Tag Archives: i am a fan

In praise of Kome Kome Shu: Sake that is easy to love and drink

If you have never tried Sake, or if you tried but didn’t think that Sake is for you. Give it a try again. But this time, try the Kome Kome Shu. Literally, Rice Rice Wine/Booze.

The alcohol content is much lower than the common varieties out there, at only 7%. And it is SWEET, not dry. So easy to drink, it feels like elixir to go with your sushi. Or a lot of non-Japanese dishes. It reminds me of Riesling — and I love Riesling. I am the one stocking up on Dr. Loosen at Costco when they carried them for $9 a bottle…

Don’t believe me? Here is a glowing review of KomeKome Shu written by one Jeremy Kaplan, a guest sommelier in NYC (as of March 2007 when this review was penned):

“[The diners] are usually shocked, and 99% of the time super pleased. Even Japanese customers are taken aback by this sake. We sometimes leave the bottle on the table so the customer can study it, which in this case is dangerous for our bottom line and usually means the sake will get poured again, by the customer! A definite no-no. Of the many wines we pour by the glass, this is the one most people ask us to write down.

What’s nice about this sake is that it opens people’s minds to sake. It drinks so much like a wine that they better relate to it. And then you hope it opens the way to try other sakes. Which is the best way to learn. Taste, drink, taste, drink… and best with friends who also want to go down this same path.”

“Congratulation, Neil Gaiman!”

Came upon this blog entry on Geed Dad (part of the Wired blogosphere). Was surprised to see that Neil Gaiman’s book won the Newberry Medal. Well, not really surprised. Actually was surprised that Gaiman was surprised.

My 5th grader couldn’t put this book down. True to Gaiman’s fashion, the book is dark (judging by the cover of the book… yeah…): it starts out with a little boy’s family being murdered and with the little boy being abandoned in a graveyard (hence the title) and raised by ghosts… Kids nowadays are so much more mature than when we were growing up so I was not concerned that my son was reading about the subject of death and murder at the age of 10. Glad to know that the judges (and many teachers and parents) feel the same way. We should never talk down to our children as if they live in a cocoon. I believe that’s a main reason why Gaiman is so popular with kids with a good head on their shoulder – he treats them like adults and speak to them truthfully about unpleasant subjects.

“On Monday Neil Gaiman was awarded the most prestigious award in children’s literature, a Newbery Medal, for his new book, The Graveyard Book. The news rocked the world of kid’s literature and was a surprise to Gaiman himself. Neil Gaiman is a beloved author for many GeekDads for his children’s literature. The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish and The Wolves in the Walls have been bedtime storybooks for my daughter since she was tiny. But Gaiman is also famous among GeekDads for his more adult literature, such as Sandman and American Gods; his movie adaptations, such as Stardust and the upcoming Coraline; and he is also a GeekDad in his own right, often relinquishing his blog to his daughter Maddy.” (Jan. 31, 2009)

More on the US Air plane landing in the Husdon River…

The BOOT – The Business of Online Travel: Can a plane land on water and have survivors? Of course it can!

This blog post has many more links to information concerning the US Air plane landing in the Hudson River. It is interesting to view this incident from the perspective of someone from the travel industry. (Again, I am able to do all these theorizing now only because everybody was safe and sound).

All of a sudden, there is a Sully fever: apparently more than one fan site was created on Facebook alone, and this one has almost 74,000 fans! And of course, guess what? The domain Chelseysullenberger.com was immeidately bought and put up. America, you never disappoint!

My favorite quote: “The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.”

“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.” Henry Kissinger

I am sure he said it in a context that was different from what I take this saying to mean.  FWIW, for some reason, it’s been haunting me.  Sometimes I see it as pessimistic, sometimes I see it as optimistic, Grin and bear it.  This is what existentialism is distilled down to, at least in my book, “Life sucks, but you’ve got to deal with it.”  When Goethe said, “God is dead,” I believe that’s what he meant: Regardless whether there is God or not, human beings need to take responsibilities for our actions.  Accountability, and the will to see things through.

As I tell my kids on a nearly daily basis: You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

Where do people find the time to blog? And the Huffington Post’s guide to blogging…

I am seriously puzzled.  I have checked out the “competitions” out there: do a google search (or a google blog search, even better), and there are a lot of suburban moms out there, clicking away. Many of them are writers, professional even, were or still are.  Thank god!

They all have kids, well, duh, that’s the definition for “mothers”.  So, where do they find the time to produce such abundant material for their blog?

I have to decide whether I want to go to bed or blabber away in the cyber space.  And even in the cyber space, there are so many “social media” choices for my insomniac mind: Facebook, My Space, Slickdeals, Baby Bargain chat rooms, in addition to all the wonderful professionally written blogs: the Huffington Post, ReadWriteWeb, Micro Persuasion, and, let me not forget the most fun of them all, randomly searching the interweb for funny stuff to read or watch.  (Oh, YouTube, you are the ultimate time sinker!)  Even Twitter, the haiku model of the social media, proves to be a great aide to procrastinators, despite its claim to brevity: read the “Everybody” section like a great “found object poetry”, and click on all the TinyUrl links that people shared. FUN!

Hack, even reading reviews (and dueling comments) on Amazon.com is entertaining sometimes.

And actually, spending more time on my computer, now that the kids are in bed, requires me to put on the blinder and ignore the 3-day-piled-up laundry, the unwashed dishes, the toys strewn about the floor, oh, and yes, BILLS TO PAY, and Quicken to enter (I am proud to say that I have been diligently keeping records on Quicken since 1993…  that’s an astonishing record for someone who has never managed to keep a journal past page 10…)

Really, I could be watching one of the Netflix DVDs that I haven’t touched and need to return soon to get our money’s worth. Or, I could read the newspaper. Or, heck, I should take a shower!  I could also use some exercise on the machine that is now, as predicted, the clothes hanger.

It amazes me every time I think about this question.

In her latest (and probably the “lightest” and least political) book, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, Arianna Huffington proposes that everybody should have a blog, and that one should write something down instantly, no thinking required, no minimum for length for each post. And that’s where the fun is, and probably what the point is about blogging.

I have taken a liking (more an affinity, actually) to Arianna Huffington ever since her appearance on the Jon Steward Show this past December (promoting the book, of course).  Jon true to himself wasn’t persuaded by Arianna’s ensued plea, “hey, you should have a blog!”  What got me was what she said, as a side comment, about why she personally likes blogging,

“This way my accent won’t be an issue: people cannot hear my accent…”

It was mind-blowing to me that with her wealth and power and position, she still minds her own accent.  Perhaps I read too much into this. But I now think of her often and wish her well.

I Promise: last post about Dr. Maddow this week…

Follow Rachel Maddow on Twitter!

Oh, oh, oh, and watch this old clip (from before we all fell in love with her) showing Maddow’s commentary on John Bolton, dubbed as the Worst Diplomat, ever. Brilliantly funny!

Confession time: I have a crush on Rachel Maddow…

and I am not gay!

I think the crush is the kind that you have for an extremely intelligent and articulate person who you know you will never be able to win a debate against, so you simply capitulate and give her all your admiration, starry eyes and all.

So far, I have only seen her shows twice since we do not have cable at home. Now I want it!! Or, I can manage to travel more frequently so I can watch her show while eating a quart of ice cream in the hotel room. (Shhh, don’t tell my kids!) I have never seen a cable news show where I laugh out loud almost through the entire show. He wry sense of humor is superb. Simply divine.

It is so strange: I have never even heard of her before until one day, she was a guest on Conan O’Brien. (Conan is another one of my favorites, deceivingly simple and anti-intellectual, yet I believe that there are lots of well-functioning brain cells under that coif of his…) Even just chit chatting, she exudes intellect, wittiness, and grace. (I know, “grace” is an odd word of choice to describe a butch lesbian… But that’s exactly the word came to mind when I saw her…)

Am I gushing?

But she also decidedly has that “girl next door” charm. Only that girl has a Doctorate from Oxford and is extremely well versed in world politics and any cultural subject you can throw her way, that you just want to shut up and listen to her, and be entertained.

Below are some of my favorite parts from the New York Magazine article on her published this November:

This well-written article started with Dr. Maddow’s 12-second explanation of what Dadaism is to the cable audience (as she was trying to make an analogy between Dadaism and McCain’s fixation on Joe the Plumber. Try that at home, I dare you!)

Ever heard of something called Dada?”

Rachel Maddow is trying to make an analogy. It’s mid-October, two weeks before the election, and the MSNBC host is comparing the McCain campaign’s recent fixation on “Joe the Plumber” to the anti-bourgeois cultural movement of the early-twentieth century. But this is prime time, and Maddow first has to define Dadaism in as colloquial a way as possible. This is something of a challenge considering she only has about twelve seconds.

“Deliberately being irrational, rejecting standard assumptions about beauty or organization or logic,” she begins. “It’s an anti-aesthetic statement about the lameness of the status quo … kind of?” She twists her face into a cartoon grimace that morphs into a wide smile. “Why am I trying to explain Dadaism on a cable news show thirteen days from this big, giant, historic, crazy, important election that we’re about to have?” she asks with a self-deprecating laugh, as she recognizes the Dadaishness of her own quest. “Because that’s what I found myself Googling today, in search of a way to make sense of the latest McCain-Palin campaign ad!”

As I was trying to figure out WHY I immediately gravitated towards her show, New York explains on my behalf:

“There’s something about the mix of personal details that is—to a young, educated, left-leaning, cosmopolitan audience—instantly recognizable. As one New York acolyte told me, “She is more like one of my friends than anyone else on television.” And her ratings have been astounding, especially in the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demographic. Maddow averaged a higher rating with that group than Larry King Live for thirteen of the first 25 nights she was on the air, enabling the network to out-rate CNN in that time slot for the first time. It’s an impressive feat, even given the fact that the show started two months before the election when political interest was at a fever pitch.”

I am changing my name to Fannie Mae!

Ok, I didn’t come up with such a clever title, of course not. The venerable Tom Paxton changed his old song “I am Changing My Name to Chrysler” to fit the current climate. Some things just never change, do they?

Watch Paxton sing this catchy song on YouTube:

Lyrics to the song, in case you feel like a sing-along at your Christmas Party where you serve pea soup and Spam this year.

I AM CHANGING MY NAME TO FANNIE MAE By Tom Paxton

Everybody and his uncle is in debt,
And the bankers and the brokers are upset.
Goldman Sachs’s, Merrill Lynch’s
Saw themselves as lead-pipe cinches,
Now they’ve landed in the biggest screw-up yet.
Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and all their kind
Have turned out to be the blind leading the blind.
They are clearly the nit-wittest
In survival of the fittest––
Let me modestly say what I have in mind

Chorus:
I am changing my name to Fannie Mae;
I am changing it to AIG.On this bail-out I am betting;
Just a piece of what they’re getting,
Would be perfectly acceptable to me.
I am changing my name to Freddie Mac;
I am leaving for that great receiving line.
I’ll be waiting when they hand out
Seven hundred million grand out––
That’s when I’ll get mine.
Since the first amphibian crawled out of the slime,
We’ve been struggling in an unrelenting climb.
We were hardly up and walking
Before money started talking
And it said that failure was the only crime.
If you really screwed things up, then you were through;
Now––surprise!––there is a different point of view.
All that crazy rooty-tootin’
And that golden parachutin’
Means that someone’s making millions––just not you! (to chorus)

©2008 Pax Music, ASCAP

(Credit to my venerable co-worker for alerting me to this song)

Go see Mary Poppins live on stage in 2009 (and 2010)!

We spent a too-short weekend in the New York city some time this year, and the boys fell in love with the city. At first we were worried that they might be bored since there really wasn’t much to do, if you are a kid, once you subtracted museums and walking around and watching people. Turned out my kids made mama proud by enjoying all of my favorite activities: art museums, strolling in the big cities, and people watching. (And yes, my youngest enjoys Starbucks as much as the next Yuppie… guilty as charged, but only for the whipped cream they generously give him there).

We went to TKTS at around 7:30 pm at night and Mary Poppins was one of the shows available. The 10-year-old was not too sure, “This is a show for girls!” Well, next to “The Little Mermaid” his complaint seemed unfounded, so off we went.

This was not the first equity theatrical productions that they had seen, but Broadway shows are truly magical, and I had forgotten how magical until I went with my children. The looks on their faces almost brought tears to my eyes. I was able to experience the excitement and magic (I know I keep on using this word, but I don’t know what else to say…) through their eyes. My youngest was sitting at the edge of his seat the whole time– he was that enthralled.

Remember the song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ? In the movie version, it was a short episode, a mere comma, a distraction from the main plot, if there is one to speak of… In the Disney production, they extended the song and made it into the main chorus number. They also used it as the encore number after curtain, and invited the audience members to stand up and sing (and Dance!) along. My boys were delirious! (though my 10 year-old would certainly not admit this now. “What? Moi? No way!”) The excitement was palpable in the theatre during this number, we were humming and dancing the whole way back to our hotel, and I had earworm for at least two weeks afterwards. Here is a clip of the production in London IF you also want to catch the same earworm…

Mary Poppins will be on tour starting 2009 (the linked page plays MUSIC automatically, I hate it when they do this, so don’t click on it if you are at work and your computer sound is on) with the same cast that we saw in NYC. Do check it out if they are coming to a city near you: it is worth it!

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Spoiler alert:
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Our cheap seats landed us way up on the right side of the auditorium. We didn’t mind at all. Turned out they were THE BEST seats in the house because at the end of the story, remember? Mary Poppins flies away in the movie? Well, she did in the show! A “gasp” in unison could be heard when Mary Poppins started ascending, and she flew right in front of us: so close that if we had reached out, we could probably have touched her dress. It was such a great temptation, like hypnosis almost, to be honest, I had to sit on my hands to refrain from doing exactly so…

Obama calls himself a Mutt and I have two!

.

Is it wrong to have hero worship towards a politician? Ever since the night of Nov. 4, I have been walking through the clouds. Elated, of course, but that feeling also comes from my disbelief that we actually did it. Or rather, he actually did it! And of course, we all know there is a long way ahead to deliver his promises, and truth be told, I don’t expect him to be able to deliver all those promises: There are just too many issues to be solved, and the biggest elephant in the room, our economy crisis, is getting bigger every day.

However, I have to say, I am a bit miffed by our President Elect, why? Because he’s brought tears to my eyes almost every day since he stepped onto that stage in Grant Park in Chicago and gave one of the most inspiring speeches that any of us have ever heard. This morning, he did it again: I am trying to keep the tears from actually falling down because that would mean crying. And that would be a ridiculous thing to do, wouldn’t it? Crying over some news conference remarks?? Obama describes himself as a Mutt, in a passing remark at his first news conference as President Elect.

And I have two here!

My 10-year-old boy just confessed not long ago that he is self-conscious when we are out together because people stare. For some reason, reading this news article this morning gave me hope that my children’s lives would not be as unnecessarily complicated as I imagine they will be.

The day after the election, we looked at the Exit Polls statistics on CNN and marveled (but not surprised) about the “racial” divide along the party line: not as pronounced as in the past elections (12% more of the White voters voted for McCain vs. Obama, whereas Kerry was behind by 17% among Whites in the last election. So we could say that Obama did “cross over,” but the difference is still obvious in the graphs). My 10-year-old asked me, “Mom, which one will I be?” The question startled and saddened me, because his identify of himself is still being formed, and yet, on any official documents, surveys, forms, he does not exist except as “Other”. I have studied all the theories on OTHER in grad schools, but it does make me sad when all those theories all of a sudden become applicable to what I am dealing with at home.

So, thank you, President Obama! Now perhaps we can openly discuss issues around Race, not in a stodgy way, but in an everyday lived-through dealt-with way. They are messy topics and there are seldom clear cut right or wrong answers, but we do need still start talking about it more openly, and in my view, more casually. If we cannot find humors in some of the messiness, and if we cannot make fun of ourselves, then the day will be far away when we can actually be color-blind, which if taken literally by the way, in my mind, is like alchemy… (We will always notice somebody else’s appearances first, and we need to learn as a culture to not let certain signifiers become symbols).

Perhaps now it would be easier to lobby for a label for mutts around the country that is better than “Other”?