Giuseppe Torcivia's heroic pasta con sardi dinner

May I list all the food G made for dinner?  I'm not sure I'm able.  Pickled eggplant, smoked olives, pickled peppers, fresh figs wrapped in ham, bresaola dressed in olive oil and lemon, mystery salami from San Franciso that made me weep, sharp cheese, shrimp pate, fried artichokes, battered &  fried sage leaves, eggplant fritters, spinach and egg pancakes, pistachio rice balls, squid-ink rice balls, bruschetta a la Norma, cuttlefish in dark red wine sauce, cured salmon with scallions and olive oil and lemon, cold tomato soup, pasta con sardi.  For 16.  Served under a tent in a wild storm.  Woof!

Bike sync

More, nice, synchronicity.  Within two days of getting back from Amsterdam I finally gave into the itch and bought a Dutch bike Reasoning was somewhere between wanting the old sore back to be able to ride in an upright position, and just plain old wanting.  The urge was there after the last two trips, but this time it was overwhelming.  So, from Rolling Orange in Cobble Hill, home came, I don't don't know, what shall I call it?  Mr. Bike.

(Baguette not included, stardust-embedded tires glowing very nicely at this angle.)

So early yesterday morning Mr. Bike took me for a ride and we found a 20 block detour to the bakery on the corner.  Leaving the bakery I realized I had dropped one of my gloves along the way - old buff leather work-gloves.  Sigh.  I'd had them a long time, and really liked using them for riding.  Wella.  So, back home, and wouldn't you know it, I pushed Mr. Bike into the yard, and there on the ground,  right where I'd started out from, was glovey!

Well, that made me so happy I decided to photograph it and Mr. Bike and go right inside and post about them.  But when I got inside, there was a better surprise.  Raymond had forwarded mail from Larry, and it started like this:

We just went for a bike ride - to the India border and back, about 6 km each way (although it didn't seem that long).  The very nice hotel manager loaned me his brand-new cycle, and they managed to get another for Parsu Ram.  It was good exercise (although I couldn't beat PR at racing as I could last time! old age is creeping up).  Anyway, the border is alive with all sorts of activity, a lot of it probably illicit.  It was a nice straight shot on the highway but the usual traffic, bullock carts, rikshaws, big smoke-belching trucks, etc.  We had some tea at one of those highway-edge shops, looked filthy but tea's not such a risk I hope due to necessary boiled water...

 ... and goes on to describe "innumerable adventures, not always but mostly good adventures."

I'm no a dead yet. (I think)

Our friend, Zahra Partovi, has invited us to a screening of her new film,  REM:

Rapid

trEe        

       Movement

Our old, old, old friend, Lewis Klahr (begorah, we're old) was just in town showing films at Millenium, and sad to say, we weren't able to get together.

Our friend, Giuseppe, took us to a raucous birthday celebration for himself at Enoteca Maria in St. George, the county of Richmond, and I had flashbacks to looney times of 30 years ago.  Yowza!

A crisis has struck the family, and we siblings have pulled together as though not a day has passed since we lived under one roof.  It's sad and beautiful.  And we're no a dead yet.

Mean Mom Bad Wife

This new shop in our neighborhood...

... reminded us of our old friend, Nicole Lucas Haimes, who is the Mean Mom Bad Wife.  Fo sho.  Way over yonder on the JP coast of the Internet.

Can I have a couple of omens, please?

On what was otherwise a sort of grim day in my skull, I found in the trash on 7th Ave a lovely 50's Harmony baritone uke, waiting to be rescued, just like the one Jake restored at Antebellum Instruments, right down to the tortoise binding; and, the fabulous SbArNuDcIeE wrote to say they'll be at the big Puttanesca & new wine bash in June.  Cheer up!  Turn this thing around.  Accentuate the positive!

The 25th anniversary edition of Little Big, by John Crowley

Ron Drummand and (as) Incunabula has put together a web site (interviews, essays) celebrating the 25th anniversary of John Crowley's Little Big.

Dan Levy, who I haven't seen more than once or twice in a long time, is the person who recommended Little Big to me.   (He recommended I read Ægypt first, but I didn't. Faraway Hills is in Ægypt, and farawayhills is, sort of, where I live.  Now I'm really digressing, but there's a spur of land in the Hudson just north of Cold Spring on the east bank of the river, 41.425841,-73.969586, which I always make believe is the site of some of the parties in Ægypt.  I don't typically mention this to anyone, because, aside from Dan, I don't know anyone else who's read Ægypt: maybe I just need to ask more people if they have.)  Dan's been many web people, pretty fancy, but at the time we're talking he was Levity.) My jaw stayed dropped the entire time I read Little Big. I laughed, I cried. I mean I really wept at one point when I realized how much I identified with one of the characters and that character was now, no kidding, just dead.

You know, when I finish reading what I'm reading now, I'm going to go back and reread Little Big. Or maybe wait for the 25th anniversary printing in April.  Thank you, Incunabula.

[Well, I'm in a groove.  Let me say a little more.  David Kassel introduced me to Dan Levy, lo those many years ago, and David is the other half of a few of web projects I posted about earlier this week.  We saw D last week for the first time in a long time, and I told him then that I had a dream - a pretty horrific dream about Dan L.  OK: here's how old friends differ.  DK immediately launched the question What does that mean about you (me, Stumpy)?, whereas I was telling DK because my next question was Is everything OK with DL?

I think I'm done now.]

Hear Hear !

that in response to Esteban's post which you should read after passing this one by (da trute: ju ju be tryin' his paw at f-bk, full disclosure).
(HI to everybuddy by the way, methinks this be Ju Ju's first post here since the new year showed up...)
CLUSTERFLOCK CLUSTERFLOCK CLUSTERFLOCK
meaning that there be lots of good stuff to peruse over there, me including linky bit below just becuz me got one hella crush on Sheila Ryan...
Hadj M´hamed el Anka | Chaabi algerien

from a tejano of our acquaintance...

comes this linkybit to share with thee, sort of a welcome to twenteeten as many folk be calling it. Esteban has met and shared a table with the esteemed C J, who oncet upon a time blogged regularly at BookNotes, now busy as one of the wizards behind the curtain of BookLab, out there deep in the heart of texas hillcountry with the fella responsible for sharing the link below, el ultimo dudo laid-backo, G. (for gimme gravy widdem grits...) McLerran. Un Feliz Ano Nuevo a ustedes, tejanos estimados!

y andale pues, chiquitos y chiquititas!, vamos a jugar con morecowbell.dj

btw, there's a picture of both G & C.J. from '06 via the post you'll find here

happy ninth anniversary to...

Mark W and his always formidable wood s lot.

wishes for a fine frolic on friday...

to ye all...
via the living spectre that is Riley Dog @ Posterous,
Sotadic and Other Zones: The Cartography of Human Sexuality;
from the marvel that is Akkam's Razor,
the 50 Funniest Internet Infographics.
fyi, some content on that Coed site may be somewhat NSFW.

William Jefferson to the rescue!

via the New Yorker online,
ol'dawg Willy C. saves the day.

and ain't that a truly fearsome duo pictured in the post below,
Dante and Ju Ju be striking the fear of Dawg into one and all.
AND just where in the hell is that lazy-ass chango tonto muckerfrikker?

Step away from the keyboard. No, really.

the esteemed Naomi Klein writes about...

Capitalism, Sarah Palin-style and 'tis worthy of a studied perusal
(as is Ms. Klein herowndarnedself...).
credit to Akkam's Razor for providing that nice chewy, chunky bit of linky goodness, and here be some others from the August 4th post there...

gosh, while we're at it (we = ju ju and his head full of imaginary friends), a review of Katherine Bigelow's The Hurt Locker from Kevin Murphy's Ghost in the Machine.

Back for a moment as we wanted to be sure to point ye to Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire and 10 Steps to Take to Do So, courtesy Tom Dispatch, but credit to the heads up on the linky goodness goes to Gordon Coale.

happi holidaze!

some of us still be working on this Friday before the 4th, no biggie as ju ju works with great crew of people doing good work in this world, but he be looking forward to weekend with pals of many years duration as on Saddidey he heading up to D & M's aerie in the Berkeley hills to dine and watch fireworks (if our summertime fog doesn't materialize) and then come Sunnyday he planning get-together with Janey & Phil with plans to grill up some meaty goodness, play guitar and make a joyful noise (more like caterwauling) all afternoon.

Wishing alla ye an enjoyable weekend whatever it is you be up to, and here's a lovely little linky thing sent my way from Bruddah K,
R. McGuinn solo, Turn, Turn, Turn

where ju ju spent his saddidey...

amongst good friends and many fellow guitarists,
an afternoon of music, the pause that refresheth, yummy munchies,
lots of beer and wine, and more music, music, music...

be forewarned, there will be video w/Audio;
let the caterwauling ensue!

dos cosas...

and both worth sharing...

via esteemed weblogging comrades Steve B. and Kevin M.,
first up, Mr. Baum points us to this moment in time,
and Professor Murphy provides us a timely history lesson
(for which I am very - ! - grateful, ignorant fool that me be...)

one o' these days me hopes to buy each of dese guys a beer
(or some adequate substitute...)

Meatballs!

Our friend, Mikey S., born and bred and lived his whole life here in our little borough, took me a few months back to see Mark Strausman give a cooking demo at De Gustibus. Mikey has become chummy with Strausman over the years and after the demo a number of us chatted. Well, out of the blue in the mail yesterday was a copy of Strausman's and Pino Luongo's Two Meatballs in the Italian Kitchen, inscribed to me by Strausman, and all of it Mikey's doing. Grazie mille, Mikey.

And it's a great read, this cookbook. All of the homages and disconnects and insults of the two friends that are the conversation between traditional Italian regional cooking and Italian American cooking.

Reading chapter 2, The Great Meatball Debate, I suddenly understood something in one of my own family traditions that I'd seen a thousand times before but never given much thought to. How my Mom serves meatballs.

(Sidenote: I spent most Sundays of the first 8 years of my life at my Grandmothers' apartment in the Bronx, as did all of her children and their young families. My southern Italian grandmother's meatballs and my Italian American mother's meatballs are very different - maybe not as different as northern Italian Luongo's and Jewish American Strausman's meatballs, but way different.)

So, my realization.
Like most Italian Americans my Mom cooks her meatballs (and, in the older family days and still for big dinners, her sausage, veal, pork, braciola, or whatever she chooses) in her tomato sauce. First brown the meat, then into the sauce. (Strausman doesn't brown the meat first. To the barricades!) But then, unlike in the Italian American spaghetti and meatballs tradition, she doesn't server the meat on the pasta. But she also does not quite serve the meat after the pasta as a separate course. The meat gets put into it's own serving bowl, with sauce, and appears on the table after the pasta. Like maybe, literally less than a minute after the pasta, but after the pasta and not before. Then some of us put the meat on our plates along with the pasta, and some of us eat the meat after the pasta, but no one puts the meat on their plate before the pasta.

A small step in the lifelong process of understanding one's family.

And today's only Saturday and there's still time to shop for Sunday dinner!

happi first day o'spring!

won't ye be my neighbor?

in re our own earlier post hereabouts,
Mark M. weighs in on the topic...

& gaawwdamm, it be good to see S. Baum back at it regularly on EtB

Sausage!

I don't think my gustatory friend will mind me sharing this:

"I thought you all might appreciate this photo taken at the annual sausage making event that I was fortunate to be able to attend a couple of weeks ago. Thirty of us gathered in a house in K..., New York and we turned over 300 pounds of pork shoulder into sausages over the course of the day. We were supervised by three Italian brothers who have been doing this forever. The shot you see is us seasoning the ground pork before putting it into the casings. Throughout the day, we were fed – fried cheese, various kinds of pizza, grilled pork – and we ended with a feast of pasta, pork stew and home made wine. Truly heavenly ( and I went home with 10 lbs of sausage!!)"

Sent via thingy.

Dear Diary, 081221

Dear Diary:

D           G6        A6
What's new, pussycat? Whoa-oh
D           G6        A6   D  E   E7
What's new, pussycat? Whoa-oh oh

Well! For all the hardships, haven't we seen some of our great good friends this last week? And didn't we get to see the Loser's Lounge do it's 15th anniversary Burt Bacharach tribute at Joe's Pub on Friday night!? Oh! Yes we did! Dr. D, Cuz Rochelle, Ginny, E, Cuz Kev, J - mwah!