The Wily Filipino

Povelicious.

My copy of Geraldine Kim's Povel sits invitingly on the table. The reason for this said interpellation is the very fact that its cover has been gently caressed into a come-hither curl, the said curl aided by the lucky confluence of two forces: one, by the manual endeavors of human hands, i.e., mine, and two, by supernatural agency, i.e., the heat and humidity of the Philippine tropics, though the latter is more appropriately "natural," but as E.E. Evans-Pritchard reminds us in his writings on the Azande which has graced many an introductory anthropology reading textbook, like the one I've been using for a few semesters now, the divide between natural and supernatural varies greatly from culture to culture. But allow me at least to discuss the reasons behind the curl in turn: my hands, first, which have only really opened the book to the very first page, that is, the first page of the "povel" proper, occasionally flipping to the back to consult the footnotes, and lingering on the mug shot of Nick Nolte, and reading Geraldine Kim's biography, convinced, after repeated readings, that her past tenure as Governor of Texas was indeed within the realm of possibility, though not probability, but it is also likely that I am fudging the semantic / mathematical difference between the two words, that is, "possibility" and "probability," since the lowest grade I ever received in college, as a Communication Arts major from my agricultural school at the foothills of a Philippine mountain, which by the way, is "bundok" in Tagalog, and is, if one remembers correctly, the only word of Philippine origin to insert itself into English without any specific Philippine denotation, that is, "boondocks," was a crushing 2.5, which is the equivalent of a B-minus in American terms, for what was in fact the only mathematics-related class I took after high school, which was History of Mathematics, though I have no doubt that Geraldine Kim's grades when she was at Yale were much lower, since it is common knowledge that she received a so-called "Gentleman's C" average during her tenure at New Haven. In fact it took me two evenings alone to read the title of her book, staring at it glazed through jetlagged eyes, to which I gave the benefit of the doubt by actually reading it twice, since it was, after all, printed twice, and I am enjoying the book immensely, between bouts of grading and headache and the overall frenzied caloric consumption that characterizes the middle-class Philippine holiday season, though I am somewhat unsure what it is about, that is, the book, not the holiday season, even after closely reading Lyn Hejinian's, or shall I say, "Lyn Hejinian's," explanatory introduction to her book, and I am in fact rather puzzled that Microsoft Word has gone and rudely placed a red squiggly line underneath "Povel" and "Azande" and "bundok" and "Hejinian," especially since one wonders, shouldn't "Hejinian" be a household name by now, up there with "Longoria" and "Aguilera," neither of whom get squiggly lines? Let me discuss the second force behind the curl, that is, the supernatural force, shortly, but right now I am feeling dehydrated and should get up and drink a glass of water. I'll be right back.

Four Movies.

I didn't get to go out and see many movies this year, but here are four excellent ones:

Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

Andersen's idiosyncratic love letter to Los Angeles, its ransacking by Hollywood, its architecture, and, when one least expects it, an incisive foray into social criticism, like a Mike Davis book brought to the big screen.

Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1977)

I'd seen the excellent To Sleep with Anger before, but little from it prepared me for the gritty neo-Realist poetry of the deeply moving Killer of Sheep, about the existential longings of a slaughterhouse worker in South Central, circa the early '70s. (Plus it features the best use of an Earth, Wind & Fire song in a film, period.)

Lav Diaz's Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family) (2004)

More details here -- speaking of neo-Realism (though I'm probably misusing the term), here it is stretched to the grandest possible scale. My humble wish is to see it at least one more time.

Marco Tullio Giordana's La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth) (2003)

I'm not as thrilled with the way in which all the members of the extended family end up, supposedly coincidentally, representing the pillars of the modern state and other constitutive elements (medicine, industry, law enforcement, economics, art, the judiciary, etc.). But no matter: it's a modern-day epic on four tumultuous decades of Italian history, both intimate and sweeping.

The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2005 Edition.

In alphabetical order:

The Carter Family, In the Shadow of Clinch Mountain (2000)

A few weeks back a reader of this blog wrote to tell me that I was the only other Filipino he knew that was a fan of American folk music. I don't understand it either; certainly it stirred up no strands of any sort of racial memory! American folk, in short, was the music that was most culturally alien to me; I never heard it growing up, or on the radio then and now. But there was something about the Carter Family that spoke to me in ways I can barely articulate -- these rough-hewn, gorgeous voices calling from a faraway time and land, singing of the curt brutality of an interrupted life, the innocence of souls in love, and a faith in an incorruptible future.

M.I.A. & Diplo, Piracy Funds Terrorism, Volume 1 (2004)

Boomf boomf. Are there banlieue in London? I don't think so. Choco slick and a kick in the teef. Chika chika. Tamil tiger daughter. Jungle guerrilla graphics. Hip pop history, Bangles and Pepa remixed. Hip hop is all de tournament anyway. Galang galang. You could be a follower but who's your leader? Crank it up. Break that cycle or it will kill ya.

Robert Pollard, Zoom (2005)

It's been a good year for the fans of the Robert Pollard Experience: a concert DVD, a band biography, three side-project albums, a soundtrack for a Steven Soderbergh film, an art chapbook, an album coming out from Merge next year, a nationwide concert tour, a box set with a hundred new songs -- and this absolutely delightful four-song EP, sourced from some alternate '70s pop universe.

Puffy, Nice. (2003)

Let's get this clear: the vaguely Orientalist TV show on the Cartoon Network has nothing to do with their music. With that out of the way, let me talk about Nice. There are, of course, frequent moments of genius scattered all throughout their discography, but Nice. -- an all-Andy Sturmer affair, but that shouldn't scare you -- is simply bursting with pop sweetness: the clap-your-hands-say-yeah! joy of "Long Beach Nightmare" (sheer perfection), the irrepressibly happy "Atarashii Hibi" (Brand New Day). Naysayers will say that every other riff seems to be stolen from somewhere else, but that's part of the genius: a reclaiming of an international musical vocabulary that transcends all borders.

Teenage Fanclub, Songs from Northern Britain (1997)

Like most people, I first heard Teenage Fanclub when the cheerfully discordant anthem "The Concept" hit MTV; like most people, I (erroneously) figured they had more or less sunk without a trace as (again, erroneously) Glasgow's response to grunge, cranking out similar-sounding albums from then on; like most people, I rediscovered the band through Nick Hornby's Songbook, for which Hornby picked two songs.

Songs from Northern Britain is an album of transcendent beauty; the fact that it's composed of the simplest four-minute love songs makes it even more of a marvel. (Which makes it a different kind of transcendent beauty than that of, say, Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, but I digress.)

I will cop out and quote instead some anonymous music fan, who wrote this review on Amazon.com:

Part of the grandeur of this record is a point which nearly everyone has missed: many of these songs are hymns to God. Listen to the first line of the record: "I don't know if you can hear me, I'm feeling down and can't think clearly...." This is not written for a girlfriend; it is written to God; a bare human call to his creator. And they are beautiful songs. There are none about drugs, none about being in Teenage Fanclub; but all are about what it is to be a spiritual being on this earth... If you think it is about girlfriends, you miss the point and much of the majesty. "I can't feel my soul without you." I could go on--this record brings tears to my eyes. It is staggering and epic.

I don't necessarily agree with all of it -- of course it's about loved ones too -- but the writer perfectly captures the spiritual core of the not-incompatible pulls of yearning and contentment throughout the album's teenage symphonies to God. Musically, Teenage Fanclub draws from the three B's (the Beatles, the Byrds, and Big Star), and they stand with those three on the strength of this album alone.

In any case, Teenage Fanclub's Songs from Northern Britain was my favorite album of this year. Sometime this summer I started living with it, listening to it before I went to sleep, or when I woke up in the morning, I went running with it, I played it in the car and sang at the top of my lungs, all with an ache and joy in my heart. It must be what it's like to be in love again.

TsuShiMaMiRe, Pregnant Fantasy (2004)

More details here. Key phrase: hair flying everywhere.

The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2005 Edition: The Runners-up.

In alphabetical order:

Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker
   "Ryan Adams??" At least two people questioned my choice of favorite albums, but Heartbreaker tided me over some: darkly romantic ballads straight from Dylan and Parsons territory.

Aitanna77, Spring Is Coming Soon
   I think, with something of a wince, that this is what is called "folktronica." Labels aside, this is quietly arresting music, all disc whirr and guitar wisp, tweaked lullabies for cold and dry seasons.

Laura Cantrell, Humming by the Flowered Vine
   Laura Cantrell's latest album is, to my ears, most analogous to Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator): a detour from Nashville / Scrabble Creek that confirms Cantrell as one of America's finest pop singer-songwriters who chooses to work in the folk/country idiom (not that there's anything wrong about being strictly country!).

M.Y.M.P, Beyond Acoustic / Soulful Acoustic
   If the songs weren't so interchangeable and weren't mostly picked from the same bottomless trough of Mellow Ballads, I would unhesitatingly add this pair of albums (now available as a two-disc set) to my favorite music for this year. M.Y.M.P. has a winning formula: take a song ("Waiting in Vain," Ogie Alcasid's "Sa Kanya") and pair it up with elegant fingerpicking and luscious, buttery vocals. Don't expect radical interpretations, or of new insights into the songs revealing themselves, but when you already have a set of cover versions even better than the originals, it's some kind of gorgeous indeed.

The Polyphonic Spree, The Beginning Stages of the Polyphonic Spree
   Great sunshine pop, but you really really really have to watch them in concert to get the full gospel treatment.

Sleater-Kinney, The Woods
   The profane, overdriven din from your speakers is the new Sleater-Kinney album, brought to you by a band newly, terrifyingly, unleashed.

Kanye West, Late Registration
   Jay-Z calls him a genius, and maybe you should too. It may not be as fresh-sounding as his brilliant debut (my favorite album from last year), but Late Registration is still a sonic thrill: the urgent "Crack Music," the soaring "Touch The Sky," the hilarious "Gold Diggers."

Yura Yura Teikoku, III
   Mislabeled by its promoters (at least in the U.S.) as "psych rock" (and therefore disappointing all the White Heaven / Rallizes / Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. fans), Yura Yura Teikoku is straight-up irresistible pop-infused rock that works in any language.

Next: The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2005 Edition.

Earworms, 2005 Edition.

My brother Bulletproof Vest has made an impeccable mix cd for the car (Missy Elliott, Keane, the Cardigans, U2, Sun 60), and I responded with my favorite songs of 2005, the results of which are below.

He's not so impressed, however, with my ever-expanding 1600 Favorite Songs Of All Time List:

"I can't believe you don't have the New Pornographers' "Letter from an Occupant!"

"I can't believe you prefer the Iron & Wine cover of "Such Great Heights" over the Postal Service original!"

"I can't believe you don't have Guided By Voices' "Fair Touching!" (Its omission was even more egregious to him because I had about 60 GbV songs on the list.)

People who clickwheel through the list on my iPod invariably tell me I have the wrong songs anyway.

"You picked the wrong Bloc Party song!" (It's listed below, from the Bloc Party e.p.; Bulletproof Vest really likes "Like Eating Glass.")

Or, "You have all the wrong Liz Phair songs!" (But "Stratford-on-Guyville" always seems to strike a chord with people who sit in my rustbucket car.)

Or, "You actually have a song by William Shatner?" ("Mr. Tambourine Man," of course.)

So without any more chitchat, in alphabetical order, my Earworms of 2005. As in previous years, the list isn't about songs actually released in 2005, but music that came my way (or were rediscovered) this year:

Ryan Adams, "Come Pick Me Up"
Bloc Party, "The Answer"
Bonnie Pink, "Evil and Flowers (Live)"
Laura Cantrell, "Letters"
The Spencer Davis Group, "Every Little Bit Hurts (Live)"
The English Beat, "Hands Off She's Mine"
HALCALI, "Strawberry Chips"
Leela James, "Don't Speak"
Lali Puna, "Bi-pet"
M.I.A. and Diplo, "Pop"
MISIA, "The Glory Day"
Motorhead, "I'll Be Your Sister"
M.Y.M.P., "Sa Kanya"
Kitchie Nadal, "Wag Na Wag Mong Sasabihin"
The Pillows, "Hybrid Rainbow"
The Polyphonic Spree, "Light and Day"
PUFFY, "Atarashii Hibi [Brand New Day]"
Rilo Kiley, "Portions for Foxes"
Jimmie Rodgers, "Home Call"
Sleater-Kinney, "Jumpers"
Smoosh, "Massive Cure"
Matthew Sweet, "In My Tree"
Teenage Fanclub, "Ain't That Enough"
TsuShiMaMiRe, "Manhole"
Weezer, "Pink Triangle"
Kanye West, "Gold Diggers"
Yum!Yum!Orange, "Letter"

Next, if I ever get to go online again: The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2005 Edition: The Runners-up.

Last of the Screen Shots.

[Answers above.]

Over the Hill.

Party: Picaro, Elixir, Flickr, more pictures to come in the next few days. Plus good times, tapas, two big plates of seafood paella, and pitchers and pitchers of sangria, despite the rain.

[Currently playing on iTunes: Velocity Girl's "I Can't Stop Smiling."]

( ).

Today I turn another year older, but instead of thinking about the year ahead, I'm dwelling more on the last few years or so. Disaster has befallen me again -- not dental, and not automotive -- but this time it's computer-related.

For some reason or other my "My Documents" folder has completely disappeared -- something to do with a "corrupted local profile" -- but I know it's still there because my disk space is still the same. No amount of system restores, logging off and on, etc. could get back what is now a completely empty and spotless "My Documents" folder.

This means everything -- my lectures, some videos, 7 gigabytes worth of music, wallpaper, my dissertation, students' grades, my master's thesis, bookmarks, pdf files, PowerPoint presentations, every single e-mail message that isn't on Gmail, passwords, every picture I've ever taken including those of Izzy -- is gone. To have the past simply wiped out like this is astonishing; it's clearly a statement against the kind of dependence we (or rather, I) have on our computers to narrate our lives, as it were.

Kind of makes you sit back and take stock of things. Yesterday Izzy finally came back from the hospital and is doing great. The puking / coughing session I had written about as a comment on the V-Monster's blog was apparently her very first asthma attack -- she hadn't been diagnosed before -- and it was serious enough to mean a trip to the ER and two nights of observation. She is, however, all happy and rested now, but this means she'll be joining the legions of Ventolin-toting tots from now on.

I told her about my computer woes, including losing my photographs of her. She said (I'm not making this up to make her sound cute), "Daddy, that means you can take even more beautiful photographs of me."

[Update: J-Lu's "IT geek" friend R. is bravely volunteering, despite my protests against it (I don't think I can find her a 1:1 scale model of Gackt though), to roll up her sleeves and mess with the computer tonight.]

[Update #2: I managed to recover all of my e-mail -- thank goodness I use Thunderbird -- but everything else is still gone. My 100 or so student papers have returned from the land of the dead; now to spend the next few days returning them to where they came!]

No Sci-Fi.

So I've been realizing that I have big gaps in my "genre" reading, especially after reading Ktrion's post (and I know that Gladys is a total sci-fi / fantasy junkie as well). It's something of a surprise to me, considering that I love watching the stuff as film and reading it as graphic novels.

I've read very little from the "fantasy" genre (more if you count Borges, Kafka and Lovecraft). Not including comic books, here's the woefully short list:

- Crowley's Little, Big
- Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia
- Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
- and not much else (the first four Rowlings, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books)

Science Fiction:

- Butler's Kindred
- Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Delany's Dhalgren
- Gibson's Necromancer (I actually didn't care very much for this one)
- Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine
- Stephenson's Snow Crash
- Some of Bradbury's short stories (though I did watch Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451)
- a handful of Dick (A Scanner Darkly / Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? / Valis)

And that's it. (There might be more, but I just can't remember them.)

Any recommendations for the winter break will be happily accepted. I really want to read Stephenson's Cryptonomicon -- and those of you who have read it will know the Filipino connection -- but it's just too heavy to place in my handcarried bag with my laptop. I heard a paper at the anthropology conference on Alex Shakar's The Savage Girl, which sounded fascinating as well.

p.s. 1: My students are always shocked when I tell them that I have never seen a single episode of Star Trek in any of its incarnations (though I more or less know the names of the actors and the people they play). (I also saw the first Star Trek movie on the big screen when it opened.)

p.s. 2: My fondness for Japanese music and film hasn't extended to anime: other than most of Studio Ghibli's output (which doesn't really count) and random robot cartoon episodes, I've seen Akira and Ghost in the Shell and, amazingly, there the list ends.

Blogger Party!

What you missed: an excellent dinner at Foreign Cinema, Pelle the Conqueror, the Poeta's Writers With Drinks reading at the Make-Out Room, non-genitally centered sexuality and missed connections on Craigslist, at least three bottles of sangria at Papa Toby's Revolution Cafe, an aborted Popeye's run, a late-night taqueria snack, and a cast of 11 in order of appearance (Ver, Barb, Marianne, Jean, Wayne, Gladys, Joanne, Oscar, Anthem, Irene and me), now all on Flickr.

[Update: More coverage of the party at Getaway, and at V-Monster's Nesting Ground. I'm swiping that first picture for my Flickr account and tagging it with "Jealous?"]

Then and Now.

Because I have no shame!

Then:

Now:

Just so it's clear: any and all blame must be placed at my mother's feet. But not even she would have worn red boots.

The Glass Ceiling.

While this may not be terribly appropriate -- the ink has barely dried on the bluebooks -- I wanted to share excerpts from two "definitions" of "the glass ceiling" which a couple of my students wrote for their examinations today:

...There was a glass barrier or obstacle. For example, there is a tree outside, I want to run and fling my arms around the tree, but I would run into the glass window.

And my favorite:

The "glass ceiling is also, like a bird trying to fly to space but can't because after a certin altitude, it becomes too cold for the bird to surivive so the bird can never go to space, because something will always prevent it from going to space.

(I should add that the two students did indeed give accurate short IDs for the term, but also tacked on the oddly lyrical descriptions.)

Quick Anthro Conference Tidbit.

Best conference moment: Lawrence Cohen describing Alan Klima as "a cross between Walter Benjamin and Neal Cassady." That totally cracked me up.

Echo & The Bunnymen, San Francisco, 12/5/05.

The latest Echo and The Bunnymen album, Siberia, is probably just what you'd expect from a couple of middle-aged, mellow friends who'd gone through hard times and weathered them all; it's almost satisfied, contented music, with little trace of their old tortured poetry, albeit with a current of nervous energy. (Lan said that they probably take yoga lessons together now.)

Live, however, the songs are a totally different matter; Will Sergeant's guitar still snarls to great effect, and Ian McCulloch's voice has turned into an expressive, somewhat cigarette-damaged instrument. But it wasn't exactly the new stuff I was waiting for. Back in Los Banos in the '80s, I wore out my cassette tape of Songs to Learn and Sing (I wasn't cool enough to own their music earlier); it was those culled tracks I wanted to hear.

I think, in any case, that I have great luck when watching concerts with Lan and Juan, because the requests in our heads almost always get played, even if they don't show up regularly on their setlists. (Lan wanted to hear "Over the Wall;" I wanted to hear "Viliers Terrace," and I couldn't believe they actually played it.)

Here's the set from last night (because I'm totally obsessive, I sat down and listened to the Instant Live CD and figured it out):

Going Up
Show of Strength
Stormy Weather
Bring On The Dancing Horses
Scissors in the Sand
All that Jazz
The Back of Love
The Killing Moon
In the Margins
Never Stop
Viliers Terrace
[T. Rex / David Bowie / etc. medley]
Of a Life
Rescue
The Cutter
Nothing Lasts Forever
Lips Like Sugar
Over the Wall
[Unknown Title]
Ocean Rain

You can't go wrong, I think, by ending your concert with "Ocean Rain," surely one of the most gorgeous songs from the New Wave era.

Conferences and "The Community."

Ran into the old grad school crowd in DC: Peter (with whom I was on a panel), Leif, Sara, Josh and Michelle. There seems to be much less of the Ithaca diaspora here this time; I wonder whether it's something of a backlash from the debacle of last year's conference (see the posts of 10/21, 10/22 and 10/23). But as I walk through the sterile gleam of the Marriott, with its hotel rooms costing well over a hundred dollars each, and $160 conference fees, I am always struck by how we anthropologists insist on meeting at places like this that graduate students, or most important, our informants -- we almost all "study down" anyhow -- wouldn't be able to afford. (I barely could, myself; Bulletproof Vest happened to be fortuitously house-sitting in Vienna, VA, at the end of the Orange Metro line, and so I got to cancel my still-expensive reservations at the hotel a few blocks down the street.)

Of course, conference attending does not at all preclude any meaningful engagement with the people with which we study and work. But such an annual ritual regularly throws into relief the distance between the hotel's deep carpets, and the staff people of color refilling the water glasses and changing the sheets and (depending on the anthropologist) the relatively benighted people we study. Or maybe this distance is an artifact of a kind of anthropological arrogance; heard many times during last year's debate was the refrain "And we're anthropologists, of all people!" -- as if we were somehow, by the sheer nature of our work, naturally capable of a deeper social commitment than any other scholar. Or, as if anthropologists couldn't be as selfish and backbiting as the rest of the academy.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the mini-crisis, in the last decade or so, within Asian American Studies as well: that many younger scholars, armed with techniques and vocabularies of French origin, were increasingly estranging themselves from "the community" through which the discipline was given birth (and, even more criminally, abandoning the ideals of social justice and empowerment). The crusty, grizzled activists, on the other hand, were sitting on wilted laurels, presenting (if at all anymore) papers that were largely descriptive and devoid of analysis, their undisciplined quality transformed into the exemplary virtue of Sticking It To The Man. All of this, of course, are inaccurate generalizations.

But I do remember, for instance, a conference in Seattle when a graduate student presented a paper on the generation of Filipino immigrants who arrived in the '20s and '30s, with a gently critical view of their ideas of patriotism and belonging. One of the many grayish-haired people in the audience stood up immediately at the beginning of the Q&A session and uttered these three fateful words: "You weren't there." The dialogue, if one could call it that, immediately shut down. But it is symptomatic of how the field, in its extended period of adolescent pains, is both deeply rooted in counterhegemonic '60s principles and commitment to "the community" [cheap shot here: it's all just lip service] and at the same time still struggling for legitimacy in a minimally, politely "multicultural" academe [cheap shot here: to be accepted in the eye of the (white) beholder].

All this intellectual handwringing (and for some, damaging to their careers) has been arguably unproductive, but at least the issue is repeatedly brought to the surface. Anthropology, perhaps in contrast, has traipsed along its own merry way, only a few decades removed from sleeping with the colonial enemy (and the repeated cries of penance that followed it). But in the end, the perhaps inherent, queasy disjuncture in any hotel conference may be attributable to the very real gulf, in any discipline, between university and "the community." I am not necessarily someone who would claim the student body as the community which I serve (particularly the students who I know take an Asian American studies class because they think it's an easy A!). For me, it must be more -- a wider and deeper involvement with "one's people" outside of the manicured quads of the campus -- though my time and energy always seem to be lacking in this aspect. Of course, the main justification for these large hotels seems to be the logistics of accommodating a few hundred panels anyhow, with which no university would dare burden itself.

Worry, Friends and Good Food.

So I was just in Washington D.C. and was feeling a little knot of dejection forming. The provenance of such pessimism was, as usual, my irrational fears; this said ragged little ball of worry was, in manner of form, similar to the thick tangle that appears in comic balloons above the neurotic Peanuts characters' heads. My solipsism is such that I turn this ball over and over in my head, very much like a snowball in snow, until this accretion of anxieties is packed more tightly and has increased in circumference. What is worst about all this, perhaps, is not the unjustified enlargement of this knotty ball, but the wince of familiarity that accompanies it; my pessimism has become predictable.

But all this, predictably too, dissipated. A few minutes later I was sharing a pitcher of Sam Adams with Bulletproof Vest and his better half, with garlic naan and lamb and saag paneer, and suddenly all was right with the world; nothing a good meal and drinks with good people will cure.

Speaking of good meals: a little over a week ago I had a sumptuous dinner -- a big Thanksgiving spread, featuring almost exclusively food from the Old World that made it to Asia -- over at Big J and his better half's house. My meager culinary (or even dish-drying) talents weren't tapped, which was probably for the better; I ended up babysitting Maia, though that only really entailed sitting with her while she watched The Princess Bride (a movie I'd thought would have been too intense for someone her age, but apparently not).

And speaking of more good food: J-Lu baked me delicious apple pie last week as a Thanksgiving surprise! (I told her she could make money off of it: just the right amount of crumble to the crust and "give" to the apple.)

And more good meals: dinner with the Porkchop in DC Thursday night!

Baudrillard once (rather fatuously) wrote in America that eating alone was "the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honour of sharing or disputing each other's food." Whatever -- but "good," as you can see, is the operative word all week. There is something simple and uncomplicated and wholesome about the act of sharing and eating food.

And today: while I was cooking in the kitchen, Izzy danced to the Vince Guaraldi Trio's "Skating" theme, from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Didn't I say everything was right with the world, at least for that moment?