What redeeming qualities does one find in someone who avoids the law by hiding out abroad, and then uses the law to file a claim of slander?

BBC is reporting that Polanski, who is living in France to avoid facing a sentence for a conviction for a child sex offense in the States, wants to appear on video in a law suit, filed on his behalf in Britain against Vanity Fair. The 71-year old Polish-born director sued the magazine for libel. He has been on the run since leaving the States in 1977. If he travels to Britain he may face extradition.

His lawyer states: This leaves the case in a mess and a situation where a defendant can get away with libel scot-free.

Get away scot-free? Nice argument, Mr. Polanski.

The important things in life

I was working out this morning at the gym, reading a FOOD magazine (crazy, I know), and I came across this question (see poll below). It hit me right there in the gut. Because I really do not know how I would, myself, answer it. Right now I'm thinking I need every point to get me through each day. I'm thinking -- maybe I would even give up eating altogether for two extra points. I could have used them, for example, last night at around midnight when the brain was working at reduced speed. But what about you? Be honest in your answer, please! I've never done a blog-poll, but I am supremely curious as to what my readers would say.

Extra extra: the Daily Show does…NOT scoop anything

Tom Brokaw is interviewed on the Daily Show tonight.
Tom Brokaw reveals that he was surprised by the popular vote.
Jon Stewart misses an opportunity. Brokaw is about to give his opinion on the candidates and Stewart cuts in to tell a lame joke. Dang!

Tom Brokaw mentions bloggers.

Tom Brokaw says to Stewart: You were absolutely right to say what you did (on Crossfire).

I would so rather Rather were leaving network news than Brokaw. Life is not fair.
And it is, I suppose, unfair that I love Stewart anyway, even if he did miss an opening for a Brokaw political revelation.

If it wasn't so funny, it would be scary: I am a New Yorker. At least to an extent.

Thanks to that screaming New Yorker in our building (TB), I found myself taking the "Are you a real New Yorker" quiz on the Time Out NY website (here).

I have only one comment: you indeed have NY in your blood (whether you've been there, lived there, rotted there, or bypassed it altogether) if you can check this one off:

[] You find this quiz hilariously funny for no good reason and you recommend it to all your friends.

I applaud Hardee’s for having the guts to market a silent killer to indulge our penchant for slow death

I’m so glad I had the news on tonight. I would not have otherwise known that corporate ingenuity would steer a company to create something that would pander to the most vile cravings harbored by man, woman and child.

Why else introduce the “monster thick-burger," with slabs of bacon, cheese and mayo, all worth a hefty 1420 calories (basically my needed daily intake if I am having a slow-moving day, or, as is reported here, enough calories to feed a family of three in many countries) and that’s before the soda and fries. One person commented that what we have is quintessential food porn. The SUV of burgers.

All we need now is to pack it up and ship it off to Europe (along with our SUVs). Maybe offer it as a food snack in high school cafeterias in France?

Make new friends ... keep the old ... one is silver ... other is gold

I could use a couple like that: friends that could be trusted to say "you are so cooooool, Nina! Yeah! you know those chumps who call you a lazy bum? What do they know? You want to stay in bed all day and skip class? Go for it! You want to kick ass and call your neighbors pigs? Yeah!" no matter what I did, they'd be there breaking champagne bottles over my chosen path, no matter what, no matter when. Mmmmmm... old friends. Friends that can be counted on to never question my superior knowledge of the world and my fanciful behavior. Gonzalez-type friends. Rice-type friends.

Half-listening to NBC news, I hear the usual about Condoleezza Rice’s nomination to the position of Secretary of State (all emphases in post are my own):

[She is] America’s face to the world. … Chosen to serve the president. …
She is charged with cleaning out the moderates … [She has] a chance to build on what [Bush has] already done…

And then on the Lehrer News hour I hear her shower GWB with praise. Did you know that under his leadership, "we have widen[ed] the circle of prosperity in every corner of the world" ?

Meanwhile, I read (here) this letter posted by her former colleague at Stanford back in 2002 (he received no response):

Dear Condi,
I'm 99.99% sure that my writing this letter will have no effect, but my conscience tells me to write it anyway. Danziger's cartoon has pushed me out of my lethargy. [His cartoon shows her banging on a grand piano, saying "War! War! War!"]

When I knew you at Stanford I had the greatest admiration for your abilities and good sense. (And I was disappointed that we never were able to get together to play four-hands music.) But now I cannot help but express to you my chagrin that the warm feelings I once had have basically evaporated. I hope you can pause to try to understand why this might be the case.

Fundamentally I don't see how the government of my country has done anything whatsoever to address and correct the root causes of international terrorism. Quite the contrary; every action I can see seems almost designed to have the opposite effect --- as if orchestrated to maximize the finances of those who make armaments, by maximizing the number of people who now hate me personally for actions that I do not personally condone.
...
And worst of all, I find that my leaders, including you, are calling for war against a sovereign nation that we suspect to be corrupt, thereby (even if our suspicions are correct) undermining all precedents against unilateral action by other countries who might in future decide that our own policies are wrong. If we peremptorily strike country X, why shouldn't country X have a right to do the same to us, and to our children and grandchildren in future years?

On my trips to Europe all I can do is hope that my friends there can help their governments try to make somebody in my own government act responsibly.

Sincerely,
Don Knuth

P.S. This is the second time in my life that I have written a letter to a U.S. government official. The first time was during the Vietnam war.

Now Knuth, notable and respected author that he is (eg. The Art of Computer Programming) -- he's no friend. He's more like my band of friends, ready to speak up whenever I misbehave. What fun is that??

My shoulders are sagging

I was a senior in high school in Poland in 1968, a mere 23 years after the end of World War II. The history teacher who taught us the Nuremberg Trials that year had her own personal accounts of the war to insert into the lesson. I wonder if I can express how it feels to have the following appear on the Net (via HS -- thank you), circulating now, 36 years later, to demonstrate historic parallels between then and now:

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." Hermann Goering, Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe (the second man in the Third Reich), at the Nuremberg Trials.

For better or for worse, my generation ofPoles has always lived in the shadow of the war. After all, it was a war that ransacked our families and destroyed more than 90% of the city where I was born. "Never Again," I heard it over and over again during my Warsaw years.

There was still rubble in the Warsaw of my childhood, but there were no war planes threatening our safety. My generation was taught to listen: we would be the keepers of history, we needed to hear what had happened moments before we were born. And we were good listeners. We remember it all: every last story, every last reason offered for the horror that swept over the European continent and especially Poland.

And so I really cannot emphasize enough how shaken we are -- we the keepers of history, because I think we did not properly recount that which was taught to us. We did not link the past into a future for our children. Instead, we became members of a voting public that did not hear us, but instead, through a democratic process, elected a leader who chose to go to war, without apology, without reconsideration, without remorse.

Coincidentally, also today, I received an email from another friend. She is reading William James (on the subject of the Spanish-American War) and finds that he has this to say:

"The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly, by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and by preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks. Such nations have no need of wars to save them."

Shake a few trees and out flies local talent

I went to eat dinner at Crescent City Grill with Chef O from l’Etoile and a bunch of summer L’Etoilers to celebrate the end of the most successful season ever (on a ripe summer Saturday, they would sell 1700 croissants and I may have lugged 1700 lbs of fruit, though the latter is probably only in my perception of things).

We chatted with the Crescent City chef afterwards and I have to put in a plug for the place. You can go there on a Monday and get a degustation menu (the chef serves you whatever he damn pleases) of many fantastic courses for a price that would make a New Yorker gawk in amazement. And the food is far from ho-hum boring or conventional. Forget good manners: run your finger through some of the sauces on your plate (or on the plate of your neighbor) and give it a good lick: sensational! The preparations are cool and creative. [You think that's just standard food talk? I don't think so. 99% of eateries around here are anything but creative. Tasty? Sure. Creative? Not so much] And, just to keep my favorite descriptors in place -- it's all so fresh and honest.

I also talked to someone (Gail) who has been paying her bills as a L’Etoile baker (yes, a familiar pattern), but who has recently opened a chocolate shop of her own – the realization of a life-long dream. You absolutely must visit her website and/or her small little retail outlet and buy the stuff now, before the limos from distant places pull up and beat you to it. Her chocolates are like no other chocolates you’ll find on this side of the Mississippi. Sophisticated and clever, the Ambrosius will (I am certain of this) eventually knock the socks off the other (Seattle-based) chocolatier of choice (Fran’s). Someone did you a favor lately? Send them a small box from GailAmbrosius.com You’ll be forever their hero.

Steamy notes on quiet nights

Last week I was telling my senior colleague how much I loved my Astor Piazzola CD (you know, the tango guy from Argentina). Did I ever read the album notes to some of his records and CDs – my colleague asked. No, can’t say that I have. I just like playing it in the background, especially when I am writing – it is so sensuously moody, a melancholy kind of music.

Today I opened an email from my colleague and there they were: program notes from some of the albums I did not have. They came with a suggestion to drink wine, listen to the music and read them out loud (presumably to someone). I am alone at the moment and if I drink wine I wont be able to work or do whatever I have set forth for myself tonight, so I’ll just share the notes with the blog readers. Remember the dry language that typically accompanies classical recordings? Piazzola is every bit a classical artist (this recording is from the 1960s I believe). But read this and tell me if you find it boring (if you are prudish, skip this post):

Album notes to Astor PIazzola y su Quinteto Tango Nuevo: Hora Zero (listen to it here)

Strip to your underwear if you’re not in black ties. Get obscene if you want, but never casual. You feel an urge? Touch its pain, wrap yourself around it. Don’t put on airs. What you seem must be what you are, and what you are is a mess, honey, but that’s okay, as long as you wear it inside. Look sharp! Don’t slouch. See anyone slouching here? Stay poised, taut. Listen to your nerves. It’s zero hour. Anxiety encroaches, wave after wave, with every squeeze of the bandoneon. Already twisted by the contraposto of uprightness and savagery, this new tango turns the screw even tighter with its jazz dissonances and truncated phrasings. No relief. No quarter. At zero hour only passion can save you… It’s all a game. You’re going to play too. You’re going to dance with the tiger. Don’t worry, your life is in danger. Remember your instructions. Listen up. And suffer, m*****f*****, this is the tango.

Man, they don’t write them like they used to!

"They are a symbol of power without responsibility, and that's what we feel about you guys right now"

This statement about SUVs (and Americans) was made by a professor of transport psychology at a university in Edinburgh (IHT story here).

SUVs are a fairly recent phenomenon in Europe. Driving around tight spaces in old cities and the astronomical cost of gas do not, for the most part, invite large-car ownership. But slowly, SUVs are making their way into the automobile market across the ocean amidst the protest and dismay of many. Read this (emph. my own):

European wariness of SUVs is expressed in different ways. In Rome, the city government has proposed charging SUV owners triple the regular rate for permits to drive in the historic city center. ... [T]he feeling goes, there is just no room for the unwieldy and intimidating SUVs.
The city's transportation commissioner, Mario Di Carlo, said that, if he could, he would put up signs saying, "Please don't come here with these cars."

"I don't want to be like Freud, but SUVs are a projection, a compensating thing," Di Carlo said in an interview. "They're when you want to show how rich, how powerful, how tall, how big you are."

..."SUV drivers are less respectful of other people - you can tell by the way they drive," Di Carlo said. "They park on the sidewalks. Mobility is freedom, but these cars in cities mean immobility, and someone has to have the guts to say it."

...In London, where SUVs are known derisively as "Chelsea tractors," after an upscale neighborhood in which they are especially thick on the road, Mayor Ken Livingston recently dismissed their drivers as "complete idiots."

Drivers report having rude things shouted at them by pedestrians, and a group called the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s has taken to slapping fake tickets on parked SUVs, citing them for poor vehicle choice... "People who see Hummers driving around think, 'Oh, disgusting Americans,"' said Sian Berry, a founding member of the group. "We're saying that what happened in America must not be allowed to happen here."

I sense a lot of displaced anger in this charge. In general, the more you read the international presses, the more you sense that the relationship between the US and Europe needs a nice long session on a shrink's leather couch. Of course, as in a dysfunctional marriage, it'll be the children of both who will be paying the price for years to come.

Starting the week with an up-beat story

Several of my friends are dating these days. Looking to find a partner in life, they turn to me with questions that I find difficult to answer: should I call him if he hadn’t called me? Should I bother, given the fact that he is shorter than I am? How should I interpret his email behavior, or lack thereof?

Recently everyone has been talking about the book He’s Just Not That Into You. Amidst the cacophony of reactions I hear one that stands out: since the beginning of time, men like to be the chasers. Do not bother calling: if he wants to see you he’ll call back. Add a few other conventional wisdoms: men don’t like smart women and women don’t like short men and you’ve limited your universe of acceptable dating behaviors considerably.

It’s all good advice I’m sure. I mean, what do I know about American men anyway.

Yet, last night, someone pointed me to a true story that breaks from the gaggle of noise about the one right way to date. (You can also find it if you follow the link from the salon.com story on dating short men here.) Sure, you can adhere to the *sound* advice of He’s Just Not That Into You. Or not. Here is an excerpt from a wedding announcement appearing in the New York Times:

The bride and bridegroom met two years ago at a dinner party. It was a few days after Ms. Schonfeld had taken the bar exam, and she was so exhausted that she fell asleep on a couch, awakening only after everyone else had left.

Even asleep, Ms. Schonfeld, stretching to 5-foot-10, made an impression on Mr. Leib. He made an impression, too, not only, she said, because he is ''notably short'' -- he is 5-foot-6 -- but also ''notably smart,'' with a disregard for small talk.

Even when she told him she thought she recognized him from a high school hockey game, she said, he seemed to have his mind on other things. ''I thought it was kind of neat,'' she said.
Mr. Leib acknowledged that he can seem brusque, adding, ''I have a tendency to be that way upon first impression.''

Two months later, through their dinner party host, a date was arranged.
''It seemed almost experimental to date someone who was four inches shorter than me,'' Ms. Schonfeld said with a laugh.

Mr. Leib said he wore his ''tall shoes.'' And as their first date extended to six hours, they discovered they had something in common worth talking about: both had engaged in comically bad behavior in previous relationships.

With that kind of history, Mr. Leib recalled, he was not certain either of them would want a second date.

Rather than call, he sent her an e-mail message, concluding, he said, ''Of course I should never see you,'' and ''of course I'm way too short for you.''

But she was not quite ready to walk away, she said.
''He was so emotionally intelligent about where he was coming from and what he was thinking,'' she noted. ''We were both so incredibly frank with each other. That was quite impressive to me.''

So she called him.

So ends the wedding announcement, so begins their life together. Sweet and unconventional, just the way it should be.

Taking heart in being part of a decadent majority

It’s odd to feel pleased in reading that we are not, after all, moving in a direction of strong “family values” and good “clean” fun. We are, according to Frank Rich of the NYTimes (Arts&Leisure Section), as decadent and coarse as always, whether we live under a Blue or Red sky. Rich writes:

There’s only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media’s conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results – and about American culture itself – confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry’s defeat notwithstanding, it’s blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of “The Passion of Christ” should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.

I cannot emphasize how relieved I feel. The idea of Democrats pandering to the Fox-news watching anti-same-sex marriage and stem-cell research banning moral absolutists turned my stomach. It is so heartening to read that, at least according to this commentator, there has been no real shift: nothing has pushed these people into a statistically prominent forefront. They remain a small (albeit vocal) minority.

I’m on a new campaign: let’s lobby for the “old biddies,” shall we?

Is there a person on this planet who hasn’t yet heard that I am 51 years old? I am on a campaign to infuse with pride the adding of deliciously complicated and brimming-with-experience years to one’s log book.

So I was somewhat disheartened to read in the NYTimes today that the Academy is, more than ever, dishing out Oscars to the dishes and I don’t mean of the type you put in your Whirlpool at the end of the day.

It has not always been thus. Even though lovely young things have always gotten their share of Academy accolades, we’ve also had the occasional “mature” stars recognized (Shirley Booth and Jessica Tandy come to mind). But as the article points out, since 1990, only one woman over 50 has won an Oscar and that was for her role as supporting actress (Judi Dench).

Why raise this now? Because the last two movies that I saw featured absolutely sublime performances: Annette Bening (a mere 46) in “Being Julia” and Imelda Staunton (48), absolutely brilliant in “Vera Drake.”

I will not be a happy movie-goer if these two get pushed out by the little ones (Rossum, Moreno, Swank or the cute and loveable little Winslet). Step aside, young things, and give the luminous "older" actresses a chance.

Swing day

It was so good not to have to work this morning.
I climbed up on the roof and cleaned gutters this morning.

Friends got me moving early on with a walk in the woods.
After that I hardly moved all day.

We were to eat at Greenbush, the old basement Italian place on Regent.
It was too crowded, we couldn’t get a table.

We ate at Nattspil instead. I’d never been there. It’s a cool, homey bar with food.
The food was slow in coming.

We caught the last showing of Vera Drake.
One of us was a doctor who saw this as an ominous and timely movie.*

* The movie is about a backstreet abortionist in post-war London. The acting, combining improvisation and script, is unimpeachable. I’m still shaking.

Now that I’m done guest-posting (for a while), am I a changed blogger?

Yes I am. It was great fun to react to the good, the bad and the ugly too. Like in politics, you can never be as clever pushing your own agenda as you can knocking someone else’s, or defending your choices against the attacks of others. [The blog where I guest-posted invites anonymous as well as registered comments and the commentators are sometimes thoughtful and sometimes, shall we say, quick and dirty in their responses]

Of course, banter without slander is even more fun, but I have yet to figure out how to get that without also getting the gratuitous nastiness that often makes people say and write things that are mean-spirited rather than sumptuously witty.

I do think that blog-versations are just in their infancy. Within a year, we’ll have fashioned more options and formats that fit our great desire to create something out of the mess of thoughts thrashing about inside our skulls. And when these blog-versations come out sounding intelligently funny or sardonic, or even poignant, or pensive, whew! they can be a thrill to read.

Adrift

This is the first Saturday morning at home for me since early April. [For those who are new to Ocean, I occasionally moonlight at the restaurant, L’Etoile, and this past season I did Market shopping for them every Saturday.]

I cannot get myself to look at the news. I’m sure I’ll read something like "Can Bush Deliver a Conservative Supreme Court?" and I’ll wish I were talking to the farmers instead of sitting with a computer perched on my lap.

Maybe I should revisit old allies (that word!) over at the Progressive. Here we go – Molly Ivins has posted her December piece in which she writes:

Of course, I'm devastated by the news John Ashcroft is leaving. Do you think we'll see tits on statues in Washington once more? [referring to Ashcroft’s prudish request to not be photographed by a statue that had a certain degree of nakedness about it]

Unfortunately, Ivins gets graphic in her speculations on what the next years will feel like for Americans. Consider this excerpt:

My friend John Henry Faulk always said the way to break a dog of that habit [of chasing and killing chickens in the yard] is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad the dog won't be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.

The Bush Administration is going to be wired around the neck of the American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.

That’s a tough one to take with your breakfast granola and café au lait.

Maybe I could just go outside and shut the yard down for the winter. Good idea.

Where in the world is this?

I’ve written that I spent this morning in the Dells. And I’ve reminisced about a winter sun gently touching Polish river banks. So where are these photos from? Can you guess?

river banks... 

...and winter light 

Correct, it’s Madison. This afternoon I took a long walk with someone I hadn’t seen for a long time. We hiked along the Wingra creek – just a short stroll from downtown Madison. Lovely. And so peaceful after another uncomfortably stressful week.