What a Month!

Is it really Hal­loween again? The month, like Scarbo the ‘half gob­lin, half ghost’ char­ac­ter from Gas­pard de la Nuit, a poem and the third in a set of 3 extra­or­di­nary piano pieces by Mau­rice Ravel, has twitched, jerked and reared up and dropped down, pirou­et­ting like a threat­en­ing demon (at least in terms of my nail-biting regard­ing the Stock Mar­ket and the US Pres­i­den­tial Cam­paign)  and now is about to vanish:

Mais bien­tôt son corps bleuis­sait, diaphane comme la cire d’une bougie, son vis­age blémis­sait comme la cire d’un lumignon,—et soudain il s’éteignait.

But then, his body would change, became as blue and diaphanous as the wax of a can­dle, his face as pale as can­dle grease – and sud­denly he would be extinguished.

– The orig­i­nal poem by Louis Bertrand

(The first few mea­sures and an excerpt that goes on a lit­tle longer are below. It’s truly some of the most men­ac­ing and spooky music that Ravel ever wrote, I think, and appro­pri­ate for this dark evening):

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He he he, creepy enough for you?

Ear­lier in the Month

I guess the piano music excerpt is partly because piano music is partly on my mind. Last week I got to a con­cert at the Chan Cen­tre by Piotr Ander­szewski, a very inter­est­ing pianist who was mak­ing his return engage­ment to the Van­cou­ver Recital Soci­ety. He played Bach, Mozart and Schu­mann, and I’d have to say that it was the Mozart that I really liked best. Mozart Sonatas, like the Sonata in C minor, K 457 that he played are often played (badly) by chil­dren. Teach­ers give them to their stu­dents fairly early in their devel­op­ment, partly because the music seems sim­ple and ‘easy’ to play. The fact is, when a really good pianist plays them, the music reveals how com­plex and really dif­fi­cult it is. I didn’t always love what Ander­szewski did; some­times, par­tic­u­larly in the Schu­mann Humoresques (op. 20), he would take long float­ing pauses, and play some pas­sages so softly and weakly that it was almost as if they were being whis­pered. Even if his read­ings seemed to lose the thread of con­ti­nu­ity at times, I have to admit that he made me think — a lot, and that’s some­thing that not every per­former can do for you. I think we’ll be hear­ing more of him in the future on the inter­na­tional con­cert cir­cuit. In some ways, he reminded me of Radu Lupu, a Roman­ian pianist who was par­tic­u­larly active in the 70s and 80s, and who won an Edi­son award for his Schu­mann (includ­ing the Humoresques as well!).

Last Night

Pam and I got an invi­ta­tion to attend another live film­ing of a tele­vi­sion sit­com pilot, this time in the South Burn­aby area in a stu­dio right by the River­way Golf Course. The pilot, called Mem­ory Lanes and was pro­duced and cre­ated for the CBC by one of the actors in it, Ryan Stiles, of The Drew Carey Show and Whose Line is it Any­way? fame. While it is fun to see, it is also a real edu­ca­tion, because nearly every scene is filmed a few times, and it was a real plea­sure to see Janet Wright, who plays Brent Butt’s mother Emma Leroy on the series Cor­ner Gas prac­tice her craft in per­son. Ms. Wright was a per­fec­tion­ist, sculpt­ing her deliv­ery and ges­tures with each take, and always mak­ing it bet­ter (and fun­nier). For me, she stole every scene she was in. I found out from her bio that she’s directed over 40 pro­duc­tions at the Van­cou­ver Arts Club the­atre (in addi­tion to work all over Canada, includ­ing the Strat­ford Fes­ti­val). It shows. I hope I’ll get to see more of her; I really gained new respect for just how much a great actor can add to a sit­com character.

Oh right, the sit­com? Mem­ory Lanes may make it to the CBC line up next year. I’d say it was a bet­ter than aver­age script, and the char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tion show some promise. In some ways, it reminded me of Wings, another sit­com that revolves around a pair of odd-couple broth­ers who end up run­ning a fam­ily busi­ness. In the end, it will be the writ­ing that makes or breaks it. Lets hope it gets a chance, some­thing that never hap­pened to the pilot of All the Com­forts that we saw nearly a year ago.

Generosity

When Pam and I first moved here, I remem­ber writ­ing about how nice every­one was to us, from the real­tor who helped with the pur­chase, to the banker who set up new accounts for us and got us credit cards, to our new neigh­bors and even the law offices who helped with our immi­gra­tion issues. The postal car­rier for our build­ing was help­ful and friendly, as was our build­ing man­ager and var­i­ous trades­peo­ple who came dur­ing our ini­tial months of setup. I took some of this to be, per­haps, partly the West vs. the East coast, partly the Canada vs. US, and partly just being lucky.

These days, a lit­tle over three years later, I’m now con­vinced it wasn’t luck, because the kind­ness and gen­eros­ity that we ini­tially met with have con­tin­ued. This past month, a friend of mine sur­prised me with lunch and Canucks tick­ets out of the blue (I won’t embar­rass him with nam­ing him, but he knows who he is). For Pam’s birth­day a few weeks ago, our neigh­bor Estelle brought in sev­eral vases of flow­ers, because she was leav­ing town and though Pam would enjoy them. She also gave Pam tick­ets to see the Speed Skat­ing tri­als at the Pacific Col­i­seum today. Yes­ter­day, my friend DaveO, who was work­ing at the happyfrog.ca booth at the Health Show, gave us free tick­ets. Last week I vis­ited with two of the first friends I met just as I moved here, Matt and Mak­taaq (in fact, I’m happy to have known them even knew them before they were mar­ried!), and at their Hal­loween party, Ryan offered to lend me one of his bicycles.

The fre­quent gen­eros­ity of my friends has been seen online in this blog, with offers from Mon­ica and oth­ers to twit­ter that I was look­ing for work (as well as oth­ers who have put the word out on their blogs), mes­sages of good will on birth­days and anniver­saries, and even flat­ter­ing blog posts about me (com­pletely unex­pected as well, I might add. Thanks Raul.). Com­ments from fel­low Bush Refugees Bob and David fre­quently make my day. They also gave us a bot­tle of their own wine.

I’ve seen the fire­works from a fab­u­lous van­tage point in Yale­town with MJ and laughed myself silly at a com­edy night hosted by Tanya. I’ve got­ten patient iPhone con­sult­ing from John and the oppor­tu­nity to write an op-ed piece for the LA Times, thanks to Travis.

I’m only scratch­ing the sur­face. With both Pam and I look­ing for work and liv­ing off of our sav­ings, and all the scary eco­nomic news (on CNN, mainly) I still sub­mit that like George Bai­ley in It’s a Won­der­ful Life, I am truly a rich man, because of friends, and they keep remind­ing me of this fact.

Political Youth

It’s no secret that the youth of Amer­ica have embraced Obama as their can­di­date, and I’m thrilled, but also a lit­tle sur­prised, that for the first time in my life, there is the dis­tinct prospect of the US Pres­i­dent actu­ally being younger than I am (although by less than a year — 10 months and 22 days, to be exact).  Barack Obama is at this moment, fly­ing to see his ail­ing Grand­mother in Hawaii. Mine is long gone. His age is on my mind, because I can relate to him as a mem­ber of my age group, Gen­er­a­tion Jones.  Not a boomer, much as they would like to lump us in with them (and I always think of Clin­ton and yes, Dubya as quin­tes­sen­tial boomers, rep­re­sent­ing much that was both good and bad about that gen­er­a­tion), and not a Gen-Xer, Gen­er­a­tion Jones doesn’t get as much press, but it I’m begin­ning to pon­der what it will be like with one of us actu­ally in charge. To quote Wikipedia’s definition:

Gen­er­a­tion Jones is a term that describes peo­ple in cer­tain English-speaking coun­tries born between the years 1954 and 1965. Amer­i­can social com­men­ta­tor Jonathan Pon­tell iden­ti­fied this gen­er­a­tion and coined the term to name it. Gen­er­a­tion Jones has been referred to as a hereto­fore lost gen­er­a­tion between the Baby boomers and Gen­er­a­tion X, since prior to the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of Pontell’s the­ory, its mem­bers were included with either the Boomers or Xers. The name con­notes a large, anony­mous gen­er­a­tion, and derives from the slang term “jonesing”, refer­ring to the unre­quited crav­ings felt by this gen­er­a­tion of unful­filled expectations.

From Then to Now

Another age-related topic was on my mind: When I vol­un­teered to work on the Dean cam­paign in Mass­a­chu­setts, we used to have many peo­ple who were younger than us over to work on the Mass-for-Dean web site. Chris, Emily and James’s lap­tops would be out at the kitchen table suck­ing down bits on the still fairly new wi fi net­work. We worked on the web site, on hand­outs, signs, coor­di­na­tion of resources and meet­ings, and a bunch of other activ­i­ties.  I still keep in touch with a few mem­bers of the group that Pam affec­tion­ately referred to as ‘The kids’. So it’s with a lit­tle pride that I view the Dean ’50-state strat­egy’, the stun­ningly effec­tive use of the Inter­net as a fund-raising tool, and the sign­ing up of all of those new vot­ers as per­haps hav­ing ‘fetal’ begin­nings in our town­house in Cam­bridge. Nev­er­the­less, I don’t think any of us had any idea of how sophis­ti­cated the online com­po­nent of the cam­paign would become.

There is also so much vital­ity and cre­ativ­ity of those who are now involved in the Obama cam­paign, which I can plainly see, even from a dis­tance. Even though I’m not a fan of the music, this online ‘grass-roots’ web ad struck me as so pol­ished, so ‘pro­fes­sional’, and so emo­tion­ally appeal­ing that I felt that I had to embed it here. Some of the newest gen­er­a­tion of vot­ers in the US (and who are, of course, even younger than the kids who crowded around the kitchen table 22 Lilac Court) have made a very impres­sive get-out-the-youth-vote video:

Undecided Voters

John Gru­ber, in Blaz­ing Fire­ball pointed out this hys­ter­i­cal pas­sage from a short essay by David Sedaris in the New Yorker Mag­a­zine (in their fea­ture, Shouts and Mur­murs — !) called sim­ply ‘Unde­cided’ and I had to quote it as well:

To put them in per­spec­tive, I think of being on an air­plane. The flight atten­dant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, even­tu­ally, parks it beside my seat. “Can I inter­est you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you pre­fer the plat­ter of shit with bits of bro­ken glass in it?”

To be unde­cided in this elec­tion is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

The Foodie List(s)

Many thanks to Jen at World­wide­Wa­ter­cooler for her re-post of the list from Van­cou­ver Mag­a­zine of 101 (Vancouver-centric) Things to Taste Before You Die. I had seen it in print, but hav­ing it online lets me also try (as she did) to note what I’ve had and what I have to still live for, at least gas­tro­nom­i­cally. I think I’ll fol­low her lead on coding:

Bold — Things I have tried from those par­tic­u­lar sup­pli­ers
Struck-out — Foods I’ve had, though not from the sup­plier they rec­om­mend
Ital­i­cized — Foods that have been on my radar for a while, but I haven’t tried yet
Left plain — Foods I had no idea were so high on the “must-try” list
(any­thing in paren­the­ses are my own per­sonal anecdotes)

1. Rasp­berry Wheat Ale – Granville Island Breweries
2. Salmon Tacones – Go Fish (actu­ally, tech­ni­cally, Pam had them)
   
3. Gyu Yukke – Gyoza King
4. Thomas Haas’ Double-Baked Almond Crois­sant – 49^th Parallel
5. Rab­bit Sausage – Cioffi’s
6. Smoked Beef Ten­der­loin –JN&Z Deli
7. Her­cule De Car­levoix cheese – Mount Pleas­ant Cheese Shop
8. Clay­burn Rasp­berry Jam – Sugar & Co
9. Chef’s Chicken Salad – Koon Bo
10. Honey Dough­nuts – Honey Dough­nuts and Goodies
11. Foie Gras Par­fait – Pied-a-Terre
12. Rain­coast Crisps
13. Dark Choco­late Carmeli­tas – Choco­late Arts
14. Euro­pean Deli Hum­mus – Euro­pean Deli
15. Lavash Bread – Yaas Bakery
16. Nk’mip Pinot Noir
17. Arepas – Baru Latino
18. Kashk-eh-bodem jahn – Kashcool
19. Chocolate-Walnut Rugelach – Siegel’s Bagels
20. The Doug Spe­cial – Vera’s Burger Shack
21. Mariage Freres Tea – Urban Tea Merchant
22. Vanilla-Salt Choco­lates – Wendy Boys (for­merly of Lumiere)
23. Penne with Wild Boar – Cioppino’s
24. David Wood’s Chevre
25. Savary Island’s Tourtiere
26. Black Hills Alibi
27. Green Party Cock­tail – Ocean Clu
28. Cricket Bread – Vij’s
29. Deep-Fried Zuc­chini Blos­soms – Cioppino’s
30. Japadog
31. Kobe Meat­balls – Ital­ian Kitchen
32. Topanga Cafe Choco­late Cake
33. Deep-Fried Frog’s Legs – Phnom Penh
34. Sable­fish – Finest at Sea Seafoods
35. Wild White Salmon – Elixir (actu­ally, I’ve quite fre­quently had wild White Spring Salmon, and it’s one of my favourites)
36. Friu­lano Salumi – Moc­cia Ital­ian Meat Market
37. Abalone – C
38. Polenta Fries – Cascade
39. Veg­e­tar­ian Pou­tine – Templeton
40. Venturi-Schultze Bal­samic Vinegar
41. Solly’s Kosher Pickle
42. C Cit­rus Salt
43. Spot Prawns
44. Ambrosia Apple
45. Barese Sausage – Colum­bus Meat Market
46. Ramen at Motomachi Shokudo
47. Pan de Sal – Aling Mary
48. Taboo Absinthe
49. Tiger Blue Cheese
50. Shi­itake Mush­rooms at Bo Kong
51. Mis­sion Hill Ocu­lus Cherries
52. Geor­gian Baguettes – Euro­pean Breads Bakery
53. Dou­ble Choco­late Porter – Phillips Brew­ing Co
54. Rose­mary Rasp­berry Sea Salt – Mai­son Cote
55. Scal­lops in Octo­pus Bacon — C
56. Lamb Bacon – Fuel
57. Bad Girl Hazel­nut Truffles
58. Xiao­long­bao – Lin’s
59. Liege Waf­fles – Patis­serie Lebeau
60. Stock Market’s Hot Porridge
61. But­ter Baked Goods’ Marshmallows
62. Beer-Injected Fried Oys­ter – Nu
63. Soda Bread – Savary Island
64. Stel­la­port
65. Smoked Bison Carpac­cio – Boneta
66. Dodo­nis Feta Cheese – Pan­theon Supermarket
67. Sta­mina Roll – Blue Water Cafe
68. Osake Pre­mium Sake – Granville Island — Just had it this week­end. Wow! Smooth, but com­plex with flavours of spice, vanilla and can­taloupe. Def­i­nitely belongs on this list.
69. Bur­rata – Les Amis du Fromage
70. Moroc­can Chicken Wings – Habit
71. Sweet Geor­gia Browns – Purdy’s
72. House Spe­cial Pho – Thai Son Vietnamese
73. Sand­wis­ches at So.Cial
74. Quail’s Gate Old Vines Foch
75. Financiers – Ganache Patisserie
76. Hy’s Stuffed Potatoes
77. Eth­i­cal Bean Coffee
78. Farm­house Alpine Gold Cheese
79. Muc Tuio Rang Muoi – Phomn Penh
80. Chocolati’s Hot Chocolate
81. Fuel’s Fried Chicken
82. Cru’s Mac­a­roni and cheese
83. Blis Maple Syrup
84. Thierry Busset’s Tiramisu – CinCin
85. Nat­ural Pas­tures Moz­zarella di Bufala
86. Milsean Dark Chocolate
87. Tofu Dough­nuts – Con­gee Noo­dle House
88. Oys­ters with Horse­rad­ish Snow – Gastropod
89. Bil­tong – African Breeze
90. Hazlenuts – Cana­dian Hazlenuts
91. Ukran­ian Church Perogies
92. Eleni Olive Oil
93. Sumac Ridge Steller’s Jay Brut
94. Pupusas – Rin­concito Sal­vadoreno (Matt has got­ten me inter­ested in these)
    
95. Bela­can
96. Cocoa Nymph’s Ila Chocolates
97. Blue Fig Mar­tini – Chambar
98. Naam Miso Gravy
99. Quadra Island Honey Mussels
100. Gelato – Brazza
101. Mat­su­take (Pine) Mushrooms

Ah, Jenn also adds:

• Oyama’s organic Berk­shire Pork Sausages
• Pold­er­side Farms Organic Chicken
• Tojo’s Sesame Mar­i­nated Tuna
• Mem­phis Blues pulled pork sandwich
• Latte from Cafe Artigiano
• Lit­tle Qualicum Cheese­works San Pareil

I would add:

• Lit­tle Qualicum Cheese­works Juliet
• Salmon Candy
• Oyama Double-Smoked Hand-cut Bacon
• Stock Mar­ket Oys­ter Chowder
• Foie Gras Bon Bon — West
• Momo Dumplings with tomato and cilantro chut­ney — Café Kathmandu
• Nanaimo Bars (I know, kid stuff, but I love them with all the pas­sion of a convert)

*Sigh* So many things to taste…