Guavalog: really regret that some have taken totally out of context my use of the world 'clean.'

A name with stories.

I went to a library event during Litquake last month at which Ben Fong-Torres spoke (about a new book co-written with some of the band's members on The Doors). I had been a little curious about the hyphenated last name at the time, and thought to look it up later, guessing that it was something he acquired after marriage by adding a spouse's name. I was wrong. (I was also busy so, later turned out to be today.)

In the introduction to "Not Fade Away," I wrote: "On the job, meeting with musicians, managers, publicists, concert promoters, and record company executives, I never sensed any surprise on their part as they discovered that the guy from Rolling Stone was Chinese. Far more often, I would hear that, from having heard my name on the phone, they expected a Latino ("Torres" or perhaps a Scandinavian ("Von Taurus," maybe?)         

But despite the name - the result of my immigrant father acquiring a Filipino name to defy the old Chinese Exclusion Act and gain entry into the United States in 1921 - I am indeed Chinese. (benfongtorres.com)

and from another interview...

JournalismJobs.com: Coming from a strict Chinese upbringing, how did your parents feel when you wanted to become a journalist -- and to cover Rock 'n Roll? Were they disappointed you didn't want to take over the family restaurant or become a doctor or lawyer?

Ben Fong-Torres: I came from a family that very much adhered to Chinese culture. In terms of strictness, it was really more the feeling of responsibility to be a part of the family business, which was the restaurant. You were simply expected to be there and to work pretty much every day and night and weekends and summers [laughs]. But aside from that, hey, we're loose man. Not to mention the language barrier. They were shouting at you, but you didn't know what they were saying. I was not inclined to tell them very much. Or I wasn't very able to articulate what I was getting into. They knew that I was kind of heading toward the newspaper racket because they would see that I was bringing home newspapers with my articles in it. But that was as far as they knew. They didn't express a great disappointment. (October 2001)

This past summer he wrote about visiting an Emerville restaurant he had worked in as a teen in the late '50s, a location now serving tapas-styled "New Wave Asian" dishes.

... an earlier lunchtime customer had left a $6 tip. 

I couldn't help but laugh. Six dollars was just about what I used to make for an evening of work in that restaurant. Well, it wasn't Furenzu, and we certainly didn't offer any wine. Nor were there any such things back then as sake-based cocktails ... 

When I worked there, it was Moon's Chinese Kitchen. It was the late '50s, and I was all of 14. Yeah, I know. Child labor. But my brother Barry (who was 16) and I were earning a little extra money for the family. And so, after classes at Oakland High School, I'd take an AC Transit bus to San Pablo Avenue, into the town of Emeryville. I'd trudge a block over to Adeline Street, and to Moon's, a tiny, six-table operation that specialized in cheap food for takeout and home delivery. Shrimp fried rice was 75 cents, fried prawns 80 cents and a ham sandwich 40 cents. 

My job was to take orders over the phone  --  invariably, people wanted shrimp fried rice and fried prawns (talk about Old Wave Asian)  --  and then pack the food into a paper sack for the delivery guys. 

... 

There was one weekend afternoon I remember well. I was reading back an order to a customer on the phone, when, suddenly, my voice cracked. When I pieced it back together, it had slipped a notch. At age 14, I had reached adolescence  --  in a Chinese restaurant. ("Many Moons Ago")

The photo above is from reelradio.com. The caption is "In 1960, while in high school, I did some weekend work at KEWB, where I met the morning man, Gary Owens."

One's opinion on onions

I like onions. Especially green onions or scallions. But onion rings are ok too.* So are red onions. Which really look more purple to me than they do red. Caramelized onions are a special treat.

Onions are pretty too. They have so many irridescent, translucent layers. Hard to appreciate them at times, through the tears, but they're there.

*Some places serve huge onion rings.  Makes me wonder if there is a variety of onions that comes melon-sized.

P.S.  I almost forgot pearl onions.  They seem less oniony.  Milder.  But they make up for it by being cuter.

Keebler cookies quite common

I had some Keebler Soft Batch cookies for the first time in several years.  They were not Uncommonly Good. They were technically soft, but in a sort of hmm-could -this-be-produced-by-injection-mold-? way. The lack of crumbs was kind of creepy. Perhaps with age I have acquired a greater appreciation for things fresh and crumby.

I wonder why I liked them as a kid. It couldn't have been just because of those cute Keebler elves. Sure, they seemed to have more of a backstory than the Rice Krispie elves. I mean, we learned that they lived in trees, and were part of a diverse community specializing in different cookies (according to the Keebler site, the Fudge Shoppe Foreman is a dark brown elf named Zack). Snap, Crackle and Pop, in contrast, seem to appear out of nowhere* like the Great Gatsby every time milk is poured into a bowl of cereal.

*Ok, so wikipedia mentions a little bit about the Rice Krispies elves' backgrounds - "In the United States and Canada, opinion varies concerning Crackle's occupation, but Snap is always portrayed as a baker and Pop as a soldier." Still, what I want to know is whether they live in a tree or in the cereal box. And whether they had issues with their mother-figure.

Cream cheese and cucumber cookery

Well, not so much cookery as sandwich assembly.

I signed up to make cucumber tea sandwiches for a tea. They sound like delightful little snacks, refreshing. I haven't had them before, though, so I looked up a few recipes. Some are simple - just butter spread on bread and thinly sliced English cucumbers. Others go full-on fancy with watercress, dill, chives, and/or mint with cream cheese or goat cheese and cucumbers.

Mine will probably be somewhere in the middle.  Cucumbers and a flavored cream cheese spread maybe.  De-crusted, of course. 

I wonder why one popular brand goes by the name "Philadelphia" cream cheese?  According to Kraft,

The name "Philadelphia Brand cream cheese" was adopted by Reynolds for the product because at that time [1880 ], top-quality food products often originated in or were associated with the city, and were often referred to as being "Philadelphia quality."

There's a little bit about how people in other countries eat it. 

In many European countries, Philadelphia is eaten as a cheese, rather than a spread, and is served on cheese trays. For example, in Italy, chunks of Philadelphia are served in fresh salads. Japanese consumers put Philadelphia on crusty bread.

Chunks of Philly cream cheese in salads? That sounds at once weird and possibly gross and also like something I want to try, as long as the chunks are small.

Bitten.

It was a jelly filled donut, which made for slightly gory eating.  I like the taste of the typical cake kind better.

Tangerine time

Alternatively:  a cornucopia of clementines (well, they would be if they had no seeds, I think)

Sunday scenes.

That last post was kind of long-winded.  The pictures starting from here might do a better idea of describing this day.  Well, ok, so there are a few captions.  But none of them are over a paragraph.  I promise.

Stuff I did that's not in the pictures:

• Walk to The Contemporary Jewish Museum to see Intersections:  Reading the Space ("This exhibition features the work of three artists: Parastou Forohaur, an Iranian exile living in Germany, Australia-based Irene Barberis, and Jane Logemann who lives in New York.)
• Watch Good Night and Good Luck at the Embarcadero.
• Listen to a possibly predominantly Jewish audience (or maybe they just reacted the loudest?)   laugh in response to what would've been an otherwise minor joke in the movie:

Edward R. Murrow: We'll split the advertising, Fred and I. He just won't have any presents for his kids at Christmas.
Sig Mickelson: He's a Jew.
Edward R. Murrow: Well don't tell him that. He loves Christmas.

• Buy chocolate-covered marshmallows (can't remember where, but I watched them make the treat.)
• Watch Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic at the Opera Plaza.
• Ponder her chink-incident related comments about how people don't make fun of things/people that they are afraid of.

Morning mountains, middafternoon's museums.

Inspired by last week's too-short trip to the region, I went back.  There were people I could/should/would have contacted while there, but without much advance notice and at this time of year, it felt like it would be at best a rude interruption of other people's holiday seasons. 

I missed my early morning flight but got a seat on a flight leaving one hour later.  Waking from a short nap in the festive airport's waiting area, I saw the window-framed views of the mountains.  I think I've always taken red-eye flights out of ONT, and/or just never spent so much time hanging around that airport, and thus never really noticed those particular mountain views.  It was a pleasant surprise.

On the escalator up and out of the BART Civic Center Station, a wavy-haired Prince Leer gave me a very mocking, lascivious sort of look before turning away to laugh with his puffy-jacketed buddies.  Not such a nice way to begin a decadent sort of mini-vacation.  I thought about how if there was justice in the universe there would be a bespectacled male dork hopping onto a Fremont-bound train about to be teased by a bevy of belly-baring Britneyesque teenyboppers.  Then I thought about how that might be more fantasy-fulfillment than justice, and how I should be less impulsive when contemplating universal justice, and how I should spend more time thinking about what to do over the long weekend.

During a pit stop at the library, I peeked at Picture This: Family Photographs of Everyday San Francisco.  (I'm kind of glad I didn't linger too long there, as most if not all of the pictures on display seem to be available for viewing online too - take a peek yourself, if you wish:  ponies, puppies, and neighborhoods.)

Then I went across the street to the Asian Art Museum, where they had a huge stone Nandi in the lobby and an animated older guy in a striking black and white kimono at the information desk.  He told me I had time to kill until the next tour, Traditions Unbound: Groundbreaking Painters of Eighteenth-Century Kyoto, so I went up to view some of museum's South Asian art collection which includes a fair amount of south Indian sculpture and Sikh art.

After the tour, I ventured into Cafe Asia and was a little disappointed to see no gender illusionists dancing on tables.  I realized that my former supervisor had recommended another "Asia"- named dining spot.  My dish of green tea soba noodle and tofu salad was kind of minty and soothing, leaving me wondering if that was how it might feel to eat mentholated cigarettes.

By the time I got to the  de Young, they wouldn't let me pay for admission but offered everyone the chance to go in for free in the remaining 45 min.  The Hatshepsut exhibit was closed, but not having known of it in advance and having seen the King Tut exhibit earlier this year made that not such a big deal for me.  Well, that and Chihuly, and A Particular Kind of Heaven (someone said "nice font" as they walked past the triptych) and soaking in the sun and shadows while seated on a rock in the front courtyard.  As I walked away, I saw the exterior lights, shaped like a cobra head, come on.  More better photos.  More on the newness. 

After checking into my room, I went out again that night to see Fun with Dick and Jane.  There's a building in the movie that is referred to as a bank for super rich people.  It's kind of funny (though not in the typical Carrey sense) considering the building is really the new CalTrans headquarters.  Apparently the new building has been in a number of tv and film productions. 

From 'Deathstar' to Screen Star, Caltrans Headquarters Is Hollywood's New 'It' Building

... the state does not charge a location or permit fee, although producers must pay for security. The state also requires that a representative from Caltrans be on set, which costs producers $70 per hour...

That sounds like a pretty good deal, but I wonder if they shouldn't be charging more.  Maybe save up for one of those infamously rainy days when the mountains come sliding down over the highway.

Wow, this post was so long and I didn't even include my stops at the Botanical Garden, the Japanese Tea Garden, and a very special Christmas Eve trip to the Safeway on Market St. (Aaaaaahhhh!!!)

Ship me some shiitake, shortly.

Yesterday I came across an ad for a shiitake mushroom log.  At first the thought of one of those fungus-infected logs on the kitchen counter sounded kind of creepy.  But then I read that the mushrooms grown that way supposedly taste better than store-bought ones, and that one log can produce multiple harvests over several years.  So now, you know what to get me for the holidays.

Green guavas.

I might have redeemed myself when I decided to try some peanut sauce with my scrambled eggs.  That was unexpectedly good.  But I don't have pictures of those eggs.  I do have pictures of green guavas and yellow rice.  The guava harvest wasn't as big as it has been in the past.  But there is plenty of yellow rice.  'Tis the season for yellow rice, it seems.