Author: David Gorsline

Some lists: 4

I don’t remember what I was reading that started this scribbled list of foods I find unpleasant. Maybe it was my 100 things list. Anyway, it’s time to write it up.

Foods that I once thought were disgusting but now enjoy:

  • Peanut M&M’s: It took a while to convince me that all three tastes and textures weren’t repulsive, that they actually could go together.
  • Cream cheese (as on a bagel) and cheesecake: Blame my Midwestern upbringing for this one.

Foods that I really don’t like but will eat if there’s no alternative:

  • Melon: I eat a lot of this in fruit salad, and otherwise never.
  • Most salad dressings: Though I do like a nice vinaigrette.
  • Hummus.
  • Eggplant.
  • Brie, hot or cold.
  • That squidgy asparagus-and-artichoke dip: In other words, most of those mushy white gluppy things you get served as appetizers.

Foods that I eat mostly on a dare:

  • Organ meats.
  • Raw shellfish.
  • Sushi: Though my cousin introduced me to vegetable sushi the last time that I was in California, and that was yummy.

Foods that are imported from Yuckistan, don’t try to feed me these, if you and I are stranded with nothing to eat but this you’re going to be fat and happy:

  • Flavored Doritos, otherwise known as Doritos with crap on ’em: Doritos are perfectly nice corn chips. They should taste like corn and salt. Not something called “cool ranch.” What is that?
  • Blue cheese salad dressing: Hey! This stuff is spoiled.
  • Tomato soup: I like gazpacho. But hot pureed tomatoes take me back to a nastier time from my childhood, a time when I would be stuck each afternoon with a couple of bratty kids from the neighborhood until my mother got off work.
  • And the #1, super-icky food: Cottage cheese.

As you might suspect, there is a story to go with the cottage cheese.

For a time, when I started grammar school, I would go to day care at the end of the day until Mom got home. Or I would be there for the duration on one of those oh-so-inconvenient teacher work days when the rest of the world was on a normal schedule. Anyway, I don’t remember how it happened, maybe I missed my taxi, but I had a lunch on a tray at the day care center, and I was eating by myself. And at the corner of the tray, where a treat ought to be, was a scoop of something white. Could it be ice cream? Oh boy! Well, I ate the rest of my lunch like a good kid (don’t get my mother started on what a good child I was) and then I took a spoonful of the inviting white mound, the mound that was a little too perfectly white and round.

I don’t recall where that sour mouthful ended up. I was a good kid, so I probably swallowed it.

Watchlist

WATCH assignments for the calendar year were distributed over the holiday break. I’ve already done some horse trading to avoid having to see the same show twice in one year and to spare another judge from having to see a show that she loathes. Here’s what I have on my list to judge, subject to any additional schedule rearrangement.

  • Shining City, by Conor McPherson
  • Oliver!, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart
  • Moon over Buffalo, by Ken Ludwig: I haven’t judged this in a couple of years
  • Inspecting Carol, by Daniel Sullivan and Seattle Reportory Co.: I don’t know why the producing company chose to run this outside of the Christmas holiday season
  • Children of Eden, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz
  • Pillowtalk: adapted from the screenplay, perhaps?
  • Six Degrees of Separation, by John Guare: I’m familiar with this one
  • The Art of Murder

Farily typical mix: two musicals, two farce/comedies, at least one murder mystery, two substantial dramas. Plus two shows to be announced later, one of them likely to be a musical. I’ll be seeing one company that is new to me, as well as another that has reconstituted itself.

The year in review, 2008

Meme via Pondering Pikaia: the first sentence of the first post of each month from this blog:

  • 1 January: I really don’t spend as much time out in the field actively birding as I would like to, but I like to make time for Cornell’s Great Backyard Bird Count, which is held each February over the Presidents’ Day weekend.
  • 3 February: There’s a lovely passage in Mark Morris’s Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes (1988) where something happens that you don’t often see: the dancers look down at their feet.
  • 2 March: The WB brings us seven sketches on the theme of love, some of them duets, others with more complex groupings.
  • 1 April: Bobolinks and other migratory songbirds are getting clobbered by pesticide use outside of the United States, beyond the protections offered (such as they are) by federal regulations, as Bridget Stutchbury notes in an op-ed piece for the Times.
  • 1 May: Try out a new movie download service.
  • 1 June: Joe Queenan gives me another megabook to strive to complete: Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities.
  • 1 July: But not a big surprise: following the recent closure of its Penn Quarter store, local independent bookseller Olsson’s has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, reports DCist and Anita Huslin.
  • 1 August: Neil LaBute breaks his pattern of writing for younger characters with Wrecks, a monologue for a businessman of late middle age, executed with skill by Kurt Zischke.
  • 1 September: Last holiday weekend of the summer and it’s time for the mountains!
  • 1 October: Expect to read more of this bad news in the future: DCist reports that Olsson’s Books and Records has converted its bankruptcy filing to Chapter 7 and closed all of its remaining stores, while Washington City Paper’s parent company has also sought bankruptcy protection.
  • 1 November: Steve Offutt road-tests the “invisible tunnel” connection between Farragut West and Farragut North.
  • 1 December: Via The Economist, recent research published by Evan Preisser and Joseph Elkinton yields an interesting result to those concerned with the conservation of Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) trees.

The year in review, 2007.

The only trouble with this meme is that for several months after I’m self-conscious about my first-of-the-month post.

I really don’t spend that much space worrying about local bankruptcies. It’s just that the Olsson’s news would break at the end of each fiscal quarter.

Just imagine

Via ArtsJournal, Michael Simkins discloses lobby lies:

…what if it’s the biggest turkey before Christmas?

* * *

A third option is to shimmy your way through with platitudes that can be interpreted to taste. Examples include “Well, what about YOU then” or “It’s been an unforgettable experience” and my own favourite “Well, was that a great evening or what?”

One more good reason

Newly-published research by Shalene Jha and Christopher W. Dick indicates that traditional shade-grown coffee farms provide yet another ecosystem service: maintenance of genetic diversity of trees in the landscape. The paper studies Miconia affinis in Chiapas state, Mexico. The inference is that natural seed dispersers (birds and bats), harbored by shade-grown plantations, promote the needed gene flow, and that the farms knit together fragmented forest patches.

Suck-it-up soup

Gemma Hooley and Chris Nelson profile my favorite Washington Capital, #21, Brooks Laich. Laich, in his productivity, ruggedness, and general no-glamour attitude, reminds me a little of Cal Ripken.

“If I’m tired or sore or whatever, I just think of what my buddies do back home in Saskatchewan,” Laich said. “They are out on the oil rig in minus-40 degrees Celsius, working outside for eight hours for a lot less money than what we make. And it just kind of brings you back to earth and humbles you, that life is pretty good.”

Murky waters

The Economist sends a correspondent to look at wildlife in China, specifically birds. It’s not altogether a pretty sight.

The press of several hundred million people along the coast threatens marine organisms at risk from river discharges, heavy metals and pesticides from farmed shrimp ponds, oil spills, antifouling paint on boats and other chemical contaminants. Brian Morton, an expert on China’s seashore ecology recently retired from the University of Hong Kong, points out that only one-tenth of Chinese sewage is treated, leading to eutrophication and algal blooms in the East China Sea and Yellow Sea. In addition, several tens of thousands of seabirds are reckoned to be killed every year by an entangling mass of flotsam—fishing gear, grocery bags and the like. “As a biologist,” says Mr Morton, “I know that ecosystems can be restored. Still, the waters of China are virtually beyond redemption.”

Advice to the players

Terry Teachout’s advice to professional theater companies hoping for a national review includes some good reminders about basic web site design:

If you want to keep traveling critics happy, make very sure that the front page of your Web site contains the following easy-to-find information and features:

(1) The title of your current production, plus its opening and closing dates.

(2) Your address and main telephone number (not the box office!).

(3) A SEASON button that leads directly to a complete list of the rest of the current and/or upcoming season’s productions. Make sure that this listing includes the press opening date of each production!

(4) A CALENDAR or SCHEDULE button that leads to a month-by-month calendar of all your performances, including curtain times.

(5) A CONTACT US button that leads to an updated directory of staff members (including individual e-mail addresses, starting with the address of your press representative).

(6) A DIRECTIONS or VISIT US button that leads to a page containing directions to your theater and a printable map of the area.

The one thing that RCP‘s front page is lacking, and I will fix it on the next update, is the opening and closing dates for the current show. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to repeat the street address of the community center.

The reality train has left the station

Via Ira and Leta, possibly the strangest Barbie collectible to be offered: Barbie as Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) attacked by crows in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Dressed in a re-creation of the stylish green skirt-suit worn by the film’s ill-fated heroine in an iconic scene… Barbie® Doll celebrates the 45th anniversary of the acclaimed film. From the doll’s classic ensemble to the perfectly painted expression to the accompanying black birds, every aspect captures the film’s infamous appeal…. Doll cannot stand alone as shown. For the adult collector.

Although it must also be admitted that the two different Hello Kitty Barbies on offer come close, if only for their universe-mixing Spock-meets-Skywalker jumbledness.

TMLMTBGB: 2

Woolly Mammoth brings the Chicago zanies back for another entertaining, provocative installment of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (previously reviewed). At December 17’s manifestation, the troupe nearly succeeded at packing all 30 plays into the allotted 60 minutes, bailing out only on #11, “Lacquer This to Your Driftwood Clock.” This team—Sharon Greene, Jacquelyn Landgraf, John Pierson, Caitlin Stainken, and Jay Torrence—could be tagged as “Now! With More Estrogen!” as the strongest pieces of the evening were written from a female perspective. Among these were seeking-validation “Let’s Pretend Mommy and Daddy” of universal applicability, the love letter with soap bubbles “Non-Toxic Miracle,” and the, shall we say, informative “One for the Ladies” about toilet seat etiquette. Warning: “Les Lesions Dangereuses” is not SAFD-certified. Fans of the Neo-Futurists’ preposterous titles were rewarded with “Having Missed Its Cue, the Orange Entered Hurriedly, but Once on Stage It Found That It Had Forgotten Its Lines Entirely and Remained Paralyzed Before the Audience for What Seemed Like an Eternity.” At least the orange hit its mark.

  • Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, created by Greg Allen, written, directed, and performed by The Neo-Futurists, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Washington