Vehicular Assault?

A week ago Tuesday, a bit after 10:00 p.m., I was on my way home from Grand Center (the theatre district in St. Louis) when a hunger came over me, so I pulled into the Open-24-7 Drive-Through at Del Taco. It's a crummy Mexican restaurant in an even crummier neighborhood, but nothing else is open at that time between Powell Hall and home, so that's where I went.

The first sign that my late dinner wasn't going to be up to even Del Taco's standards of service was that I had to wait next to the intercom for several minutes before the staff was ready to take my order. Then, after ordering, I pulled ahead to the window to wait for someone to take my money and give me food. There was no one ahead of me in line, and only a couple of parties ordering inside the restaurant, but no one came to the window to help me. From my angle of view there didn't seem to be much going on in the restaurant - now and then an employee slouched into view, but never got close enough to the window to do me any good.

After an unprecedented wait, in my drive-through-dining experience - perhaps ten minutes - someone did come and take my money, and after a few more minutes they gave me part of my order. I checked the bag to make sure it was all there, and it wasn't. So I reminded the employee about it.

Meanwhile, several other vehicles had lined up behind mine. The drive-through lane is bounded on one side by the Del Taco building, and on the other by a curb with short concrete columns rising out of it at about six-foot intervals. The guy in the pick-up behind me was effectively stuck, boxed in between me and the customer behind him in the drive-through lane.

So I truly sympathized when the driver of the pick-up leaned out his window and asked if I could pull ahead for just a moment, so he could get out. I shouted back that I was expecting one last piece of food to be handed to me through the window at any moment, if he could wait just that much longer. In truth, I was suspicious - like I said, Del Taco isn't in a very good neighborhood - and I didn't trust the intentions of the stranger behind me.

The last of my food arrived only a few seconds later, but it was too late for the rear bumper of my car. The impatient guy in the pick-up decided he couldn't wait one more moment, and he began trying to sidle his truck through a gap in the intermittent barrier to our right. In the process, he bumped into the rear of my car.

You can imagine how furious this made me. Did I get out of my car and exchange insurance information with the guy? Did I lecture him about respecting other people's property? Did I call the police? You bet I didn't! Of course not. I thought the guy was going to kill me next. While he was still angling his truck between the concrete pillars, I snatched my burrito out of the cashier's poky fingers and fled for dear life.

This incident was brought to my mind today when I had to take my car into the dealership to have the "Check Engine" light turned off and its reason for being on explained. Even though I vaguely suspected it had something to do with Jiffy Lube changing my oil this past weekend, I couldn't be sure it wasn't a sign that yet another catalytic converter was shot. (It turned out my first guess was right; Jiffy Lube screwed something up - and they later refunded the money I paid to the dealership for setting it right). The service person looked the car over to make sure there wasn't any damage on it that I could later blame them for, and she pointed out the small mark on my bumper where Mr. Can't Wait 30 Seconds hit me. I wonder if the poor guy had to go to the bathroom. Whatever his hurry was, he gave me a good scare.

FROM THE TACKINESS ON HOLY GROUND DEPARTMENT: Right now the ELCA church near my home displays the following message on its lighted sign: "CAUTION: LENTEN JOURNEY CAN RESULT IN LOST BAGGAGE." Translation: "We've moved from 'Christ crucified' to 'baptized psychobabble'."

A couple weeks ago it said: "LENT: U-TURNS PERMITTED AND EVEN RECOMMENDED." If that message gets out, it ought to give the traffic cops plenty of work.

Gideon Reed

Years ago, when I was the kind of person who recorded my life in the form of poetry, I hurt a friend's feelings with the sonnet below. It was a description of our relationship and, unfortunately, I chose a pretty disgusting metaphor. Not flattering at all. Don't read too much into this poem. All it's about is the fact that some people are so open and confiding that they almost scare you off. Or something like that.

For each the blister of his confidence
Has diff’rently enduring skin, some tough
To pierce, some sweating pus; too deep to lance
The first, the other not quite deep enough.
One of these last stood brimming to explode;
My nudge enloosed a deluge of regret,
Dead tissue sloughing forth, all waiting to unload
Old venom on the first new flesh it met.
The friction of two selves create such welts:
The bruis’d but clinging reed, against the great
Horn-blowing Gideon flashing battle-pelts.
The lancer, I spread on the salve of faith,
But even that in pus (still unexhausted) melts,
And from my hand his wart calls out a mate.

Italian Food, Mystery Music

Today's taste of St. Louis took place at Bartolino's, one of "the Hill's" numerous Italian restaurants. For one price off the dinner menu, I got a soup, salad, main dish and side dish, dessert and bread; plus they were able to offer me an interesting imported Italian beer.

The beer was Menabrea. I hadn't had it before, though I have found other Italian beers to enjoy - and a few to avoid. It was a nice, mildly hoppy ale, which is a nice change from the "Budweiser with an Italian accent" that one finds under most Italian birra labels. It reminded me vaguely of a Salvadoran brew I rather miss (I haven't seen it in years), called Caguama - a very decent-tasting blond ale that feels good in the mouth.

The soup was a spectacular minestrone. The salad was actually pretty spectacular too, with a house dressing that turned out to be a cut above the usual flavorless, purple vinaigrette too many Italian "houses" run toward. It was more of a creamy Italian with a tangy bite to it, and the salad had some artichoke in it, as well as grape tomatoes and shredded white cheese (but not the overabundance of cheese that also seems to run in Italian "house salads"). Several slices of a nice, full-bodied, crusty bread rounded out the "befores," though unfortunately the butter was ice cold and had to be warmed in my hands before I dared try spreading it on the bread.

I can't say much about the main course. It was something called saltimbocco romana, which apparently means veal marsala. For you deprived people who don't know what veal marsala means, it's veal cutlets and sauteed mushrooms covered in a garlic-butter-and-marsala-wine sauce. And though you can get veal-marsala-to-die-for here on the Hill, this wasn't quite it. It was "OK veal marsala." The side dish was cheese-filled tortellini in a cheesy tomato sauce, and again, it was OK but not "to die for." However, after the very special spumoni ice cream that followed these merely-OK dishes, all is forgiven.

The waitress claimed that Edy's makes this particular spumoni only for Bartolino's restaurant. You can't buy it anywhere else; the Edy's spumoni you can buy in your grocery store's frozen section is far inferior. I believe her at least on this last count, because this was a remarkable spumoni. The main body of the ice cream was a creamy-caramelly flavor and color, marbled with thin lines of light-green pistachio ice cream. There were crunchy bits of pistachio in it, as well as jellied cherries that I could swear were steeped in Amaretto. Shazam!

TONIGHT'S SOUNDTRACK: Gerhard Samuel's world premiere recording of a Symphony in E purported to be the long-lost symphony which Franz Schubert (1797-1828) composed at Gastein, Austria in 1825. The music was discovered as recently as 1960 and may or may not be authentic; and it does seem that Schubert wrote a large symphony in 1825 that was subsequently lost. The symphony quotes from several of Schubert's string quartets and songs of the period, as well as his well-known Wanderer Fantasy for piano.

The scale of the piece (60 minutes of music, including the repeats) puts it on a par with Schubert's "Great" C Major symphony, which he composed in 1828 and which was also discovered some time after his death. The evident inferiority of this E Major Symphony may stem from its being an experiment inspired by the 1824 premiere of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Like Beethoven's 9th, but unlike Schubert's other symphonies, it swaps the order of the middle movements so that the scherzo plays ahead of the slow movement. But its similarities to the "9th" of Schubert (as many people number the Great C Major) are much more numerous. This earlier piece in E could almost be taken as a sketch for the later masterpiece in C.

In fact, hearing the second, third, and fourth movements of this E Major Symphony is a profoundly weird experience. One frequently encounters textures and themes eerily similar to ones found in corresponding sections of the C Major Symphony. Sometimes the rhythm, instrumentation, and accompaniment figuration are the same, but the tune turns in a different direction - or even more bizarrely, is a tune you recognize from a different work! It's like hearing the same story told in different words, or rather like hearing the same words used to tell a different story.

Of course, this doesn't mean this E Major work is necessarily a forgery. I've listened to all of Schubert's other symphonies, apart from the so-called Seventh which officially exists only in sketch form. And there are definitely points in his earlier symphonies where you can recognize bits that he recycled from one work to the next. Self-plagiarism is the sincerest form of egotism, etc. Plus, you also have to admit that this piece reeks of a composer turning a page in his career, from Haydnesque conservatism toward innovation on a grand Beethovenian scale, and rather falling on his face at it. He's trying out things that don't quite work, using borrowed tunes; three years later he wrote it again, and did it right, but using brand new tunes. Had he lived longer, imagine what he might have done!

I do wish I could hear this piece played by full-time professionals, though. I don't know from this Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra, which published its "world premiere recording" of the lost-and-found Schubert work on the Centaur label in 1992. Whoever they are, they sound about on a par with the St. Louis Philharmonic - a no-pay, town-gown outfit that performs about four times a year on a local college campus, and that compensates for its less-than-perfect tuning and occasional clumsiness by playing something you've just got to hear. If a major symphony orchestra played this piece, I would be first in line at the ticket kiosk.

I-8 Right There!

Speaking of Yuma, the last year that I lived there I had a job in which I frequently drove to Tucson with a co-worker, picked up a customer, and drove back to Yuma - all of which took about 9 hours, give or take. Somebody had to do it. I didn't mind; it beat working. I got to drive a rental car, dine out on per diem, and occasionally have an adventure (such as the time the customer had a bladder problem and needed to go to the potty every 15 minutes - a real challenge when you're in the middle of the Sonoran Desert).

My favorite story from these trips is another illustration of this blog's overarching thesis that I am a fat, stupid jerk.

My co-worker and I had picked up our customer, who seemed to be a somewhat confused and cantankerous old man. He sat in the backseat while I drove and my co-worker and I kept up a lively stream of conversation. As we approached point where I-10 turns north toward Phoenix, and where Yuma-bound travelers must exit onto I-8 to continue westward, I drove by in the left lane, oblivious.

The customer noticed, however. He became increasingly agitated as the exit approached, interrupting the shop talk in the front seat with ejaculations of "I ate there! I ate right there!" I looked around, saw nothing but desert, and decided to humor the old fellow. "That's nice," I said. "Did you have a picnic? 'Cuz I don't see any restaurants..."

It was only as we blew right by the exit that I realized he wasn't saying "I ate" but "I-8."

You see why I say these things can only happen to me? God put me in just the right place, at just the right time, to enable my stupidity to shine in all its glory.

Opa!

I live very close to a Greek restaurant called Ari's. The folks at Ari's have an interesting use for the Kasseri cheese that I used in yesterday's mousse-de-foie-de-canard sandwiches. They bread and deep-fry the cheese, soak it in brandy, set it on fire, then put it out with a squirt of lemon juice while shouting "Opa!" at the top of their lungs. I'm not sure what role the "Opa!" plays in the recipe. Perhaps it is some kind of magic. Knowledgeable customers join in the refrain.

I haven't actually tried Ari's Opa Cheese, but I've overheard the "Opa!" on several visits, and tonight I sat a couple tables away from where the ritual was being carried out. It looks good. I know the cheese tastes good. I'll have to give it a shot. However, even knowing that this was a possibility, I still chose a good old All-American cheeseburger (only with feta cheese) and fries (only I dipped them in tzatzike sauce). I washed it all down with a bottle of Fat Tire, served in a cold glass.

I love Greek food; I've had all kinds of it; but tonight I was in comfort food mode. Nevertheless, tzatzike sauce beats ketchup any day, and a little feta can lift any mood, even on a day of gray skies and snow flurries like today.

Before I sign out, I want to put in a plug for one of the Two Wonders of the Omelette World. It is the feta cheese and spinach omelette, which I first tasted at Fort Wayne's Omega restaurant. I don't know if Omega is still there (it opened while I was at the seminary in the late 1990's). It was a very convenient spot to study because it was open all night and it wasn't far from the sem. They made the thick, fluffy type of omelette that must have a bit of pancake batter added to the egg before it is whipped in a drink blender; the kind of omelette they serve at Waffle House and at catered brunches, that only gets folded once (in half) and stands up taller than anything else on the plate. With spinach for sweetness and feta for tartness it was just perfect - at least, as long as the cheese remained in its molten form. It did lose a bit of its charm as it cooled and the cheese congealed. And since huge plates of food were the only kind Omega served, there was a good chance this would happen unless you wolfed the omelette down right away.

The other Wonder of the Omelette World is the Blue Ribbon Special Omelette served at Tyler's Taste of Texas in Yuma, Arizona. The next time business or pleasure takes you along I-8, do stop at one of Tyler's two locations, where they serve a diabolically delicious decoction of egg, cheese, onion, pepper, and I think maybe ham, topped with slices of avocado and a dollop of sour cream, plus a side of salsa if you want to add that (do). Complete your order with the country-style potatoes (sliced and fried to perfection) and toasted sourdough bread, and you'll be their driveling slave every time you're in town.

Party for One

This week I planned, and tonight I carried out, a party for one - i.e., me. It was quite enjoyable. I had a late lunch / early dinner at a restaurant I have never visited before (some kind of noodle outfit that majors in cultural diversity, with dishes ranging from Pad Thai to Mediterranean and Italian cuisine - it was interesting at least).

Then I went to see a Sandra Bullock movie called Premonition, which was creepy and interesting and effective except for the bonehead ending. In the movie, Bullock goes through the unnerving and hard-to-describe-without-sounding-unintentionally-funny experience of living the seven pivotal days of her adult life out of sequence. She starts the week on Thursday, then wakes up the next morning on Monday, then jumps ahead to Saturday, then - if memory serves - Tuesday, Friday, the previous Sunday, and finally a climactic Wednesday in which all the missing pieces of the puzzle fall into place...but too late to really change anything. After which a weird little ending is tacked on, an ending that really left me cold. Considering the confusion and desperation that comes out of experiencing a major life-changing event in a before-after-before-after-before-after sequence, it's not surprising that Bullock's character went a little bit crazy. Un-crazying her just seemed to happen too easily, in my humble opinion.

I've been home for a while now. I've been leafing through some new books that arrived by mail order - maybe I'll discuss them here another time. Then I got the party really going by opening a bottle of hard cider, toasting some Italian-style bread (the sesame-seed variety) and adding various combinations of Greek sheep cheese (Kasseri), Brie, and duck-liver pate. I snuck a few bites of the brie yesterday, on rosemary-and-olive-oil crackers, and was disappointed by its lack of flavor - I guess I was expecting something stronger, more in the spirit of the gorgonzola-brie torte that someone always brings to the Symphony Chorus parties. Tonight, however, I discovered that the combination of full-bodied, toasted bread and duck pate brought out the best qualities of the brie, sort of a nutty, pleasantly musty flavor.

I don't always party by myself. Next week, for instance, I'm going to the Symphony Chorus "Hungarian" themed party, in honor of our upcoming performances of Bartok's Cantata Profana. I don't really know what to expect from a Hungarian-themed party, except probably some goulash, some paprikash, and some made-in-Hungary booze out of a bottle with a stag on it (remember, the Bartok piece is about nine young men being turned into stags). The chorus administrator sent out a memo speculating that the dessert might include "chocolate with a heavy dose of barangoltak or, hmm, csodaszarvasnyomra" - a joke best appreciated if you've been trying to sing Bartok's music while pronouncing those words, and many more like it. Apologies to anyone who knows Hungarian; I thought it was hilarious.

Another party I'm looking forward to - or rather, two parties that may almost run together into one - is the release of the 5th Harry Potter movie followed, within two weeks, by the 7th Harry Potter book. Some friends of mine who share my Harrymania are already making plans to line up for the big events, and (in the case of the book) to stay up late together, eating, drinking, reading, and discussing. Actually two of the people I plan to party with are staffers at Mugglenet, where I write a regular column and book reviews (under a very thin pseudonym); one of them is also in the Symphony Chorus. There's a funny story about how we recognized each other as fellow fans.

Last spring, I flew to New York and back with the Symphony Chorus, where we sang a program "presented by Carnegie Hall." One married couple in the chorus sat across the aisle from me on the return flight. It was the wife who emailed me the following week, through the Mugglenet feedback system. She had noticed my byline saying I lived in Missouri, and she wanted to know if I was anywhere near St. Louis. If so, would I be interested in attending one of her Harry Potter movie marathon parties, like a recent one attended by Amy Kaiser, who directs the Symphony Chorus? I replied that not only did I live in St. Louis, but I also knew exactly who Amy Kaiser was, because I was in the chorus and, in fact, I had sat right across the aisle from the questioner on the flight home from New York. Her reply illustrates her typical level of enthusiasm: "AAAAAACCCKKKK!!!! You are effing effing kidding!!!"

Observation 1: Not that my head has been turned, but it is nice to get a bit of starstruck recognition now and again. Observation 2: It's a ridiculously small world, after all! Observation 3: These will be fun people to party with.

Anatomy of a Fat, Stupid Jerk

I have long since confessed to being a fat, stupid jerk. I'm sure the last post is merely a confirmation of that. How did I get to be that way? Here are a few details of the process. I don't recommend subjecting your children to this, however.

I was born in a certain state of the U.S. which, on more than one occasion, someone has failed to guess in 50 tries or less. (It's not fair to go down the list in ABC order. You must think of the states off the top of your head.) I was the older of two sons born 16 months apart. My parents' marriage was falling apart before my brother was born.

I love, love, love my family with all my heart. I need to say that up front before I start dishing serious, bad-ass dirt on them.

My father has a way of making me laugh, and of making me feel loved, though once in a while I have also found him very intimidating. My mother has a completely different way of making me laugh (and I love making her laugh), and I'm sure she loves me, though there have been long periods when we weren't on good terms. I probably picked up a good deal of my argumentative streak from listening to them bicker and, more and more often, brawl.

Towards the end of their marriage they threw dignity to the wind and began propagandizing my brother and me, with the idea that we would side either with him or with her. At least my mother did this, though she incessantly complained that my father was the one doing it. It was really, really uncomfortable for a while, but I got used to it. This may explain why I don't seem to feel quite at home unless I'm at the center of a storm of controversy.

My father came from a large family of devastatingly clever people who, on their bad days, can sometimes strike other people as meanspirited. To borrow a phrase from the British, the Fish family excels at "taking the piss." When you're around them, the flow of biting wit is nonstop. It is a family of droll, stand-up comics (Dad even won a talent contest in stand-up comedy once); they are so naturally good at it, and have so much practice, that there is almost nothing you can say that won't suggest a punchline - one that flows out so naturally that it never occurs to them to stop. I find this same tendency in myself at times, especially when I am around other members of the Fish family, or when I am nervous and under pressure. Unfortunately, some of our jokes are pretty weird and, if you don't quite get them, you might get the idea that we are being unspeakably rude.

My mother came from a large family of Sicilian immigrants whose values and habits are so close to the "Corleone family" stereotype that, whenever my mother tells me who said what at the last family reunion, I invariably find myself humming a tune by Nino Rota under my breath. If I take after them at all, which I doubt, it may be in a certain emotional reserve (which outsiders may interpret as coldness) and a fondness for food (though that runs on both sides of the family).

My immediate family, on the other hand, was quite small. My father studied to be a pastor and I looked up to him with pride and admiration. My mother vacillated between being a submissive housewife and a feminist rebel, but mostly excelled at embarrassing me in front of my friends and playing the kind of emotional games that the mothers of serial killers play in the movies. I didn't spend much time with my other relatives, but with my mother's family I was the oldest and favorite grandson (until I grew up to have nothing in common with them), and with my father's family I was the smack-in-the-middle, least-regarded grandchild (until I let them down less than the other grandkids and wound up being sort of a favorite for a while). So I was a little spoiled and coddled, somewhat forced to fend for myself, often allowed to engage adults in conversation at their level, and always surrounded by people who enjoyed arguing for its own sake.

Then my parents split up. I was 11 years old. So I have tended to think of the divorce as a fault line running down the center of my childhood. Before the divorce the only thing remarkable about my family was that my father often made me proud and my mother sometimes embarrassed me. After the divorce I felt like the only kid in the world going through what I was going through. I partly got that impression because the small-town, Lutheran school I attended was full of kids whose parents were still married to each other. I was almost the only kid in the seventh or eighth grade who could talk about "my Mom's boyfriend." Another reason for the sense of isolation was that I belonged to two different households now, in two different states, and what with a bit of moving around (including a parental kidnapping caper I'll tell you about sometime) and a bit of paranoia (fallout from the aforementioned caper), I didn't have much involvement with other kids outside school and church. I developed different interests, different habits and values...and an inability to partake of "groupthink" that persists to this day.

Mostly I learned to think of myself as alone from the lesson my parents' divorce taught me: even within your immediately family, you can't rely on anyone but yourself. Especially when everyone is vying to be the one indispensible person in the household...and they'll make you the bad guy for a day if they think it will help them.

My stepfather and I didn't get along very well, as I think I have mentioned in another post. By the time I was 12, he was already skewering me with remarks like, "You always have to be right, don't you?" Well, I did have some pretty firm convictions by then, and I had thought them out for myself, and once you agreed to engage me in discussion about them I didn't let up until you enforced a change of topic with threats of bodily harm.

My stepfather actually didn't do any bodily harm. He perfected a range of punishments that hit me where it hurt: the intellect. Things like forbidding me to practice the piano for a week, or canceling my music lessons; making me sit idly in a room by myself with nothing to read; forcing me to read something odious and then to write an essay on it; etc. When I grew up beyond his ability to set punishments, things really got ugly. Hours went by when we said nothing below the top of our voices. Years went by when we didn't exchange a word. I don't know if I learned anything positive from this, except perhaps some basic survival skills - and a habit of losing my temper when pushed around in certain ways that remind me of my stepfather.

Meanwhile, I grew closer to my father and began seriously considering following in his footsteps. One of the best things that happened to our relationship resulted from my musical skills. For the last two and a half years of high school, while he served a dual parish, I played the organ at both of his churches and rode to services with Dad. I got to spend a lot more time with my father than many pastors' kids do. Which also meant observing a lot of preaching, teaching, arguing, and pastoral thinking-out-loud (which combines all of the above). In our discussions, my father was never high-handed the way my stepfather sometimes was. It helped me see the reason in what he was saying...even when we disagreed!

My poor stepmother didn't have the kind of upbringing my father and I did. She has never quite understood our magnetism for trouble and conflict. She's a saint for putting up with us. When I have argued with her it was like communicating with an alien life-form; her approach to "dispute resolution" is so completely different from the one I was brought up on. But we managed not to scratch each other's eyes out during my teen years, and we're good friends today. My stepmom's main impact on my fat-stupid-jerkitude is her good cooking.

In high school and college I surrounded myself with friends who enjoyed spirited discussions of political and religious issues; but I also got in trouble, now and then, for disturbing the peace. Clearly, not everyone likes the kind of animated, argumentative discourse I thrive on. I still haven't forgotten the time I was debating religion with my Catholic buddy on the school bus, when a girl took an apple out of her lunch bag and stuffed it into my open mouth. The really humiliating bit was when everyone applauded.

I think I have valuable things to contribute to the church and the world. I judge myself to be a good writer. I have been told that my sermons and Bible studies are effective; nothing is sweeter to my ears than "Pastor, the way you explained that, I finally understood it for the first time in years." When I talk to a group, unscripted, I get a jazzed-up feeling and the ideas flow freely. I have gotten good feedback on my conduct of liturgy, singing, keyboard playing, and general musicianship. I work well with kids, disabled people, the elderly, the sick, and the mentally ill.

But I also have some weaknesses. Chiefly, I am a big, fat, stupid slob and, at times, a total jerk. Heavy, malicious, and unrelenting opposition unnerves me. I lasted less than four years in the parish before I reached my threshold for stress, after which point I simply couldn't deal with church meetings any more. If the ministry were all about preaching, teaching, visiting, and administering the sacraments, plus weddings and funerals, study and prayer, I would be all over it. And in my opinion, it should be. But the reality also includes interminable meetings with people for whom Word and Sacrament isn't good enough, and for whom pastor is an employee (in my case, a grossly insubordinate one). It's a truth that does not bode well for the church: guys who are good at handling board meetings, but not much else, succeed in the ministry while guys who are good at everything else, but bad at the meetings, drop out.