Fried French

" Yo. Vous want frites wit dat?"

As many of you know, I sell books, CD's and DVD's on Amazon in my continued efforts to simplify my life. Today I sold a boxed DVD set of The Wire (Fourth Season) to someone in Paris, France (not Texas.) I usually write a personal note on the invoice slip, thanking the person for their purchase. I wrote in French, "....Merci, pour la commande...."but I was thinking of the buyer and how a French person would interpret inner city school life in West Baltimore. For example, when Prop Joe says, "I'm like a marriage counselor. Tell the man he oughta bring the bitch some flowers every once in a while. Tell the bitch she gotta suck some cock every once in a while. That sort of shit," it translates into "Je suis comme un mariage conseiller. Dites-il l'homme oughta mettre la chienne quelques fleurs de temps en temps. Dites la chienne, elle dois sucer certains queue tous les temps en temps. Ce genre de merde," but can you truly translate that? And in this country, would it really be flowers and chocolate ice cream anymore, or tears, tantrum and a new car?


And who gets to do the voice overs on these things? Standing in a black room in front of a white screen, asking the dub director, "Quelle est ma motivation ?

I must have been in a Frencified frame of mind, because I went over and dumped a comment in French on Les Playaz blog, as if I was reviewing Phil's video effects for Cahiers du Cinéma and taking him to task for not using a soundtrack of Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road" and Buck Owens "Will There Be Big Rigs in Heaven,":





Ce n'est pas un véritable exemple de Cinéma vérité aussi connu sous le nom de "vérité vérité" car il n'est pas modulaire underlaying le thème musical de conduire l'action en avant en vérité. Vérité une vérité en quelque sorte. Où est "Bonnie Jean": La distance de femme par rapport à la perte de la télécommande, une utilisation obsédante de Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road" a thématique s'inscrivent dans les traditions des générations du Sud avec le jugement qui nous attend tous, comme envisage de Buck Owens "Sera-t-il Big Rigs dans le ciel?" On ne peut pas inscrire ce travail dans le même genre que "Tirez sur le pianiste" sans ces considérations. Truffaut de "La mariée était en noir" fait bon usage de cet effet qui pourrait bien être ajouté par une application judicieuse de "The Girl on the Billboard." Et où est Wayne? Un article récent paru dans Cahiers du Cinéma revendications scènes cruciales ont été laissées sur le plancher salle de coupe en raison de différends contractuels. On ne peut que s'étonner de voir ce travail dans sa globalité.



The day doesn't bode well. I had already cited John Wayne Gacy on another blog saying I couldn't see Ronald McDonald without thinking "serial killer clown." I think my day should end this way, and I just happen to have a bottle, chillin' in the fridgedaire. It ain't Mad Dog 20/20, but it'll do:

Ce qui un jour!

I Relish A Good Pickle*

I have had people in the past tell me, "Oh. You're one of those people who sits around and adds things to Wikipedia, aren't you?" Given the nature of my interests that I cover in my writing--my "digressions" as my friends kindly call them-- I can easily see how one would picture me wikiing away on a rainy Saturday afternoon. In truth, up until yesterday, I had never bothered, even though I had seen gaps that needed filling** when I was researching various things.

I had a jar of Ploughman's Pickle. I suppose that was the trigger. Proust had his madelines. I had Ploughman's Pickle. I was remembering the Ploughman's lunches I used to have when I spent time in London, and that led to my next mental jump which was "Gentleman's Relish." I first stumbled on this food in a novel, actually. Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate, so I went to Wikipedia to see what they had to say about Gentleman's Relish . I noticed they didn't even cite Mitford so I decided to take that big Wikileap into being an online know-it-all.

"The Hons"***

Here you are going to have to do some Wiki yourself, because the Mitford clan was a fascinating family, and they cross a lot of boundaries from Country Squire Quirks to Bright Young Things to Neo-Fascism to a daughter named Unity in love with Hitler. One of them did an infamous exposure of the American funeral business called The American Way of Death, which also inspired Evelyn Waugh (a friend of Nancy Mitford's) to write The Loved One. Deborah...Debo...married a Duke, Unity shot herself, Tom died in the War, Diana and her husband were either in prison or being watched on the facism.

She should have poisoned his big saucy

bangers when she had the chance****

So this is how I learned about Gentleman's Relish. One autumnal day, reading Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate, purchased from Hatchard's. The quote? Here it is, and for some reason, it has lodged in my memory:

Good on hot toast or polishing your boots, Gunga Din, Sahib*****

In Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate, the character of Linda Radlett asks her mother for Gentleman's Relish. Her mother Sadie offers her some hot toast at tea (to distract her over the loss of a pet,) and Linda pushes her advantage for sympathy, "Can I have Gentleman's Relish on it?" she said, quick to make capital of Sadie's mood, for Gentleman's Relish was kept strictly for Uncle Matthew and supposed not to be good for children."

What can I say? This is not Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde material.

You see all sorts of odd foods in Great Britain. I wrote, not too long ago, about Spotted Dick. Go into any market in England, and you'll stand in the aisles thinking, "I can't make this stuff up." They eat things like jellied eels (just what it sounds like) and baps . (Memo to self: Correct Wikipedia on baps.) I used to love going into the grocery stores in London where I would find all sorts of interesting things. Like:

(Insert Joke Here)

or

(Insert Joke Here)


or

(Insert Joke Here)

I think the very first time I recognized these oddities was a Sainsbury's in Notting Hill where I found a can of mushy peas. Mushy peas is a very popular food in Britain. I actually brought a can back with me with a far better 1930's graphic to use as a pencil holder, but this will establish it's existence as a food:

(Insert Joke Here)

(Insert Joke Here)


Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever. Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.~~George Orwell, Animal Farm



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* My first bad joke

** My second bad joke

***Hons would take forever to explain in terms of Mitford slang. The children were all "Honorables" from their Lord father. As children, they formed a club called "Hons" and "Non-Hon's" and "Honorable Hons" (people they liked that weren't titled.) Jessica wrote a book using Hon in the title, and older sister Nancy was infamous for writing an essay on "U and Non-U" which covered the proper terminology for things in the English language and other habits of the upper and lower classes. Looking glass viz mirror. Notepaper viz stationery. Putting milk in your teacup before pouring. Snobs? Uh. Yeah.

****Next bad joke. Instead Unity shot herself when she had to return to England at the start of WWII, in despair over her love of Hitler. She survived the bullet in her brain, but it left her impaired, and she died in 1948. That's what they get for naming her "Unity Valkyrie."

*****I wanted to get Kipling in here somewhere! This is just the kind of thing Colonial India soldiers would eat in Mess, pining for Pinge. (Wiki-Memo To Self: Write about Pinge.)******

******My next bad joke.

No T.V.? Sheeeeeit.

"You didn't vote for Syesha? Sheeeit."

I was reading Arjewtino’s blog this morning where he wrote about the peer shame of texting in a vote for American Idol, but more importantly, the idea of dating a girl who doesn’t have a television set. I have to say that for a few years in my late teens and early twenties, I didn’t have a television set, (or a telephone or a computer.) I had a mattress on the floor in a room I had painted sky blue and airbrushed in multi-toned clouds. Ultimately I broke down and bought a tiny television set, and I have to say it was heaven to curl on the mattress at night, watching t.v. sideways. Life was a lot simpler then--and cheaper.

Growing up, I always had television. There is the famous moment in my family's history when my brother and I got up early on a Saturday morning to crank up the cartoon shows, and the television started emitting blue smoke, a strong electrical smell followed by a groggy Dad yanking the chord. I remember how upset my mother was, because part of the t.v. melted onto her oriental carpet; a carpet I have in my bedroom to this day. The bare spot is hidden, but I think it gives the carpet “character.”

There was only one boy in my elementary school that didn’t have television. I remember his name (which I won’t repeat here,) and I remember his family moved into the neighborhood when we were all in about fifth grade. For some reason, memory tells me his father was a German rocket scientist. Space, German and Mathematics, definitely. The boy’s hair was cut military short, and he always wore a gray crewneck sweatshirt to class. When he announced to his classmates that he had no television, I remember asking him what he did at night. He answered that he “spent time with his family, and his father helped him with his math homework.”

Thinking back, it’s odd, how such an obviously intelligent boy could be so removed from his classmates and his culture. I do know this. He was quite proud of the fact that he didn't watch television. Children spend the next day discussing what happened on t.v. as much as their adult counterparts at work. I was telling a friend about the comment I had left on Arjewtino’s blog, and he said, “I always thought of television as my third parent.”

I can’t imagine any parent in this day and age that wouldn’t utilize a television set in some manner. Blues Clues and Baby Einstein at the least. I am sure many censor the viewing subjects and viewing times. Some do not. Those parents are the same ones who take their kids to see the tee bagging in Borat, passing a pint of Barcardi 151 over the kid’s head.

"Where the Honey Nut Cheerios?"

It’s all kulturny. Me? I'd have my child watching The Wire (Season One Boxed Set) and him telling me he didn't like oatmeal for breakfast, "Where the Count Chocula re-up? You feel me on this, Yo?"

"5-0 Coming Y'all. 5-0"...and I don't mean Hawaii 5-0^*

^* In HBO's The Wire (Season One) a lot of the story line centered on the drug trade in the low rises (poverty apartments.) The drug runners would yell out "5-0" to warn and scatter that the police were in the vicinity. There was one episode when three police go into the projects at 2 a.m. to roust, and the residents in the inner courtyard start throwing televisions down on their heads and their cruiser (which is later destroyed.) Cultural nirvana would be yelling 5-0 is coming, throwing your t.v. out the window while watching a re-run of Hawaii 5-0. At that moment in the world, every coconut would drop from every palm tree and split open to reveal a beatific Buddha Wo Fat. Steve Lord in his big wave hair would descend on a big wave swell of clouds, hanging ten and yelling "Book 'em Danno."

Sociopathy 101

I wish I had the courage of a Velvet to just lay it right out there and tell you what this picture means. I did confess it to a few people, but trust me, it was not me on my best behavior, and to waylay the obvious, "No, it was not me caving and eating junk food."

At the start of the New Year, I developed problems in both eyes. Minor problems that could have been dealt with, but when one eye started bleeding; "had" to be dealt with. I got through two weeks of that. Everything's fine. Just had my eyes reexamined this week, and the whole incident did not alter my vision. Clean bill. Then a few weeks back, at 3 a.m. and perfectly sober, but extremely tired, I fell on my stairs in my house when I went down to get a bottle of water. In twisting to break my fall, my ribs took the full impact of stair treads. I didn't think I had broke them, but when the pain increased, a doctor's visit and an x-ray revealed, "Hello. Broken rib." So I've been painfully recovering from that, and then this past weekend, the cold from hell that everyone's Uncle Tom, Dick and Harriet (we don't talk about him much) has finally landed on my doorstep. I shut down my blogging mode and went into retreat. Coughing and hacking hooey and rib equals weariness and ouch. A lot of ouch.

Yesterday I went out to do my advance work on a cocktail of the week (probably up by tomorrow,) and stopped by a market to buy exactly two things: Water. Tissue. I got into the express lane and waited and waited and waited. Twenty minutes. Three people in front of me. Sidecars and sickness make you do strange things.

I glanced over and saw this Enquirer in the stand by the register, and I thought about Britney Spears and how she is out there daily doing things that scream "Look at me." The crotch shots, the torn fishnet pole dances, the wreckless driving. The reported drug abuse. Ignoring her lobster burger while out to dinner with Pa, but making repeated trips to the bathroom. The reported child neglect and abuse. KFed wants her to see them. You take them. No, YOU take them. Studying the cover story and the raking over of "Kirstie's packaging on MORE pounds," I thought, "If Britney truly wanted to get the media squawking and on full blown out hysteria? She should get really, really, really fat." They may forgive her the weaknesses cited earlier, but getting fat? The last cultural taboo.

....and "no," the pastry shot has nothing to do with Kirstie's eating issues or Britney's road kill of a life. As I said, Sociopathy 101.