Mr. Joel

You probably haven’t heard, but Jeffrey Deitch was named director of the LA MoCA. What does that mean? Well, it’s complicated. Jeffery Deitch was one of the people who helped make the New York art scene what it is today the nuclear boom in sales and celebrity in the last ten years. He is/was a dealer extraordinaire and his gallery, Deitch Projects, is one of the mammoths of the New York galleries.

This January the board of  LA MoCA named him their new director. This is a big deal. First of all, because it has always been understood that museums are run by the academics and galleries by the money men, and not the other way around. But LA MoCA has changed the game by promoting one of the biggest money men there is to the head of their museum, in fact this is the first time that something like this has ever been done. Now, this may be seen as a turn for the worst in the museum world. With business tie-ins, dumbing down, and selling out all for the sake of big name glitz and global connections. And it may yet turn out that way.

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A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Wild Sheep Chase is the fourth Murakami novel that I have read and the earliest. It is also the first of Murakami’s novels to have received wide international acclaim. The novel is broken up into multiple parts, eight in all, but really there are only two main parts, the observational character development describing the narrator’s relationships with his wife and then his new girlfriend and the sheep chasing adventure. I found it weak story telling that the slow clear description from the first bit of the book did not reoccur as the narration unfolded. Murakami must have too, in his later books he overlaps the two styles with much greater success.

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Jules de Balincourt was born in Paris (b.1972). He did his BFA at California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco and his MFA at Hunter College NYC. He now shows with Zach Feuer Gallery in New York. Balincourt gained notoriety while he was still at Hunter, when he built an indoor treehouse of scrounged materials that he used to spy on his instructor while they debated whether or not pass him. His works tends toward the political, both obliquely and head on. Balincourt is often described as having an outsider style, a claim that does not stick well in my eyes, and often uses spray paint and tape in his paintings along with the more ‘fine art’ material.

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Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My father got me this book; he was really enjoying it and wanted to know what I thought. After reading it I see that he didn’t really want someone to talk with, he wanted someone to gossip with. Now it’s true, once I started it I couldn’t put it down. That’s because it’s like The West Wing, but real life. Well, and in a book. The rubber-necker in me really wanted to know how Hillary took to Obama’s absurdly quick rise to national prominence and, most of all, exactly what thought process lead to Sarah Palin as the VP nominee. And, as well as it can, this book delivers. Most of the quote are unattributed and the sources are unnamed, but he fact that this book has gotten as much publicity as it has without anyone raising their hackles at it leads me to believe that the reporting is right on. And what reporting it must have taken to piece together all the information it took to make this book. The authors conducted over 200 interviews.

The news cycle being what it is, all of the events in this book seem like they are in the distant past. While reading it, I was constantly being struck by just how amazing the last presidential race was. The knock down drag out Democratic nomination. McCain’s amazing comeback. The release of Sarah Palin . The economic meltdown. Let alone the fact that however you cut it, this was a race of epically historic proportions. I was constantly amazed that I lived through this.

In the end nobody comes out of this looking good. The entitlement assumed by the Clintons is staggering. Hillary was putting together a transition team, in charge of moving her and her staff into the White House, before she had even secured the nomination. McCain’s selection of Palin is almost painful to read about. She was selected to be a media ‘wow’ moment, and her debut at the RNC was all that and more, but when it became clear that she was not ready for a national campaign and had no idea what she was getting into when she said yes she was abandoned by the main campaign. And then there is the crazy story of the downfall of John Edwards. whew.

Although it comes in at just over 430 pages this book felt like a surface level read. It spends most of its time on the Democratic nomination fight. The pages dedicated to the Republican nomination seem cursory at best. I was left wanting so much more. It just scrapes the surface of almost every topic it touches. There should be dissertations written about Obama’s fundraising machine and McCain’s campaign belly-flop. There probably will be and I look forward to reading those too.

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Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the best books about the Civil War, or the War Between the States if we northerners are being polite, that I’ve ever read. But really, that’s because it’s not about the Civil War at all. Instead, Tony Horwitz studies the footprint left by the Civil War and how we are still facing most, if not all, of the important issues of the war. This book is not an academic study, it is more of a travel story: one man’s journey into history, beginning with his childhood fascination with the war and ending with, well, more experience but very few conclusions. But I’m okay with that, because these issues, race, heritage, and the interpretation and misinterpretation of history are not the kind of things that we never really do reach conclusions on, ever. I found this book is a satisfying read anyway, because it illuminated many points of view that I had no real understanding of before.

Raised and educated in the north I never really understood the glory of the romantic south. I remember watching Gone with the Wind with my father. He would grow soft and sigh and Scarlett’s fortitude. I turned to him and asked

“Why do people like this movie?”

“Because it reminds them of a lost time, of something they can never really get back.”

“But they were wrong, and they lost.”

The conversation died there. I clearly didn’t get it and my father did not want to push the point with his ten year old. That I was sitting through a cinematic epic that did not contain spaceships was enough of a victory. I high school we were taught about how the Confederate states were well within their right to secede, but we didn’t dwell on it. The AP was in May and we had a lot of ground to cover. I get it now Scarlett. You were one classy lady. I understand why some people want to fly the Confederate flag over state houses and why some people weep at the sight of it. This is a story told in the only way it can be told, shades of Confederate gray.

Every chapter and story is interesting and worth reading. I felt that the amount of time spent with the hardcore re-enactors lagged a bit, but it definitely wasn’t bad or boring. It just seemed like these guys were deluding themselves, searching for their “period rush”, while so many other things were going on around them in the contemporary world. Undoubtably that was one of the points.

I know that the attitudes and personalities recored here do not form a majority in the south today (especially that of arch hardcore re-enactor Robert Lee Hodges); but it does seem like they permeate southern culture. I wonder how how many of these attitudes have changed in the ten plus years since this book was published. I imagine not much.

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Something cool from the Natural History Museum that I did not post last time:

This piece of cloth is the only one of its kind in the world. It is woven from the silk collected from one million golden orb spiders on the island of Madagascar. That’s right. Spider silk. The project was begun by Simon Peers after he read about a device Jacob Paul Camboué invented in the nineteenth century for milking spiders. Now, what I wonder is why Camboué felt that spider silk was the way to go in textile creation. He created a set of bed hanging shown at the Paris Exposition in 1898. I remain unsure that the immense effort it took to collect the silk justified the 19th century demand but there you go. Simon Peters and his associate Nicholas Godley created this cloth with dozens of spider handlers as well as volunteers who would collect wild spiders to be milked (the spiders were returned unharmed to the wild after their silk was stolen). While Camboué went into full textile production Peers and Godley created this cloth mostly to prove it cold be done.

Spider silk is an amazing substance that is very hard to create artificially. The silk is produced as a protein liquid that is extruded into a solid by the spider. Which is totally awesome. The silk has a strength similar to steel or kevlar. Which means that this tablecloth is bulletproof. Imagine the golden super suit you could make out of this stuff. (However, the force of the bullet would still deal a deadly impact. All your bits would be in the same place though.) Scientists have been trying to make spider silk artificially for some time now, but inserting the silk making genes into bacteria and cows and goats. But it hasn’t really worked out as of yet. Large scale spider farming is also something of a pipe dream. Unlike silkworms spiders have a tendency to eat each other when they are kept in close captivity. I hope science gets it together though. I want the soldiers and tanks of the future to be outfitted with golden spider armor. Just think of how fantastic they would look.

Now we know what Spiderman will be doing in his old age. Knitting spider armor from his web sacs (if you are in the ‘he produces his own web school’ that is). He could make all kinds of money supplying armor to super secret special ops teams. Even if he doesn’t produce his own, he would be rolling in it if he started producing web commercially.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Perfume is the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man born without a scent but with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. It’s a murder story, but it is not all about the murder, victims, or evidence. There is no brilliant or cunning detective here. It is a period piece, set in the eighteenth century, yet does not feel overly historical. It’s a magic realism examination of the overlooked world of scent.

The main character, Grenouille, is not sympathetic. He is as cold hearted as he is talented. His motives are simple, create the the most appealing scent so that he can be loved by all. I found myself uninterested in the characters and most of the plot, I found that it drags in the first half f the book, yet drawn in by the vivid description of the smells, the people and, later, unlikely circumstances of the novel. It was similar to my experience reading Candide in high school, but without the complex social satire.

Though a very enjoyable and interesting read, in the end it came to more of a ‘hu’ than a ‘wow’.

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I love the American Museum of Natural History. It’s one of my favorite places ever. Now, it might not be my favorite museum, that would be the Kelvingrove in Glasgow, but it is still utterly fantastic. I always find something worth looking at and learn something worth knowing.

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I love visiting my cousins in Scotland. I love seeing my family, I love the countryside, and I love the food. Now, if you know anything about Scottish food, the last part of that statement may stick out a bit. Scottish food does not have a reputation for being good. British food does not have a reputation for being good. But it is. At my cousin’s farm it’s fantastic; because the majority of what they eat is homemade, local, and seasonal. The foodie trifecta.

Now, Yorkshire Pudding is not the best nom-able that I’ve had at my cousins; but it has the best simplicity to deliciousness ratio. Also it is the one that is most often paired with gravy. Yorkshire pudding was invented in Yorkshire, England; it’s not really pudding in the American sense. It’s pudding in the ‘food made of a batter that rises when it is cooked and is yummy’ sense. The pudding is typically made as part of a big dinner with a roast and potatoes and carrots and such. The batter at it’s simplest is one part eggs, one part, milk and one part flour. It is baked on hot oil in the oven. The oil is usually the drippings from the roast, which makes the pudding extra yummy. It used to be that you would make one big pudding and cut it up into wedges when it was served; but now it’s the style to make mini puddings in muffin pans and eat them like dinner rolls. Which is what I did.

The Recipe:
(this made 22 mini puddings in my muffin pan)

four eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
pinch salt
roast drippings, lard, or vegetable oil

Heat the oven to 450 F. Whisk the eggs and the milk together in a bowl. A large one is good but it doesn’t have to be super large, just large enough to hold all the ingredients listed above. Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes. Then sift in the flour, baking soda and salt. You want this to be a smooth mixture, so take your time and stir a lot. When your done let this mixture sit for 30 min. While it’s sitting get out your muffin pan and put about a half tsp of roast drippings, lard, or vegetable oil in the bottom of each cup. Pop that in the oven and let the oil heat until it is almost smoking. Or let it heat until it is smoking, it’s easier that way, your smoke alarm will let you know when they’re done. You’ll notice this is a great recipe to make while you’re preparing other things. It was invented that way. It assumes that you’ve got your roast going and that your mashing potatoes and boiling carrots and preparing other good things too. That’s part of why I like it. I often have a lot going on in the kitchen while I’m cooking. I’ disorganized like that. When the oil is hot fill each cup 1/3 to 1/2 way full. Put it in the oven and let it cook until they’re golden brown. That’s about 20 min. When they’re done let them cool for a minute, pop them out of the pan, heat up more oil and make puddings until there is no more batter. Serve fresh with gravy or stuff them with some other edible.

P.S. These do not reheat well, so if you want them hot, eat ‘em fast. However, they are also very good cold with jam for breakfast the next day.