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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Exchange Of The Day "Well, yes, the server is down, but you could check your notes and enter some old cases for the time being." "Who is this Time Being? - and why are we always doing things for him?" 9:38:08 PM    comment []

A Little Nostalgia As the UN Security Council gathered for a meeting on Afghanistan, 80 agencies warned in an open letter that the situation outside the capital Kabul was so bad that many civilians had started to reminisce about the "better days" under the Islamic fundamentalist Taleban regime. A Little Gunplay American troops have opened fire on a demonstration in Baghdad.   There are reports of several casualties, with the AFP news agency saying that one man was shot dead. The demonstration - by sacked members of the Iraqi army - was taking place outside the main entrance to the former presidential compound which now houses the US-led military coalition running Iraq. A Little Roadmap (folded correctly) Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has won a vote in the country's parliament, the Knesset, backing his handling of the US-backed Middle East peace plan. Mr Sharon told the Knesset that Israel could not achieve a peace deal with the Palestinians "while terrorism runs rampant". This public service announcement is brought to you by CIA "Team C", aka the BBC. You may now return to your regularly scheduled delusions. Wait a minute. You linger. "Where is the good news?" you ask. Well, here it is... A Little Good News! WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Declaring he would continue to advance "compassionate conservatism," President Bush kicked off a two-week fund-raising blitz for his 2004 re-election campaign with a $2,000-a-plate dinner Tuesday night that raised at least $3.5 million. 4:47:51 AM    comment []

God Sues Publishers For Bible Royalties  Cites Disney, Digital Millenium Copyright Act Lawyers Ask Court "What would Jesus do?" Okay, it's late and I really don't feel like developing that story, but you get the idea. I got it after hearing an NPR story about Pink Martini and their enormously successful debut CD Sympathique. I ordered it and finally got a chance to listen to it last evening after an inordinately late night at work. It's nice retro stuff, tunes like Never On Sunday, Brazil, Que Sera Sera, and Andalucia. What hit me hardest was Ravel's Bolero. When Frank Zappa's released The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life (from his last tour, in 1988), Bolero appeared on some editions but not others. You can read the whole story here, but the driving force was the post mortem copyrights available in dastardly France. It was a great Bolero, but there were problems. Now DMCA copyrights are even more restrictive than anything even the French could dream up. For years, Publishers strived for French copyrights so they could retain royalty rights on well-established DWEM composers. Orchestras and artists moaned about it, but praised the more lenient US laws. Now Eisner has helped his paid-off buddies in Congress come up with something worse than France. Imagine! Oh, BTW, the Pink Martini Bolero is okay. Just okay. I see what they want, a nice hotel club band version, but it never reaches the level of insanity I personally crave in Bolero. The Zappa version does, in spades. The Que Sera Sera arrangement on the Sympathique CD borders on dissonance. It is performed en la manera with studied restraint, sounds that might have come out of pre-war Berlin. Perfect, a little salt and a little lime. Just because Bolero didn't meet my expectations doesn't mean this CD is a waste. Not by any means. This will get many spins in the player. The full circle here is that Pink Martini released this CD independently. They've sold 600,000 copies with no airplay and no big record company promotions. Quality will out itself, despite all the legal wrangling of media conglomerates to suppress it and leave us with only rigidly-controlled mediocrity. Artists will discover new channels; it is in their creative nature. Those who want art, not mechanically separated musical product, will find it. There's not a goddamn thing the lawyers can do about it. Conversely, those who want shit will find a way to wallow in it regardless of legal attempts to limit choices to varieties of shit (Clear Channel) or suppress it when it offends a self-righteous minority (porn). The only thing laws do is provide income for lawyers. In a way, that is good, because it drives the price of shit higher. 3:26:40 AM    comment []

It’s June. Peach season. This article inside the rear cover of Gastronomica caught Liz’s attention right away. I concurred. Mimosas and bellini have lost some of their luster. This looks the ideal day to waste an early summer Sunday morning. The glasses will not be easy to find. A google on Kullerpfirsich yields little in the way of English articles to find them. We’ll find something. Never underestimate the abilities of the alcohol-dependent in finding what they need for a new drink. Maybe those silly oversized martini glasses at WalMart will do the trick…   (a thanks to Sister Ruth for the Gastronomica subscription)   LAGNIAPPE || nina m. scott   Kullerpfirsich   EARLY SUMMER in northern Germany brings special pleasures. I remember long June evenings in Bremen, when my beloved aunt Hertha Koppermann served frosted glasses of Kullerpfirsich in her garden, punctuating our lively conversation as the sun lingered on. Making Kullerpfirsich was an annual event at Aunt Hertha's, as highly anticipated as the arrival of spring's first asparagus. I've often wondered about this tradition. In seventeenth-century Dutch still rates, peaches are almost always depicted near a glass of white wine, which was thought to counteract any digestive problems they might cause. Could Kullerpfirsich be a holdover from humoral medicine?   Kullerpfirsich (literally, "rolling peach") is made by taking a fresh, ripe, preferably white peach pricking it all over with a fork (Aunt Hertha insisted that the fork be silver), and laying it in the bottom of a specially designed goblet, which is then filled with cold, dry champagne. The goblet must be deep and wide enough to allow the peach to rise to the surface and then begin to spin around and around in the champagne, releasing bubbles as it spins. Because the goblets are so large, one bottle of champagne is barely enough to fill three of them, but domestic champagne (Sekt) is inexpensive in Germany. Kullerpfirsich is not only a visual spectacle, but delicious on the tongue. The perfumed peach juices mix with the champagne, and, when you get to the bottom of your glass; there lies a treat – the alcohol-infused fruit.   The reason for the spinning fruit, my chemistry-trained husband, Jim, explains, is that peach juice is acidic, and champagne contains dissolved carbon dioxide, which forms the bubbles. Because the peach is pricked all over, it releases its juice into the champagne, causing more carbon dioxide bubbles to form on the surface of the peach as it comes in contact with the champagne. As the bubbles buoy up the fruit, the underside of the peach becomes lighter, causing it to turn over as the bubbles rise to the surface. This action, in turn, produces more bubbles, which cause the characteristic spinning motion. Kullerpfirsich is at its most spectacular right at the beginning, when the peach rises to the surface and begins to roll over and over, causing the cold champagne to bubble and hiss, and the glass goblet to frost over.   When Jim and I got married, Aunt Hertha asked us what we wanted as a wedding present. I immediately answered, "Glasses for Kullerpfirsich, please," envisioning a grand party for all of our friends. As a good German, Aunt Hertha still operated in terms of a dowry for life, I think, since a few months later a gargantuan box arrived, bearing fifteen cutglass goblets. When we found out how much champagne would be needed to ply our friends properly with Kullerpfirsich, we came up against the reality of our combined incomes as a graduate student (me) and a beginning high school teacher (Jim). So we shelved the idea, along with the box, which now resides in our attic with thirteen of its original goblets, forty-two years after our wedding. The other two goblets we use occasionally, when we think of it.   Come to think of it, with June just around the corner, I should rummage in the attic for the rest of the goblets and hold that grand party at long last.   (copied without permission. If you read this you are obligated to subscribe to Gastronomica. Subscribe now and get a 15% discount! Use your savings to buy some Sekt and some white peaches!) 2:59:53 AM    comment []