TiVo Lady

Happy T'Giving

From my table, to yours, orchid and prematurely-blooming Christmas cactus, included:

Pan Pain

Here's my favorite pan.  Or rather, here's my favorite pan after I was too sick* to clean it immediately after a buffalo burger was cooked in it and Husband 'cleaned' it and stuck it in the dishwasher:

Yes, that is permanent, baked-in charred grit and grime and unidentified non-nutrients embedded in Favorite Pan, forever and ever.  Amen.

*SICK = Fever, drippy nose, sneezing, coughing, sheer and utter misery...(not including the notion of my Lost Forever pan)...

Here is replacement pan, to the tune of $39.99:

All's well that end's, well, expensively.

Fault Lines: Great Gimmick

Boomer author Nancy Huston (born in 1953) has taken a chance in Fault Lines, her latest novel.  It's a book with a gimmick, a very simple though very risky one.  The story is told by in four parts, by one member of each of four generations of a single family.  Not only that, but it's told backwards, starting with the great-grandson and going back in time, through the boy's father, then his grandmother, and finally his great-grandmother.  And each character tells his and her story from the age of six.  That's the part that's risky, since the voices here are very damn sophisticated for six-year-olds.  Don't believe me?  How about this, from the Sol section, the youngest-generation American-born boy:

"One thing my parents agree on completely is that I should never be slapped, spanked, or given any form of corporal punishment whatsoever.  This is because they've read lots of books where it shows that battered children turn into battering parents, molested children into paedophiles and raped children into pimps and prostitutes.  So the important thing is you should always talk, talk, talk, ask the child why it misbehaved and give it the chance to explain itself before pointing out, as gently as possible, how it might be able to behave better the next time around.  You should never hit it."

To my ear, a rather inauthentic first-grader.  But.  The method gathers speed, as we meet the generations backwards, zooming to the heart of a family mystery that propels and motivates every person in the story, despite their ignorance of the mystery of great-grandma's childhood in Nazi Germany.  It's a terrible stain that casts a cloud over the entire family, both literally, in the distinctive birthmark each member has, and figuratively, in their suffering and confusion.

Here's six-year-old Sadie, in 1962, who lives in Canada with her grandparents until her mother's wedding:

Gran "buys me a new dress--a puffy yellow thing made of stiff lace and taffeta with a black plastic belt around the waist.  On the morning of the wedding day she takes me to the hairdresser's, the lady washes my hair with scalding hot water and sets it in brush curlers, rolling them so tightly I could scream and sticking pink plastic pins through them at a sharp angle against my skull...when it's finally over and she takes the curlers out I think I'm going to be lovely with ringlets but instead of leaving them alone she backcombs them until I look like a wildwoman, then pins the whole thing up into a beehive and sprays it stiff and I can't even recognise myself, it's a vastly inappropriate hairdo for a little girl."

I bought the gimmick, completely, despite the unreality of the six-year-old voice, but I have a suggestion.  If you read this book, do it all in one sitting, since it will make much more sense, and be much more powerful that way.  It's only 304 small pages long, and that way you won't forget crucial details of the story, the way I did.  (If you don't have Boomer Brain, though, then maybe you don't have to read it all in one go...)

Victory!!!!

The new sofabed actually fits!!  Well, except if you open the sofabed you can't get in the bathroom.  And if you can get into the bathroom, you can't open the bed.  (Minor details.)

E voila:

Sofa Saga, Part II

Having spent $150 to buy no sofa--as in there is no new sofa in my home--I spent a sleepless Friday night conjuring ways to re-purchase a sofa that would fit through my narrow, attic-y stairway.  (See Friday's post for details on the Most Frustrating Sofa Purchase, Ever.)

Thus it was that I decided to heed Thomas Friedman's advice, from his Sunday Times column, and get patriotic by going shopping.  Yet again.  On Sunday, I set out on yet another Sofa Hunt, this one not at a deep discount store.  I arrived at the undisclosed location, which shall remain anonymous (until such time as they screw up completely), and faced a horde of other sofa-shopping folks.  (Though probably none who'd already bought and returned a sofa within the previous 48 hours.)  Either we all read the same Op Ed piece, or everybody else needs a sofa as much as I do.  See photo of current "sofa" here--it is scheduled to self-destruct within weeks, probably.  (Those are patches of sunlight, but also patches of imminent unraveling..)

So, there I was, with the sofa-shopping hordes, and two harrassed saleswomen, both on autopilot and refusing to find out if an item was in stock unless they were sure that the customer "was convinced that you really want to buy that one."  In other words, "I'm not doing anything unless you're seriously buying something right this very minute."  So, to show her who was boss (namely, her), I picked a sofa in about four minutes, and demanded that she check that one.  Right Now. 

She did.  And I did.  Reader, I bought it.  It's 83 inches long--nearly as long as the previously unfittable 88-inch sofa, but with a twist.  It arrives, allegedly, armless;  the arms are attached in situ.  Hopefully, in situ in the room for which the sofa was purchased.  So, paid I in full, fingers crossed, having asked three times if the sofa is really (really) delivered armless.  Yes, says she.  Okay, says I.

It's arriving today.  Allegedly.  Allegedly and armlessedly.  Update to come...

Sea of Poppies! (Oh, Crap, It's a Trilogy!!)

Sea of Poppies, by India-born Boomer (1956) Amitav Ghosh, is a roaringly great novel, with a fascinating story, a gaggle of completely real and wonderful characters, and an ending that stops cold  turkey, right in the middle of the action.  IT JUST STOPS:  ARGHHH!  I had to read the cover flap to find out that this is "the first novel in Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy." 

SHOOOOOOOOOOT. 

Why couldn't I have started reading this after he'd written all three?  Now, I have to wait until he finishes writing the rest.  Torture by fiction!

Poppies is several stories twined together, all of them fascinating.  There's Deeti, a young mother and poppy grower from North India whose older husband, an opium factory worker, dies abruptly.  There's a bankrupt Raja, a Chinese opium addict, a young American sailor named Zachary, and a young, naive French woman, Paulette, and her Bengali foster brother, Jodu.  Plus at least a dozen more vibrant, fabulous characters.  They are all part of this story about opium-growing India, on the edge of chaos, as the opium wars in China are about to begin. 

Ghosh invents his own language to tell this story, a mix of Bengali and English and French and maritime chatter that's at once charming, hypnotic, but very, very confusing, too.  For instance:

"In the old days the Rascally bobachee-connah was the best in the city.  No fear of pishpash and cobbily-mash at the Rascally table.  The dumbpokes and pillaus were good enough, be we old hands, we'd wait for the curry of cockup and the chitchky of pollock-saug.  Oh he set a rankin table I can tell you--and mind you, supper was just the start:  the real tumasher came later, in the nautch-connah.  Now there was another chuckmuck sight for you!"

Trust me--in context, it makes a kind of sense, and you just need the patience to see it through, rewarded by the splendor and scope of the story and the writing.  Here's another example:

"...the Burra Malum swore even louder, telling the serang he was an over-shrubbed sniplouse, and what did he think he was doing lying incog on deck at this time of day?  Serang Ali was slow to answer, for he had stuffed, as was his custom, a large wad of paan into his cheek after his midday meal...At this, the Burra Malum snatched a bitt-stopper off the bulwark and ordered the serang to get down on his knees and clean up the mess.  He had been swearing all the while, of course, but now he used an oath that everyone understood:  Soor-ka-batcha.  Son of a pig?"

Having finished this book, I am in mourning that there's no more left.  Seriously.

Worst Bond Movie, Ever

The new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace makes about as much sense as the title of the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace:  NONE.

There is no continuity from scene to scene;  no clear reason why we are in Haiti and then Austria (?) and then Italy and then London.  There is a lengthy car chase, a boat chase, and even an airplane chase--the only transport chase missing is a train chase.  But every one of these chase scenes is so poorly directed, and edited, that it's nearly impossible to tell who's doing what to whom and when.  It's mostly just smashing metal, bloody faces, flying bullets, blah, blah.

Daniel Craig is, of course, utter perfection as Bond.  But here, he's meant to be all broody and moody over his lost love--the one who apparently betrayed him before her extremely bizarre death by drowning in an elevator.  (This movie attempts to explain the woman's behavior, I think, but I still have no clue why she ran out on Bond and decided to end it all...)  As a result, there's very little humor here, sexual or otherwise, and no punning Bond, no sunny Bond, barely a sexy Bond.  See, he's suffering too deeply.  Sheesh;  we just want to be entertained, please.  The people in the packed audience on Saturday were desperate for a laugh--chomping at the bit to find one here, but there weren't any laughs whatsoever.  So we laughed at the vaguely dopey stuff....like the bad guy who requests euros instead of dollars, the latter being too weak even for greedy villains.  Ha.  Ha.   Not really all that funny.

This Bond had a huge, $70 million opening, and that's too bad, because it really doesn't deserve it.  I'm sorry for my Bond-crazed nephew, but this one is a Real Stinker.

(Not you Mr. Craig, not you!!)

Yet ANOTHER Shopping Fiasco!

Some people, like me, should never be allowed to shop.  Ever.  For anything:  clothing, shoes, jewelry, furniture.  They--me--don't know how to shop, don't like to shop, and can't shop.

Take today.  Here's what I thought I was buying:  a gorgeous new sleep sofa, at a Bloomingdale's discount store, for half of the usual price, with a $90 delivery charge from the mover I found, much less than the $150 charged by the store.

Here's what I got, instead:  three round trips to the discount furniture store, a $150 delivery charge, and NO SOFA.  That's right, read it again:  No Sofa.  I took one trip to the store to find the sofa==Perfect! I thought.  I took a second trip there to meet my $90 mover.  I took a third trip there, with the now $150 mover, after we discovered that the sofa would not fit through the doorway of the room I had hoped to put the sofa.  (Nor would it fit in an alternate location.)  Back at the store, they told me that for an additional $150, they had a guy who would chop the sofa apart, and then put it back together in the appropriate location.  But he would not move the sofa, because that's not what he does.  So, it was kind of too bad that I hadn't left the sofa where it was.  (They did not tell me about the Sofa Chopper, however, when I called to ask if I could return said Sorry Sofa.)

Ack!  The upshot:  I'm out $150 and I have no new sofa. 

Here is what the Sofa That Will Never Be Mine looks like:

I should just remember that I am a Toxic Shopper, and to never ever ever go shopping unless the lovely Rio Gringa is with me.

(Since she is currently residing on another continent, it looks as if I will not single-handedly be able to save the American retail economy any time soon...)

Tree = Life

This tree speaks to me.  I don't quite know what it's saying, exactly, but it is talking...

These trees are also speaking, but their message is different:

The White Tiger

After seeing Slumdog Millionaire, my fascination with all things Indian has exploded.  And Aravind Adiga's new book, The White Tiger, is my reward for that obsession.  (Adiga was born in 1974, so alas, he is no Boomer.  Not even remotely.)  I'm not revealing a great new discovery, since the book did win the Man Booker Prize, the British answer to our National Book Award.

The book is written (oddly) in the form of a letter penned by our hero, Balram Halwai, to the premier of China, as a personal explanation of the Indian way of life, in general, and of the narrator's penchant for murder, in particular.  Balram is a servant/driver, from Laxmangarh, one of the poorest parts of India, which he calls "the Darkness."  It's about corrupt government and corrupt cops and corrupt rich people and corrupt elections.  It's about a country built on corruption, surviving on corruption, festering in corruption.  Balram describes furious gossip about elections at the tea shop this way:  "Like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters discuss the elections in Laxmangarh."

Over and over, Balram documents the almost infinite number of ways that India operates on the other side of legality, and how and why that makes it highly unlikely that the country will ever undergo true modernization.  Everyone is trapped in the "Rooster Coop," Balram says, just like roosters who can smell the blood of their slaughtered brothers, but do nothing to escape.  He continues:

You can "see a man on a cycle-rickshaw, pedaling down the road, with a giant bed, or a table, tied to the cart that is attached to his cycle.  Every day furniture is delivered to people's homes by this man--the deliveryman.  A bed costs five thousand rupees, maybe six thousand.  Add the chairs, and a coffee table, and it's ten or fifteen thousand.  A man comes on a cycle-cart, bringing you this bed, table, and chairs, a poor man who may make five hundred rupees a month.  He unloads all this furniture for you, and you give him the money in cash--a fat wad of cash the size of a brick.  He puts it into his pocket, or into his shirt, or into his underwear, and cycles back to his boss and hands it over without touching a single rupee of it!  A years salary, two years' salary, in his hands, and he never takes a rupee of it."

This is not because Indians are honest, Balram says, but because they are caught in the Rooster Coop.  Most servants and workers have large families, and "only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed--hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters--can break out of the coop."

This is a hint about what is to come, which is not only dramatic and moving, but also insanely horrible, all at once.  Next on my reading queue:  Sea of Poppies, another Indian epic!