WombatNation

Last Friday my wife and I celebrated our 15th anniversary by going to Linden Street Brewery for their Friday afternoon open house and then the Oakland Museum of California for the Best of the East Bay party. Both were excellent. Some of our friends brought a penne pasta salad with fresh-grated parmesan and grilled tri-tip on the Linden Street grill.

The Best of the East Bay party blew me away. It’s estimated that over 4,000 people attended. There were four stages with live bands playing all night. Lots of delicious foods and drinks (I enjoyed a very nice macchiato from Julie’s Coffee & Tea Garden) were available. The whole museum, except the parts they are refurbishing, was open. There was a mini skateboard park with ramps just below the sculpture gardens. Splash Circus was there with a roughly 35-feet tall tripod from which girls were performing acrobatics on ropes and fabric, a la Cirque du Soleil. Kid’s band performances, a guy typing out poems on an old typewriter, film screenings, bands like The Uptones and Flipper, and much more.

And most amazingly, we didn’t see a single security guard or policeman the entire time, and we also didn’t see a single sign of trouble anywhere. Everyone was in a great mood. So forget what you think you know about Oakland.

Saturday night we opened up a 1993 Boony Doon Le Cigare Volant. Lately I have had bad luck with some of my older wines being corked, but this wine was in great shape. It was very smooth and had a delicate cherry taste.

When I think bike safety or car safety video, I mostly think about boring instructions on how to ride a bike or drive a car in the most conservative fashion. But what if the kids in the safety video had monkey faces and curly tails? That would make even the most Ritalin deprived kid pay attention, right?

This seven minute sampled video I found on Monoscope is pretty great. The first two minutes are a bit of an artsy “My Lunch with 10 Year-Old Andre”, but then a pack of kids with monkey faces and curly tails and funky hats join our young friend on their bikes. It’s weirder and better than it sounds. If my parents had shown me this when I was a kid I think I would have ridden into a lot fewer open manholes.

Monoscope, by the way, is a great site for design enthusiasts.

Waiting for Fidel by Christoper Hunt

My wife bought this book for me a few years ago when we were doing a lot of international traveling. It never made it to the top of my reading stack, but this summer I was looking for a relatively small paperback book to read while taking BART and MUNI to California Victory matches in San Francisco. I’m really glad I decided to choose Waiting for Fidel.

Christopher Hunt spends a lot of time blending in with locals and comes away with a perspective that would be extremely difficult to obtain by most visitors to Cuba. While he is clearly enamored with Cuba, he doesn’t hesitate to point out the flaws in their economic system and the suffering that is ever present. While some of the suffering is due to the American embargo, Cuba definitely lost out big by betting big on a losing horse (the Soviet Union) and Castro appears (even back in the late 90’s when the book was written) to be far out of touch with the realities of day-to-day life and the high levels of corruption throughout much of Cuba. Still, it sounds like the majority of Cubans are incredibly kind and warm-hearted and they make for wonderful hosts.

After a couple of failed attempts to meet Castro in Havana, Hunt decides to follow Fidel Castro and his fellow rebels’ 30+ day march across most of the length of Cuba (I don’t know why I thought Cuba wasn’t that long of an island, but it is) en route to overthrowing Fulgencio Bautista in Havana. His adventures while following in the rebels’ footsteps make for fascinating reading. Although most of the Cubans he meets are relatively poor, they offer to share whatever they have with him.

Along the way, Hunt learns many terms that help to Cubanize him. A regular part of Cuban life is queuing up in lines, so the phrase everyone says as they approach a queue is “¿El último?”, in order to find out who is currently at the end of the queue. This is, of course, not to be confused with “El Máximo”, which is a nickname for Castro. When commenting on the regular challenges Cubans face each day, they often sigh and simply say “La Lucha”, or “The Struggle”. Other useful slang terms include wanikiki - money, fula - dollars, jinetero - grifter, jinitera - prostitute, and el fuego - the act of grifting.

One interesting bit of trivia is that the Communist daily political newspaper Granma is named after the boat the rebels used to land at the Eastern tip of Cuba, or as Che Guevara described their arrival, “This wasn’t a landing, it was a shipwreck”. But why was the boat called “Granma”? Well, they had purchased it from an American who had given it the affectionate name for his grandmother. Imagine if they had bought the “Luna Sea”, “Obsession”, “Wet Dream”, or “Miss Behavin’”.

Tonight my wife and I attended a benefit for the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland featuring a menu designed by Alice Waters and music by Kronos Quartet. We’ve donated annually to Creative Growth for many years and purchased several pieces of beautiful art there. For over 32 years Creative Growth has offered fantastic creative opportunities for adults with developmental, physical, mental and emotional disabilities. In the first photo you can see some of the art created by Creative Growth students. In the next two photos you can see some works by Judith Scott hanging from the ceiling.

The menu included (I’m guessing on the contents of the appetizers that were passed around):

• Fava bean spread on toast
• Green garlic and goat cheese on toast
• Fried artichoke with a cream dip that I think contained dill
• Acme breads and sweet butter
• Slow roasted wild salmon with frisée, pickled beets and citrus vinaigrette
• Soupe au Pistou - Provencal vegetable soup with lamb shank, garlic, and basil
• Strawberries with crème fraîche ice cream and sugared cookies

The food was wonderfully complemented by Murrieta’s white meritage, red meritage and zarzuela from Livermore Valley. Everything was great, but I was absolutely blown away by the Soup au Pistou. It’s one thing to prepare a soup like that in a restaurant with a professional kitchen, but to prepare a dish that stunning in a makeshift kitchen to be served almost simultaneously to about 300 people is quite a accomplishment. Very fine work by Olive Green Catering. Also, thnks to Monterey Fish Company, Murrieta’s Well Winery, and Prather Ranch Meat Co for donating food and wine for the event.

After the meal, Kronos Quartet performed for about 40 minutes. The second piece they played was composed by John Zorn. I think it was from The String Quartets. They also performed a piece by an India composer that was hauntingly beautiful. The final performance was a magnificent rendition of “Flugufrelsarinn (The Fly Freer)” by Sigur Rós. You can hear Kronos perform Flugufrelsarinn for yourself on the NPR website. It’s the last song in the first hour of the show.

So far, the weather had been cloudy and cool. Today we had a nice change with a bit of sun and warmth. Unfortunately, this was to be a rare combination over the next week or so. The first week of June was surprisingly cold in central Europe. Most days, the temperature didn’t cross 15 degrees C (about 60 F).

Our first journey was to Heroes’ Square. In a large plaza there’s a big statue in the middle and a semi-circle of statues around the edges of all the great Hungarian heroes. It’s worth a walk around if you are on your way to the big park behind the square or to the Museum of Fine Arts (Szépművészeti Múzeum) next to the square.

The museum is fantastic and totally worth a long visit. I could have easily spent the entire day there. We saw a special exhibition on Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary, while we were there. I’m partial to the Flemish masters, and they have an excellent collection. Their 19th century French collection was also quite extensive. Of course, there were many works by great Hungarian artists that are rarely shown outside of Hungary.

The Museum of Fine Arts also had a great collection of Egyptian mummies. Not as extensive as the British Museum, of course, but still, nothing to shake a jar of embalming fluid at. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

My wife has a particular fascination with the works of Pieter Jans Saenredam, and the Museum of Fine Arts turned out to own one of his works. Saenredam was a Dutch painter working in the 17th century who was best know for his detailed architectural paintings. It all started with an article she read in the New York Times. Then we saw his painting Interior of St. James’ Church in Utrecht at the Alte Pinokethek in Munich a few years ago. Now it’s a quest to hunt down his paintings where ever we travel. Sadly, we did not see the exhibit at the Getty in LA a few years ago. That occurred just before the Saenredam obsession took root in her. Okay, it’s less an obsession than a string interest, but “obsession” makes it sound more exciting.

Next we headed over to the Opera house for a tour. I was very impressed by everything except the fact that they won’t let you take pictures inside. It was gorgeous, though. The sheer quantity of marble was overwhelming. Here we learned about Hungarian red marble, which really isn’t marble. It’s an amalgam of material that looks like marble. The Opera House had tons, and I means tons, of real marble, though. They were particularly proud of the original air conditioning system. They brought in blocks of ice below the seating area and blew air across the blocks with big fans. The seats had vents underneath them to allow the air to come up from below.

If you’re looking for good ideas for Xmas gifts, please consider buying from people and businesses located on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Here are a few links I managed to dig up.

• Ohr O’Keefe Museum of Art store
• Walter Anderson Museum store
• Morans Art Gallery
• Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum
• Beauvoir, Last Home of Jefferson Davis
• The Mississippi Gift Company - in Greenwood, but they buy from vendors on the Coast
• Mississippi Music

Also, please consider making a donation to the Ohr O’Keefe Museum of Art or the Walter Anderson Museum or any of the other museums on the Mississippi or Louisiana Gulf Coast.

Once again, it’s that time of the year when you open your wallet and make a large donation to the best college radio station in the country, KALX. Okay, so I’m a little bit biased because my wife is the general manager of the station, but they really are awesome.

And speaking of awesome, this year they have sweatshirts with an amazingly super cool design. Of all the KALX designs, this one is by far my favorite. It was used on a t-shirt about ten years ago. It was so popular that they have brought back the design for a sweatshirt this year. The front of the sweatshirt has El Dee Jay, as seen in the image here, and the back has El Escuchador (the listener). I guarantee you that this black hooded pullover sweatshirt will gain you immediate admission to all cool bars and nightclubs everywhere. The hipness quotient cannot be denied.

In addition to the t-shirt and bumper sticker, this year they have a logo bottle opener also in the $50 package. The bumper sticker design with the chicks hatching from the call letters isn’t quite as cool as the El Dee Jay design, but nothing is.

The fundraiser ends October 30th, so give early and often.

It’s not exactly Schoolhouse Rock, okay, it’s not remotely as snappy as Conjunction Junction, but there’s something you gotta like about the Singing Physics Professor. Listen to his off key, falsetto, baritone voice accompanied by baritone ukele in an interview on NPR.org. Many more songs are available at his website.

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t stop myself from clapping along to the Kronecker Delta Function Song. Maybe if this site had been available when I was in college, I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time studying droll books on quantum mechanics.

[via Boing Boing RIP: Judy Scott, amazing sculptor with Downs’ Syndrome.

Sadly, Judith Scott has apparently passed away recently. She was a very talented sculptor who worked on her art at the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland. Judith wrapped yarn and fabric around ordinary objects to create large, mysteriously shaped creations. Like many of the works we have bought at the Creative Growth Art Center, Judith’s sculptures reflected the intense, obsessive hand and mind of the artist.

More about Judith at :

Mark Faigenbaum, an old friend of my wife’s, is having an exhibition and reception January 21 (5-9 pm) and 22 (1-5 pm) at SF Recycling & Disposal, Inc., “also known as The Dump”, with two other artists. Mark is currently an artist-in-residence at the Norcal Waste Art Studio & Gallery. The pieces he will be exhibiting were all made from recycled materials obtained on location.

We’ve gone to several of Mark’s openings, and his work is absolutely mesmerizing. He previously did a residency with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. He was in the Artist Studio/Artist Demo Program at the Legion of Honor.

More info about Mark from other websites:

• Mark’s website
• Norcal Waste
• Pigman Gallery