White, yes...and dark too, please.
Stuffing. With whatever's lying around. Decent whole wheat bread, rye bread, nuts, seeds, sausage, apples, onion, herbs, celery.
Mashed potatoes? A little bit, please-- I make'em skins on, cooked with roasted garlic, and one sweet potato.
Cranberry sauce.
Pumpkin pie. Whipped cream. Vanilla ice cream. This year, it's pumpkin cheesecake.
Sometimes, poached pears. Not this one.
Some kind of vegetable side -- beans or brussels sprouts or whatever.
Red wine. Or prosecco.
No marshmallows.
Football on Thanksgiving is overrated. I hate the Cowboys. I grew up with the Lions, and as far as I know there aren't any Billy Simses or Barry Sanderses in Motown anymore, which are the only reasons I've ever known to watch that less than fabled franchise. Hell, they're lucky if they have any latter day Mel Farrs. [...superstar, for a Farr better deal....]
Last couple years, I've been able to grill the turkey, but our deck is off limits this year due to a building renovation project, so I'm going back indoors. The good part about that is I can cook the stuffing in the bird, which I don't do when I'm cooking it on the grill. Grilling does produce a nice turkey, crisp outside, moist in. And frees up the kitchen, of course, which is saying something here in NYC.
Post dinner nap is always nice, too. Usually during the Lions game.
The aftermath: gallons and gallons of turkey soup. Best way to eat leftovers: turkey meat, stuffing, mashed potatoes all mixed up in one skillet and heated through on the stove top. When I was a kid, cold white turkey meat with Lawry's seasoned salt.
Things I didn't eat as a kid: stuffing, pumpkin pie, cranberries. Thanks God for acquired tastes.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Autumn in New York
My son's day care was closed on Veteran's Day, so he and I had the day off together. It was the kind of brilliant Fall day, with richly colored leaves and crisp air and sharpedged sunshine, that reminds me why I live in this great, big, beautiful city. We went to Central Park, where the light really was knifelike, cutting at an Emily Dickinson slant through the trees. He ate a midmorning hot dog in front of the Met, and was a good sport for me when I wanted to go inside.
I wanted to make sure I saw the Morandi exhibition before it closes, and I figured that if at all possible, a weekday morning would be best for avoiding the crowds. Having a four year-old with you is not optimal for looking at Morandi's slow and exacting work, but it's better than missing the show entirely.
Like I said a couple months ago, I do wish they had hung the show in more spacious, better lit galleries. I remember the lower level of the Lehman Wing was one of the toughest places to stay awake when I was working as a guard there, although it's different now, trafficwise, because of the new public cafeteria down there as well.
I'd still like to go back alone and take more time with the show. It was my first time seeing the landscapes, which are dishraggy in color and tone, and not in a good way. So they were disappointing to me. (Although the landscape etchings are very fine.) But the still lifes, of which I've seen only a handful in person before, as there are not many Morandis on this side of the Atlantic, are great. The delicately muddy palette works on the intimate scale of still life, but it is only weak and dull in a landscape, where you expect the light to, well, do something. And every once in a while, there's a tone or color in a still life that rings like a bell, whether the brushwork is shaky and shimmery or tight and focussed.
Compositionally, I had never seen, even in reproduction, the odd still lifes that sit on one half of the canvas and run off the side. The more tightly composed pictures, with objects centered like family portraits in early photography, are more stately, the bottles and vessels and boxes gathered and crowded into even more intimate groups, as if you were looking into a full elevator with glass walls. It makes me think of de Kooning's quotation about all the space a painter needs, which goes something like, if you stretch your arms down along your sides, and wonder where your fingers are. Yes, I'm not sure how much sense it makes, but I will say that some days it makes more sense than others.
And the watercolors are strange and gorgeous, like shadow plays.
I wanted to make sure I saw the Morandi exhibition before it closes, and I figured that if at all possible, a weekday morning would be best for avoiding the crowds. Having a four year-old with you is not optimal for looking at Morandi's slow and exacting work, but it's better than missing the show entirely.
Like I said a couple months ago, I do wish they had hung the show in more spacious, better lit galleries. I remember the lower level of the Lehman Wing was one of the toughest places to stay awake when I was working as a guard there, although it's different now, trafficwise, because of the new public cafeteria down there as well.
I'd still like to go back alone and take more time with the show. It was my first time seeing the landscapes, which are dishraggy in color and tone, and not in a good way. So they were disappointing to me. (Although the landscape etchings are very fine.) But the still lifes, of which I've seen only a handful in person before, as there are not many Morandis on this side of the Atlantic, are great. The delicately muddy palette works on the intimate scale of still life, but it is only weak and dull in a landscape, where you expect the light to, well, do something. And every once in a while, there's a tone or color in a still life that rings like a bell, whether the brushwork is shaky and shimmery or tight and focussed.
Compositionally, I had never seen, even in reproduction, the odd still lifes that sit on one half of the canvas and run off the side. The more tightly composed pictures, with objects centered like family portraits in early photography, are more stately, the bottles and vessels and boxes gathered and crowded into even more intimate groups, as if you were looking into a full elevator with glass walls. It makes me think of de Kooning's quotation about all the space a painter needs, which goes something like, if you stretch your arms down along your sides, and wonder where your fingers are. Yes, I'm not sure how much sense it makes, but I will say that some days it makes more sense than others.
And the watercolors are strange and gorgeous, like shadow plays.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Halloween
Gorilla with girl (2007), oil on canvas, 54x60in.
House (2006), oil on canvas, 18x20in.
Gorilla with showgirl, (2007), pastel on paper, @42x42in.
Backstage with skeleton (2005), oil on canvas, 14x20in.Ever since he found out one of my favorite movies of all time is the original King Kong, my son says I should be the giant gorilla for Halloween. He is going to be a vampire bat.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
Football weather
Homecoming (2000), oil on canvas, 72x42in.It's been what we used to call football weather back when I was growing up in Ohia. Cool, crisp, brilliant blue skies. Gorgeous.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
No joy, etc.
I just hate -- hate -- that it was the Marlins again.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, another long, cold, dark offseason.
When I played baseball as a kid, I never quite got the game. It was a mystery to me, the whole rate of failure, the game in your head, the bounces, the inches, the judgment of the umpire. Football was my game, something straightforward, physical. Line up across another guy and try to knock the snot out of him. Baseball, I was too uptight to really let it it fly. And my mind wandered. Now, watching games, I prefer baseball to football in every way. The beauty, the rhythms, the day to day of it. Today football is a different game from the one I loved, a game of specialization and matchups and strategy, plugging players in and out for specific plays, situations. That's just boring and impersonal to me, a kid who soaked up the stories of the sixties Packers and Giants and Browns and Rams.
Anyway, even though I love baseball now, there are still things I just don't get. The biggest being that you just can't bend any given situation to your will, at least as a hitter. The game is just too big and crazy and mysterious to me. Football, I always felt like you had a little control over things, if only biggest there's always somebody waiting to be knocked down.
Anyway, the first, undisputed fact is the bullpen has to be rebuilt from the ground up. Maybe you keep a couple guys, I don't know, but most of them have to be gone.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, another long, cold, dark offseason.
When I played baseball as a kid, I never quite got the game. It was a mystery to me, the whole rate of failure, the game in your head, the bounces, the inches, the judgment of the umpire. Football was my game, something straightforward, physical. Line up across another guy and try to knock the snot out of him. Baseball, I was too uptight to really let it it fly. And my mind wandered. Now, watching games, I prefer baseball to football in every way. The beauty, the rhythms, the day to day of it. Today football is a different game from the one I loved, a game of specialization and matchups and strategy, plugging players in and out for specific plays, situations. That's just boring and impersonal to me, a kid who soaked up the stories of the sixties Packers and Giants and Browns and Rams.
Anyway, even though I love baseball now, there are still things I just don't get. The biggest being that you just can't bend any given situation to your will, at least as a hitter. The game is just too big and crazy and mysterious to me. Football, I always felt like you had a little control over things, if only biggest there's always somebody waiting to be knocked down.
Anyway, the first, undisputed fact is the bullpen has to be rebuilt from the ground up. Maybe you keep a couple guys, I don't know, but most of them have to be gone.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Morandi in the basement / Mets in the pennant race
I am looking forward to seeing the Morandi retrospective at the Met, but I was a little disappointed to see in the Times today that it's hanging in the lower level of the Lehman wing, which is below ground in a strange, circular layout of galleries adjacent to the cafeteria. Holland Cotter thinks this is fitting; I'd rather see these subtle, straightforward paintings up on the second floor in some skylit galleries and with some room to maneuver [a Morandi show is a rare event this side of the Atlantic; it's going to be crowded down in the Lehman catacombs]. There is some indirect natural light in the Lehman wing, but it's mostly for the interior courtyard where they usually don't hang art. Anyway, I hope I'm wrong, and the space does not take away from the work.
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Meanwhile, the Mets are in a real, live division championship race with the Phillies, and it is excruciating fun.
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Today's post was brought to you by the letter M.
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Meanwhile, the Mets are in a real, live division championship race with the Phillies, and it is excruciating fun.
***
Today's post was brought to you by the letter M.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Kid's eye view
What happens when my son gets his hands on a camera. At the risk of sounding like an easily pleased, too-proud parent, it's kind of nice to be reminded what the world looks like to a four year-old. The Wiggles shot from the tv is a little odd, considering he hasn't watched them in years. Looks like the Wiggles are in that transporter thing on Star Trek.
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