What happens when…

...You’re riding along the I-90 with a friend who is a terrific driver, accelerating powerfully after each toll gate? The problem: she’s a woman, driving a sporty Audi TT. She passes people. She passes men in their black-bullet Corvettes. They don’t like it. They then hog the left lane to block her way for hours on end.

road hog 

...You’re at a Chicago mall in the year 2005 and you enter a Sony video store with all sorts of movie making and movie watching technology? You end up being part of the display.

starring Althouse and Camic 

...You are at the same mall, this time in an Apple computer store along with five million shoppers wishing to touch with their own greedy little fingers the shuffle-pods and iPods and who knows what else-pods? And wanting to get rid of their squirmy children, so that they themselves can play with the new technology? You come across all the children, squirreled away in the corner of the store, where they have their own private little Mac attack (and then hit parents for the very computer or computer game they so enjoyed in the mall. Say as a stocking stuffer next Christmas).

absorbed 

I am a stranger in my own town

Peering in on the blogs of others, I came across this little speech test over at SamplesConnection. Of course I am going to be sucked into doing the test. Of course! I want to be rated, ranked and categorized, I want to know why everyone around me thinks I use words singularly, in ways that aren't wrong, but aren't exactly common either. I want to know where in this country, linguistically speaking, I would best fit in.

I wish I hadn't found the answer. My new label: foreign-born linguistic misfit in her own town. Because it is a small wonder people in the Midwest look at me strangely. Here's my speech profile:

Your Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

25% Yankee

10% Dixie

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Musical chairs

Tonight, my daughter is singing on stage under the direction of Krzysztof Penderecki, the world-renowned composer from Poland. That is unquestionably the closest anyone from my family – extended over all known-to-me-generations – has ever come to performing alongside musical greatness. So it is fitting that it should be a Pole right there, on the same platform as my girl (who is no longer really a girl… sigh…). But she is on the East Coast and I am in the Midwest attending to work and dishes (not even in that order) and so fate has pushed me into the shadows as she sings in probably achingly beautiful tones (okay, she is in the choir, but still, her voice I am quite certain will be the achingly beautiful one).

This event does recall my own brush with Polish musical greatness, though not on stage and with less flattering overtones. I was on a ship, crossing the ocean, returning to Poland. I was thirteen. Really, I think appearance-wise, that was my worst year. I cut my own bangs and my sister said I looked like a pope – all straight across, like a papal beret. More importantly, teens like myself should not have had bangs to begin with because they never looked good, even fresh after a shampoo. Then, too, though I was athletic and fit, I think I really had some gawk gene that reached peak maturity at that age, before I learned to suppress it.

It happened that Leopold Stokowski was also on the ship – along with his juicily attractive two adolescent sons. We hung out. Or, rather, most likely, I chased them. As I recall, they showed less than zero interest in me and my being 13 made me even less of a hot prospect, as they were firmly into their high school years. But I chased them nonetheless. I did not have a crush on either, but I was in love with the idea of a shipboard romance and so I tried.

Moral of the story: don’t chase sons of famous composers while crossing the ocean?. There is no other moral or point to the story, but I did think of it just now as my own daughter prepares to sing. She at least has the good sense not to show the slightest interest in Penderecki’s sons, possibly because she hasn’t met them and they would be well into their fifties should they even exist.

Thoughts about cooking Polish-Russian food

Hey, no one called an ambulance.

Would I do it again? I would!

I like the way the foods on my menu sounded Russian and Polish: blinchiki, pierogi, caviar, borsch, uszka -- in addition to the staples such as herring, trout, nut cake..

Two recurring ingredients: mushrooms (I used the dried “porcini” type that I brought over from Poland) and sour cream. Practically every dish had one or the other.

Advice: always always eat with people who are good sports about it and shower the meal with appreciative (and critical, where it’s warranted!) words. I know we should all rise above compliments and comments, but when you cook all day long, the pleasure comes in seeing people eat and react. One reason why I stopped moonlighting at the restaurant is that I felt disconnected from that last stage of the process: when I let the plate go from the kitchen, I never saw how it was received. You evolve as a cook, I think, by keeping an eye on people’s faces as they eat. Not all dishes work well and you learn what people pick out as the truly exciting and what they appreciate on a smaller scale. Last night, my group was expressive in all ways. Putting out plates of food was, therefore, a joy.

Okay, it’s late and I have a hell of a clean up before me. I promised those far away a few photos from the evening. Here’s a sample:

Festive beginnings: potato rounds with smoked salmon, sour cream and caviar 

It's so good to have last minute help with plating foods... 

you have to have herring to nibble on before dinner. Here, it's tossed with apples, sour cream, onion and dill. 

the rewards of cooking: watching the faces of guests as they sample different foods (in this case, Jeremy reacts to the deep burgundy colors of borsch) 

wild mushroom pierogi, from start ... 

...to finish. With sour cream and crispy onion bits. 

indispensible dinner companion: a camera, of course 

almond-orange cake with bittersweet chocolate: some impatient person dug in too early 

Running scared

All I did was say things like “I am cooking up some Polish-Russian food tonight” and I started getting the emails: “I’m excited, but are you serious about the boar?” When another evening invitee stopped by in the afternoon, most likely to check up on the food prep, he proceeded to make every excuse under the sun to avoid returning in the evening (I was busy cooking, but something about crazy internal aunts was at some point mentioned).

Now really! This is the kind of continental provincialism that drives me crazy! Eels, boars, pigs knuckles – these foods have been staples, I’m sure, for hundreds of years!

Never mind, I am proceeding, if I have to eat all the courses myself, with the rest calling for take-out pizza on some excuse or other.

I’m sure they’ll eat the cake, it’s been pretested.

Dear Mr. Schwarzenegger,

Okay, I have issues with you. Anyone can tell I am not a fan. But you know, California is not my state and so I stay out of the discussion.

But today you irritated the hell out of me and you stepped on MY toes, so I feel I must react.

You said the other day that the way to deal with the immigrant problem in this country is to close the borders. Yep, that’s what you said – I heard you. And so did others. Many thought that perhaps these were not kind words, coming from an immigrant like yourself.

Now, I am sympathetic to your language issues. But when today I hear you say you misspoke because English is not your first language, I bristle. Because you know damn well that “close the borders” sounds nothing like “secure the borders.” Close, secure – nope, no similarity at all.

So please fess up: you misspoke because you speak foolishly oftentimes and you don’t really have all your political wits about you at all times. It is NOT a language thing.

Best wishes for a hasty return to "acting,"

nc

April 21st rules!

You really are shamelessly obsessed with your birthday, aren’t you?
Yes.

Did you have to write on the blackboard in class today “don’t mess with me, it’s my birthday?” Isn’t that unprofessional or something?
Unprofessional, shmeshional. Besides, it was point number three on a list of factors regarded as significant in determining jurisdiction for a modification of a custody order. I thought I’d lighten up their fare a little.

Every post has been about your birthday thus far. Every one. And you’ve put up three and it’s not even noon.
I’m about to do a fourth.

Disclaimer: Ocean posts in and of themselves are insufficient to establish a credible case of author battiness. More is needed.