghan civilians."  

I'm curious about something:  None of the links I've copied and pasted appear to be "live," so I'm going to publish this before I've finished with it to see whether once published the links are active.

Presidents Weekend

Yesterday I saw a flag at the Cullums' house on Poshard, and immediately I thought of Whitney Houston even though it wasn't really flying at half-mast.  "Oh, it has to do with our presidents," I commented to the nice neighbors who'd put it up.  "I saw a cartoon in today's paper, and it showed Abe Lincoln after he was shot in the Ford Theatre.  His last words were 'Please...in honor of me and President Washington...for our birthday, have an auto blow-out sale."

Hula Dancers at City Hall?

Why were hula dancers at City Hall's sing-along?
Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and City Hall is such a beautiful building that it can contain all sort of excess.

City Hall Sing-along with Tony Bennett

Instead of teaching my students a Whitney Houston song (Did you know she was the daughter of a gospel singer and the cousin of Aretha Franklin?), I taught “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the recording of that song.  I let them read about the big event at City Hall, where we would all sing along with Tony Bennett.  I got dressed for it too:  my cable car earrings (“To be where little cable cars/Climb halfway to the stars”) and my tie with all the heart-shaped candy plus my red rain boots and my fuchsia pantsuit and my red, pink, and white boa.  Nothing quite matched anything else I was wearing, but everything matched the theme.  My plan was to teach my Tuesday morning class and skip my office hour so I could head out to City Hall.  But for the first time all semester, students needed to see me during my office hours, and I thought of Madrid, where most students skipped their Friday classes between holidays to “hacer puente.”   But the rule at Mangold Institute, where I taught, was that if even one student showed up, we had to stay and teach.  I remember a teacher saying, “One student showed up and said he loved my class and wouldn’t miss it for anything.  I could have bashed his head in.”  I didn’t really want to bash in the head of my two students, mothers trying to balance both classes and toddlers, but spending an hour with them meant getting to City Hall too late to get anywhere close to a place with a view.  Still, I enjoyed Standing Room Only without a view.  I straddled my legs around a man who was bent over taking in the scene, and every now and then I’d move in over his butt and take a picture.  I really enjoyed the fairy princess from Beach Blanket Babylon who just evaporated into golden light.  The SF Girls Choir, the SF Boys Choir, and the SF Gay Men’s Chorus all sang too.  And then we all sang under the direction of hula dancers.  I don’t know why.  I've chosen to illustrate with magic golden light instead of hula dancers, but check in tomorrow.

Shark Fin Soup

                                                     Shark Fin Soup

Everything I ever learned I learned from show tunes, so from “Grant Avenue” (Flower Drum Song, 1958, based on a book by C.Y. Lee and revised by Hwang in 2002), I have the following cultural awareness of our Chinese Community in SF:

You can eat if you are in the mood.

Shark fin soup.  Bean cake fish.

The girl who serves you all your food 

Is another tasty dish!

So I had the speaking and listening students sing it yesterday in honor of the Chinese New Year parade tomorrow—billed as the biggest Chinese celebration outside of  Asia—but we sang

“Not shark find soup but bean cake fish”

Because as even some of the students knew (I say even because when I was a college student, I was much too busy to read anything but the funny pages), there’s a shark fin ban, and they understand why. 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/03/MNV71N32N0.DTL

Of course, we left the 1950s sexist "girl/tasty dish" line.

Tonight is the Chinese New Year Parade, which Bob Irwin says guarantees rain.  I'm taking Javier, Vilma, and Bill to dinner at the Millennium, so the only part of the parade we'll witness is the difficulty parking.

Then on Tuesday at noon, I'll join the sing-along for the 50th anniversary of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" for Valentine's Day--before Javier comes by later on his way to class.