Tag Archives: Seattle

The Salted Carmel Gabfest

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Anne’s Maple Leaf and Purple Jellyfish

It has become impossible not to notice that Mother Nature has switched off her summer furnace. After weeks and weeks of unbearable heat, things have cooled to the point that there is almost a certain crispness in the air. To put things in the ‘Starkest’ way, “winter is coming”. I mention this as preamble, before I pivot to my larger story.

I am a fan of the multitude of Slate podcasts. The only problem is that I am not a good fan. I don’t use iTunes to download their episodes. Me bad, let’s move on. These talk shows all follow the same basic format that I’ll call Slate’s rule of three. Each podcast involves three participants, covers three topics, has only two commercial breaks (but this is inching up to three) and is finished with each participant making an endorsement, cocktail chatter, what have you. It is a couple of these recommendations that I want to share here. I would like to share an endorsement from Slate’s Cultural Gabfest, another very recent cocktail chatter from Slate’s Political Gabfest and a recommendation of my own. The Slate rule of three is preserved.

The first endorsement comes from Cultural Gabfest’s Dana Stevens. Her pick was Jessica Oreck’s Mysteries of Vernacular, a project of animated shorts, each one exploring the etymology of one word for each letter of the alphabet. So far, only eight letters have been produced using Oreck’s stop motion animation technique. This leaves plenty of room for growth. Check out ‘P’ for Pants.

The second cocktail chatter harkens back to this post’s preamble. This week’s Political Gabfest’s David Plotz chattered about the Weather Channel’s plan to start naming winter storms. We’re all use to the National Weather Service naming hurricanes. Who could forget Katrina? In past winters we had Snowmageddon, Snowzilla, Snowpocalypse, all names that we can now retire. Instead of NWS first name picks like Andrew, Camille and more recently Isaac, the Weather Channel plans on selecting names from mythology, ancient history, and yoga. Examples for this winter include the following:

  • Athena: The Greek goddess of wisdom, courage, inspirations, justice and mathematics.
  • Brutus: Roman Senator and assassin of Julius Caesar.
  • Gandolf: An 1896 fantasy character in a medieval country (not to be confused with Tolkien’s Gandalf).
  • Iago: Enemy of Othello in Shakespeare’s play, Othello.
  • Q: The Broadway Express subway line in NYC.
  • Rocky: A single mountain in the Rockies (Not to be confused with the movie by the same name).
  • Yogi: People who do yoga (Bear or Berra?).

My recommendation is for Starbuck’s new Salted Carmel Hot Chocolate. I’m so glad that this little blog operates at such a low-level that it will slip beneath the radar of Slate’s intelligentsia. This is not because I am recommending a Starbuck’s product, but because I’ve only tasted it in their sample size. In Grande sizing it could end up tasting like their pumpkin spiced latté, tasting too much of pumpkin spice by the end. Maybe I should do more research? Nah, I think that I’ll just crowd source this one.

Iron Sky

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Nazi Punks F-Off T-Shirt

Hitler visits a lunatic asylum, where the patients all dutifully perform the German greeting. Suddenly, Hitler sees one man whose arm is not raised. “Why don’t you greet me the same way as everyone else,” he hisses at the man. The man says: “My Führer, I’m an orderly. I’m not crazy!”

Even in the stratosphere of political correctness there is one political group that it is still safe to beat down, the Nazis. I must confess a certain fascination about the Nazis. You just have to love to hate them. I’ve read all of Alan Furst’s WW II era spy novels and I am currently reading, City of Women. This is David R. Gillham’s first novel, which Furst has dubbed, “Extraordinary”. It is set in 1943 Berlin, it tells the story of one woman in a city where all the men have shipped off to war. It is like a Furst novels, in the way that it catches the mood of this period.

The true Aryan is as blond as Hitler, as slim as Göring and as tall as Goebbels.

I watched Iron Sky last night. This indie film won praise earlier this year at its debut Berlin film festival. I’ve been anxiously awaiting it US arrival since I first heard of it and saw its trailer and first four minutes. It is a campy film based upon the following high concept:

In the last moments of World War II, a secret Nazi space program evaded destruction by making a daring escape to the Moon. In the intervening 70 years they have re-colonized, re-armed with devastating new weapons and silently plotted their revenge.

It is a dark comedy. For an Indie film the special effects are quite good. It has real Sci-Fi chops. It makes fun of the Nazis, but more pointedly makes sport of the Tea Party movement. It is set in 2018, in the middle of a ‘Sarah Palin’ administration. The only good news here is that apparently Obama got his second term and the ‘Palin’ character is only in the first two years of her first term. I watched it online at Amazon, so it should be available elsewhere.

Hitler and Göring are standing atop the Berlin radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on Berliners’ faces. So Göring says: “Why don’t you jump?”

The jokes interspersed among my text are authentic WW II German jokes. A Berlin woman was put to death for telling the immediately preceding one. I wish that I could reference the article where I found these jokes from, but in my haste to create this post I lost the author’s name.

The pictured T-shirt was photographed in the AC/DC exhibit at the EMP Museum, Seattle. It was worn by Krist Novoselic, 1984. Matt Lukin of the Melvins made this shirt, referencing the anti-fascist/racist Dead Kennedys’ song.

If Hitler, Göring and Goebbels were on a ship in a storm and the ship would sink, who would be saved? Answer: Germany.

All Shiny on the Outside

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Exterior of the EMP Museum

One more story from last Sunday. I was in Dierbergs, one of the two locally owned, family run grocery store chains that dominate the Saint Louis market. I normally shop Schnucks, it is both closer to home and cheaper than Dierbergs. Besides, Schnucks sports a more interesting and diverse clientele, who are not always annoying. I’m speaking of the students from the three neighboring universities. Dierbergs just happened to be conveniently placed astride my return route from the infamous Micro Center.

So, I’m immersed in my usual snatch and grab that passes for grocery shopping. I like to go commando, no list, no cart. Just a green basket slung in one arm, ready to be wielded as a shillelagh if necessary. Such is 21st-century foraging, it is about getting in and out of the store quickly. The longer you dwell, the more time they have to sell.

So I digress, I’m shopping in Dierbergs and I’m approached by a man. He has a plastic container in his left-hand. I can see that it is one of those whole chickens that both chains rotisserie roast. They’re a good deal, a lot of meat and not particularly expensive. He says that he is short a dollar or two and would like to buy this chicken to bring home to his daughter. While he is telling me this my vision is focused upon his right-hand. It is badly deformed. He has only two fingers, ring and pinky, and only a knuckle’s worth per. He notices this and kind of nervously laughs. I slipped two one-dollar bills between his right-hand’s ring and pinky fingers, which he seemed to strain to grasp. He thanks me and we quickly go our separate ways.

I don’t normally give money to panhandlers. I feel bad not doing so, but I believe that it is the better policy. Besides it’s cheaper. I still wonder about this guy’s story. He could have easily return the chicken to its bin and returned to the liquor aisle where this meet had occurred. Bottom line, I wouldn’t have given, if I didn’t want to, any ulterior motives aside, he was worse off than me. The next day, I decided to assuage any lingering guilt by buying one of those scannable food bank coupons at Schnucks.