day 7: since we're talking about pianists

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this one probably never woulda seen the light of day had last night's post not triggered the memory--and even then, probably not if it wasn't for the fact that it's suddenly day 7 and i otherwise got nothin.

picture it:  a summer afternoon in waco, texas, 1970

so i'm thirteen and on a trampoline in some strange kid's backyard in a strange city, having been dragged there by the kid of the friend my mother had dragged me along with her to visit [that's clear, right?].

it's hot and we're jumping and hollering and generally having a good time, when suddenly there's the sound of a car out front and then the gate opens, three grownups appear and the action grinds to a halt. one of 'em (the woman, i think) steps forward and calls out, "c'mere, kids, there's someone we want you to meet!"

"my parents," one of the kids who lives there mutters.  "c'mon, we have to."  obviously, he's done this drill before.

we dutifully dismount and cross the lawn to the grownups.  i'm embarrassed as i always am when meeting new grownups, but even more so than usual because they're all impeccably turned out in their church clothes, and we're a fuckin' mess.

the parents proudly introduce their guest and the kids are all like, yeah, whatever, give him a half-hearted wave and head back to the trampoline.

the parents are obviously mortified by their kids' reaction.  i'm mortified, too, and more than a little stunned--because, unlike them, i know exactly who this guy is.

see, my grandmother had told me all about him as we watched him perform on television one night.  about how he'd gone to the soviet union at the height of the cold war as a callow young kid from the nearby town of kilgore, competed in their fancy piano contest, beaten the russkies at their own game and come home with the prize.

about how america had celebrated his victory with magazine covers and ticker-tape parades.

but more importantly--at least for my grandmother--about how he had vindicated east texas.  because suddenly we weren't backwoods hicks anymore--we had produced a prodigy.

so without overthinking it too much, i walk my sweaty and grass-stained ass up to this elegant, imperially-slim gentleman, stick out my hand and say, "nice to meet you, mr. cliburn.  my grandmother loved you."

and then feel myself flush as it flashes through my mind--"holy shit, is 'van cliburn' like 'van dyke'? does he have a first name i don't know about and i just made an even bigger a fool of myself?"

no worries--he smiles and takes my grubby little mitt in his without hesitation.  his hand is cool and supple, and i marvel at the fact that he'd let anyone touch it, much less me.

we talk for a minute.  turns out the kid's parents are real estate agents and are helping him find a house for his mother.  he asks me about school and about my grandmother, and seems genuinely interested.

and then he heads into the house to talk business with the parents and i head back to the trampoline to join the others, but i can't get back into it.  the afternoon has changed, and i can't put my young finger on why.

alas, the word "surreal" hasn't yet entered my vocabulary.

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day 6: how about a classy "it came up on shuffle" for a change?

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this wasn't mere blogfodder--for my money it's the undisputed kick-ass piano composition of all time, presented to you below the way i first heard it.

and i'm glad entremont's chopin was the first chopin i ever experienced.  yeah, even to my untrained ear he's a little sloppy sometimes, but the passion he brings to the music he so obviously loves more than makes up for it.

since then, i've heard many interpretations of this piece by many different hands, and even when more technically perfect, they all seem flat and bloodless when compared to this one.

enjoy.

day 5: presenting the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art, part 2

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years ago when i was a lowly second-year architecture student trying (and failing) to re-create a pencil perspective of some baroque building or other, i remember at some point flinging my french curve across the room in disgust and deciding that modern architecture didn't evolve because some early 20th century geniuses had a collective vision--it evolved because the bauhaus crowd were a bunch of lazy motherfuckers who realized it was easier to compose a building using only squares and straight lines and call it a new "style" than take the time to develop the skills necessary to draw--much less artfully employ--all those goddam curves and curlicues.

and i was only half-kidding.  the modernists, in a single stroke, threw out about 95% if not more of the architectural vocabulary that had developed over the millennia--i kinda think of modernism as the ebonics of architecture.

and as i started looking around me--at contemporary painting and sculpture and music--i saw much of the same reductivism at work.

is it, i wondered, because, as a civilization evolves, it strips away all the extraneous crap to get to the essence of a particular art form?  or is it because, as a civilization becomes corrupted by abundance and everything becomes easy, it relaxes its standards and allows anybody to call themselves an artist?

or maybe it's not that clear-cut; whatever--here's the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art: 

to the degree technology advances in a given civilization, artistic technical virtuosity tends to decline.*

if i had to prove the theory?  well, i couldn't, but i'd sure postulate the following:  take any average renaissance painter, sculptor, musician or architect and plop 'em down in the middle of now, and, once they stopped laughing, they'd be up and running in the modern version of their respective art form in fairly short order.  do the reverse, and the modernists would be reduced to panhandling raphael and botticelli on the streets of florence for loose change.

am i right? i dunno--you got a better theory?

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*since i first developed this theory, computers have of course changed everything--the technical virtuosity of the scientists has made artistic virtuosity easy.

day 4: presenting the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art

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a.  painting

       classical:

       modern:

b.  sculpture

       classical:

 

       modern:

c.  music

        classical:

  
        modern:

d.  architecture

       classical:

       modern:

  

sober update:  actually, this one wasn't quite ready for publication yet, seeing as how it's missing the "theory" that's actually the point of the post, but i've been really good at hitting the wrong button lately.  i'll try to finish it tomorrow.

day 3: comida reconfortante

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if you're down, feeling empty, and happen to find yourself in van nuys, may i suggest...

 
alberto's asada nachos--cheap heaven in a styrofoam clamshell.

and yes i did eat the whole thing--what's your goddam point?

day 2: my last-ever global warming post (unless, of course, it's not)

believe it or not, i'm not a global-warming denier; rather, i'd call myself a healthy skeptic.

not just because of the recent exposures of shoddy science, cover-ups, conflicts of interest and outright fraud within the movement.

and not just because the movement's disciples keep moving the goalposts as the planet stubbornly refuses to warm on schedule per their vaunted computer models (thus requiring the awkward branding shift from global "warming" to global "climate change").

and not even because of all the high-living fat cats at the top of the movement preaching austerity to the rest of us as they position themselves to reap huge fortunes from the carbon-offset schemes they've devised to save us from ourselves.

no, my skepticism goes beyond all that--in fact, a wall street journal article from back in february summed up my feelings on the subject in a couple well-written paragraphs:

We do know that carbon dioxide and other gases trap and re-radiate heat. We also know that humans have emitted ever-more of these gases since the Industrial Revolution. What we don't know is exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in these gases versus other possible factors—solar variability, oceanic currents, Pacific heating and cooling cycles, planets' gravitational and magnetic oscillations, and so on.

Given the unknowns, it's possible that even if we spend trillions of dollars, and forgo trillions more in future economic growth, to cut carbon emissions to pre-industrial levels, the climate will continue to change--as it always has.

as it always has.

oh, and speaking of "solar variability",  get this:  scientists who had up until very recently been convinced we were heading into a period of intense solar activity have--as scientists frequently do-- suddenly changed their tune.

According to three studies released in the United States on Tuesday, experts believe the familiar sunspot cycle may be shutting down and heading toward a pattern of inactivity unseen since the 17th century.  

and how did the sun's "inactivity" affect us here on earth back in the 17th century?  glad you asked, because i was curious about that too.

Experts are now probing whether this period of inactivity could be a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period when hardly any sunspots were observed between 1645-1715, a period known as...

wait for it--here it comes...

the "Little Ice Age."

got that, folks?  according to the scientists over here, the planet's warming--unless, of course, the scientists over there are right, in which case we're about to get our collective asses frozen off.

see where i'm going with this?

*     *     *     *     *

whenever i'm drawn into a discussion with a global-warming fanatic, i always end it with some variation of the following:

"ok, hotshot, i've just appointed you king of the world, given you carte blanche.  solve global warming--you've got 5...4...3...2..."

and, of course, they can't.

because what it comes down to is this:  the world is not gonna give up its cars, its chemicals and its concrete.  no civilization in the history of humanity has ever voluntarily regressed, and we're not going to, either.

and despite all the pie-in-the-sky bullshit to the contrary, there isn't a green option on the horizon with even a snowball's chance in hell of supplanting oil and/or coal in our lifetime.

is mankind a cancer on the planet?  are we fouling our own nest to the point of engineering our own extinction?  yeah, and yeah.

so let's expend our energies on mitigating our impact where it's practical--like accelerating the development of green technologies, curbing the birth rates of the third-worlders and maybe cleaning up the oceans, for instance--and leave the weather to the gods where it belongs, ok?

day 1: zen and the art of the chopped salad

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enough with the current events--let's kick off the month with something truly important.



it seemed like a lot of money--$50 for a few crappy pieces o' plastic with metal teeth--but what can i say, i was desperate.

having tried everything else, including this monstrosity,

great if you need to make coleslaw for the russian army--but otherwise, fahgettaboudit

i'd pretty much given up on my quest to produce the perfect restaurant-quality chopped salad for my quotidian consumption, until somebody turned me onto the borner v.

a mandoline--seriously?  another one of those cheap plastic pieces o' crap?

"seriously," she said. "this one's different.  but make sure you also order the kevlar gloves, because the holder that comes with the thing is useless--otherwise you're gonna shred your fingers."

and damned if the bitch wasn't right on both counts--you gotta get you one of these things.

[btw:  the true zen of the chopped salad is that there is no art to it--this is truly the sausage of vegetarian dishes.  trust me, push whatever you've got left over in the vegetable bin through the borner v, and it's instant magic.


today's masterpiece:

a base of equal parts shredded iceberg and romaine lettuce
half a cucumber
one roma tomato
a quarter medium red onion
two stalks celery
one medium carrot
four radishes
half a jonathan apple
a few crumbles of bleu cheese
some chopped-up salami
half a can of garbanzo beans

i'd give you the recipe for the dressing i whipped up to go along with it, but i'm holding that back in case i run short of posts before the month runs out.  you understand, right?]