Codeine blues

Well, hmm. The FDA has issued a warning to doctors to exercise caution in prescribing codeine as a pain killer to kids.

Now, as I have no offspring in the “children” age group, this isn’t something I have to directly worry about.

But back in the day when I was a kid, MDs must have been handing the stuff out like Pez, at least with respect to cough syrup. And I do recall (even all the way back into the last century) that cough syrup with codeine was the only thing that could kill my coughs, which I had with some regularity.

As I grew up, the frequency diminished but the severity didn’t. If I don’t nip an upper respiratory problem in the first couple of days, I’m in for a painful time, and so are the people around me.

Let me just say that when I cough, everyone in the office with me winces.

A few years ago I had one of these episodes and called my primary care office to get a prescription for codeine-infused cough meds. The nurse practitioner on the phone admonished me to try various OTC remedies before I resorted to the controlled substance, because “we don’t like to prescribe codeine.”

This pissed me off no end; you'd have thought that as a responsible adult with deep knowledge of my own medical history, I'd have got some respect from the broad. I did buy the OTC crap, with the expected results, and two days later I called her back and coughed down the phone at her. I got the script.

So I hope that the medical profession doesn’t go mindless on this ban. There are probably little ones who have the same capacity for coughing up their lungs that I do, and they really need the stuff.

Thank yew so much!

You’ll have to pardon me while I’m in mourning. The Closer has ended its seven-season run on TNT and I don’t know what I’m going to do for intelligent plot lines, realistic characters (flaws and all) and the use of junk food as panacea for all the slings and arrows of outrageous LA.

If you’re unfamiliar with the series…have you been living in a cave? It’s about Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (played by Kyra Sedgwick), an Atlanta native, brought in to turn around a dysfunctional high-priority crimes division of the LAPD and close investigations by eliciting confessions from the perps.

Brenda Leigh had me at the first episode—which included everyone in her unit requesting transfers, and ended with her taking comfort in a Ding-Dong in the privacy of her hotel room. Let me just say—that was as close to cheap chocolate-like-food-product porn as you’re going to get on basic cable.

But there was a whole lot more to Brenda Leigh than a sugar addiction. Smart, tough, sometimes missing the mark, yet always focused on catching the killer. In one of the early episodes she was surprised at a crime scene by an attacker. When she finally managed to get out her service weapon and had the suspect under control, her hand holding the pistol just shook uncontrollably.

She didn’t have an easy time with her team, either. As you know, cops are not shrinking violets. Imagine the reaction if the detectives focused on the worst crimes of the city suddenly discover their new commander is from outside the LAPD, has the XX chromosome configuration and tawks lak theis. It doesn’t help that she looked like she got her clothes from the Piggly-Wiggly. But over the course of the first season, she won them over because, while they might be chauvinists, they recognized the genuine article. Eventually.

Watching their faces as they started to realize her gifts was really television at its best.

The writers gave the actors great lines, too. At her very first crime scene, when one of the officers in place tells her she doesn’t need to be a bitch about it, she replies, “If I liked being called a bitch to my face, detective, I’d still be married.”

Another time, watching Detective Sánchez interviewing a suspect who responded, “Abogado”, Brenda Leigh screwed up her face and asked, “Did he say avocado?”

There’s another exchange, between Brenda Leigh and Lieutenant Flynn, about how Germany determines nationality by blood, not by birth or residency; but you have to watch that to fully appreciate it.

Brenda Leigh was dynamite when it came to solving crimes, but she often missed the boat in reading personal relationships, and that was another endearing quality. In the end, it was this single-mindedness that caused her to lose two opportunities, with catastrophic consequences, one with a family member and the other with a colleague.

The producers of The Closer are continuing the franchise with Major Crimes—most of Brenda Leigh’s team with Mary McDonnell taking command as Captain Sharon Raydor (who carries baggage, as she lead several Internal Affairs investigations). I’m sure it’ll be fine, but it just won’t be Brenda Leigh.

’Scuse me, I must go find a Moon Pie and an RC Cola. Ahm’na miss yew, Brenda Leigh!

Bon anniversaire, Julia

Julia Child was born 100 years ago today, and although she died eight years ago, her legacy is living on in kitchens (home and professional) all across America.

Google honors her today with its doodle:

Child opened our eyes and minds and taste buds and hearts to much more than French cooking. She passed on the sheer joy that can come from a meal of fresh, seasonal ingredients, prepared with respect and shared with friends.

“You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces—just good food from fresh ingredients.”

Her seminal first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, basically roused Americans from the post-war somnolence of convenience foods and invited us all to venture out into new regions of cookery because we’d be well rewarded.

Her culinary credo was pretty much “de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace”; but she backed it up with meticulous investigation into how things work, constant practice and unquenchable curiosity. She gave us permission to experiment, to fail and (above all) to enjoy.

“Learn how to cook—try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all, have fun.”

The first Julia Child recipe I ever attempted was her “Selle d’Agneau Rôtie” (roast saddle of lamb). The butchers at the upscale food market in downtown Durham, N.C., had photocopies of the pages from Mastering Volume II to hand out. They assured me that the saddle was an amazing cut and that Child’s take on it was the way to go.

God bless ‘em—they were right. The meat cost a freaking fortune, but Julia was right there beside me and the dinner was stunning.

(I didn’t realize until I recently started reading a biography of Child that I had a somewhat close connection with her. I of course knew that she came from Pasadena (as do I), but it turns out that one of her childhood houses was smack behind the one where I grew up, in the southern end of town. Well, blow me: I used to peer into that back yard when trimming the ivy. Why is it that was one of the few back yards I didn't invade and explore? And the house where she grew up was around the corner. Way before my time, of course, but still.)

Mastering and her French Chef TV series for PBS opened that saddle-of-lamb world to a lot of people. I’m frankly not wild about the part of that world includes the Food Network and all its pompous self-involved twits; but you have to take the good with the bad—and know how to tell the difference.

It wasn’t all haute cuisine for Child. She enjoyed burgers from In ‘n Out, and McDonald’s French fries—until they switched from cooking them in lard to vegetable oil on account of the nutrition Gestapo.

“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.”

She liked what she liked and didn’t apologize to anyone for it. She lived her life that way, too.

On this her 100^th birthday, I hope you are taking time to enjoy a lovely meal (perhaps including one of her 100 favorite recipes) and spare a minute for Julia Child.

Bon appétit! Really.

Olympic ring

As a final (I hope) salute to the Olympic Games 2012, I give you a series of infographics produced by artist Gustavo Sousa:

It has nothing to do with the actual Games, really. Sousa uses the Olympic rings (can I say that without IOC or LOCOG siccing their lawyers on me) as a framework for giving statistics on social issues like global population, obesity, carbon dioxide emissions and Coca-Cola consumption.

He purposely left out a key, so you’d have to ponder for yourself which ring represents which continent; but here’s a spoiler: yellow = Africa, red = Americas, blue = Oceana, black = Europe, green = Asia.

Run through it a few times. It’s really quite thought-provoking.

Olympic delay

I celebrated the XXX Olympiad last week by watching Olympia, the iconic Leni Riefenstahl film of the 1936 Games in Berlin.

Well, look—it had better production values and the delay in coverage was only somewhat greater than what NBC has been doing for the past couple of weeks. (Plus: no fatuous commentary or commercials.)

You know all about Jesse Owens poking holes in Nazi super race theories, but several things struck me about the events that Riefenstahl presented.

Diving standards have changed in the intervening 76 years: many of the divers went into the water feet first, and they hardly did more than one somersault or twist before hitting the water. They seemed almost leisurely. Plus—way more splash when they struck than is allowed now.  Today, you’d better barely make a ripple, or you’re outta the pool.

Athletic clothes were considerably lower tech than what you find these days. Runners, vaulters, jumpers, putters and throwers frequently wore what we’d call warm-up gear (sweatshirts and pants) to compete. And the shoes—my dear, the shoes! Everything these men and women accomplished seemed to be in spite of their apparel.

The Fosbury Flop may have expanded the capabilities of high jumpers, but I have to say it’s not nearly as lovely to watch as the old straddle method. I swear that, on clearing the bar, some of the jumpers kicked the air to propel themselves out and down. You can’t do that when you’re sailing backward over the thing.

And when watching both the high jumpers and the pole vaulters, the engagement with the athletes was so intense that I found myself gearing up to will them over the bar—every one of them—and groaned in disappointment when anyone knocked it down.

Seemed like all the equestrian competitors were military—cavalry officers. That is so 1936.

Forty-nine nations competed in that Olympiad—so the parade of athletes went a lot faster than the one a couple of weeks ago. And the athletes marched sharpish, all of them; they didn’t swarm about like weirdly-dressed paramecia equipped with photographic devices. Most of them gave the Nazi salute. Frankly, it was bizarre to see the Canadians doing it. The Brits did not.

The only nations from the entire continent of Africa were South Africa, part of the British Empire, and Egypt, also under British rule. Asia was represented by India (likewise British), Afghanistan, Philippines, Japan and China.

But here’s the one thing that kind of freaked me out: the marathon. Riefenstahl devoted more than ten minutes to that ultimate Olympic event and the first thing that struck me was the lack of Africans. I’m so used to seeing Kenyans and Ethiopians dominating distance running—that’s when I discovered that the only blacks appearing in 1936 mostly came from the US. And they seem to have concentrated on the sprint events.

But then I though it very odd that a couple of runners from the Japanese team were out front from the beginning. The Argentinian winner from the 1932 Olympics took the lead and held it; but he was trailed pretty closely by the two from Japan and a Brit.

Well, it was an incredibly exciting race—I mean, there is something about the punishment of the long-distance runner that you have to admire. These days, you wouldn’t see Olympic marathoners stopping for water, or walking for stretches, but you can still see these athletes from 76 years ago focused on what their bodies have to give in order to take the next stride, and the next.

The Argentine dropped out at mile 19 and the race belonged to “Son Kitei”, Ernest Harper and “Nan Shoryu”. And that’s how they finished.

In 1936 the winning athletes got laurel crowns, and Son was also given a small oak tree in a pot, which he held in front of his uniform, while the national anthem of Japan was played.

I looked at the names on the board and thought to myself, “Self—‘Son’ just does not sound Japanese to me. What’s up with that?”

And that’s where I discovered the real drama of that race.

Son Kitei and Nan Shoryu were Koreans; real names Sohn Kee-chung and Nam Sung-yong, respectively. Korea had been under Japanese occupation since 1910, and the marathoners were forced to represent their imperial overlords under the required Japanese names.

Son was able to obscure the Japanese flag on the front of his uniform with that little oak tree; Nam had no such protection. But both had to endure listening to the Japanese national anthem, and you can see their shame in the way they hold their heads in the photo. Their extraordinary achievement was subverted to the glorification of their oppressors. What a perversion of the Olympic ideal.

And no one knew, because the Koreans’ translators were Japanese and they refused to translate any of their disclaimers.

(If you want to destroy a culture, first go after the language. Outlaw the indigenous speech, require that your language only be used. Make people take names in your language; destroy native news media; substitute your place names for theirs. The Japanese did that in Korea; the English did it in Ireland.)

The record books now show Sohn and Nam with asterisks next to their names, recognizing their nationality, but I had no clue about it until I watched Riefenstahl’s remarkable film—which covered all sorts of events, including ones the Germans tanked at.

If you can find a copy, I recommend it. Always something to learn, always something to appreciate, always something to admire.

Which are Olympic ideals.