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THE GREATEST DAY Of OUR LIVES!!!

Monday, August 30, 2010

Tanya and I bought fancy picnic foods at Fortnum and Mason and took a long train ride to Crystal Palace Park, where we ate our scones and cream and jam in the park and saw historically innacurate but lovely and amazing Victorian Dinosaur statues, and managed to navigate and escape intact and sane from and honest to goodness real live hedge maze and then we explored the ruins of a burnt down Victorian pavillion and then we went to Soho for Chinese food and an evening at the theatre!

And yesterday we went to a puppet show in a shop that sells shrunken heads, bones, and Victorian surgical implements in a rather salty part of town and didn’t even get murdered or lost (or have our heads shrunk)!  GO TEAM.

There are pictures but I am paying for internet in the basement of my dormitory (sadly, yes, but there is full English breakfast every morning!)  so I will post them when I am back at the British Library (land of books, knowledge, and free wifi) later this week!

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R is for Rotterdam, good enough for me.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Hey everyone, I am in Rotterdam!

I am now officially ON VACTION NOT DOING WORK for the next week and a half.  Then it’s back to London and back to researching for me.

I met up with Aaron in Brussels at the Pantone Hotel, which, yes, is paint chip themed hotel.  We were on the orange floor.  It was pretty amazing.  At breakfast I almost accidentally ate a raw egg, because there was a bowl of raw eggs right beside the bowl of hard boiled ones.  I cracked it open and thought, “Gosh, Europeans really like their eggs soft boiled,” and then I noticed it pouring out of the egg cup.  Another excellent job.

And now we are in Rotterdam, in a hotel in a barge in a canal!  It is called the H2otel.  Every piece of furniture in the room is spray painted silver, which, truly, is a marker of style and class.  My general inclination while travelling is to stay in wonderfully silly accomodations whenever possible, and that particular goal has been realized quite effectively on this trip.

Rotterdam is fascinating – the city was completely bombed out in World War II, and rather than reconstruct, the way many European cities did, they took the opportunity to just start brand new.  So the architechture is mostly very interestingly modern, with odd smatterings of pre-war buildings.  As a post-war-ist, I kind of love it.

And my goal of eating mainly cheese and beer on this trip is going very well:  yesterday we had fondue for dinner, and today we had dinner on an all-you-can-eat pancake boat, which is a wonderful thing that really, really exists in the world.  You pay your 15 euros, you get a seat by the window and a cruise through the harbour, and you get to go and get as many pancakes as you want from the pancake closet (actually a thing) and top them with as much ridiculous stuff as you want.  Topping choices included peaches, apples, salami, wedges of brie (cheese requirement fulfilled!), syrup, nutella, sprinkles, candied ginger, and weird little candy covered cruchy bits.  Also, some of the pancakes had apples and bacon baked into them.  And pannekoekenboot is my new favorite dutch word.

Tomorrow we are going to Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog for the day, which is a Belgian exclave in the Netherlands with dutch enclaves in it.  The purpose of this trip is mainly to take pictures of ourselves jumping from one country to the next and to go to this restaurant that has something like 500 kinds of beer.  And then on Thursday, we’re going to Gouda for the day.  The purpose of that trip is mainly cheese.

Some pictures!  For your edification.

The color scheme of our room at the Pantone, where everything has a color number.  Everything.  Including the teas at breakfast.

Rainy Brussels from the Pantone Hotel fire escape

Canals and bicycles abound in Rotterdam

Rainy Rotterdam skyline, as seen from the Pancake Boat

Aaron likes pancakes!

I also like pancakes!  I like them with jam and brie!  (Weird.)

Also, I was in Liverpool last week and lots of things happaned including me refusing to go to any Beatles-themed attraction that you had to pay for,  me not understanding anyone’s accent,  and also me  discovering wine that comes in a pre-poured plastic glass with a tin foil top like a yogurt container that you can get for two pounds at Marks and Spencer, which I took as proof that the British understand my needs.  But I will write a proper Liverpool report later!

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Not dead yet

Monday, August 9, 2010

Hey, did you know that domain names expire if you forget to renew them cause you’re so busy going to England?  Funny, that.  But it’s ok!  I fixed it!  There was no blog here for a few hours today, but it’s back!  Good grief.  Clearly I should not be allowed more than one task at a time because damn if I can handle it.

So, I’m in England!  I had a scant 24 hours in London, then a weird couple of days in Wigan (a small town that was once the spot to be for Northern Soul, and now has a mall at the former site of the Wigan Casino Club, which was the spot to go dancing to Northern Soul, but don’t worry!  They’ve named the food court the Casino Cafe in memoriam).  Wigan is a funny, small town with not much to do in it, and I finished with the research-related stuff I wanted to do fairly quickly.  And the town was kind of quaint and sleepy, but just quaint and sleepy enough to send me spiralling into an OH MY GOD I CAN NEVER WRITE A DISSERTATION BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THINGS type of identity crisis, so I didn’t sleep very well and sent what, in retrospect, was a totally pathetic and unfortunate email to my dissertation advisor explaining said crisis, and luckily she wrote back approximately five minutes later and told me that everything would be fine and that research trips basically make everyone feel disoriented and alienated.  And then I had a good night’s sleep and then I felt better.

Now I’m in Blackpool (the hilarious Niagara Falls of England, minus the falls, with a lovely ocean, and just enough rain and clouds to make for a right crummy day at the beach) and tomorrow I’m going to Liverpool.  A quick google search of upcoming cultural events in Liverpool tells me that there is going to be a John Lennon Memorial Poetry Contest tomorrow at the Beatles Experience museum, so I could go to that!  Or I could shoot myself!  Or more likely, I could stay in the hotel room and wash my underwear in the sink.

But I’m actually having a really good, productive time. I’ve gotten some good work done, and I’ve really enjoyed riding trains around the countryside.  I’m looking forward to being in a big city tomorrow, though.

Further observations about the United Kingdom:

THINGS THE BRITISH DO WELL:

Jaywalking.  Good god.  It could be because I’ve gotten acclimated to LA, where if you jaywalk, you’ll probably either die or get ticketed because the LAPD don’t have enough to do, but holy fuck, the British seem completely unafraid of death by speeding car.  And I’m sure I look like a total tool as I patiently wait for the walk signal.

Prepackated foods.  Oh, Marks and Spencer!  I am basically surviving on your little pies and your little salads because it’s cheaper than eating out every night, so Marks and Spencer Picnic in the hotel room (while watching Antiques Roadshow) is quickly becoming a bit of a tradition.  Also, walking around your stores is weirdly relaxing and therapeutic, more so than walking around a Trader Joe’s, which is how I relax and unwind and end up making unfortunate food purchases (ie:   those awful frozen avocados) in LA, largely because everyone in Trader Joe’s are always all Busy and Important and that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Tawdryness.  Blackpool is a little bit amazing.  Because it’s kind of shoddy and falling apart, and there are these old Victorian pleasure piers with rides and attractions on them that people clearly LOVE even though they are a little unfortunate and decrepit.  Also, they are currently getting ready for the Illuminations, which, basically, are piles and piles of Christmas lights that they run up and down the shore every fall for, um, some reason?  It’s kind of unclear. But people are very excited because ROBBIE WILLIAMS is coming to town to flip the on switch for the illuminations this year!  Gee golly.  So, basically, I sort of love Blackpool in spite of/because of this tawdryness.  As a devoted student of kitsch, it’s been a fascinating educational experience, because it is such an interestingly different kind of kitsch than SoCal Kitsch, with which I am intimately acquainted.

THINGS THE BRITISH ARE LESS GOOD AT:

Free wireless.  AAAAGGHH!!!  Some people need wireless internet a little too much.  This person needs wireless internet a little too much.  There is wireless in coffee shops here, yes, but it is almost always owned by British Telecom and is stupidly expensive (5 pounds for, like 1.5 hours!) which I resent deeply.  Luckily, I know that in London there will be wireless at the British Library and at St. Pancras station, both of which are basically across the street from where I’m staying, thank goodness.

So that’s all for now!  Liverpool tomorrow, and then I will be reunited with my dear Gentleman Caller in Brussels for the ACTUAL VACATION part of this trip:  We will eat and drink our way through all of the cheese and beer in Belgium and the Netherlands.

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Adventures across the space-time continuum

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Ok, so I started writing this late last night and got as far as uploading the picutres before I realized how past my bedtime it was.  I am now no longer flying to London tomorrow:  I am flying to London today!  I am currently in LAX, bogarting wifi from Air France, which is very very slow because I am obviously not actually in the Air France first class lounge.  However, this is a major improvement over what normally happens when I’m stuck in this airport for hours which is this:  I turn on my computer hoping that there has been a miraculous miracle and that LAX has free wifi all of a sudden (because charging for wifi at an airport should probably be illegal).  Instead, it is like, $7, which I totally resent, and so I try to steal wifi from somewhere, which usually results in me being able to connect to the Air New Zealand wifi but not actually use it because they give all of their customers a secret code and are mean and don’t share.  But today, some of the stars are aligned correctly, or something, so god bless Air France for their unsecured network.

Anyhow, things are not as wonderful as they could be because there is NOT A SINGLE COPY OF VANITY FAIR ANYWHERE IN TERMINAL 2.  Vanity Fair is the only magazine I ever want to read on an airplane:  it has just enough actual, good, politically-oriented journalism and just enough complete and utter fluff (ie:  celebrities and dresses) to be perfect airplane fodder.  The New Yorker has too many words, Vogue has too much Anna Wintour, Vanity Fair manages to hit the happy medium between them (unless there’s a Christopher Hitchens column, but even then, there’s nothing quite like feeling some righteous anger regarding an idiotic blowhard who should never have been given any sort of media mouthpiece).  But not today, alas.

ANYHOW!  Back to last night we go!

…

Presently:  I’m feeling rather future-oriented.  Tomorrow I fly to London!  What happens there will shape the future of…my dissertation.

Pastly:  I cleaned out my camera’s memory cards and found all kinds of photos of past adventures, presented here for your enjoyment and edification, after the jump!

(Continued)

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DINOSAUR DAY 2010!!!!!

Friday, July 23, 2010

If I go down in history for anything in the world, I want it to be for inventing Dinosaur Day, the day on which we honor our long lost reptilian overlords, the dinosaurs, by going on Dinosaur Pilgrimage.  Last year, we celebrated the inaugural dinosaur day with a trip to the Cabazon Dinosaurs, home of a terrifying creationist museum.  This year, aided and abetted by roadsideamerica.com, a website that has come to dictate far too many of my day to day activities, we went on yet another ambitious journey into the desert, in the middle of July, where it reached 44 fucking degrees celcius.  But nothing will stop Dinosaur Day!

Armed with seven hours worth of educational paleontology podcasts, we ventured forth to Apple Valley, California (stopping along the way at the Donut Man, in Glendora, the Official Donut Purveyor of Dinosaur Day), home of the now tragic, crumbling Apple Valley Dinosaurs.

What was once a magnificent . . . mini golf course, is now a tragic monument to the loss of our long-departed lizardly overlords.  I braved six inches of barbed wire to get close to one, and, apart from that time at the Cabazon Dinosaurs, and that time at the Natural History Museum, and that time at Science North when I was five, and that time at the Bruce County Museum, and all of those other times when I’ve stood next to fake and/or reconstructed dinosaur skeletons, it was the closest I’d ever been to a dinosaur.

So, I cannot over-emphasize the strangeness of this place, you know?  Wire and cement skeletons of fake dinosaurs were everywhere, a few had vestiges of their original paint jobs, and it was so hot and desolate.  I’m fascinated by the strangely melancholic desert cities in the middle of California – who are the people who choose to live there and why?Once, the area was booming, but it certainly isn’t anymore.  And, most importantly, who builds their dinosaur golf course out there?  My theory is that since Apple Valley is Route 66-adjacent, it might have been a tourist draw once, but now, there is nothing surrounding it.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Anyhow, we stopped at the Route 66 Museum in Victorville because it was there and because it was free, and it was fascinating too.  They have a 9 foot tall hula girl statue from Hulaville, which looms large over the entire museum, and which Aaron completely failed to notice because he is an oblivious boy who was busy reading the descriptions of antique radios.  And also the Route 66 Museum is right next to a Wonder Bread/Hostess warehouse store (yes, really) so next time we go out into the middle of the desert for no good reason I am going to buy a gross of Twinkies.

And then we were off to Peggy Sue’s Diner and Diner-saur park.  If you’re going to have a giant 50′s diner with an entrance shaped like a jukebox, you need something to distinguish yourself from all of the other 50′s diners.  And apparently that thing is dinosaurs.  And to think I was already excited that there were sandwiches named after Fabian and Frankie Avalon and Richard Nixon!  I could eat a Frankie Avalon sandwich AND ALSO there were dinosaurs.

And King Kong, don’t forget King Kong.

And in case anyone needed any help with dinosaur identification, voila!  A handy guide to dinosaur taxonomy:

And then we went home and watched The Land that Time Forgot, which had WONDERFUL and TERRIBLE fake dinosaurs in it and also cave men and Really Excellent Science.  Although it did suffer from a little too much “we are on a German U-boat and not very pleased about it”-style exposition before we got to the actual dinosaurs, but they were such good actual dinosaurs that I can’t complain much.  We also made our own Special Edition Dinosaur Day Ice Cream by throwing vanilla ice cream in the stand mixer with blue food coloring, malt balls, chocolate chips, and marshmallows, which, somehow, stands for dinosaur?  Whatever, it was awesome.

I am thinking that for next Dinosaur Day we need to do something really big, and maybe actually involving real dinosaurs, like volunteering on a paleontology dig or something?  Whatever we do it will be amazing because Dinosaur Day is officially the BEST DAY OF THE YEAR.

There are more Dinosaur Day pictures on that facebook thing, if you want ‘em.

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Operation Desert Storm

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Many Moons Ago, my Gentleman Caller took me away for a suprise weekend of tramping about the desert.

We went to Joshua Tree, which was much like Northern Ontario (rocks and trees and trees and rocks, and rocks and trees and trees and rocks, and waterrrrr), only completely different (rocks and cacti and cacti and rocks, and rocks and cacti and cacti and rocks and sannnnnnnnd).

Aaron wore his jaunty, cactus-inspectin’ hat.

And no, this is not a picture of me emerging from a giant cement vulva!

It is a picture of me emerging from a giant cement (historically inaccurate and somewhat offensive but we’ll let it slide just this once cause it was the 1950s) teepee!  My Gentleman Caller is very good at helping me fulfill my insatiable need to experience as much novelty architechture as possible.  We stayed at the Wigwam Motel in lovely, scenic Rialto!

Rialto has some very good mid-centuriness happening in it, like DJ’s Coffee Shop, which had tasty tasty breakfast.

And the next day we went on a hilarious ghost town tour, stopping in Calico, a mining town turned ghost town turned historical re-enactment site/theme park at some point in the 60s that has changed very little since and thus remains hilarious and weird,

And we went to California City, a weird planned city/social experiment that never really worked out – you should read about it.  All that’s there are the roads that were laid out for a city that was planned, but never populated because, shockingly, nobody wanted to move out to the middle of the desert.

And then there was this, the most glorious sign I’ve ever seen, on a sadly closed-down drive in, somewhere outside Barstow:

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Everything’s in boxes

Thursday, July 15, 2010

A lot is going on!  Big changes are afoot and many adventures are in the air.

First of all, something that would have seemed so highly improbably mere months ago has happened:  I have moved in with a gentleman.  I know, right?  But it is wonderful and good.  I am currently living off of his good graces in his apartment on the West side (part of operation Pay As Little Rent As Possible This Summer) and in the fall we will be moving back Eastwards to a West Hollywood apartment built for two.  Well, built for four, actually:  it will house myself, my Gentleman Caller, his Gentleman Hound Dog (Boomer Thaddeus Dog, Esq., World’s First Canine Lawyer), and a CAT that I am going to get and the cat will be grey and cute and named either Otto or Rock Hudson.  And as for my Gentleman Caller, well, suffice it to say that he makes me a pretty happy lady, and takes me on wonderful adventures and makes me tasty sandwiches.  Also, he is currently sitting behind me geeking out over an old synthesizer someone gave him to play with and it is totally cute.

PLEASE NOTE that this does not change the fact that I am, and will always be a spinster, and spinsterly in my ways and doings.  I recently conferred with one of my sisters in spinsterliness and explained that, despite how happy Gentleman Caller makes me, I had been having a very fraught, angst-ridden identity crisis over the nature of my spinsterliness.  But Good Spinster Amy reminded me that, indeed, men may come and (hopefully not) go, but Spinterhood is Forever.  And since being angst-ridden is really our defining characteristic, what was I worried about anyhow?  And so now I begin this new weird life as a cohabitating spinster, with slightly less angst about that particular issue, but plenty of angst about most other things.

Also, one of the sad things about this move is that my dear, dear now-former roommate, Sam, has left for New York for a year, and I miss him.  The glory days of 1027 North Laurel Ave have now come to an end.  But also this gives me an excuse to go to New York sometime.

Other important things have happened recently, namely:  I have done the greatest thing that I will ever do.  No, no, I did not start and write my dissertation in a month.  No, I did not end world hunger.  Instead, I had a poem about crullers written in the style of William Blake published in the Los Angeles Times.  Because remember how I ran that Donut Summit for LA Metblogs (now totally sleekly redesigned and relaunched as blogging.LA)?  Well, the whole event was nothing short of miraculous and wonderful.   And the next day, when I saw that my cruller poem, written late one night when I needed to think of something funny to post on the blog, was in the LA Times, I laughed and laughed and laughed.  ”All of our hopes and dreams for you have come true,” said my father.  Well, all of my hopes and dreams for myself have come true, too.  I can probably just go ahead and retire now that I am a published poet.

Giant fantastic things are coming up in the next few weeks, too:  I’m off to the UK for my first venture into actually doing research for my dissertation.  I’ll be traveling in the North for a couple of weeks, then meeting up with Gentleman Caller for a couple of weeks of vacationing in Belgium and the Netherlands.  And then I’m going back to London for a month of research at the British Library.  And TANYA IS COMING TO VISIT ME THERE AND WE ARE GOING TO KIDNAP HUGH GRANT!  Actually, probably we won’t kidnap Hugh Grant, probably we’ll just go laugh inappropriately at the art in the Tate Modern, and maybe see a soccer game.

UNTIL THEN, my life is consumed by teaching the history of rock and roll to a group of people who ask me questions like “what is that electronic sound effect they use on Neil Young’s voice in that song.”  The technical term for that sound effect would, of course be “Just Neil Young’s Voice.”  Oh, the undergraduates!  Sometimes endearing, always entertaining.

Also, Gentleman Caller and I went on a desert adventure that I am going to post about in a minute.  And also this weekend is dinosaur day so I will post about that in another minute!

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A desperate epistle from the land of Higher Education

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Ways in which my students have spelled “The Shangri-Las”:

The Shringa-Las,

The Shrangris Las,

The Shingles,

The Shir La Las,

The Rondelles,

The Rockets.

Artists my students have identified as the performer of “I Can See For Miles,” by The Who:

The Byrds,

The Beatles,

The Rolling Stones,

The Beach Boys,

(and all of the above seem like completely understandable mistakes but the next two are totally inexplicable,)

The Drifters,

The Everly Brothers.

IN OTHER NEWS:  So much other news!  But the most important other news at the moment is:  JULY 16th IS DINOSAUR DAY!!!!  Oh yes.  I bet you thought I didn’t mean it when I went ahead and invented a holiday last year.  Oh, but did I ever mean it.  And if you think I am ever going to let July 16th pass again without commemorating the loss of the late, great, dinosaurs, boy howdy, are you mistaken.  SO STAY TUNED!  This year I am going to invent some kind of dinosaur cake, perhaps a cherpumple variant?  But for now it will remain a thrilling mystery!

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Recent Culinary Adventures, episode two!

Friday, June 4, 2010

Bless me father, for I have sinned.  I made this thing out of gelatin, cheese, and carrots:

So, there is a story here:  back in the long-ago days of when I was singing in choir in Kitchener-Waterloo with Leith, the church we sang at was having a book sale, and we found an AMAZING two-volume Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, from 1954, by one Ms. Meta Given, who seems to have been, like, the poor woman’s Betty Crocker, from Pittsburgh, and who is potentially fascinating.  Someone’s dissertation should be on atomic-age cookbooks and gender and domesticity, and there should be a chapter on Meta Given, but because I am in Musicology they want my dissertation to be about music, or something, so that won’t be my dissertation, sadly.  ANYHOW, the Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking is ridiculous and has lots of horrible gelatin-based things in it because it was the Atomic Age, and, you know, Better Eating Through Chemicals and things!

And one of the most amazing recipes was cheese carrots.  I cannot remember the actual specifics of the cheese carrots recipe because the book is at home in Canada somewhere in my parents’ basement, so I had to recreate this from vague memory, and in my vague memory the recipe for cheese carrots was this:  you take your carrots, you grate them.  You take your cheese, you grate it.  You mix them with gelatin, mold them into teensy, canape-sized carrots, and you make carrot greens with sprigs of parsley.  Um, yeah, I know right?

And then one day, for reasons far too complicated to explain to anyone who has not been in Musicology wing of the Schoenberg Music Building this past quarter, I needed to make food that was a culinary representation of the musical oeuvre of Lady Gaga (for homework, because graduate school has done nothing but equip me with useful and practical skills with real-world application), and that is when I decided that cheese carrots were the only possible thing.

My blissful unawareness of certain important facts like, say, the proportions of the ingredients, did not prevent me from boldly sallying forth on this journey of culinary blasphemy.  So when the cheese carrot batter was too runny to roll into tiny canape-sized carrots, we MacGuyvered a mold out of a loaf pan, cardboard and some tin foil, poured the mix in, and giant cheese carrots were, unfortunately, born.

They’re more art than food, really, and remarkably inoffensive in flavor.  But the texture is . . . just not the texture of something you really want to eat. Oh, 1954.  Truly, you were another planet.

As a counterpoint, I also made this blackberry/muscat jelly from a Nigella Lawson recipe, and it was legitimately delicious, although less like Lady Gaga.

Also:  in the UK gelatin is measured in leaves, and in the US gelatin is measured in packets, and neither of these units of measurement  is not even remotely related to the metric system and therefore I throw my Canadian hands up in exasperation at both of them.  For the record, 1 leaf gelatin = 1/4 packet of gelatin, or something, I think, I don’t actually remember.  So this recipe calls for five leaves of gelatin which is 1 and 1/4 packets, which is a stupid amount, because what do you do with 3/4 of a packet of gelatin?  Add it to your cheese carrot batter, I guess.  Too bad.

Is that math even right?  Who actually counts things anymore, anyhow?  Whatever.

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Recent Culinary adventures, episode one!

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Happy 601th blog post!  Did you know that I have been blogging for five years?  That is FOREVER in internet time!

Anyhow, I wanted to tell you all about some recent food-based adventures I have had.  First of all:  Giant Breakfast.

So you start with an ostrich egg, which you crack with a mallet:

The insides will look weird and sort of gross,

but mostly like a normal egg, only gigantical:

You should probably devil it.  The classiest eggs are devilled eggs.

And as a side dish, you should toast some mini donuts and call them giant cheerios!

I also hear that giant egg goes rather well with giant toast, giant pancake, giant french toast and giant veggie sausage patty.

Giant breakfast = giant success.  And we had egg salad sandwiches for a week.

Special thanks go to Gentleman Caller, for his fancy pants camera and photography skillz, and to everyone who came and braved ostrich egg with us!  And extra special thanks go out to the champagne in the giant mimosas.

STAY TUNED NEXT TIME FOR ADVANCED (DISGUSTING) ADVENTURES IN GELATIN!  The cuisine of 1954:  It’s here, It’s now, It’s slimy and unfortunate!

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