A Few Random Thoughts on Clothing and Fashion

It's not that I'm not a fan of the thong bikini, it's just that it isn't right for all women and definitely not for men. Yuck! Let's just say that the backsides of some women are not automatically enhanced by this meager shred of fabric. The main purpose of a thong is to plumb the lascivious and salacious depths of the minds of all who behold the wearer of the garment. I have often seen cases in which the thong evokes horrifying images of a villager being swallowed by a crocodile.

Do you ever think that Hitler mustaches will come back in style? I can't think of any other historic figure who single-handedly poisoned a style for at least a generation and perhaps for eternity. Even hard-core white supremacists and skinheads don't walk around with Hitler mustaches. Here's the thing, I think that Hitler mustaches probably always looked fucking stupid which is why I can't understand how this clown had such a profound effect on people. Charlie Chaplin had a mustache like Hitler but he was a clown.

I can't believe anyone uses the words “fashion designer” and “genius” in the same sentence. How smart do you have to be to raise a hemline or wrap a sash around something? Maybe if someone actually made some sort of revolution in clothing, like removing the ephemeral nature of fashion from what we wear so that instead of worrying about how we dress we could all move on to more important things, things like just about anything other than fashion. And fashion designers, I got a project for you. How about designing an off-the-rack dress shirt that actually fits? Most shirts are made for the kind of guy whose belly is about twice as big as his chest. I realize Elton John is a big spender but how about making clothes for the rest of us?

Here's what I look for in fashion: anything that doesn't make me look stupid and anything that won't make me look stupid when I look back at myself a couple years from now in a photograph. I remember watching a French movie from the 1960´s and noticing the shoes a guy was wearing. They were black leather dress shoes with a buckle instead of laces. I thought they looked cool when I saw the movie sometime in the 1980s. I have had a pair of those shoes since then. I try to follow the same rule for haircuts. I'd rather be anonymous than stick out like something desperately in need of being pounded down. If I want to distinguish myself from the crowd I'll try to do it with ideas, not by buying something made by Ralph Lauren.

So You Want to Be a Millionaire: A Wall Street Cautionary Tale

Companies pricing luxury items "are not selling goods, they are selling an emotion," says Jens Baumgarten, head of financial services at Simon Kucher & Partners, a strategy and marketing consulting firm.
-Forbes Magazine

Is greed an emotion? Shamelessness? Vanity? Hubris?

Back when Ronald Reagan was talking about “welfare queens” he was merely speaking hyperbolically, which is basically lying but with a party stamp of approval. He was referring to the apocryphal recipients of government aid who were driving around in Cadillacs. Welfare queens? I mean, what kind of royalty drives American? Maybe a Hummer that has been converted into a limo, but that's just for when you have too many high-priced escorts to take the Maserati. As far as lavish excesses go, we have a certain panache that those fictitious welfare cheats never dreamed possible.

Our worst fears of socialism are about to come true if we allow government to limit executive pay to $500,000 for companies receiving part of the Obama stimulus package. They can't possibly mean $500,000 a year? Granted, we all voted for candidates who opposed raising the minimum wage, but we didn't mean for us. Don't you remember watching with horror that show So You Want to be a Millionaire? A millionaire? All we could think was, “There but for the grace of God go I.” As terrifying as that program was, now we may be dealing with a federal government that wants us to work two years just to make it to the slumdog millionaire's club.

1) With a range of 3,400 nautical miles at Mach 0.80, the Gulfstream G250 corporate jet has the capability to whisk away you and three of your board members, also under indictment for securities fraud, to the closest country that does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S. which is:

A) Brazil
B) Tunisia
C) Laos
D) California

So what if we all make Marie Antoinette look like some sort of under-paid case worker for social services? We deserve everything we have. Do you think it's easy to install an entire government, from lowly congressmen right up to the president who will systematically lower our tax rates to the point where the rate paid by the richest 400 Americans fell to 17.2 percent through the first six years of the Bush administration?*

2) How many $40 bottles of Bling Water does it take to fill your bath?:

A) 40
B) If you have to ask, you can't afford it.
C) Is that sparkling or without gas?
D) $40 seems like a lot but you get a nickel deposit on the bottle.

How is it even constitutional for them to limit our pay? They should just give us the federal money and let the free market take over from there. Sure, we all support drug testing for welfare recipients and that they show proof that they are working or looking for work, but those are poor people, they can't be trusted. Many of them spend their food stamp money on excesses like ice cream and cookies. They can be so out of touch. We promise to spend tax dollars responsibly, like $87,000 for an area rug for the CEO's office at Merrill Lynch or on a spa holiday for A.I.G. executives.

3) How long can America's richest citizens count on the support of the bottom 80% of wage earners?:

A) Until the presidential election of 2012
B) Until we say so.
C) As long as poor folks keep playing lotto and believing they are one scratch away from being our neighbors.
D) Are we certain that all those guillotines have been destroyed?

Need a lifeline? You can make a call to Czar Nicolas II and family. No answer? Just let it ring. All of this talk is starting to sound like class warfare. That's what we call it when the other side decides to fight back. We prefer things to be like they were before, kind of like the moral equivalent of those glorified petting zoos where rich guys like Dick Cheney "hunt." You know, the places that keep the animals caged up until the great white hunter lumbers by, is given time to calmly finish his glass of single malt scotch, load, fire, have the guides administer first aid to other members of the party, and then fire again. We've made it even easier for the accuracy-impaired by just having them shoot pre-packaged meat right in the butcher aisle at the supermarket, although radical anti-gun hippies have made this illegal in some states.

3) This question was posed to Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street: How many yachts can you water-ski behind?

A) 1
B) More than 1
C) Don't I pay someone to water-ski for me?
D) Find out the record number of yachts someone has water-skied behind and simply add one more yacht. Do we have to do everything for you?

And now for the final question.

2) How much is enough?

A) Can you repeat that, I was busy demeaning my maid.
B) Is this a trick question?
C) A lot, an awful lot.
D) Certainly a lot more than $1 million.

Who wants to be a millionaire? Not us, that's for sure.

*www.Bloomberg.com

Cousin, Cousine

Cousin, Cousine directed by Jean Charles Tacchella was probably the first French movie I ever watched, at least in French with English subtitles. I was in my first year of college French at Indiana University and this movie was suggested by my teacher, a very enthusiastic grad student and mentor to all of his students. At that time the Midwest was my birthright and I had rarely traveled outside its familiar confines. I knew that I wanted to get away from where I had lived almost my entire life up until then, but I didn't know how to do it or know where to go. I was studying French mostly because it was a required part of an undergraduate degree. I suppose that I just saw it as another course, like economics or history. After watching this movie at an off-campus art house movie theater, I couldn't help but think that the French were very different from the people I knew. At that time, as far as I was concerned, “different” was the same as “good.” I immediately developed an overly-romantic view of France that I hold to this day. Cousin, Cousine also gave me an overly-romantic view of love that I have maintained to this day.

I just watched this movie again recently, a film that was made in 1975 yet holds up extremely well, both as a timeless work of art and as something capable of speaking directly to me. In some ways I think that I haven't changed a single bit over the course of what has been my adult life. I still think this movie is just about the sexiest thing ever put on film, a story about two people who become best friends before consciously and deliberately deciding to be lovers.

I don't even know where to begin as far as my praise for this beautiful film. I love everything about it, even the music remains wonderfully whimsical—a lot of movie scores from the 70s are woefully dated. Cousin, Cousine has soured me on a generation of American films that don't have the slightest clue about how to portray ordinary people. The central characters are a handsome couple but not movie star perfect. They haven't been air-brushed, surgically enhanced, and stair-mastered to within an inch of their lives. All of the characters in this movie have ordinary (if not dumb) jobs. Hollywood's idea of a normal person's job is an advertising executive, and forget about accurately portraying all of the other details of middle class life. I think it was this movie that started my prejudice for books and movies about ordinary people, people I can recognize from my own very ordinary life.

If you haven't seen Cousin, Cousine I think you should give it a look, if you can find it. It should only take about the first 15 minutes or so to turn you into a francophile.

Why Valencia?

Photo by Juan Flores

Why Valencia?

As far as where I chose to live when I moved to Spain I have to say that my selection process was a bit on the random side. I knew for a long time that I wanted to live in Europe again, somewhere, anywhere. I was deciding between France and Spain when a trip I took with my younger brother to Spain. We visited Madrid, Sevilla, and Toledo on what was one of the best vacations I've ever had, thanks mostly to some friends who live in Madrid who shaped our travel plans. When the time had finally arrived for me to move to Europe, I knew I was going to Spain. As much as I loved Madrid and the other places we visited on that trip, my past experience of living in Greece tipped the scales towards living somewhere on the Mediterranean.

I knew that I wanted to live in a fairly large city as I was comfortable living in a city the size of Seattle and anything smaller would have been like wearing a too-small shoe. I must admit that I never considered Málaga, another rather large Spanish Mediterranean city. I considered Barcelona but I was a bit reluctant to move there because of the heavy Catalan influence—I was moving to Spain to learn Spanish, after all. The truth is that before I started looking seriously into moving to Spain, I wasn't even aware that people spoke Valenciano in this part of the country. Valenciano is very similar to Catalan. I would say that it is merely a dialect of Catalan but I might get beat up by some of the more chauvinistic locals for saying that. My knowledge of Valenciano/Catalan is fairly scant, but I still am unable to tell them apart whether spoken or written. I apologize for that.

With a little research into the matter I determined that Valencianos were more apt to speak Spanish—at least in the street—than their counterparts in Catalonia. I had traveled to Barcelona twice before and I loved the city, as almost everyone does. The language issue bothered me a bit and also its size, as I figured that a big city like Barcelona would be more expensive and perhaps less user-friendly for a recent immigrant. I had also traveled to Valencia once before and stayed there for only a day or two on my first trip to Europe. I couldn't remember anything about the city from that trip except the beautiful train station and the huge central market.

I wish that I could say that I spent hours and hours doing painstaking research into my choice for where I was going to move in Europe. I mean, I didn't exactly throw a dart at a map of Spain and then move there with nearly all my remaining worldly possessions. In truth, this would be an insult to dart throwers as there is a bit of skill in that game. No, my selection of my new home was more like a behind the back, over the shoulder toss. I'm not a lucky person by any means—I don't even believe in luck—but in hindsight I would have to say that by choosing Valencia, I hit a bullseye with my throw. I wouldn't change my choice for anything. Once I arrived I thought about perhaps moving to another Spanish city to get a fresh perspective on the country, but I could never bring myself to leave Valencia. It's my home. I chose rather well as it turned out. As random as my selection process may seem, I suppose that if I examine it more thoroughly there is quite a bit of logic involved.

I think that I would be very comfortable living just about anywhere on the Mediterranean, my life in Greece taught me that much. I could have moved to Marseilles, or Genoa, or Tunis for that matter, and I would have found much to love about living in those places. The Mediterranean has its own climate with which I was familiar. The weather is far from perfect but there are many months of perfection throughout the year. Time had not erased those cold, wet winters in Greece from my memory, but I could never forget the wonderfully sunny summers. And of course there was the food.

There is an indelible stamp on Mediterranean cooking that can be found in every corner and cove on this inland sea. In our era of global trade, it's possible to get just about any food product you want anywhere on the planet but there were many things I had missed about Mediterranean food. It wasn't just the basic ingredients, things you can probably buy in any good, upscale supermarket in the United States, what was missing were all of the little things that when taken together make up the essence of the Mediterranean diet. Things like the wonderfully odd-shaped tomatoes that are impossible to beat when the season is right. The different types of beans that are native to the basin. Olives of every character, shape, and flavor, and olive oils to match any dish. But it wasn't so much the flavor of foods that I missed, it was something else. A grilled sardine, some fried squid, roasted lamb or pork probably taste the same anywhere they are prepared, to say otherwise would be dishonest or verging on the overly-romantic. The element that was missing from Mediterranean cooking when I lived in America was their reverence for food. It's difficult to overstate the importance of food in the lives of the people who inhabit the shores of this sea that has been called the “middle of the earth” by many of the cultures that border it.

On a clearly anecdotal basis, I have to say that everyone I have met from Spain, France, Greece, and Italy all seem to have a much greater appreciation for food than most of the Americans and Brits that I know, unless those Americans or Brits have learned to revere food while living on the Mediterranean. This isn't to say that the Mediterraneans are superior to us, they just take food more seriously than we do. We have different priorities and values. The importance that these people place upon food is something that perhaps we reserve for other things. I wouldn't care to say what these other things might be, but I will say that I find American and British humor to be far superior to the Spanish or French version. They have paella, coq au vin, and risotto. We have Seinfeld and Monty Python's Flying Circus. The good news is that we can share.

I have met Italians, Greeks, French and Spanish people who admit that they can't cook but who can will whip up veritable miracles of simplicity in the kitchen using ingredients common throughout the region. I've never met an Italian who couldn't make some sort of memorable dish with only a bit of pasta, some olive oil, and a vegetable or two—I've also never met an Italian who doesn't eat pasta every day, if not with every meal. It never ceases to amaze me how the Spanish will raise the lowliest of food items to an exalted level. A slice of tomato and a single anchovy will be shaped into an elegant tapa to accompany a beer or a glass of wine; a plate of olives will prime a first course at dinner; even a bag of store-bought potato chips will be decanted into a dish before being served. The have a great respect for food because it is their inheritance, their birthright handed down over centuries.

What I first found to be close-mindedness on the part of Valencianos when it came to modifying—in any way—their local dishes, I soon found was just a respect for their own traditions. There are just certain dishes in their culture that they feel cannot be improved. I feel the same way about a handful of things that I prepare. Change just one ingredient every couple of years, or even every generation and before long you will have lost sight of the original dish entirely. Some of my first impressions of Valencianos regarding their cuisine was of a people hog-tied and impaired by their own traditions. I quickly realized how foolish I was for thinking this; it would be like mocking a person for caring for the foundation of his house. Without embracing their culinary past, every day in the kitchen would be like reinventing the wheel. It took me a while to come around to their way of thinking. I was a decent cook when I arrived in Spain, and inspired amateur at least. As my cooking experience with Valencian food expanded, I came to base my own recipes firmly on the basics. I gradually learned that to know your way around you have to know where you started.

Super Easy Pizza Sauce

Super Easy Pizza Sauce

1 Onion
3 Cloves Garlic
½ Cup Red Wine
1 16 oz. Can Whole Tomatoes (entero) (I mush the tomatoes with my hands)
1 16 oz. Can Tomato Puree (triturado)
1 Small Can Tomato Paste (doble concentrado)
Olive oil, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, oregano, 2 bay leaves, pinch of sugar

Sauté onions and garlic until translucent, then add spices. Add wine and allow for most of the wine to evaporate. Add the other ingredients and simmer for about two hours. The sauce should be fairly thick and it will thicken even more after you let it cool.

I learned this simple recipe years ago and I still find it makes an excellent pizza sauce. Most pizza joints have terrible sauce that tastes like it came right out of a can, which it probably did. If you are going to do something, do it right. That's what I was always told. If I am going to pay someone to make a pizza for me I expect them to make it at least as well as I would at home if I had the time.

We are all forced to take shortcuts in life, but sometimes you have to stop and ask yourself just what you are doing with the time you are saving. There are things more important than food—I suppose. I just think that most of those more important things can wait until after you've had a good meal.

I have to say, this sauce is absolute perfection. No kidding. I can't see why I would change a thing about this recipe. It's not just a pizza sauce. I bought some ready-made meatballs from Mercadona. I used to think that they had too much filler in them but I have grown quite fond of them. I placed them in my clay baking dish and put them in the oven along with a tray of potatoes. I perforated the potatoes with a fork, lathered them with olive oil, and salted liberally. If you are going to turn on your oven you may as well cook a couple of things at once. When the meatballs were done I tossed them in some of the sauce. Then I put the meatballs and sauce on a baguette with some fresh mozzarella cheese and threw that in the oven. A meatball sub and a baked potato—I guess I'm still an American after all.

P.S. The cold baked potatoes are great on a salad which is why I will cook a bunch at a time.