Category: Brian

Travelin’ Kids

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In the same days that Eric and Alison are getting all the mention, traveling west by train across China, Brian and Sadie are driving west across another continent; North America.

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Brian’s Camry sat, virtually idle in Montpellier, France for six years, just waiting for this occasion. They set out from Belfast, Maine on Monday and spent the first night in Pennsylvania. Tuesday, they visited the Hale homestead in Lancaster, Ohio. Wednesday took them to Albia, Iowa, just south of Des Moines. Thursday, they crossed Nebraska and ventured into Wyoming, spending the night in Laramie,  a town well known from cowboy movies. Today, they’re on the homestretch to Reno.

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Who knew these guys, in a late September week of 2009 would be spanning two continents on opposite sides of the world?

Meanwhile, I have another three-part text message from China to share.

Fri Sep 25 8:02am
Almost 7am and still a ways 2 go in Gansu province (!) just past Jiayuguan. Due in Turpan around 2pm, but train was rnng an hour late ystdy so …
Al here. Train is fun. Scenery is spectacular. Sunrise in desert, now. Our roommate 56 yr o male teacher lives Shanghai, very nice. His colleagues uighur, like 2 sing.
Adventure!. Shaanxi gansu border amazingly beautiful, rivers – mts @ sunset.

Big Al for VP!

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Here’s ten reasons why Al Gore should be Obama’s choice for VP in ’08:
1. He doesn’t crave being prez and doesn’t have a prez-or-bust ego — in other words, if he’s called, he will answer;
2. As veep, he could pick a couple pet projects and focus on them, a position that he would surely enjoy;
3. He would provide solid White House experience;
4. He would mootify the “what if Barack gets shot” “argument” that Hillary so tactfully raised this past week;
5. He is about the only major politician who can match Obama’s anti-Iraq-invasion-from-Day-1 credibility;
6. Seriously, who’s a better choice?
7. If Bush Jr.-Cheney has taught us anything, it’s that VP doesn’t only have to mean “the guy who goes to state funerals” anymore (Cheney proved it by blowing off Gerald Ford’s funeral) — it’s two presidents for the price of one, but this time in a good way;
8. People around the world have been talking about how an Obama presidency would immediately improve America’s global image (indeed, I have heard this personally from people of many different nationalities) — add Big Al to the mix and we’re talking international America-love-in;
9. Dig, if you will, a picture of a future presidential challenge that Jr. & Cheney don’t have the wherewithal to handle — e.g. getting us out of Iraq gracefully, actually trying to capture bin Laden, or dealing with a resurgent China or Russia. Now imagine two guys as intelligent and thoughtful as Obama and Gore huddling in the Oval Office to come up with a solution. Not only is it the best possible solution but Obama gives the speech laying it out. Does it get any better than that? They could sell tickets to this kind of thing;
10. Obama-Gore would be a slam dunk in November — big states like CA, PA, FL, would go from on-the-table to in-the-bag.

So, Barack, if you’re reading this (and we know you’re a regular), pick up the fone. It says here that if we aren’t treated to an Obama-Gore ticket, it will be because Barack didn’t ask — not because Al turned him down.

Either way, you heard it here first.

Zavet

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Click on thumbnail for full-size photo

It’s safe to say I’ve never seen a film that had so much bestiality — in a funny way, of course, as Zavet (which means “The Promise” in Serbo-Croatian) is more screwball comedy than anything else. It’s also a statement by the former Yugoslavia’s most prominent film maker (Emir Kusturica, who is quite popular in France) about globalization, the westernization of Eastern Europe, and a country boy’s coming-of-age journey to the big city. But as I said, it’s a screwball comedy first and foremost and features, among other things, an endless array of trap doors and pulleys, a local government official persistently wooing a buxom villager in a succession of funky old cars, and a man shot out of a cannon who never lands.

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Of course, of all these things, you can prolly guess that the story revolves around the country boy’s coming-of-age. Briefly, the story sets up thusly: Young Tsane lives in the Balkan countryside with his eccentric grandfather and a handful of other village characters. Their buxom neighbor is the schoolmarm in the one-room schoolhouse, in which Tsane is the only student. One day Grandpa decides that it’s time for Tsane to come of age, so he gives him the family cow and instructs him to cross the hills to the nearest city and sell it. Tsane is also instructed use the proceeds to collect a souvenir, an icon, and a wife to bring back to the village. Once he gets to the city, the object of his affection quickly becomes the babe-a-licious Jasna (Marija Petronijevic) but luckily for us the two of them must first endure a surreal odyssey — including small-time gangsters, an old-timey whorehouse, non-stop gunplay, a bumpy ride in the trunk of an old Lada, a pair of bald, boisterous twins (one 6’6″, the other 4’5″) who dress alike and share a passion for imploding buildings, and yes, plenty of bestiality — before they can get back to the village and up to the altar. One emerges from the theatre baffled, light-headed, and laughing out loud.

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Letter From Languedoc

chirac_sarko.jpgThis morning Chirac finally (and tepidly) endorsed Sarkozy as his choice for prez. Much was made of the wait and basically it was about as climactic as Clinton endorsing Gore in 2000 (or Bush Jr. endorsing whatever fascist gets the nomination next year). There was a big thing on the noon interview show that the lab lunch crowd watches (of which I join about 3 days a week) about the impending (5 weeks!) first-round of the election. The main reason is that last time (’02) Le Pen came out of nowhere to make the top two (who advance to the second and final round).

This time the left learned their lesson and anointed Ségolène Royal and are more or less standing behind her (last time, the left was much more split than usual, which contributed to Le Pen sneaking into the 2nd round with 17%). The right is more or less united behind Sarko.

[also for reference: No Sex, Please, We’re French, an NYT op-ed by Stephen Clark printed 23 March]
Continue reading “Letter From Languedoc” →

Doc B cooks a fish

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Doc B got a fish-poachin’ pan for Xmas, so he went down to his local fishmonger and picked him out a nice, local fish. Here she is, a two-pound Mediterranean sea bass (called loup in French, which also means “wolf”; smaller ones are called bar — sort of like “cod” and ‘scrod,” I guess), posing in the pan next to the fancy Japanese knife that I also got for Xmas, plus a bunch of Italian “palm cabbage” (more about that to come) and a very handy local fish cookin’ book. btw, those are her egg cases at bottom right in the pan. The fish guy asked if I wanted to keep them and I figured they weren’t heavy so I’d at least carry them home and figure out what to do with them later. I ended up just seasoning them and stuffing them back in the fish, natural-like, before cooking. They were extremely fluffy and rich when cooked and Valérie gobbled them up without flinching. I wasn’t as crazy about them but what do I know? I guess I was just expecting something more dense and salty.
Continue reading “Doc B cooks a fish” →

What Took You/Us So Long?

Please!Okay. Friedman writes a fine piece:

How could there still be 29 percent of the people who approve of this presidency?…I think a lot of Americans in recent months have simply lost confidence in this administration’s competence and honesty…Is there no job in this administration that is too important to be handed over to a political hack? No…And that is the core of the matter: the Bush team believes in loyalty over expertise. When ideology always trumps reality, loyalty always trumps expertise.

Nice hook, heart in the right place, good examples, etc. But what gets me about these kinds of pieces is that it’s been obvious since Day 1 what DB’s m.o. has been and the American press gave him such a long honeymoon that you have respected columnists writing pieces like this NOW, almost 6 yrs into this dark age and two years into his second sham term!
Continue reading “What Took You/Us So Long?” →

Big Food Wins?

Two For The RoadIf there’s one thing I remember fondly about Tifton, it was the gut-busting preponderance of good BBQ. Like to about killed me (as they say down south).

One can certainly eat well here in France but it’s a different kind of eating down there. I guess here they emphasize really fresh, simply prepared vegetables and then do really creative things with meat. There they give you a pure, simple, huge piece of meat and cook the vegetables to death. Either way, there are some places that make you glad that you have to eat three times a day (or 12 like the subjects of this NYTimes article…).