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584. uzmakk - 4/28/2006 5:19:39 PM Menu posted this weekend. Cafe opens. 585. uzmakk - 4/28/2006 5:21:21 PM Nilsson, you have no idea what you're getting involved with here. 586. PelleNilsson - 4/28/2006 5:26:07 PM Bring it on! 587. uzmakk - 4/28/2006 5:36:50 PM Imagine, if you will, that I went to the trouble of posting
THUNDER in 20pt. type. 588. uzmakk - 4/28/2006 5:41:29 PM Can I get you into the Cantina? Special today: Mother's Own Borsch w/wo a wedge of cave-aged brie plunked squarely in the middld. 589. judithathome - 4/28/2006 5:54:48 PM Wow...that sounds very good!! A hunk of crusty dark bread alongside? 590. uzmakk - 4/28/2006 6:26:51 PM Always good bread, Judith, as you well know. 591. webfeet - 4/28/2006 8:35:32 PM It's 2 a.m and Maurice and I are laying in bed together, post-coitus. It's actually Little Bear's bed, and we are sitting up resting on the wooden headboard, with a tray between us. On this tray are two large pieces of chocolate cake and a glass of milk. We have just discovered that we both love Mozart. Now he is teaching me a little yiddish; what are mishigass again? I ask, sidling up to him as I take a bite of the cake. Mishigass, he says, are your phantasmagoria. As you're drawing you say "oh my goodness! A fish house!" or "oh my goodness a mushroom house!" * It's strange to see them on paper and to recreate them during a production, as I did when I was working on the set of 'Hansel and Gretel'
'Are they like your boogeymen?' I ask, suddenly aware that Owl, Cat and Hen are peeping at us, every now and then through the window. I shew them away. 'They can be,' he says, not noticing. 'They come from inside your head.'
"Maurice, tell me what 'Sendak' means again in yiddish?'
"It means fish," he says, helping himself to the reest of my cake. "I've used it emblematically in my stories, especially to give my father pleasure.**"
"And the moon?"
"That's my mother watching down over me," he smiles. He's tired. "I think webfeet, that I'm getting sleepy," he says, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes.
'Oh, Maurice," I say sadly, imagining the long shadows on the corridor back to my room. 'Bedtime already? When am I going to see you again?'
'How about the Peninsula Hotel?' he asks, turning over.
'Can we take a bubble bath together and eat warm croissants?'
'We can do anything you want," he says and I know, as I turn to go, pulling the covers over him and shutting off the night light, that he means it. 592. webfeet - 4/28/2006 8:36:54 PM *excerpts from Backstage at Lincoln Center interview with Maurice Sendak
593. webfeet - 4/28/2006 8:41:14 PM In Sendak, I never saw much of a message. Just the genius of his personal universe, immediately accessible, full of childlike wonder. But I'm probably missing stuff.
"The subject of all my work from the beginning, my books and everything I've done is-to put it simply-the extraordinary heroism of children in the face of having to live in a mostly indifferent adult world. Generally speaking, people don't understand what's going on in the heads of small people. I side with the kids all the time."
--Maurice Sendak, excerpt from Backstage at Lincoln Center
594. arkymalarky - 4/28/2006 10:51:12 PM Uzmakk+Nilsson=innovation
Uzmakk+Malarky=REVOLUTION! 595. Jenerator - 4/28/2006 10:51:53 PM webfeet,
That is so interesting. A friend of mine has older parents who survived the holocaust. When you're at their home, food is literally bursting out at you from every pore of the kitchen. They even have three deep freezers full of meat!
I asked the son why they had so much food and the dad heard me and responded, "My dear, we went without for so long, that we will never go without again. If you have ever starved, you will know how important it is to always have cake."
596. NuPlanetOne - 4/29/2006 5:28:35 AM
Web…then I definitely will not read Marquez. Truth be told, my ignorance of modern literature is profound. It is possible that I have not read a living author of fiction in 20 years. I have always entertained the notion that one day I might write a novel, or at least a collection of stories. At some point I decided I didn’t believe I could be original if I absorbed the desire to emulate, or conform to, or compare myself to what is considered exceptional prose. Fortunately, as with my poetry, I can exist in a vacuum here in The Mote with you guys and safely take a crack at it. And by all means, I am the one who attempted to write a serious piece, and you reacted with a serious critique on your way to encouragement. It reflected objective on this end and exhibited nothing harmful and merely pointed to some springs that could be wound a little tighter or loosened to help the flow. I admire your prose, so I will use the advice as the prodding of an editor, rather than react egotistically. I’m not sure how it works actually, these are first drafts, and I have also realized that first person narratives are not the darling of many publishers. What say you of that?
…thanks Mac. You’re right twice. The thread is for fun and it seems Web has the confidence to give real advice objectively. Forgive me Jen, but she’s my new best pal. (“At least till I sign a book deal,” he dreamed.) Anyway, I have scallops to deal with.
597. webfeet - 4/29/2006 5:29:28 AM I hope your friends are always happy. I'd love to raid their fridge in the middle of the night.
With cakes I don't discriminate--sheet cakes, angel cakes, flourless cakes, carrot cake --all are delectable. The only cake, sadly, that sunk, literally off the crest of winners, was belle-mere's 'reine de sheba' or Queen of Sheba that she insisted on making to show off for a french family she had met here, in NY, while walking Juliette in the park.
"il faut que je fasse un gateau!" she said, as she ran to her suitcase to fetch her apron. I couldn't intervene; how could I?
Now, one has to be either quite a good chef to pull off baking a cake if a) you are in a foreign country b) you arrive without your livre de recettes which, if you are like belle-mere you never use anyway because you don't cook, and c) if you are unaccustomed to your daughter in law's kitchen--or--you are an ass.
The cake was disastrous. No-one touched it. It wasn't even the kind of cake you could just take a few bites of, and then leave politely to the sides. Pauvre belle-mere didn't understand my 'baker's chocolate' and it was impossibly bitter.
Apart from the cake, the company, a french bourgeois family who arrived bearing a grotesque assortment of flowers, a bouquet that was obscenely expensive and ridiculously unfit for the occasion--was even worse. The pere de famille, a stiff investment banker, prodded the gateau with his fork, as though it was a turd and then left it aside to the shame of belle-mere. after they'd gone, she couldn't stop talking about it, such was her offense.
It was possibly the most awful afternoon I've spent with anysingle group of people in my life ever. Dimanche apres-midi in hell.
598. webfeet - 4/29/2006 5:55:30 AM Oh, Nuplanet. Another night owl..I'm just in this zone of writing right now, and editing, styling is what I do instinctively. I am like Karl Lagerfeld--fussy. only with words.
While I am no Marquez, I find that by reading great writers I instinctively become a better one without trying to consciously emulate their styles. The point is obviously to find your own voice. But first you have to have an ear.
I wasn't advising you to imitate Marquez, perhaps it was simply a glib way of saying go back and edit until what you want to say comes out. That was very Karl of me, I'm afraid. If I were to really give you advice, I would say resist the impulse to give a play by play commentary on the dialogue because it doesn't always need it. But that's what anyone would tell you what a first draft is for.
Your writing has a lot of exciting moments--or verve, as Karl would say. Anyway, this night owl must go to bed. 599. alistairConnor - 4/29/2006 10:45:42 AM The visceral antagonism with Mère-Belle has such great potential, I hope it's in the novel. Not just as a running gag, though that could be very useful, but as a wellspring of subtle tragedy too. Like a cake of marvellous potential, baked with the best of ingredients and intentions, and which turns out disastrously wrong. 600. Jenerator - 4/29/2006 2:38:21 PM Nu,
I won't be mad. 601. Jenerator - 4/29/2006 2:48:47 PM Webfeet,
The Queen of Sheba is the quintessential French cake. I find it amusing and ironic that belle-mere was able to mess up something so traditional yet simple to make - I imagine that in her mind she blames our nationality (our inability to taste and our lack of real food) for the rejection of her gateau.
Ha ha ha ha
My MIL is a wonderful woman and despite her culinary quirks and idiosyncracies I am charitable with her cooking. Besides, I believe that all older woman have at least one great recipe in their repertoire. She insists on teaching me everytime she's down to visit. Last time she wanted me to learn how to make the best enchiladas this side of the border.
Ingredients - canned sauce, canned chiles, corn tortillas and velveeta.
!!!
I wonder what we will teach our daughters? 602. Jenerator - 4/29/2006 3:31:19 PM And since it's early and my brain is prone to random thinking let me tell you an amazing story about my friend's parents.
Dad [Jacek - the father of my American friend Dan] was a small boy with three siblings when Hitler invaded his country. Jacek's father was an officer of some sort and the family had been preparuing for invasion "just in case".
Jacek was shown where the family's personal weapons stash was hidden (in one of the walls) and all the kids new where the best hiding places were in their home. They all just assumed it would be easier than how it turned out.
Mom and dad both practiced a secret knock for the children so that worst case scenario, if they were split up, they would recognize one another by the secret knock.
Jacek's home *was* raided and the stash was found and the family heirlooms and jewels were sent to Germany. Their father was immediately taken into custody because of who he was and then the wife and children were shipped off to various camps.
Jacek was sent with his mother (wish I could remember where), and his sisters were sent to Dachau. That was the last they ever saw of each other.
Anyway, Jacek went on to tell me that he was in the camps with his mom for years and he watched with horror all of the atrocities we read about in our WWII books. He and his mom became emaciated and louse ridden. Children starved to death, and old men and women just died around them. Nazis treated them all with rude indifference if they were lucky, fatal hostility of they weren't. In total, he and his mom spent time in three camps.
It was hell.
Eventually, the camp he and his mother were in last was liberated and they found themselves in Russia! Once "free", they moved and hid like nomads among the people who wanted to help them. No family really reached out to them emotionally because all were still afraid of what might happen.
I cannot imagine what it must have been like for them - speaking a different language, depending on the mercy of strangers who may or may not be their enemy, not having had any souce of income and really not knowing if they were safe, ever.
There had been rumors of retaliatory killings and raids throughout the part of Russia they were in and so Jacek and his mother were more cautious and nervous than ever. They had survived the camps, they had survived starvation and disease - yet now, they faced the possibility of being recaptured or killed on the spot.
The family they had been staying with kicked them out for fear of Russian military intervention and so they gave them a loaf of bread and sent them on their way. They luckily found a sympathetic farmer and stayed with him for the next two months.
One fall night, as the farmer and his family sat down to dinner with Jacek and his mother, they heard footsteps on the porch. The entire family froze dreading the worst. Jacek said that he could taste his heartbeat - and then the secret knock came.
Jacek's mom literally passed out and he ran to the door!
There stood his father, noticeably thinner and with completely white hair. He had found them after looking over a year in Russian countryside!!
---------
I just cried and begged him to write down everything he remembered.
603. Jenerator - 4/29/2006 3:32:52 PM I forgot to mention that the family was/is Polish.
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