Just made a bad batch of macarons - they're purple, which makes me happy, but I was in a hurry and not paying attention and undercooked them a bit, so when I tried to take them off the parchment paper, the shells popped right off of the middles. Now I have a bunch of thin purple macaron shells, and I'll try to do something creative with them - fill them with lovely and delicious things between football games today. Pictures upcoming if I meet with success! I also have a couple zucchinis and should make zucchini bread with them today, and I still have egg whites to use up, which means more macs or some other kind of meringue cookies.
Semi-reading Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand - just finished The Bitter Kingdom (<3 a="" and="" baby="" babysit="" basil="" bit="" excess="" for="" get="" hang="" i="" know="" morning.="" my="" next="" of="" one="" out="" p="" pots.="" poured="" rain="" saturday="" then="" to="" today="" water="" with="" you="">
On my list: Record some more, apply for financial assistance at the Long Island City YMCA so I can keep gong to Zumba, get confirmation about some work dates and then book my ticket to the CSJO board meeting in November, read, read, read.
It's really a lovely day out today - gotta go for a walk before football starts!
I actually did have an idea of something interesting to write in this post, but I forgot it amid all the pleasant mundanity.
"That which will be shrunk
Must first be stretched.
That which will be weakened
Must first be strengthened.
That which will be torn down
Must first be raised up.
That which will be taken
Must first be given.
This is called "subtle illumination."
The gentle and soft overcomes the hard and aggressive.
A fish cannot leave the water.
The country's potent weapons
Should not be shown to its people."
Sometime's Lao Tzu's subject changes are a little perplexing to me, but I still enjoy them!
I will buy an iPad without agonizing over it for a year.
I will have beautiful nice furniture!
I will have a brand new electric piano.
I will take little weekend trips to the coast!
I will have an Anthropologie kitchen.
I will have a one bedroom apartment!
I will travel abroad and stay in actual hotels.
I will buy fancy cheese MORE OFTEN than once a month.
I will buy very high quality chocolate, and all the ingredients I want!
I will eat at EXTREMELY FANCY restaurants as often as once a month or even once a week!
Faye and Katie and Ian and I were just talking about how it's possible for a single person to make triple digits and not save at all, since we have heard of those people. But I'm pretty sure than even if I did all those things, I would still have some left over to save! I don't know how it's possible to make triple digits and have no one to support but yourself and NOT SAVE. Very perplexing.
Two thirds packed, bathroom clean, one load of laundry done, (kind of expensive) car rental reserved to get from Springs to Denver, two Singin' in the Rain performances left and one melodrama spoof show. Library books to return, kitchen and bedroom to clean, linens to launder.
Listening to -
and -
Thinking about -
Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find The roots of last year's roses in my breast; I am as surely riper in my mind As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed. Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will, Call me in all things what I was before, A flutterer in the wind, a woman still; I tell you I am what I was and more.
My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air, My sky is black with small birds bearing south; Say what you will, confuse me with fine care, Put by my word as but an April truth,– Autumn is no less on me that a rose Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes.
I love it here, and the weather is great - lots of warm summer days (actually, I could stand a few more and a few hotter - it's no California, but it's 8 million times better than New York), interspersed with surprise mountain storms. I just went for a run in the rain! That's two days in a row of going for a run, although they're only 10-15 minute runs of probably less than a mile, because those hills are DESTROYERS OF LIFE, plus the altitude. And I just got a letter from Katie, and the shows are going great, and my coworkers are delightful, and I'm living in a nice house with a large and functional kitchen (I made sour cream coffee cake last night - new recipe - yummy!) (the 9,500 ft. baking conditions aren't even that difficult to work around, either - extra flour, an extra egg, underestimate the sugar, turn up the oven 15 degrees, and you're solid :p), and now I have a nice cup of tea to take with me into my bath in my claw foot tub! I miss my ice cream maker, though, and I miss sitting outside in the sun on my sidewalk in Queens wearing a floppy straw hat and having a homemade milkshake in a teacup. You know, miscellaneous moments and habits are what make a place home, maybe. Actually, about the only two things I miss about Irvine are driving with friends to the beach (not even the beach part as much as the driving with friends toward the beach part!) and sitting outside on the enormous sidewalk in the sun wearing my floppy straw hat and having neighbors lean down from their balconies and offer me tacos. So I guess I just like food and sun. I can get that here! Vestiges of homesickness, gone!
I still miss the ice cream maker, though.
Here's the new Millay poem I just memorized:
"The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.
All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.
My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Sometimes I think Millay knows everything about me!
Actually, that poem reminds me of another one of hers that I love:
"Not in this chamber only at my birth--
When the long hours of that mysterious night
Were over, and the morning was in sight--
I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firth
I have not seen, through alien grief and mirth;
And never shall one room contain me quite
Who in so many rooms first saw the light,
Child of all mothers, native of the earth.
So is no warmth for me at any fire
To-day, when the world's fire has burned so low;
I kneel, spending my breath in vain desire,
At that cold hearth which one time roared so strong,
And straighten back in weariness, and long
To gather up my little gods and go."
Home everywhere - but nowhere so much home that I'm not missing somewhere else.
And I kind of love it.
Anyway, I guess this was a pretty miscellaneous post, and after a substantial hiatus. It's not as if I haven't been doing actual things out here for the last few months - sushi in Colorado Springs, a familial visit including the tram up to Pikes Peak, karoake at the bar, the '20s-themed birthday party of a coworker, a latke-vodka party last week, the super rad farmers' market in Woodland Park, time in the sun on the porch with Hazel my wonderful stage manager and housemate, free Zumba classes 2-3x/week, picking up shifts at the coffee shop across the street (I started out as a regular - like, she knows my order and gives me discounts and I hang around - and all of a sudden today I was employed!), Impi bars with peanut butter chips, brownies, Italian chocolate-almond torte, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, coffee chocolate chip cookies, tons of great science fiction/romance/classic reading, and I just started watching Girl Code on Youtube (I'm degenerating with this list here! But seriously, one episode in, and Girl Code already rocks. I still have some Psych to get through, too!). And it's not as if there's not tons more stuff I want to do here, that I probably won't even have time for - the mine tour, more time in Manitou Springs, shopping with a couple coworkers, the museum at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, hiking....
But I'm not going to try to cover all of that.*
Instead, I'll leave you with one more poem. She's still on the travel theme here, but not too melancholy - just saucy!
"How shall I know, unless I go
To Cairo and Cathay,
Whether or not this blessed spot
Is blest in every way?
Now it may be, the flower for me
Is this beneath my nose;
How shall I tell, unless I smell
The Carthaginian rose?
The fabric of my faithful love
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here,–but oh, my dear
If I should ever travel!"
*Praeterition = my third favorite literary device! Partly because of its fun name, and partly because sometimes it's like winking at a person (although sometimes it's like stepping up in their face to challenge them and then stepping back passively as if you've been friends all along, which is also sort of my style, unfortunately).
So I got the very exciting Hand-Crafted Candy Bars from the library, and I am psyched!
Immediately I was ready to make faux-Snickers bars (not that the careful
authors identify them as such, but obvs you can kind of tell).
First, Alex and I made the nougat. We were to whip egg
whites to stiff peaks while slowly pouring in hot sugar syrup. I had heard
horror stories about attempting this technique, but particularly with four
hands (mine and Alex’s) it went fairly smoothly. Two minutes or so away from
stiff peaks, however, my electric mixer broke. Ok, stiff enough, we decided. We
chilled it and then stirred in the peanut butter as directed.
Next up: Caramel. I already know how to make caramel, so the
process wasn’t bad, although I’m not used to making wet caramel and didn’t
realize how fast it was going to go. It came out a little darker and bitterer
than ideal, but still pretty good, especially once the peanut butter was
swirled in there too. So we chilled that too.
After roasting the peanuts, mixing those into the caramel
too, and chilling everything for an hour while we made (a very successful)
dinner (which I will tell about later), we were ready to assemble the insides
of the candy bars! The nougat gets made into logs, the caramel gets poured on
top, and it all gets refrigerated for ten minutes before getting dipped in
tempered chocolate.
Unfortunately, as we discovered twenty minutes of
refrigeration later, “stiff enough” nougat is… not stiff enough.
There was no way these could be dipped in chocolate – they couldn’t
even be lifted off the pan. Refusing to be demoralized, we scooped the mush with
a spoon into an 8x8, for Snickers casserole!
The remains of the "bars"...
...made into casserole! ahahahaha.
Although tempering the chocolate
was looking less necessary, since the plan now was just to pour it over the
top, I wanted to try anyway, since it’s a stressful process – the temperature
has to be so precise, and my first try several months ago didn’t work at all. (That
is probably, however, because I’d halved the recipe, and it’s just too hard, particularly
with my cheapo only-semi-instant digital thermometer, to temper chocolate in
tiny batches because its temperature will fluctuate faster.) But this time it
worked! Brilliant success! I used 72% dark chocolate from TJ’s pound plus bar,
plus some leftover regular dark and some Callebaut I didn’t like very much, to
add to the volume of chocolate and not waste it but not be the dominant flavor.
Anyway, as soon as it hit 60 degrees (after bringing it up to 115, throwing in
another handful of chocolate, and then down to 82 with the aid of an ice bath),
I poured it all over the casserole and stuck it in the fridge.
And, ten minutes later, we discovered it to be delicious!
Hooray Snickasserole!
Next time, maybe I’ll make actual candy bars (with my BRAND
NEW electric mixer, the price of which I am ashamed to relate). Don’t worry, I’ll
keep ya updated right here :)
Oh my god, I am obsessed. I am in love! I am so happy!
So I actually have a different post written and lined up for whenever I have time to get the relevant photos off the camera and upload them (tomorrow? heh). In the meantime, here's a poem that I love despite its explicit call to Jesus. Longfellow's translation is clear, forthright, yet beautiful - to me, this is his voice when he's at his best - you know, how all great poets have a particular voice even though it usually only comes through now and then. And actually, I don't think the moral of the poem is "come to Jesus"; I think it's, "don't procrastinate." But, obviously, in a less prosaic, shallow-sounding way.
Ugh, this is why talking about poetry is so hard; poems have already condensed, crystallized, cut to the core, so expounding on them always sounds banal. It's finding extra words for something that is currently pithy and effective.
The point is, I like this poem, and the last two lines particularly are what still ring with me, and what make my mind return to it regularly.
Tomorrow
Lord, what am I, that with unceasing care Thou did'st seek after me, that Thou did'st wait Wet with unhealthy dews before my gate, And pass the gloomy nights of winter there? Oh, strange delusion, that I did not greet Thy blest approach, and oh, to heaven how lost If my ingratitude's unkindly frost Has chilled the bleeding wounds upon Thy feet.
How oft my guardian angel gently cried, “Soul, from thy casement look, and thou shalt see How He persists to knock and wait for thee!” And oh, how often to that Voice of sorrow, “Tomorrow we will open,” I replied, And when the morrow came I answered still “Tomorrow.”
With Andy, Faye, Ian, Katie, Lara, Alyssa, and Alex I saw Once, which we rushed last week. Even the rushing part was pretty fun, since it was a nice day and there was so much company!
Here's your soundtrack for my review (skip ahead to about 1:30 - he talks a lot at the beginning):
The show was lovely. It opened - well, pre-opened - with an Irish folk jam session, most of it while audience members were onstage milling and drinking. So that was awesome. I mean, really, based on my response to Million Dollar Quartet and to One Man Two Guv’nors,
I don’t really want to see musicals at all, I just want to see rockin’
concerts. Which is in keeping with my generally negative attitude toward
musical theatre, so, you know, no surprise there.
As for the body of the show, everyone agreed that the music
was beautiful. While we saw four understudies that night, one of them – the weakest
– in for the lead “Guy,” overall the cast vocals and instrumentals (the cast is the orchestra, which I loved –
definitely a better solution to the don’t-have-money-for-band problem than just
replacing all the musicians with synths, anyway, and conceptually perfect for
this show) were powerful, locked in together, and very moving. The “Guy” understudy
was a little noncommittal both vocally and emotionally (of course, the two go
hand in hand), particularly in the first act, but in the second act when he was
featured in quieter songs and ditched the I’m-trying-but-can’t-quite-wail-like-Glen-Hansard
thing, he shined a lot more. [Note: I wrote “shone” instead of “shined” there
first, and it took me a while to figure out why it was wrong! No wonder
non-native speakers have trouble, if we natives can’t even remember which tense
patterns go where.]
Particularly, incredibly beautiful was the a cappella reprise of “Gold” in the
second act, with all cast members standing simply singing on stage. It was
breathtaking, and it was perfectly together, which is astonishing for a large-group
a cappella number with no conductor
(I looked and looked for their monitor), no formal music director (listed in
the program are a cast music captain, a
la the more standard dance captain, and a music supervisor, but no music
director – I would love to have a peek into those rehearsals!), and no one even
looking at each other on stage. Also brilliant was the
more-instruments-than-in-the-movie rendition of “When Your Mind’s Made Up,” the
song they record in the recording studio (which is in 5, which I find both
distracting and wonderful – talk to me about “alternative” meters sometime).
As for the non-musical elements of the show, I’m afraid I
disagreed with everyone I went with.
They thought the script was weak, telling rather than showing, that the
production didn’t add anything new and better to the story told in the movie,
and that the result was on the whole less dramatic than the movie.
I, on the other hand, really liked the new choices they made
with the script. I think in a play you have
to tell more than you do in a movie, because you don’t get close-ups of faces,
and I liked the way they wrote through
the dramatic moments rather than letting the actors fall intensely silent
(again, something that works a lot better in a movie than on stage; after all,
that’s one of the things Alex and I both hated about Billy Elliot, was the laziness of the librettist in substituting dramatic
pauses for difficult dialogue). I do think the emotional moments didn’t carry
as well as they should have, but to me that was the result of the lack of 100%
commitment on the part of the “Guy” understudy, which meant the chemistry
between him and the “Girl” wasn’t quite there. Any script is going to look weak if the actors
aren’t pulling it off. I would love to see the show again with the regular “Guy”
– although listening to the recording of him, he has the same vocal problem as
the understudy, which is that he’s a musical theatre singer trying to sound
raw, resulting in a vibrato-free but not particularly emotional belt.
And, you know, whatever they say about the storytelling in
the production, I definitely heard some uneven breathing and saw some reddened
eyes from the members of my party round about the last number of the show.
The other show I saw recently was Matilda, which I’ve been excited for for a year! While I didn’t
utterly love it the way I’ve loved some recent shows,* I really enjoyed it. I’ll
start with the flaws, so I can end with the strengths, which carried the show
enough to make it easily worth your time and money.
Meanwhile, here’s your Matilda
soundtrack!:
Flaws – Uneven pacing. Most of the time I was absorbed, but
there were several five or ten minute chunks where I was bored. The dialogue was a little prosaic and not
very strong. Not all the songs flowed seamlessly from the script to heighten
emotional moments or to allow characters to communicate openly – they were
mostly fairly internal, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. Miss Honey’s
song in particular, “Good Enough for Me,” was almost beautiful but ended up not
working at all for me. Some of the adults were a little weak – I think maybe
they were focusing on their accents harder than on actually being clear. Miss Honey
was the weakest I’ve ever seen her, and I wanted her to have more agency. Matilda’s
relationship with the librarian was played for laughs without being actually
very funny, and without successfully establishing Matilda’s internalized role
as a parental figure in a way that justified her later relationship with Miss Honey,
as it should have based. And while I respected that they made a strong choice
with Trunchbull – casting a man in her role – and followed through on that
choice fully, making use of the physical and vocal, and
internalized-character-development implications of cross-dressing-man rather
than big-strong-woman, I didn’t like the choice to begin with, which I’ll talk
about more later.
Strengths – The lyrics! The lyrics were brilliant. The lyrics were clever and on point; the rhymes were
smart, the phrasing was repetitive in a way that clarified and emphasized, the
lyric content phrased over the meter (one of my favorite songwriting devices
and one that I have yet to master) – basically, it was how I wish I wrote
lyrics. Also, the set – equally clever and creative. The floor was in
miscellaneously-sized squares that raised horizontally up and down to form platforms
and desks or rose vertically to form 2-D facades; the alphabet/reading them was
prevalent but unobtrusive; the whole concept was well-synced with the show
concept and very well executed. The choreography! Basically, the trifecta of extremely
clever, well-synced creativity in this show was the lyrics, the set, and the
choreo. The choreography was detailed, precise, and new; well-tuned to the
songs; and developed over the course of the show. Loved it! The addition and
development of the acrobat/escapologist storyline worked really well – my trust
in where they were going with it, when it initially looked tacked-in, was
warranted.
Performer-wise, Miss Honey had a lovely soprano although her
character was a big nothing aside from her first (great) song (“Knock on the
Door”); the Wormwoods were effective and creative; the Latin number, “Loud,”
with Mrs. Wormwood and her salsa partner was hysterical; Matilda was great,
great, great, carried the show exactly the way she needed to despite being exhaustingly
onstage almost nonstop and having a substantial amount of singing to do. But,
more important, the children – oh my god, the kids were incredible. The kid
choreography was specific, high-energy, and extremely extensive, and they
nailed it, better than I’ve ever seen kids on Broadway before and better than a
lot of adult dance choruses on Broadway. Plus, their British accents were so
good that I assumed the kids were imported before I checked out the program and
found them to home-grown! Seriously, if the lyrics/set/choreo don’t convince
you, go see this show just for the children’s chorus.
[I was going to insert the link to "Miracle," the opening number, here, but it's giving me trouble, so you should just click through! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF5y84mTBjA]
Cross-gender casting – I am all for cross-gender casting.
But what bothers me is that the cross-gender casting trend on Broadway applies
only to casting men in the roles of large or powerful or scary or over-the-top
women. To me, it suggests that largeness/power/scariness/over-the-top-iness
(haha) are traits that belong to men, that women who have them are therefore
manly – are not like women. While I don’t want to accidentally reinforce the “strong
but feminine” trope (which Katie and I got into extensively one night in a bar,
and which I will happily talk about with you in person) with that last
sentence, what I’m trying to say is that this kind of cross-gender casting actually
reinforces the gender binary, by
saying that some traits are womanly and some are manly, and that a woman with
certain traits is appropriately played a man, particularly when other
incidences of cross-gender casting are almost completely nonexistent on a
professional stage. If we saw more women playing men, or men playing more “feminine”
women; if we saw more gender-play in general; even better (in my feminist
utopia), if we saw gender as not relevant
to characters, such that we took ability to perform the role vocally and in
terms of personality/acting ability as the only precursors for being cast in a
role, not taking gender into account at
all, I would be way more down with the cross-gender casting!
Back to this
specific case, I actually thought that casting an man as Trunchbull and
emphasizing effeminate gestures and mincing around actually make the character
into a parody of womanhood, made her funny because she is someone who is trying
to perform femininity and not doing it well rather than because she is just
over-the-top scary, made her less actually scary-due-to-being-intimidating and
made her more unstable/“crazy,” only scary because we’re told she’s scary through narrative, lights, music, etc. I don’t
want to fall into comparing the musical to the movie – particularly since they’re
both based on a book and a spectacular one at that – but the Trunchbull in the
movie is perfect, and is also a great
role for a woman who doesn’t look like the usual women who get cast, and while
I liked a lot of the different approaches the musical took, they should have
just left that one alone.
I guess those sound like pretty mixed reviews, but the point
is, I liked these two shows a lot, and you should go see them!
*Peter and the
Starcatcher is the most absolutely beautiful show I’ve seen in the last two
years (topped only by Scottsboro Boys,
which I saw neither off-Broadway nor on Broadway but managed to catch during its
brief San Francisco run, but I was also head over heels for Newsies, Book of Mormon, Venus in Fur,
One Man Two Guv’nors, and Million Dollar Quartet; in the
quite-liked category are American Idiot, Finian’s
Rainbowl, Memphis, and the silly but delightful Lysistrata Jones, in the meh category is Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and Everyday Rapture, and in the wasted-my-money-and-my-time category are
Anything Goes and Billy Elliot, and there you have every Broadway
show I can remember seeing since I moved to New York, and now I feel like I
haven’t been taking advantage of my city of residence nearly enough.
If you're feeling like being transported... here's the "Gold" reprise:
Well, first, I have been on a checking-cookbooks-out-from-the-library spree, actually. Cook This Now, The Sweet Life in Paris, Simply Satisfying, and Around My French Table.
Which has caused me to be on a cooking spree!
Walnut cake with mocha whipped cream frosting: Tasty, mildly nutty, light. The frosting is the star of this show - hot cream poured over coffee and bittersweet chocolate, chilled, and whipped stiff. Also I am proud of the chocolate curls on top.
Quickbread with chives, walnuts, and cheddar. Sounds so awesome; turned out kind of boring and a hair dry. However, it's great toasted and spread with...
...cheesy creme brulee! Which, as you can see, was almost a disaster. Certainly the recipe didn't work for me at all; it asked for 40-50 minutes at 200 degrees F, at which point the brulees were still 100% liquid. I turned it up and left them in for another 45 minutes or so, took them out, sprinkled cheese on top, torched them, and then despite my skepticism around the concept of savory creme brulee...
...discovered that they were INCREDIBLE DELICIOUS, reminiscent of super rich mac and cheese, and SO WORTH all the hassle. Great on chips, great on toasted cheese quickbread, great with a spoon.
There was also an entire quart of leftover charoses from Pesach, which Alex and I have been struggling to eat before it goes bad. I mean, it's delicious, and you can eat it by the spoonful, but a quart is still a lot of charoses. So what to do with leftover charoses?
Charoses pie/crisp! Graham cracker crust, mound of charoses, crisp topping with oats and spices, 350 for half an hour. Delish!
And the final project of the two-day period: Milk and honey brioche. Which takes two days. Which requires 3/4 lb of butter and ten egg yolks. Which also requires a mixer with a paddle attachment, which I don't have, so I used my hands, realizing too late that Stella suggests in the comments trying it in a food processor. Which for a long time seemed like an utter disaster, with the texture of extremely sticky cookie dough and an apparent inability to rise at all.
When I at last put it in the oven, trembling for its fate, it did puff up but it also was a very ugly shape and blackened on the outside immediately rather than turning golden. Then I took a bite...
...and it was basically the best thing I've ever eaten. It's flaky, light, rich, sweet, crispy on the outside, buttery, and GLORIOUS. I legit wish I could make it every week. Too bad I can't afford that much butter! (Egg yolks I often do have, given frequent macaronnage. Although ten is still, um, excessive.)
Anyway, that's it so far for this week! Although I have a batch of macarons to make, commissioned on behalf of Paul's cast (for money!! although I'm definitely price gouging the competition). Probably mint or espresso with chocolate ganache.
In the meantime, here are more things I made in the last month, which I haven't posted about yet!
Clam chowder!
AMAZING chocolate torte. Basically, it's a ton of unsweetened chocolate and a ton of meringue, which was confusing and ugly, but incredible and now in my rotation, although unsweetened chocolate is also too expensive to use that much of very often.
Also, only part of this is homemade - the baguette - but I'm posting it because it was pretty much the best lunch ever. That's some kind of blue-veiny expensive cheese from the grocery store, and mind-blowing smoked salmon dip from Trader Joe's.
I also had a ton of leftover black eyed peas from making Hoppin' John (see: Sundays at Moosewood), and was tired of eating black eyed peas. Some dollops of cream cheese, cheddar, parmesan, garlic, and leftover green sauce from Mama's Empanadas, and bean dip it was!
Last but not least, in other news, Alex and I bought an expensive coffee table and I love it!!!! Well, expensive for us. Pretty normal priced for a regular coffee table that is fairly sturdy and pretty and not from IKEA. From now on: coasters and place mats, no exception!
Also, Andy Ball is here! And we have a great new subletter named Lara! And Alex's brother Ben came to visit! And I have a music director master class in programming keyboards with Mainstage coming up on Thursday! It's a cool week. :)
So Pesach was really great! I didn't take any pictures because I couldn't find the camera easily in the rush of all the cooking and all the people, so you'll just have to use your old-fashioned visualizing skills!
We had 29 people total - after 4 or 5 people who were planning on coming weren't able to make it! Which is probably a good thing, because although they were missed, we used every single available piece of furniture from our apartment, Faye and Katie's apartment, and Amanda and Tom's apartment in our quest to seat everyone and provide them a surface upon which to place their food. We have finally found the limits of our hosting capabilities! It actually didn't feel that packed, because we did a great job the day before of thinking it through and arranging all the furniture (in a long line through both living rooms of tables flanked by couches and chairs, with the bar sticking out into the center of the library to turn it all into an L-shape) so that everyone had at least a small space of their own, and passage wasn't too difficult.
We had enough food and just exactly enough wine. Alex and I had spent probably 6-8 hours each in the days leading up to Monday prepping, cooking, and arranging the house - not counting planning the menu or grocery shopping! Which really wasn't too bad, spread out over several days, particularly since I actually enjoy cooking and baking! On Monday itself we had a lot of help, particularly from the lovely Jillian, who showed up at 2:30 and didn't stop chopping vegetables for an hour and a half! Menu items included 96 deviled eggs (one batch of which I forgot to serve, which means we have leftovers, which is AWESOME! because all deviled eggs will always get eaten if they are put out in public, it's just the way of the world), veggies with hummus and delicious (if I do say so myself!) ricotta basil dip (with homemade ricotta! well, fake ricotta, made with acid rather than whey), matzo ball soup chock full of veggies (although for some reason the matzo balls got passed around before the soup, and mostly got eaten separately. weird), utterly scrumptious fish soup that Jamie and Alf had spent the entire previous day making, leek patties, potato-leek matzo casserole (no one in the Seid family likes wet matzo, but it is very popular with all other people of my acquaintance, and the leek patties and casserole were big hits), charoses concocted by Rivka and Lital, startlingly fresh horseradish as well as enchiladas and baklava from Lynne and Teri, a hilariously inappropriate but fairly tasty ham-cheese-and-noodle casserole that I'm not even sure who brought, cupcakes from Esther, fresh mint ice cream and cinnamon ice cream from Amanda and Tom, and some ugly-because-I-was-rushing-but-still-tasty macarons (pistachio with white chocolate pistachio ganache, and hazelnut with leftover caramel).
We used the Kinderland hagada that I stole when I attended their seder my first year in New York. It's a little Holocaust-heavy and has some lines that have great intent regarding solidarity with other oppressed groups but which could use slight rewording so as not to appropriate the experiences of others, and also it's generally just not as well written (or as short) as Judy's. Also, too many candles to light, which this year we lit only metaphorically, thank goodness. But it's still a pretty good progressive secular hagada. It took about 40 minutes to read through, which isn't bad for a raucus group of 29 people, only two or three of whom are capable of reading Yiddish transliterations in a non-absurd way. It afforded a few moments of solemnity, which I appreciate. I had updated it to be slightly more explicit (although still a little even-handed and a little opaque, as I have guests with Israeli families, and I haven't talked about the issue with them previouly) about my justice-for-Palestinians sympathies, and next year I'll remember to add the Rape of Nanking to the list of events that we are committed to remembering. Although next year we'll be using the Seid family hagada, which we would have done this year if I had located my copy of it BEFORE I made 7 copies of the Kinderland one! Heck, maybe I'll even put together my own, with bits from each and bits of my own! If I'm feeling ambitious.
We had a good 6-8 Jews present, which was cool, and another probably 5-10 people for whom this was their first seder (plus everyone in the middle, friends who are not Jewish but who have been to my seders before), which was very cool. Passover is turning into the favorite holiday of all my New York-based friends, and I will totally take credit for that! It turns out that my Jew-job is providing people with their first Passover experience, and it is a job I totally embrace! Also, providing expat Californian Jews with a home for the holiday while exposing them to a more progressive version of the holiday they know (and boy do they tend to be super thrilled about it).
And so today I am tired but pleased, and I only work six hours, until 3:30, when I can go home and take a nap before book club! (We're reading The Summer King by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Emily's pick, and it's pretty cool so far. I can't tell yet if there will be more books, though? I hope not, only because I am already in the middle of 11 unfinished series, which is way too many!) Then tomorrow I work at StarVest and then go straight to Xanadu rehearsal, and then on Thursday Esther and I will watch the last Lizzie Bennet Diary together (AGHAHGHGAHGHGH DEVASTATING SADNESS THAT LBD IS OVER AGHAHAGHAGH) and then I'll go out for Carla's birthday, and then on Friday we will all have an LBD wake, and also Ben (the brother of Alex) will get here and we will hang out all weekend, which will be great. Then Andy gets here and stays for a week, and then I have some music directing master classes to go to, and then Xanadu goes up... basically, I don't get to rest until the end of April. Yikes! But it will all be great stuff, and I will try to remember to blog about it! See y'all later :)
O winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.
He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathed In ribbed steel; I dare not lift mine eyes; For he hath rear’d his sceptre o’er the world.
Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks: He withers all in silence, and in his hand Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.
He takes his seat upon the cliffs, the mariner Cries in vain. Poor little wretch! that deal’st With storms, till heaven smiles, and the monster Is driven yelling to his caves beneath Mount Hecla.
That's William Blake. And I love it, but if someone could explain the meter in the last stanza to me, I would be obliged.
(1st - cacao nib macaron shells; 2nd - buttery almond macaron shells; 3rd - buttery almond macaron with salted mint buttercream; 4th - cacao nib macaron with bittersweet espresso ganache)
(also, they are SO DELICIOUS. the cacao nib ones particularly. the butter ones are no bittersweet espresso, but they are pretty freaking good when sandwiched with their creamy white buttercream - with a hint of sweetness giving way to faint mint, and finally leaving a lovely salted butter aftertaste. mmmmm.)
Baking right now, for Austen day tomorrow - two kinds of macarons. Sweet vanilla almond macarons with bittersweet espresso ganache and cacao nibs, and buttery almond macarons with salted mint buttercream.
The first one I found online (and here's a secret - "sweet vanilla almond" just means "regular," actually); the second I made up. Not sure how it's going to taste yet - I added a 16th teaspoon of butter flavor and an extra pinch of salt to the meringue, and added another 16th teaspoon each of butter flavor and peppermint extract, with another pinch of salt, to the buttercream. The meringue batter and the buttercream individually tasted lovely when I stuck my finger in them, so here's hoping! The cacao ones are out of the oven, pictures to come; the delicate yellow buttery ones are still in the oven. And can I just say how much I love my new insulated cookie sheets? My cookies in general are coming out so much more even - and so far the whole macaron batch has only one, count 'em, ONE cracked shell! Booyah!
Austen day, by the way, is to be approximately 12 hours of Jane Austen movie adaptation marathoning (Keira Knightly P&P, the 2007 Persuasion with that blonde guy, the 1999 Mansfield Park with the brunette holding a key, the Emma miniseries, and one or another of the Northanger Abbeys. No Sense and Sensability because I haven't read it yet and ACTUALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN IT, so no spoilers, please [yes, I'm aware it's been out for two hundred years, thank you very much], and not the for-real 5 hour P&P because it's too long, and no Clueless/Lost in Austen etc. because we don't have time - we'll just have to have Austen day part 2 at some point!), accompanied by appropriate-feeling snacks (tea sandwiches, maybe scones) (yes, I know macarons are French) and tea.
In other news, I saw Pentatonix a couple weeks ago and it was very cool - big theatre, lots of lights and pop/rock concert style effects. Not gonna say I don't prefer them in a more intimate venue where I can hear the less-amplified vocal blend and see their faces a little better, but they handled the bigger show very well, managing during most of it to continue to provide a pretty friendly, intimate feel. Plus now that they've earned doing whatever they want from their last tour, we got to see some beat-boxing/cello playing from Kevin, some (AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING) dwarf singing from Avi, and some very cute goofing off, plus of course a double handful of new arrangements and a new audience sing-a-long. It's been great watching them grow as a group!
Further news - I'm music directing Xanadu at Little Radical Theatrics in White Plains in March and April, and I'm working for Edlyn's company, StarVest, as clerical support, starting now. (No more unemployment - yay! Although of course I still have to make sure they give me the $ for the 7 weeks during which I filed... haven't seen that yet, eh....) I have also accepted summer work at Thin Air Theatre Company in Cripple Creek, Colorado, for which I am totally excited quite a lot.
Gotta run and check the macarons! Plus sandwiching them, and taking photos... ttyl!
It's raining and it has been raining all night and there is STILL a ton of snow on the ground! I'm listening to this -
which is perfect for how this morning feels.
I have a job interview tomorrow and another one next week, plus I'm supposed to have another one scheduled soon. Yay! In the meantime, totally enjoying - or at least filling up - my free time with society and self-improvement (a la recording new songs). I've been to two birthday parties already since I got back, and a knockoff Lunar New Year party, and a concert (Kishi Bashi) with another one to come (Pentatonix), I've visited my 101 year old cousin, I have a Skype date on Friday with Cheryl in Singapore, a girls' night at Jamie's coming up next week, a lunch date with my feminist friend, and two book clubs!
I am positively a butterfly.
Got nothin' else, but I'll leave you with some Kishi Bashi! I really recommend looking up some of his live stuff - the way he puts the songs together piece by piece with the looping pedal is SO COOL.
And for a bonus, the best song by the opening band, Plume Giant! I would say their overall show isn't that developed yet - a lot of their songs are too short, cutting off right before the build - but their harmonies are HOT, and they have some great ideas. And they live in Brooklyn, so I can track them as they grow!
P.S. I messed around with the little tools at the bottom of each blog post, and it might be easier to follow by email now. If you've been having trouble with that, take a poke around - I forget what I did already, but it should be possible to get updates for new posts now.
I've hung out with Alexia and my grandmother and Ruthy, I've had Mexican food four times with a fifth time on the way, treated myself to a double-double, explored San Diego and the zoo (pics to come on facebook!), attended Shawn and Sara's lovely lovely lovely wedding and danced a lot at the reception! Watched the 49ers head to the Super Bowl, and am watching Baltimore and New England in the AFC championship!
I'm not going into lots of details because there will be pictures and because everyone has been hanging out with me while I do all these things!
Oh, also I saw Les Mis and have lots of thoughts about it. Some of them are, poor Russell Crowe, how did no one realize that he was utterly out of his depth and embarrassing himself and bringing down the movie and how did they not replace him?!?!? Hugh Jackman is a stellar actor and has a great belting voice and strong musical theatre technique, but lacked the chops for the offhand and quiet stuff, most crucially "Bring Him Home." (I just caught a glimpse of the 25th Anniversary Concert version on TV in between football games. That guy knows how to do "Bring Him Home.")
(that guy being Colm Wilkinson)
I think the music director was a little too hands-off. Anne Hathaway was delightful. Amanda Seyfried threw her songs away with a weird short of breath wavery vibrato thing, which is a shame because I hear she's classically trained, and her voice underneath is beautiful. Aaron Tveit is brilliant, as are all the students, probably because they're actual Broadway performers/classically trained. Also, he is super hot. I kind of liked the new placement of "Do You Hear the People Sing" - straight out of the book, really - and I loved the build of it... and then they threw it away. Another four bars of repeat in harmony would have made it so satisfying and stirring. Although it was a little slow for my tastes; I happen to think it oughta be a march! Speaking of placement of songs, though, some of it really derailed the build of the show, especially with the orchestral tweaks it made necessary. I particularly thought it problematic that the recitative section wherein Valjean is in the convent and panicking mistakenly that Javert has found them didn't lead straight into "One Day More." The actor who played Eponine was the best female singer of the bunch, and she acted the crap out of it too. That said, I wanted more direction, and fewer big face shots of people crying. "One Day More" I think was shot nearly as well as it could have been, but it's just not as strong without seeing everyone standing all together, which you can do on stage with some locational suspension of disbelief but which you can't really get away with in a movie. But did they need that many close-ups, in "One Day More" or in the Finale? Ack. Also I missed the Fantine-Eponine harmony in the Finale. The kid playing Gavroche was great, and also totally looked related to the kid playing little Cosette.
Short version, I don't love the show but it has grown on me. I liked the movie a lot but with many critical caveats.
Unrelatedly, I have "Love Take Me Down to the Streets" (Not Wings) stuck in my head, and now I want to watch Role Models. Also, I Love You, Man.
If only, possibly, because I'm so sick of photo covers.
Anyway, here I am in LA, hanging out with Ethel and Ruthy and Alexia, soon to see Meredith and the good ol' OC, San Diego for a wedding... oh, you know all this!
Also I'm reading 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson. Science fiction, but not up my usual alley. Very long. I'm almost 200 pages in and I'm finally starting to get into it. We'll see how it goes! Also I'm memorizing 1492 (I think I posted it in my Chanuka post!), publicizing CSJO and J-West, I wrote two songs (except they're sort of the same song) on the plane and can't wait to sit down at a piano and get the stuff behind the lyrics and rough melody, scribbling a bit more flesh-out into the opening third of the book I started writing 8 years ago (I know I can finish a novel, I've done it before... but, you know, can I? and will it be good? It isn't, yet), seeing Zero Dark Thirty tonight (ack. But I know it will be good for me), MEXICAN FOOD.
Posts
