Recent Adventures, Part One

I've been too busy to get to the long(ish) post about being left to my own devices while Corrie and Cass met the Dolman family at large in OKC. It was the Boy's first flight, and my first non-work related absence from him.

Anyway, I got a text the other day saying something like, "Hey, I've got an extra ticket to the Angels game on Tuesday...in a suite, food and beer supplied. You in?"

How do you say no to that?

It felt pretty easy, actually, but I resisted the urge to decline. I was/still am quite sick, and Corrie had only been home for a few days, and it didn't feel right to take off to a game, even if the ride was included...(sigh)...ride included? Ride to and from Anaheim, food, and beer provided for a suite experience? Corrie said it best: "You kinda have to go."

The spot was phenomenal, even if the photo doesn't do it justice. Above is baseball's best player, Mike Trout, in the batter's box.

Maybe he's baseball's best player ever...

On the ride home my friend's radio was tuned to news radio, and the second thing I could hear was a traffic report.

It was 11:05 at night and the radio program was discussing a traffic report, which was more than two sentences---there was plenty of traffic news to report.

Let that sink in.

The Angels broke a scoreless tie in the middle innings, then the White Sox roared back and took the lead. The friend who texted me is from a Chicago and is a Sox fan, and the company that rents out the suite knows he's a Sox fan, and so once a year, when they're in town, they get him and his pals the suite. Pretty sweet. (Oh, homophones...)

In the bottom of the 9th inning, the Angels tied it, but didn't win the game. After a scoreless 10th, I leaned over to my other buddy, the one that drove, and asked how long he wanted to stay. I don't really care about either team, and needed to get some rest. He said he was pretty much ready whenever.

The third in our literary-minded trio was already asleep on a chair in the suite. After some incriminating phots, we woke him and left. (The photos were not my idea and I refused to participate. Spoil sport, I guess...)

As we walked out, a White Sox player hit a home run, putting them ahead in the top of the 11th inning.

I still don't know for sure who won...

Happy Birthday Dan!

Each year my brother gets closer and closer to my age... Today we went on a hike to celebrate.

But by "we" I don't mean him and I, just myself with my own peeps. Dan and I are about 400 miles apart.

But we went over to Point Fermin. There's a park at the end of Gaffey Street in San Pedro. San Pedro sits on the other side of the port from us in Long Beach, but whereas Long Beach is flat with the Signal Hill bump, San Pedro sits on the most southerly roll of the Ranch Palos Verde Peninsula, an erstwhile Channel Island that has turned into a peninsula though eons of the river deposits that created the LA Basin.

Anyway, Dan's Birthday today was the first time we ever went down to the Point Fermin park at the end of Gaffey, so it wasn't until today that I realized that this hike was only fifteen minutes away from home, essentially three towns over:

Down at the bottom is almost like Montan(y)a de Oro:

Cass loved him some palm tree smacking, standing tall with no help:

The Point is the sight of a historical lighthouse, a spot open to visitors between the hours of 1 and 4:

It looked pretty cool but we didn't get inside. Bummer.

Anyway, happy birthday Dan! Hope the movie and steak were both as good as I imagine!

Twenty-Eight Hours with the Boy and the LA Book Festival

Corrie had a long-planned camping trip away from the four of us boys, and as the date came up, anxieties did so as well. Hers mostly, as I was sure I could handle it (overconfidence is no stranger here), and the Boy had no idea what was going on.

With Corrie all packed up and ready to go, she said her goodbyes and I held Cass as he watched her descend the stairwell and shut the door, and then we watched from the window as she drove away. He whimpered a little as she left, but after the car was gone, we got back to normal: playing and having a good time.

That was only an interlude, since I was getting ready to embark on a trip to USC to bring the Boy to his---and miy own---first book festival.

Originally I had planned on taking the trains, but this would prove just too inconvenient in a practical sense. Stupid lack of infrastructure. I would have to take the Blue line all the way to the Staples Center and switch to the Expo line, a combination of at least 85 minutes which could easily be 110 minutes. That's all well and good for a single adult head with a buzz and something to read, but with a 10 month old in tow?

That idea fizzled during committee.

The drive wasn't so bad and the parking price wasn't as bad as I'd expected, so that was that. The return trip would be early enough that parking would be acceptable, which helped matters.

I used the stroller, which for our family is a rarity. We use our Ergo carrier and wear the Boy on a constant basis around Long Beach: we walk everywhere anyway and the stroller, while compact, is still a bit of a burden in bulk and sizing at the restaurant establishments we frequent.

Also, the stroller allowed me to show off my Pynchon shirt.

I've always heard that USC is in the 'Hood, that it's the bastion of "A-Way-Out-Ness" in South Central South LA. Having seen their lovely campus and the surrounding environs I'm not sure I agree with that designation. Maybe times have improved the area, but everything is north of 40th street, possible 38th. Maybe in 1920 this was considered "far" south of downtown, but these days I usually think of the fifty blocks from 70th to Imperial Highway as the heart of South LA. (Residents there won't ever read this, but I'm sure they'd take issue with that statement. Sorry everybody...I now it's bad and rough all over the central, blight-affected zones of this metropolitan mess...)

Anyway, we parked and started on our mission: have an adventure and celebrate books. We passed a lonely socialist table on our way to the big outdoor convention-styled booths area that was manned by a single black dude. I wanted to chat with him, and agreed to do it on our way out. I had planned not to spend a copious amount of time out, this far from home, because I essentially wanted to take it easy with the Boy.

Eventually we made it to the rows and rows of vendors. The first place I stopped at and struck up a conversation with was the Atheists United booth. I eventually picked up a book written by the lady with whom I had been speaking that touched on a very specific thing I had been contemplating recently: the state of being of the black atheist and a critical view of African American religiosity and generally conservative social views.

From there we made our way to lots of other booths, chatting briefly with authors, publishers, C-Span workers, fans of the printed word... I found a large place with a good deal on books. "Brand new books! Two for fifteen bucks!" the man barked, over and over. I came over and started perusing, but the stroller was difficult to maneuver in and the shelving on the uneven grass where it had been set up. They had a book on American anti-intellectualism, a copy of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and lots of other things.

In the end, I put back the items I'd chosen. Wasn't I the champion of the under-served book writer, a champion of writers who attempt to speak the truth despite it not being necessarily commercially viable? Having just bought a small-batch printing of a book about black atheism, I decided to only go find either used books or books I wouldn't be finding anywhere else.

The opportunity to buy another book presented itself on the way out. Passing back by the Socialist's lonely table I found it manned by two gentleman, neither them the first black dude I'd wanted to talk to. No matter. I purchased a book about women's long fight for freedom and equality.

Here they are together:

In between those two moments, I purchased a gift for my dad as well as a the slipcase edition of Congressman John Lewis's graphic novel history March. Lewis himself was there signing copies, and as Cass and I stopped for a shady seat to grab a Cheerio-and-puree pouch snack, I realized that the nearby lines for signings seemed long, and that I should probably head out once the snack was over to get a start on avoiding fussiness. I think I heard them say that John Lewis was out for lunch at the time anyway.

In the two weeks since then, and having read about half of the March trilogy I have to say: if I'd known the details of John Lewis's story I would have waited all goddamned day in line, screaming baby or happy baby, just so I could say "Cassius Starling met AMERICAN HERO John Lewis."

And John Lewis is an AMERICAN HERO. Go buy the trilogy and read it. Please. Please.

A number of people throughout our time at the festival complimented Cass on his cuteness and adorability, which was expected. BUT NOBODY MENTIONED MY PYNCHON T-SHIRT. Not a single person.

I mentioned that to Corrie, and she said, "What? What kind of book festival was this?"

Once home, and the nap not taking, we ate some more, and then I had to start dinner. Eventually he went down for bed with no hiccups. He woke when I went to bed hours later, but I nursed him with the sippy-cup and he was asleep in moments.

The next day went without incident until Corrie's return, and I felt pretty accomplished. Beforehand, I could have explained to a stranger every little thing I would be doing with the Boy, but it wasn't until I was alone with him that I realized the stress of being the only person at that moment that is making sure this other, littler person is thriving. That heaviness, that reality...that I wasn't so prepared for.

And Corrie does it everyday.

Upon being told of mamma's impending return:

Big Ol' Clusters

All of us have them: intersections that are headaches at best, total cluster effs at worst. I sat at one bad one today and it inspired me to write this right here, right now.

It also reminded me to put the other cluster eff I hit up much more routinely.

The first, from earlier today, was the intersection of Vermont, Anaheim, Gaffey, and Rancho Palos Verdes North:

Vermont is coming down from the North while Anaheim cuts diagonal through where Vermont splits off into RPV North on the left and Gaffey to the right. It makes much more sense from above. I was heading south on Vermont, trying to turn left onto Anaheim, about to head off the right side of the square.

Every direction has it's own light, and except for my left turn light, they all take their precious time. These streets are probably more iconic for LA proper than the picture I'll show next. Vermont travels down all the way from the west side of downtown LA to this terminus at the base of the Palos Verdes Peninsula over 23 miles later. Gaffey is the main street of San Pedro, a former-beach-current-port town in LA county. Pedro has its own feel and identity and tiny beachy town sense-of-self, and fosters a certain independence that betrays the truth: its subjugation to and annexation by LA when the larger town needed to claim the Port. (The Southern California Port(s) of the US are actually two bureaucratic entities: the Port of Long Beach (which is bigger) and the Port of LA (which used to be San Pedro?) and together the industrial blight is something special.)

Rancho Palos Verdes Drive is the main, curving thoroughfare of the ritzy peninsula, here named North, but also having a West designation as well. Anaheim is one of lower Long Beach's main streets and ends to the west off screen quickly.

If you ever find yourself driving through this area...um...no advice, just...sucks, man...

The other drive I happen to head through more often, as it is in Long Beach proper, and is where Clark, traveling south, intersects Stearns, heading east/west. The only issue is the Los Coyotes Diagonal, a large east-side Long Beach route, pretty much bisects their intersection:

They eventually altered Stearns to curve a little. Like the previous intersection, this one makes more sense from above. And, like the previous intersection, each direction gets its own light.

At least this intersection's lights are pretty decent. I'm usually driving south on Clark, hoping to breeze through the light.

May Day in the Southland

May Day celebrations date back to the Roman era with a festival called Floralia (similar to winter's Saturnalia). Back then the Summer Solstice was the midpoint of summer, not the start, and May Day was seen as the first day of summer. Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" highlights the solstice party as this midsummer phenomenon.

In the 19th century May Day was adopted by workers the world over as a day to celebrate labor and the proletariat. Eventually the US recognized Labor Day as a holiday in September.

May Day had been my parents anniversary as well.

At work last week a union rep had warned us that if we were going to take the day off that we had better get our reasons correct for the report that we have to fill out. We're allotted a specific amount of sick days or personal leave days, but still ave to sign paperwork after we get back about the reasoning.

Why would we take Monday off, someone asked. It wasn't me who asked, but that question had occurred to me. "For the protests!" was the snide response from one of our more cynical and burned out workers, and the tone implied the unspoken phrase you idiot at the end of the exclamation.

I remembered a handout I was given when I was with the Boy at the Book Festival the weekend before:

I got it while chatting with the Socialist's booth and laughed at the idea: Monday at 11 am...um, I work? So that'll be a little tough.

I heard later that the union had asked the superintendent to shutter the entire district for the anti-Orange Roughy protests, but the request was denied. We even got a robo-call from said superintendent extolling our importance and the importance of our institution for our young people, and that was the reasoning behind the decision to remain open.

Cut to earlier today while Corrie and Cass were taking a bath: I heard what sounded like chanting crowds. I looked out the window and saw a march coming down Atlantic, one of the streets bordering our block:

EDITED: The crowd beckons. They were heading south, and after a minute it had passed. Pretty cool, though.

To quote Homer Simpson, "I remember when I was young and cared about stuff..."

Of course now I care more than ever, but really more in the vein of How can I/we make this world better for my son?

Happy May Day!

Political Advertisement or Propaganda?

On the eve of next week's LA Festival of Books, which I'm planning on dragging my baby to at USC on the train, I felt like highlighting a trio of books in my library and discussing the differences between political advertisement, religious advertisement/informative literature, and propaganda.

Is it really just the point-of-view of the observer?

During the 2014 mid-term elections, a nasty little battle between liberal Long Beach voters for the right to represent the Democrats in the general election for District 70 in the California State Assembly broke out.

If you're familiar with The Wire, think Carcetti defeating Mayor Royce for the primary. Here in Long Beach one candidate was Suja Lowenthal, a Ph.D.-from-USC-having mother who came to the US in 1977 from Madras, India; and Patrick O'Donnell, about whom I know less.

My memories of the election, and for whom I voted are fuzzy. I remember a conversation I had with a reporter friend who had some unpleasant run-ins with Suja when she was on the Long Beach school board, and this reporter was in support, I believe, of O'Donnell.

In any case, because of Corrie's status as a small-business owner and being a woman, and especially a woman-voter, we got something in the mail in the run-up to the primary:

Of course I kept it. It's essentially a sixty-page manifesto from a politician, printed as a 6" x 9" trade-paperback book with glossy pages. Having printed a few books in my time, I can say that the quality is high, for what amounts to political ad-mail. As a book, it's a little garish, what with the shiny pages, but overall production is nice. Also, what can be said about the name? "Repaying America for All It Is to All of Us."

She didn't win. Kind of a bummer, that the political world was robbed of such am ambitious politician. Obviously the woman who sent this out to business-owning, politically-savvy women had/has bigger goals than California District 70.

If you see the endorsements from that 2014 midterms in this area, you can see it was pretty well split down the middle (I just looked it up on ballotpedia.com).

I guess that would qualify as propaganda, but only in the narrow sense of "cult of personality", and when it involves a candidate who didn't win her primary, even that narrow sense is a stretch.

From the world of religiosity, let me take you back to some fall day in 2014. I was at the university's campus in Carson when a white man (rare already on this campus) with a beard and samurai-like ponytail asked me if I liked books. He was standing next to a box and appeared to be handing things out.

Well, how could I say No, I don't fucking like books, when that's so blatantly against character for me? I do, however, find it distasteful to be handed JESUS! books, so I found myself circumspect in my answer. Before I could fully answer, he handed me a tiny pocketbook-sized publication and said, "It's Eastern. Check it out..."

It was titled "Beyond Birth and Death," and looked to be authored by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

His Divine Grace AC is the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

The dimensions of my own Robot Crickets, but less than sixty pages, it's a very well put together little book. The cover isn't the same type of material as Robot Crickets, but it looks like they used the same type of printing company. As an artifact, I found it very interesting, and it even pushed me along in trying to finish pulling together some material for myself as a novelty.

Fast-forward to Wondercon 2016, last March, when I was heading back to the convention center after a quick walk around the neighborhood looking for a falafel joint that didn't exist anymore. I was beginning to separate from the crowd of nerds as we crossed the street when, like the campus before, a guy jutted his hand out to me as I passed, able to read me and knowing just what to say: "Hey man, free book."

The title was "The Perfection of Yoga." Holy cow! I thought as I checked it out on the way back through security. I couldn't really believe it. Here they are together:

Of course, at that time in March of '16 I didn't have the first book with me, but the "His Divine Grace" jazz at the bottom is pretty noticeable.

Here are the backs:

Funny thing: I read the very first sentence in "Beyond Birth and Death," took fundamental issue with the basic Cartesian-duality assumption, and didn't read anything more. It turned me off with the very first sentence, and I never returned.

I don't mean it rubbed me the wrong way, I mean I philosophically disagree with the assertion of the first sentence, and if you disagree with that assertion and assumption about the world---you can't convince me of even your premise---you'll be hard pressed to keep my attention for when you finally arrive at your conclusion.

Like I said, as artifacts, I really dig these books. They do seem like religious propaganda, but still, it's a minority religion for the country, and they take their book trust seriously:

Go independent book projects that are propaganda or ads for politics or religiosity!

Brassica Oleracera is a Pynchon Characrter

It's confusing with the capital letters and no italics...it should really be Brassica oleracera. When it started to become clear how splintered the development of the species was, all I could think of was Slothrop fracturing in ruined Europe right after the war with enough time to be many places at once, like appearing on the record cover of one of the great Midwestern kazoo concertos.

Anyway, it all started a few months back. I had wanted to put up a random blog piece, with Internet-supplied photos, about the difference between Broccoli, Broccolini, Chinese Broccoli, and Broccoli Rabe, the four main types of broccoli I worked with through my years in the restaurant industry.

We eat a lot of broccoli in this house, be it blanched, or roasted, or sauteed with other vegetables and meat, or shaved raw into a salad. Good stuff. The name sounds Italian, right?

This version was developed in Italy as it were, so the Italian sounding name fits.

The corporate kitchen gig I had served lots of the next picture, broccolini. When I first started working there I said, "Ooh, broccoli rabe...popular side dish?" thinking it wouldn't be, not in Texas.

They said, "No no, this isn't broccoli rabe, it's broccolini..."

They told me it was a mix between broccoli and kale, but they were only half right. Broccolini is a mix between regular broccoli and Chinese broccoli, also known as kai lan:

We served a ton of kai lan at the first restaurant I worked at in Manhattan. We would blanch it in ocean-salty water and it was great. The greens are more robust than chard but less than kale and the buds resemble broccoli in flavor and look. Chinese broccoli is great.

Next in my memory was one of the reasons I was inspired in the first place last November (or whenever) to start this post idea: broccoli rabe:

It is similar to kai lan in that it's a mix of leaves and broccoli-looking buds, but the leaves are far more dynamic looking, the buds denser, and the color more midnight green and less neon.

And the taste. Holy cow, the flavor. It's, eh, acquired. If done really well, the fiery bitterness is perfectly complemented with salt and garlic and pepper flakes, and it's awesome. If done poorly, it's barely edible.

Those four pictures and the accompanying anecdotes were the basis for this concept---comparing four types of "broccoli"---an idea and plan that languished for months until recently when I started doing some research.

All four plants come from the Brassica genus, one of the two genera of "mustard plants." Oh really?

How interesting...Brassica nupus gives us the rape flower and the rapeseed, of which the world makes and consumed barrels of oil. The Canadian Oil company decided that "rapeseed oil" is not a good name for marketing (or sales) purposes, so they renamed it "canola oil." Brassica rapa gives the very similar rapini plant, otherwise known as raab or rabe, and when the greens are budding, we call it broccoli rabe.

So what? So this: I just wanted to get that part out of the way. Broccoli rabe, radishes, turnips, rutabaga, mustard greens, mustard seed, prepared mustard, and canola oil are all from the same family of plants.

And broccoli...?

This is where my dive down the rabbit hole ended up with me looking at Brassica oleracera as a dude from a lost Pynchon title...

It all started around the fifth century BCE, when humans decided they liked eating the leaves of a plant now called wild cabbage. They selected for plants with the best leaves, using an activity we like to call artificial selection (see the domesticated dog). Pretty soon, these folks had created a cultivar and the culinary kale was introduced to the world.

Thereafter there was a preference selected for the density of the bunched leaves, called the terminal bud, which lead to the cultivar known today as cabbage.

In Germany they selected for thicker stalks and developed kohlrabi (kohl is German for cabbage...). In Belgium they focused on selecting for lateral buds and ended up with Brussels sprouts. In other parts of Europe they focused on the premature buds, which lead them to cauliflower (15 century), and a century later, broccoli.

Do you see all those underlined culinary items: kale, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels and kohlrabi?

THEY ALL COME FROM THE SAME SPECIES.

Add to the list collard greens, romanesco, kai lan, all forms of cabbage, and all forms of kale.

Frankly I wasn't prepared for that result. I thought they were connected, surely, but the exact same specie?

Domestication and selection for specific preferences has led, over the course of less than five thousand years, to a whole slew of vegetables...that many American's revile...

...but this household eats in abundance.

Cruciferous veggies...they're good for you! That's what we tell the boy! And he likes 'em!