Famous among dozens
Four cool things about food:
Popular Science’s The Future of Food, which is a gallery of kitchen tools that let you make cool food. Whipped cream pancakes? I’m in!
Boccalone’s Salumi Society. They don’t ship yet, but Bay Area residents are bless-ed indeed.
What does 200 Calories look like?
This Imperial Tie Fighter is made of gingerbread.
Dear Can of Baby Corn,
The hell? How do you keep ending up in my pantry? I never purchase you. I’ve donated you to the food bank at least three times. And yet here you are, again — stony, steadfast, utterly useless. Baby Corn, you are beginning to stress me out.
Even if I wanted to use you, I wouldn’t know how. Grill you and take little, tiny nibbles? Blend you up in a hideous baby-vegetable smoothie? I am at a loss.
Baby Corn, your persistence is unsettling. The can of Haggis, I married into that. Bryan keeps it in the cupboard as an uproarious pantry joke. The twelve cans of aging garbanzo beans? Those are leftover from the overambitious homemade-hummus fiasco of 2006. But you? You are mute and inexplicable.
Go away, Baby Corn. You’re making everyone uncomfortable.
Sincerely,
Maggie Mason
P.S. Take the can of Mandarin oranges with you.
I pull into the quiet lot behind the Gymboree, the five and dime, the gourmet grocer. As I lift Hank out into the sunshine, a security guard scowls at us. His stance is wide, his arms crossed. Who is this guy?
I look around the small, peaceful parking lot — I can almost smell the Pablum on the air. Why in the world would they hire a security guard? I picture a herd of soccer dads ramming each others’ minivans in a frenzy to beat the line at the nuevo Cubano coffee shop. Perhaps the stroller meets have turned ugly. The Bugaboo moms are lying in wait for the Orbit moms who have learned to use their ponderous diaper bags as weapons. Maybe there was a standoff at the baby center because one of the parents mentioned that their baby was already beginning to talk “for real,” so they were thinking of dropping the baby sign class. Beneath the mundane exterior of this yuppie commercial complex beats a bloody revolution.
The security guard adjusts his mirrored sunglasses, and strolls past a couple of loiterers on a nearby bench. One of them calls out:
“Heeeeey, dickfaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!”
Ah. Or that could be it.
Oddest quote I came across while researching an essay for a fatherhood anthology:
“‘The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,’ Keith Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.
‘He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared,’ he said. ‘… It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.'”
There’s a brief interview with me up at In the Air. My interviewer is a kid who’s learning how to express himself better and finding ways to relate to other people better. His questions are great. Go check it out.
Me: We could just redo the Hot Dog on a Stick thing. Hank could be a soft pretzel! But then we’d have to rebuild your corndog outfit.
Bryan: We could do that.
Me: Or Hank could be a monkey, you could be a banana, and I could be Carmen Miranda.
Bryan: … Why do I always have to be a giant phallus?
Me: I guess that’s just how I see you.
At 826 Valencia’s Creative Non-Fiction writing seminar, Beth Lisick talked about her decision to write her new book Helping Me Help Myself, which is a humorous take on trying to live by various self-help books. Of San Francisco, she said:
“You go to the park and there’s like two Wiccan potlucks — the alternative world. So the mainstream world did seem sort of exotic and interesting to me.”
Stephen Elliot introduced Po Bronson by noting that he meets other writers in a clandestine location for an occasional “big literary basketball game.”
Because most writers I know began writing in part to assuage the pain of always being picked last at kickball, my immediate mental image of “literary basketball” is a tangle of flailing arms and pasty middle-age guys yelling, “I’m open! Dude, Beckett! I’m OPEN!”
Go see Sweeney Todd at the ACT. If you live in the Bay Area, or have plans to visit, you must go. Buy your tickets now please. Spoilers ahead:
Sweeney Todd, of course, is a musical about a serial killer. In this production, the cast doubles as the orchestra. Do you hear me? They found people who could act and sing and play instruments.
You will come away feeling gravely untalented, but you will also want to kiss John Doyle on the mouth. (Is that cool, Mr. Doyle? Do you mind if San Francisco kisses you on the mouth? We like you as more than a friend.)
Anyway, see it! You must see it.
– … He was a magician comedian.
– Oh man! The only thing worse than a magician is a “funny” magician.
– No, it could be worse. What would be worse?
– Magician comedian mime.
– Magician comedian renaissance mime.
– Magician comedian renaissance mime for Christ.
Mighty Girl 