Push the little red button

Oh my word—those totes cray-cray Kiwis are at it again. I’ve reported before on Air New Zealand’s attention-getting approach to airline safety spiels. From Richard Simmons to hobbits, they know how to make a video.  

Well, they are not resting on their laurels. No, we’ve moved from orcs to Men in Black:

I have to say that I’m not enthralled by this iteration; I prefer Middle Earth. But I do purely admire their gumption. And their video-making budget. Nothing cheap about these guys.

Statement of intent

As you know, I’ve only seen two [Someone] for President yard signs, here in the Valley They Call Silicon. For the election that doesn’t take place for another 14.5 months.

And here’s the only car so far with 2016 bumper stickers on it:

To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure what it means. Possibly either several Democrats in the household; or multiple personality disorder.

(It was a dual-Prius family, if that’s any indicator.)

Poli-sigh

For at least the last six months politicians have been on the campaign trail for the presidential election that won’t take place until November next year, so I guess it shouldn’t surprise me to find some political signs in yards of the Valley They Call Silicon.

I mean—we appear to be entering the Age of Perpetual Electioneering, which is one of the strongest arguments around for streaming media that allows you to shut that posturing out.

However, I’m a little surprised that, so far, these are the only two I’ve seen:

Do Republicans not want to shell out for signage until the field is narrowed down to single digits?

PULEEZE check it out

Apparently I’m not done harping on the Santa Clara County Library District’s (SCCLD) notion of user interface for their online catalog. Because their product managers and UX designers just keep on giving me harp material.

My days of browsing in library stacks are largely over, for a number of reasons. My typical pattern is to hear about a book, or read a review, go to a library’s website, and (if they have it) put it on hold. When it becomes available, I borrow it. Sometimes I read reviews at the time of publication, and if I don’t reserve the book then, I’ll forget about it by the time it hits the SCCLD’s shelves. It’s just easier.

(Yeah, I could make a list. But then I’d have to keep track of it somewhere. Not happening.)

I’ve already told you about their kludgy interface—with the application just hanging like it can’t decide whether to grant your impertinent request or not. They’ve apparently fixed that, because it now completes the action and gives you an acknowledgement message.

Well, except that the other day this is what I got:

I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong, and that error message is not particularly informative.

So when I went to the Cupertino branch to pick up some materials on hold, I asked the guy at the circulation desk what gives. And it turns out that library patrons are limited to a maximum of 12 holds at a time. (You can check out boatloads of books, but only have 12 holds in the system.) Only when I either cancel a hold or check out something that’s become available can I put another item on hold.

Well, okay, fine.

But why could they not word their error message to tell me that? How hard is it to say, “You’ve reached the maximum number of holds allowed”? Why cite some mysterious “problem”, and tell me to “see a librarian”? A librarian can’t help, unless s/he can override their system.

And, in fact, a librarian is a highly-educated person who should be dealing with matters a lot more human than looking up my account to try to decipher something that sloppy technocrats slapped up there because they couldn’t be bothered to program in useful messaging.

IMHO.

Gratitude Monday: Ice cubes and air conditioning

A while ago friends went on a trip to Budapest, Vienna and Munich. It was great following their journey, with photos of castles and meals. But something perhaps a little mundane struck me about the reportage.

On their return to Virginia, one posted to Facebook that she was happy to be back in the land of ice cubes and air conditioning.

To which I say, amen.

I’ve posted before about being grateful for the civic institutions that ensure that pretty much all of us in the United States (except in extraordinary circumstances like the wake of natural disasters) do not worry about water-borne diseases because we have potable water delivered to the insides of our homes.

The combination of indoor plumbing and taxpayer-supported water districts is not enjoyed by large parts of the world’s population. And I know this because I’ve lived in a place that did not.

I realize that not having air conditioning and ice cubes is more of a first-world problem than the potential for cholera or malaria in my fruit punch (which I used to make to disguise the taste and brown color of the water purification tablets). But I’ve also lived in a place where both are considered surplus to requirements, and at times I struggled with that.

I come from Los Angeles, where anything older than 20 years is marked for destruction and replacement. So structures that have been around for centuries are pretty impressive to me. But it’s one thing to admire them and another entirely to try to sleep through an August night in a fourth-floor London flat with no air stirring and nothing but drunken pub-goers outside to distract you from your thoughts.

Or a hotel room in Antwerp, or Bayeux, or anywhere in Europe, really.

I mean, it’s like those Euros are waiting another century or so to see if this air conditioning thing will outlive the fad stage.

(Also—what is it with window screens? Why do they not put screens on their windows so you can at least stay on the opposite side from flying insects? If you’re not going to invest in AC, put up a few screens, will you?)

A trip in July to Vienna was particularly wonder-provoking. I stayed at the K+K Hotel Palais, a four-star jobber. There was a window AC unit in the guest room, but nothing in any of the public places—lobby, breakfast room, bar, corridors. So I did no lollygagging anywhere there after breakfast time.

Also—you’ll perhaps recall the international legal-moral fracas about the return of a Klimt painting, “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer”? It was looted by the Nazis and kept by the Austrian government for decades after World War II, until they finally were forced to give it back to the remaining Bloch-Bauer heir in 2006. I was over the moon when Maria Altmann won her case against the Austrians because they’d been displaying the painting in the Belvedere Gallery (one of the Hapsburg palaces with which Vienna is littered)—and it was not air conditioned.

They had twelve thousand signs warning you to keep off the grass outside, and they threw a hissy fit about the size of my shoulder bag (which held three cameras, a journal and my AmEx card), but they had all those amazing works of art in the Baroque equivalent of a sauna. It seemed to me that for that reason alone, the entire contents of that palace should have been trucked somewhere with climate control.

As for ice cubes—how on earth are you supposed to make a decent cocktail without them? Or have iced tea? Or chill your bottle of Bolly?

The phenomenon was most interesting in the UK. I’d go into a pub, and if I wasn’t drinking bitter for some reason, I’d order a Diet Coke or a mineral water. The barman would twig to my accent and ask me slowly and carefully, “Do you want ice in that?”

When I’d allow as to how I would indeed like ice in my drink (which would have been in a mini-bottle sitting on a shelf, not in a refrigerator), he’d ceremoniously open an ice bucket, withdraw one or two cubes, and drop it/them into a glass. The liquid would go in and he’d consider it a job well done.

After a while I just ordered a [whatever] and a glass full of ice on the side. Those bottles of soda were still stingy, but at least I’d get my drink cold.

Maybe eight or ten years ago the Wall Street Journal ran a story about how commercial-grade ice-making machines were beginning to sell across the continent. Some American was breaking into the market big-time by selling Hoshizakis (I think).

But, if my friend’s heartfelt first words on landing at Dulles are any guide, there’s still room to grow in their use.

So, as I sit here in a third-floor flat in the Valley They Call Silicon, where temps outside are in the 90s, I am very grateful indeed that my 20-year-old AC unit is cranking away to make it 82 degrees inside, and I’m swilling glasses of iced tea, which I periodically top up from the automatic ice-maker/dispenser in the refrigerator.

Don't bust my crust, baby

Since I’ve got Keith Richards floating around here, I’ll turn a few thoughts to Life, his memoir, which I read a while ago.

Yes, it was written “with” a journalist (James Fox), so I don’t know how much of it is Richards and how much Fox. However, it was much more engaging than other celeb books, with less ego than Lisa Robinson’s name-dropping and product placement-fest (There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll), and none of the whining of Morrissey’s drama queendom (self-consciously titled just Autobiography). Richards certainly dishes dirt—but consider that in more than 50 years with The Rolling Stones how many hectares of the stuff he’s accumulated.

And—the guy does know how to tell a story.

Richards has very strong opinions on food, and advocates only eating when you feel an appetite, not at set times. It was a habit that drove his band mates a little cuckoo.

He also has useful thoughts on his comfort food, starting with the ever popular Bangers and Mash. (Which I have to say are utterly delish, in a good pub, with friends and a pint of bitter.)

“I’ve been cooking bangers all my life and I only just found out from this lady on TV that you have to put bangers in a cold pan. No preheating. Preheating agitates them, that’s why they’re called bangers. Very slowly, start them off cold. And then just be prepared to have a drink and wait. And it works. It doesn’t shrivel them up; they’re plump. It’s just a matter of patience. Cooking is a matter of patience. When I was cooking Goats Head Soup, I did it very slowly.”

And he gives us the recipe.

“My Recipe for Bangers and Mash

“First off, find a butcher who makes his sausages fresh.

“Fry up a mixture of onions and bacon and seasoning.

“Get the spuds on the boil with a dash of vinegar, some chopped onions and salt (seasoning to taste). Chuck in some peas with the spuds. (Throw in some chopped carrots too, if you like.) Now we’re talking.

“Now, you have a choice of grilling or broiling your bangers or frying. Throw them on low heat with the simmering bacon and onions (or in the cold pan, as the TV lady said, and add the onions and bacon in a bit) and let the fuckers rock gently, turning every few minutes.

“Mash yer spuds and whatever.

“Bangers are now fat free (as possible!).

“Gravy if desired.

“HP sauce, every man to his own.”

Another culinary gem is his recommendation for shepherd’s pie: just before you top the meat-and-veg mixture with the mashed potatoes, add a layer of chopped (raw) onions. This tip came from Big Joe Seabrook, one of Richards’s “minders”, “and he was damn right—it just gives you that extra je ne sais quoi.”

I’ve tried it and Seabrook and Richards are indeed damn right.

Richards is religious about his shepherd’s pie—one gets delivered before every performance, even though he doesn’t eat before a show. But no one—no one—is permitted to cut into the pie. “Nobody touches the shepherd’s pie until I’ve been in there. Don’t bust my crust, baby. It’s written into the contract. If you come into Keith Richards’s room and he’s got a shepherd’s pie on the warmer, bubbling away, if it’s still pristine, the only one that can bust the crust is me. Greedy motherfuckers, they’ll come in and just scoop up anything.”

This is a book that should have come with a CD, DVD or link to online playlist. I had to haul out some of my own and queue them up. Like this one:

But as for his Life, I really wonder how Richards remembered enough of it to produce more than 500 pages about it.

What would Oscar do?

For some reason, Keith Richards memes seem to be floating around teh Interwebz. Like:

And:

I sent them to a friend, who commented, “Yep, he got the face he deserves.”

That made me wonder if there isn’t somewhere, in an attic, say, a picture of Richards that every year looks a little younger, fresher and healthier? Because that might explain how it is that he’s still around, in any condition.

Just a thought.

Boooooooo

I was unsettled to drive down a street here in the Valley They Call Silicon and find that they’re already gearing up a Spirit Halloween store.

And then I took a walk around World Market and saw this display:

Not only do I find the notion of pumpkin spice-flavored beverages repulsive, but we’re barely into August, people! Give us a break!

A parting glass

You know—a personality as large as John Farrell’s deserves a couple of days of my posts. So here’s something for his memory.

A glass of Pimm’s Cup, made the way he liked it (with ginger ale instead of lemon-lime soda):

And a song suitable for an Irish wake:

Sláinte mhaith, John.

Gratitude Monday: The Tiger of San Pedro

I learned this weekend that the world has become considerably more pedestrian: I received word from a friend in LA that my friend John Farrell has died. Over the weekend I’ve been remembering him, and reveling in gratitude for our friendship.

I met John the summer before my junior year of college, at a gathering of an LA-based scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars—people who enjoy the stories of Sherlock Holmes. I was seated at a table with John, his younger brother Eddie and others who riffed off of one another like beatniks at a poetry slam. In a room populated by persons with greater or lesser grasps on reality (think a Trekkie convention, without the Vulcan ears or Klingon foreheads), John stood out.

Well, he did in any room. He was 6’3” and hovering on one side or the other of 300 lbs. Plus, he had a distinctive beard and moustache and dressed like an Irish squire—plenty of Harris tweeds. And he never went anywhere without a hat and a walking stick.

[John at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire and May Market]

John didn’t need a prestigious education—Harbor College and Long Beach State—because he was one of the most well-read people I’ve ever met. He was smart, observant and possessed of a formidable vocabulary. He told a great story, but also knew how to shut up and listen. He was not above embellishing a tale for effect, but he did not sling bullshit.

He was passionate about literature of all kinds, and well-known in Sherlockian circles for his scholarship. He was invested in the Baker Street Irregulars (a rare honor) with the title of The Tiger of San Pedro (taken from “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge”), which was an homage to his home town of San Pedro.

He also loved music and theatre. John took me to my first Gilbert and Sullivan performance, The Pirates of Penzance at the LA Music Center, and then to other productions indoors and out. He also gave me D’Oyly Carte recordings, which I’d probably never have found on my own. (I grew up in a house that wasn't big on the arts.)

(I once took a voice class, in which we had to prepare a song to perform for our fellow students. I asked my friend Margaret to come in to accompany me, and John turned the music for her while I sang “Poor wand’ring one”. I think he was tickled that I’d chosen that piece, and was very happy to have been invited to hear my one performance.)

I was working for the Pasadena Star-News for part of the time I knew John, and through that connection he started writing theatre and music reviews. They didn’t pay him, but he got reviewers’ seats (good ones) for the performances, which otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to afford. Frankly, this was work he was born to do: write about the arts.

He was utterly committed to writing accurate and thoughtful reviews, and to getting them into the next day’s edition. The incumbent reviewer, a guy named Thompson (whose actual job was in advertising or circulation, I forget which), would attend a performance, but not write the review until the next day, so it didn’t appear until two days after the show. John thought that was a disservice to the public. He’d sit through the performance, then go to the paper’s city room (no Internet then) and write at speed to make the midnight deadline. He considered it the duty of a reviewer to deliver the goods on time.

Which was kind of funny, when you consider that the single quality that drove me the farthest and fastest up the walls was his feckless, vague Irish notion of time. For John, “I’ll be there at 0930” meant “at some point during the daylight hours I’ll attempt to get myself sorted sufficient so that we can get going.”

In fairness, though, if there was an actual curtain time, we always made it.

(Thompson was hugely unhappy to discover that he was losing the free tickets to important performances. But not so unhappy as to commit to filing reviews for the next day.)

Through the Star-News, John (and sometimes I) attended events including Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills in Die Fledermaus in San Diego (Sherrill Milnes showed up to serenade us after the performance), Charlton Heston playing Sherlock Holmes in The Crucifer of Blood (at the Ahmanson in LA) and a whole string of performances at the Hollywood Bowl. (With the reviewers’ seats in the box section came free preferred parking, too, which was just like flying first class.)

John would put together the most wonderful picnics for those nights; he never stooped to slapping anything together or picking something up, he meticulously planned those meals. I still occasionally make a variation on his modified shrimp cocktail on avocados. In fact, that recipe is the only reason I have dill weed in my kitchen.

It was great when he was reviewing Sunday matinee performances at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium; we’d combine the concert with brunch at the Pasadena Hilton.

The concert I remember was Saint-Saëns’s Organ Concerto. Not because I happen to think that that piece makes you sit through a whole lot of meh to get to about 12 bars of spectacular (which I do), but because it turned out that we were seated next to a urologist I knew professionally, who was with a woman not his wife. (The wife was active in civic groups, so I’d conversed with her several times as she brought notices to the newsroom.) I didn’t know any conversation gambits that didn’t involve the two things about him that I was familiar with.

The Hilton staff must have groaned every time they saw “Farrell” on a brunch booking. We’d get there at 1000 when they opened, and drink a glass of bubbly before our first trip to the buffet. What they made on all those people who came in, drank half a glass of wine and basically had the $2.99 Denny’s eggs-bacon-and-toast breakfast for $10, they lost on us. We’d have to leave around noon to make curtain at the Civic. Otherwise, I imagine we’d still be there, drinking bubbly and eating melon, custom-made omelets and pastries.

As you may have gathered, John had quite a capacity for liquor. His most frequent order was a brandy and soda; entirely in keeping with that squirearchy persona. In the summer it might be gin and tonic, and he introduced me to the Pimms’ Cup. We shared the love of champagne. At one Sherlockian event he provided the only occasion where I’ve seen a jeroboam of Cordon Rouge on the hoof, and where I contributed substantially to its demise.

According to the obits, over the years John built a solid reputation around LA as a passionate supporter of the arts, respected for his honest reviews of operas, classical music and plays. I get the impression that he probably wasn’t making a living at it—he wasn’t a staff writer, but contributed to a number of publications—which saddens me; someone that knowledgeable, articulate and diligent should have been properly compensated.

This is what I mean by diligent: I don’t know why, but John apparently did not own a car. He traveled to concerts and shows by bus. If you have any experience with the public transportation system in LA County—and the distances involved—this should boggle your mind.

When I knew him he drove an MG A; you know—the English sports car that actually had wooden floorboards. Anyone who’s ever had one knows that MGs, Austins and Triumphs are not reliable transportation. This one was no exception, and John rarely had the money to maintain it properly, so every outing involving it was a complete crap shoot.

We once set out for a day in Oxnard (about 70 miles away), only to get a blowout on the Ventura Freeway while still in the San Fernando Valley. That was when I discovered that he didn’t have a spare tire. Well. For an hour or two we sat in a bar next to the service station where they were mounting a new tire, me drinking a margarita and he a G&T. I had a few things to say about the fecklessness of not having a spare…on an MG, and finished off with, “And furthermore, you drink that nasty stuff.”

The bartender couldn’t help but overhear, and she said that I should open my mind, because all gins weren’t the same. She personally liked Boodles. I think I tried Tanqueray, Boodles and Bombay. I still didn’t (and don’t) like it, but at least I learned something.

(We didn’t make it to Oxnard that day, but we did another time. John was never particularly bothered about that kind of thing.)

John was sui generis, but he was not a poseur—I’ve known plenty of those. He wasn’t doing any of it—the moustache and beard, the clothes, the intellectualism—to impress anyone. All of that was just what he was. He was completely aware that, with his size, he didn’t meet 1980s standards of appearance. On one level that might have bothered him, but on another I think he just didn't much care that he didn't fit into others' expectations.

One rather amazing thing about John: he never made derogatory remarks about the 99.3% of the world who did not possess his intellectual wattage. (Well, maybe politicians, but I don't recall any specific example.) And I never once heard him make an ad hominem attack on anyone. One time there was a snafu at the Hollywood Bowl about the preferred parking; the attendant was adamant that the name Farrell was not on the list. John was frustrated but he did not say one snappy thing to the guy with the clipboard. I thought about that this weekend as I reviewed my several calls with Comcast since Thursday.

He showed up to more than one dress-up party in an outfit he’d bought from a Hollywood costume house: pink knee breeches, waistcoat and embroidered jacket worn by one of the characters in The Kissing Bandit. It takes a special kind of man of any size to do that.

[John at a party with someone who came as a kind of low-rent Evita]

(Actually, he was once driving home from a Sherlockian event in downtown LA to which he’d worn this, and his car broke down on the Harbor Freeway. Can you imagine the Highway Patrol pulling up and finding this guy in this outfit behind the wheel? And discovering that he was sober? Well, this is LA, so it probably happens all the time.)

He did what he wanted to do—write about the arts—even though it came with a price tag that included lack of financial security. I think that’s integrity, and dedication. You had to take him the way he came.

This was not always easy to do. I’d lose patience with him because I couldn’t count on him to show up on time, or trust that the car was mechanically sound, or that he wouldn’t overindulge on the drink. There was one party where he drank so much mescal that he became essentially legless. Four of us couldn’t get him into the back seat of the car, so we called his father, who brought a pickup truck, which thankfully we could manage. John spent the rest of the night in the back of the truck. He was apologetic the next morning, but as you might imagine, I was pissed off.

As far as I know, he never screwed up a writing assignment—he was always on time, alert, taking notes and filing the review on deadline.

He was always working—in the month before his death in May, I counted more than ten reviews for just one publication (the Long Beach Press-Telegram), and he wrote for many. In fact, the friend with whom he was staying at the time found him dead at his computer, where he’d been in the midst of writing. I believe he’d have pronounced that as good a way of going as any.

Back in the 80s, one of the performances we went to was some 20^th Century opera that had (I think) socialist themes and a bunch of pineapples that featured in the closing act. For the life of me cannot think what that opera was. Sadly, the only person I could have called to ask, “what 20^th Century opera that no one’s ever heard of was staged at the Chandler Pavilion in the 1980s? It ended with a bunch of very symbolic pineapples?” was John.

He’d have known the opera, the composer, relevant historical background, other well-known productions and how he’d reviewed this one. That was what he lived for.

John Farrell died on 7 May 2015, at a friend’s home in Sherman Oaks, California. He was 63. I’m one of the scores of people whose lives he enriched, and I’m deeply grateful for that.

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