Glass Shallot by Adam Baer | Adambaer.com

the information: verizon wireless on weeds

I had a pleasure-anxiety moment this morning during the very important KCRW pledge drive--the CD package I picked from Mssr. Harcourt’s latest and greatest, if you'd like to know, includes Lily Allen, Brazilian Girls, the kickass LA band Ozomatli, and the Sounds Eclectic Covers Project. Moving on, I don't know if it was Nic's consummate wit or the music I had heard on producer Ralph Sall's Weeds soundtrack (which features Nellie McKay’s amazingly catchy song “David”—I know this because I’m writing a story about TV soundtracks). But something KCRW-related was telling me to take some action on issues I just leave on the mental shelf. Listening to the station always does this to me--it makes me happy but introspective at once in a way that no other NPR member station ever has.  It was at this moment that I realized my life is at least 7% less great at the moment because I haven’t seen a new Weeds episode in a long time. I was in my car, and wondered aloud: When is the show returning? And for some reason, I really needed an answer to this question. Right away. This rarely happens to me--I'm not crazy. But for once, I wanted to feel officially connected to something that had made me feel connected to it. I had also just sent my hard-earned dollars to a station that provides music that picks me up. Why couldn't I help a new Weeds season come about sooner--or at least know when it's set to debut?  Could I send some money to Showtime for an inside track on show info and related content? (OH wait, I already do.) Could I buy my way in? Why couldn't I know this immediately--as immediately as I used my Verizon cellphone, Amex card, and Adam Baer voicebox to tell the KCRW pledge-taker that I really wanted to give him money, and keep the hits coming. That good pop culture means something to me. So I did the first thing I could think of, and I'll share it with you even if it sounds stupid. I picked up my cellphone and called information. Yes, I know that information calls cost a lot—especially with Verizon Wireless—but, on another completely different issue, I was beginning to feel as if my beloved cellular carrier was really making my life more than 7% worse than it used to be--nevermind the missed messages and bad international calling rates, Verizon never has the right phone for me (and I'm not even talking about the iPhone). So I had to at least see if their information people could give me the facts I needed. Iwas optimistic if moronic.

The following is the transcript of my conversation with the operator (believe it or not, it was an actual conversation):

“City and state please.”

“Agrestic, California.”

“City and state please?”

“Agrestic, California.”

“What city?”

“Agrestic.”

“Agrestic?”

“Agrestic.”

“We don’t have that city in our database.”

“Have you ever seen the show Weeds?”

“Ok.”

“Ok?

“Well, I’ve heard of it, but I’m not sure I’ve seen more than an episode.”

“Well, it’s pretty good.”

“Ok.”

“So I need to know when the show’s coming back on the air.”

“What about your city and state?”

“What about them?”

“What, is that show on HBO?”

“Showtime, actually.”

“I don’t know, I don’t get cable.”

“I really need this information. So I called information. Can you give me this information?”

“Ok.”

“So can you tell me when Weeds is coming back?”

“I wish I could.”

"But you just said Ok."

"I didn't know what else to say. I wish I could tell you when your show is on."

 

“I wish you could too.”

“Ok.”

“Ok.”

"Ok."

“You’re not angry, are you?” [Me, just in case you lost track.]

“Ummmm, no. I just can only give you phone numbers and addresses.”

“I hate Verizon Wireless, but I feel trapped in their web by their family and friends plan. Everyone I know has it. And I may have made them switch to it!”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir.”

“I am, too. Hey, you should watch Weeds.”

“I think I’ll give it a try.”

“Ok.”

“Thank you.”

"Thank you."

pitching: our leaky tent

A little birdie tells me that an awesome new anthology of writing edited by Shallot supporter and writer extraordinare Bonnie Tsui will make its way into stores this April. The book is called "A Leaky Tent is a Piece of Paradise," and it will feature an essay by yours truly on tennis courts, their identities as built landscapes, and how they can serve as stages for people to play out social dramas. Want more info?

Here's the catchy description:

Warning: This is not your parents' nature writing! A distinctly contemporary take on the genre, "A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise" features original essays by twenty gifted writers, all 30 and under, whose strong and diverse voices redefine nature writing for the 21st century.  Editor Bonnie Tsui's cast of accomplished contributors wrestle with integrating nature into daily life while putting down roots—often in urban environments. Included here are The New Yorker's Andrea Walker on learning to hunt with her father; noted fishing author and painter James Prosek on the mythology and mystery of eels; writer Hugh Ryan on being taught how to pitch a tent by a six-foot-tall drag queen at a Radical Faeries camp in Tennessee. Other stories are unusual in subject, like Christine DeLucia's meditation on life cycles in Massachusetts's Mount Auburn Cemetery, and Adam Baer's argument that the outdoor tennis court -- carefully constructed as it is in a natural surround -- is the built environment in which is he is allowed to be primeval and, at last, to grow into a man. Theirs and the other writings in this collection illuminate questions about self and place, belonging and rootlessness, and the meeting of created and natural landscapes. Brimming with insight and humor, "A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise" rewards us with new perspectives on personal identity in relation to nature, and on the impact of landscape and place on our lives.

Want more? How about an excerpt from my piece? Oh, fine, you convinced me.

A tennis court isn’t nature dressed up but nature objectified, manipulated, pounded even by bulldozers and will. .... A tennis court, explicitly manufactured—grass courts don’t look like grass, chain-link fences offer views of what's outside—feels open and closed. You can often see a tennis court's limits and setting at once. It’s an honest construct...A tennis court placed in the outdoors is as much a way to think about your place in the world as it is a space to think about your place in the service box. ...In the end, a tennis court is a metaphor for humankind’s progress and the limits of that progress: it’s a product of the industrial, and yet it’s most useful to people interested in accessing their primal selves... For all of their civility, tennis courts are revelatory, confessional spaces that, in their uncommonly organized nature, expose contradictory elements, forcing powers to struggle with one another or vibrate in rhythm, or both. Tennis courts are like music staffs. Systematic but open to invention, they’re breeding grounds for anomie and communion altars at once—natural imaging centers where you can’t help but submit to a CAT-scan of your spirit.

I've obviously left out all the juicy stuff: the blood and guts, the fights, the sex scenes. Pre-order the whole book for this story and a whole lot more from Bonnie's impressive karass!

shallot on parade, episode 43

I just learned from the cool people at Six Apart/Typepad that my blog is one of their “featured” sites today. Coolness. I really should say as someone who assesses technology quite frequently that this is an excellent blog application. I've said it before to friends, but what the hell, why not render it officially Shallot-approved on the day of our big, global blog-communion?
Welcome, new readers. Now, you may be curious about this site's purpose and goals.  You’re right, you over there in the corner of your St. Louis loft: I don’t chronicle my experiences as a club bouncer or write only on sustainable seafood. My blog isn’t a celebrity or media gossipIST, nor is it a localized cityIST or entertainment verbER. It’s hard to categorize my blog. I call my posts cultural shards, but they’re also personal shards. I rarely write or speak about the concept of the Glass Shallot because I’m the kind of writer who feels we really shouldn’t have to use language to explain everything. Think about it, and maybe it will begin to mean something to you, or maybe you’ll drift off into a thought about how the shmucky guitar player who lives next to you resembles John C. Reilly on barbituates. So far, this site has become nothing more than it was from the start: a personal interests blog run by a working writer--one who covers a lot of different topics as well as writes creatively. You sometimes get my articles, sometimes my thoughts on the news or other articles. Sometimes my thoughts on crackhead rockstar wannabes. Or lobstermen. Or health politics. Or a fictional humor casual. You will also sometimes get someone else’s thoughts on something curious. You could call these posts Web vagaries; I rather like that term, had just spoken about it the other day with a friend who reads Shakespeare the way I read op-ed columns. Would that it were the other way around: that’s one of my goals for the year. That and hearing someone laugh at a line in my new film. The latter seems more plausible at the moment. And I’ve never even slept with Harvey Weinstein--high five! But above all, I’d like you to notice that as hard as the Shallot may be to crack, it’s subtly sweet underneath whatever onion-y sharpness you may notice on its nose. At least that’s what the cook intends. Let's mix metaphors and move on! Click on the post-continuation to read Typepad's very kind words.

returning thoughts

Heaving breasts, the color rosa, the pig-centric kitchen prowess of Mario Batali (if he were the world's *second* most gorgeous woman): The most striking aspect of Pedro Almodovar's Raimunda in “Volver”--other than her physical exquisiteness-- is that she is a person—not just a woman—who moves forward, no questions asked. Forget returning: Raimunda is progressing.

Much has been written about Almodovar and his love for women—I personally enjoy this proclivity of his as I do his fascination with the dead. And much has been made of his problem with men (see Anthony Lane; note: usually love his reviews, this one not so much). But gender arguments aside, Almodovar has written a character that can weather insanity-inducing winds, rape, incest, worse, loss, and then the ultimate shock: seeing it happen to her daughter. Raimunda may live in a land that only Almodovar could create, but she is very much of our time and place. It seems fitting that the people I gel with best now are the pro-active, the surviving, the people who get things done and take care of even the dirtiest business. The ones who forge on despite petty, negative obstacle-characters or terrifying news. Avoid confrontation? You’re not one of these people. Leave things unsaid, conflicts unresolved, people you love on hold? You, too, don’t apply. You don't treasure life, and you'll be remembered that way. This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you--or that I'm someone who should even say such a thing--only that I know I loved Volver because I am psychologically attracted to those men and women who are more Raimunda-like than those who aren't. The reasons are personal, but my point here is to say that Almodovar has--yes, as many critics have written--created yet another fiction that only he could dream up, in a place that only could exist in his head,  but that his is also the best fiction: the type that feels real, of this earth. Raimunda is, underneath it all, a brave life-lover who only wants her serving of it with all the trimmings, and that's what Volver's about. Our new reality. Ghosts, fucking, cancer, and insanity included. (If only Clive Owen's character in "Children of Men" could have met her when their fates crossed in filmland. Maybe at an awards show...)

wincing the voice away

Wow, it's sad that Robert Christgau received the fate he did at the Village Voice (via Alex Ross). But look what's happening at Rolling Stone since that crazy day: This is the most in-depth review of the Shins I've ever seen (hell, it even mentions indie-prog's obsession with imitating basic Bach and Debussy!). And it's dead-on. So what if the trippy rain droplets and multi-tracked guitar pitch bends of "Red Rabbits" from the band's new "Wincing the Night Away" render me hopelessly winsome in a way the epic B-Minor Mass never could. Oh, inverted taste...

milking the truth

Not long ago, I communicated with Andrew Weill, M.D., the author of "Spontaneous Healing" and other books devoted to integrative and complementary medicine (in which it's OK to blend alternative medicine and nutritional strategies with Western approaches). After speaking with Dr. Weill for my story, our conversation downshifted in my reasons for writing it, which include a chronic auto-immune disease in the wake of cancer, among other things. My prescription became: go see an "integrative oncologist" in San Francisco--one brilliant and uncommonly kind Donald Abrams at USCF's Osher Center--which I did.

Abrams was the right choice--I'm cancer-free now, but don't want a relapse, or a secondary cancer--and he had trained with Weill, and had lots of nutritional and herbal advice for me--among prescribing some Western strategies and a Chinese medical consult. The one thing both world-famous doctors advocate, however, is: CUT OUT DAIRY. The oncologist told me something I had heard for years: that no human, short of some people in Scandanavia, have the genetic makeup to digest it naturally--which is why it causes so many digestive problems. The other reason? It induces inflammation, if only because it's animal protein, and can cause cancer, specifically lymphoma and leukemia, my friends from the past.

Now, comes Shallot friend and colleague Hannah Wallace to the cause with a giant, amazing, and deep Salon article about the disease-curing benefits and bacterial dangers of raw milk, as well as the subcultures of raw-milk drinkers who will do anything to step around the government to get it. What's going on here? Hannah writes:

"Many people come to raw milk as a last resort; one man I spoke to for this article had terrible asthma, one woman had debilitating arthritis, and another had osteoporosis (which pasteurized milk hadn't improved) -- and all saw complete reversals of their diseases after a few months of drinking it. Their stories were persuasive, but in an age where E. coli is turning up at Taco Bell and even in organic spinach, I wondered: Is it really safe to drink unpasteurized milk?"

Not only that, but what about my doctors' cautionary words? Why are we still obsessed with udder liquid when so many alternatives abound? I posit biological psychology. The milk habit is hard for a civilization to break when it's the first food--the first suggested "healing food"--offered to us. Of course it's healing diseases in a small subsection of the population. So's love and, for that matter, God.

UPDATE: Hannah writes to correct me about milk causing cancer. She says:

"That's true of pasteurized milk, honey, not raw milk.  SO many people digest raw milk with no problem whatsoever.  If you need any proof that our ancestors drank rawmilk, I'll send you "The Untold Story of Milk," by Ron Schmidt.  Raw milk contains lactobaccillus, which means that even those who are lactose intolerant (i.e. can't digest pasteurized milk)  can drink it with no gas or bloating. And it has CLA (grass fed milk does) that FIGHTS cancer and arthritis (which is inflammation) as well as asthma and eczema."

LAST UPDATE: My integrative oncologist advises me to Google "milk and cancer" and then visit milksucks.com. He advises erring on the side of caution: He just presented at the milk and prostate cancer link--references to milk and lymphoma exist in the Integrative Cancer Therapies tumor-board article on refractory lymphoma. So those of you with PubMed, or some medical studies database, as well as the ability to stomach all this jargon, get on there and have a read. Then send me hate mail for ruining your morning.

What I've learned: Milk is way hotter a topic than I ever thought. Next week: A celebrity deathmatch on, yes, you guessed it, TEA.

 

new york's identity--or increasing lack thereof--gets gopnik-ed

This, among other reasons, is why I left my hometown for L.A. [via Kottke.org]

lindsay's wonderland in the sky

I'm not always one for celebrity gossip--at least not at the pace it's delivered in US Weekly--but I couldn't help but laugh when I learned that Lindsay Lohan had checked herself into rehab at the Wonderland Center in Laurel Canyon. It's the location that's ironic. Laurel Canyon, for all its rustic beauty, was the historic home of drug-gorging rockers--from Mama Cass to Joni Mitchell and Jim Morrison--among other good-doers, and remains an industry weed-and-beer-and-coke-and-acid-and-God-knows-what-else node. I, personally, love the area--dig hitting the open architectural homes and attending New Year's parties in B-celebrity treehouses while the stilts shake, the Imogen Heap howls, and the Porsches zoom up the hill. Still, anyone who's ever hung--or lived--near Wonderland Ave. knows the hallowed ground has powers, and they ain't healing vibes.  From the Wonderland Center's own Web site: "In 1981, Wonderland Avenue was the scene of a drug related murder; the suspects porn star John Holmes and notorious drug dealer Eddie Nash influenced the stories for the movies Wonderland and Boogie Nights." Talk about kick-ass rehab-center marketing!

saving ruby tuesday

In "Children of Men," the one recent futuristic flick I actually thought quite highly of, John Tavener's high-pitched vocal wails blend with Messianesque jazz riffs from Radiohead's Amnesiac. But it's the unusual cover of Ruby Tuesday that regularly streams throughout the film that caught my ears. Who did it? The answer is Franco Battiato, an Italian Renaissance man (musician, composer, filmmaker, painter) born in 1945. I love how a musician unknown to Americans--one who refuses to compose in one genre, or even pursue just one avenue of the arts, praising Stockhausen and composing prog rock at once--is the mystery singer of the beautifully chosen Stones's anthem. Hearing Mick's words--"She would never say where she came from, yesterday don't matter if it's gone, etc."--sounded all the more appropos of Alfonso Cuaron's rootless and frighteningly believable tale in which the world goes infertile, ethnic cleansing reigns as political borders dissolve, and out of the blue, one young woman becomes pregnant. So much for staying away from the apocalyptic cinema, huh? Do we have a convert over in Shallotville? At the very least, I've got a fever, and the prescription is more Battiato.

ces: oh-so-substantive

Some cultural journalist, I'm not sure who, decided to secretly troll the halls of the urban hell that is the Consumer Electronics Show looking both for bizarre instances of what Borat may call "Technology for Make Benefit Americana" (see above) and, what the hell?, some gadgets. This is what he returned with, at least concerning the latter subject: The Best of CES, Men.style.com.