Behold: Fanny the Roborat.

Chicago.

Hooray! Fanatical Apathy got an upgrade! Or a facelift. Well, it's something snazzy-looking.

Best of all? Adam Felber's added in a few other bloggers, including Mo Rocca and Fanny Roborat. Fanny would be the official FA mascot, as inspired by this story of science gone mad. Seriously. This is like some kind of B-movie setup. The next step, I think, involves massive amounts of radioactivity¹, resulting in giant monster robot rats that destroy much of downtown Akron before pseudoscience saves the day. Or possibly Godzilla. He hasn't been around much lately, though.

And speaking of city-smashing excitement, I finally got around to seeing The Incredibles this past weekend. It's a shame Brad Bird hasn't directed more throughout his career - even his stint on "The Simpsons" was primarily as a creative consultant - because he does such wonderful work. Moreso than the previous Pixar features, this felt like a complete film.

Not that the others² weren't wonderful, but they felt like kids' movies brought up to a level of sophistication where adults could enjoy it. The Incredibles felt more like a movie intended for adults, but which happened to be just fine for kids. Issues that wouldn't mean much to young'uns - like marital infidelity - are touched on in more subtle ways that zip over their little heads. And the usual superhero clichés were tweaked or contrasted so wonderfully with the mundanity of real life, and it was genuinely a relief from the big, mindless action flicks.

Among the points that cheered me the most:

• The juxtaposition of the super and the mundane. Bob's and Helen's problems require the same sort of gentle relationship maintenance as anyone else, regardless of their crime-fighting superpowers. Bob's put on a lot of weight in middle-age, past his glory days, like every ex-football player you've ever seen. And so on.
  
  
• Edna Mode's vehement opposition to superhero capes. Sure, they look snazzy on the comic book cover, but they're pretty silly in most cases. Batman's an exception, but one of the few. And Brad Bird as Edna is just delightful.
  
  
• Superheroes with previous engagements. It's so rare that a superhero just lets the criminal go because he's got something more important (that isn't some other, more impending, world-threatening disaster).
  
  
• Well-chosen voices. No one seemed bigger than their characters, which is the unfortunate norm these days. Until the credits ran, I was expecting (and hoping) that Frozone was voiced by Phil LaMarr. Not that Samuel L. Jackson didn't do a find job, but I'd love to see the real voice talents get bigger roles. But Craig T. Nelson? Sarah Vowell? Excellent, unexpected choices.

* * * * *

¹Possibly from outer space.

²Excluding Cars. Haven't seen that yet, so no comment.

Strawberries and Shivers.

Chicago.

It feels like this past weekend was all strawberries, all the time. In actuality, it was probably only about twelve hours of strawberry-intense activity. So, hey, not even half of my waking hours.

Saturday morning, we sold (if I heard right) sixty-three flats of strawberries. At ten pounds each - eight quarts in a flat - that's a lot of strawberries. Most went away in one- or two-quart sales, whittled down with frequent tastings. I was a little wary of the sampling berries early on, when folks would eat one and keep on walking. Then Paul arrived with a pallet, and things picked up. We were able to convince plenty of passers-by to buy some berries after tasting, in part because they tasted so good, in part because it was clear we were proud of what we had to sell.

It genuinely helped to have certified organic berries. Locally grown¹, too. People weren't concerned about eating them without washing, and there's no potential for a pesticide-influenced taste. Try some conventional berries alongside, and the difference is clear. Taste them against some conventional berries shipped unripe from California, and it's not hard to consider waiting until real berries are available again next year.

Even before tasting this year's crop ourselves, we knew that JenEhr would have great berries. Sharon and I picked five or six pounds last year, and I trust Kay and Paul for quality. We've tried their chickens and produce, visited the farm, and gotten some respectable backup from folks such as Tory Miller, Odessa Piper and Therese Allen. So, even though their hand-weeded organic strawberries may cost more than the average conventional U-pick, it's still our top choice. Besides, I don't think $2.25 per pound is at all unreasonable for organic berries.

Sunday, then, was strawberry U-pick time. Barely ahead of the rumbling thunderstorms - we could see them blackening the western horizon and marching closer - we made it through the patches with over thirteen pounds of berries, scattered rashes along our forearms, and a variety of red stains on hands and clothing.

The stains were only compounded by the jam-making session that directly followed. Ripe strawberries won't stay good through the week, and there's only so many one person can eat fresh.² And though strawberry shortcake is indeed wonderful, I adore strawberry jam. In addition to being a wonderfully concentrated version of pure strawberry that plays up the deep notes, it keeps forever (or until next June, assuming we don't eat it all first). It's great with pancakes, waffles and crepes. It's a quick and easy way to make sorbet. Or for sweetening iced tea. And when I need an occasional sugar fix, a spoonful of jam'll do it for me.

Not candy or chocolate or any of the usual suspects. I've got to go the Russian route.

So I stuck around long enough to get Sharon through the bulk of the jam-making process. In other words, I made a mess in the kitchen and left before cleanup time.³ By the end of it, I was thoroughly splattered with red juice. At first glance, you might think I'd spent the day butchering animals.⁴

Speaking of blood and gore: next weekend, the Orpheum (in conjunction with Four Star Video Heaven) will be showing Shivers⁵, David Cronenberg's first full-length feature. It's about parasites that turn people into killer sex-crazed zombies, full of really disturbing scenes and low-budget special effects. It's part of their "Summer Camp" series of films: "the under-appreciated, oft-forgotten, and wonderfully awful". I don't think I'll be able to catch it - neither showing happens to be at a time I can get there - but I'm dying to see it. I mean, what could there possibly be about a Cronenberg-zombie-sex-horror film produced by Ivan Reitman⁶ not to like?

* * * * *

¹Everything at the DCFM is local, in that it's grown in the state of Wisconsin, and there's a limit to how far vendors can be from Madison and still consider the trip worthwhile. Some shoppers - tourists, I'm guessing - aren't aware of this.

²I hit that limit in the field, per rules one and three of the JenEhr U-pick system. Rule one: eat a berry before you pick any to take with you. That's the only way you know you'll be happy with them. Rule three: eat your fill while harvesting, so you won't be tempted to eat and drive at the same time. Little kids leave the farm looking like extras in a George Romero flick.

³I feel rather guilty about this, but I didn't have much choice.

⁴Except, of course, for the fact that strawberry juice dries bright red, whereas blood dries black. I realized this on Saturday, when different red splotches dried in different colors.

⁵Also called They Came From Within!, which is so much cheesier. But what would you expect for the American release in the '70s?

⁶Of Ghostbusters and Stripes fame, of course. Also Twins, which is why Cronenberg's masterpiece was re-named Dead Ringers.

Books I should have read years ago. Part One.

Madison.

I've been reading a lot of nonfiction lately. A fair bit of it food-related, which isn't surprising. I think I'm ready to dive back into fiction for a change, though; in some ways, it's decidedly less disturbing.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Krakauer's first-person account of the 1996 disaster atop Mount Everest. Aside from the general terrors accompanying the trip - frostbite, seracs¹, all manner of hypoxia-induced problems - there's the storm that strands several mountaineers on top of the world. Which, as one might imagine, is generally fatal. One man - Beck Weathers - manages to survive, long after being thought dead, though not without horrific frostbite and multiple amputations. Another, mountaineering guide Rob Hall, slowly freezes to death, in radio contact but beyond rescue, on the very top of the mountain. It takes more than a full day, and it's gut-wrenching to read.

What disturbs me the most isn't any of this, perhaps because I harbor no visions of dragging myself to Everest's peak. What gets me is the unreliability of Krakauer's account, a fact he is more than careful to point out. He makes this a central focus of the book, telling his story and later dissecting it with the actual facts. In the instance with the deepest ramifications, he confuses two hikers - two men hardly alike in any way - and gives rise to a confusing explanation as to how one died atop the mountain. Other clues seem to back it up, but fall apart under closer inspection. It isn't until much later that the mistake is realized, through a chance comment in conversation, and Krakauer is left to try to make amends.

He doesn't succeed, not entirely. His writings - he's a journalist, and his expedition was funded in exchange for his story - make enemies. The truth, the actual events on the mountaintop, sits beyond reach, and speculation takes the place of the memories of the dead. At times, it swerves closer to fiction, as the line between memory and imagination becomes blurred. Fuzzy. Perforated.

Not being a mountaineer, it's hard to take too much from Krakauer's account, but I suspect the same is true for climbers, too. It's a snapshot, slightly out of focus, of a brief period when nature overwhelmed a group of alpinists, some well-prepared, some not. Bad luck played a key factor, as did a growing cascade of decisions that seem poor in retrospect. In context, especially given the deleterious effects of extremely high altitude, it seems like tragic misfortune. Our understanding, as fragmented as it is, serves to remind us of our own individual unreliability. It's not particularly heartening, but a worthwhile consideration.

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
Banned in Illinois! In some rationality-challenged suburban Chicago school district, at least, as I overheard on WBEZ, Chicago's NPR station, one morning. Why? Because it discusses marijuana.² Also plant sex. Kinky, kinky plant sex.

Of course, being banned might get more kids to read it, and that's not a bad thing.³ It's an excellent book, a study of how plants - four in particular - have used us to further their evolution and range about the planet. Pollan selects these four based on their gratification of certain human desires, in much the same way that many flowering plants gratify honeybees (or bumblebees, who have a slightly different ideal of beauty).

Those desires - sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control - have some excellent corresponding examples: apple, tulip, marijuana and potato. And our current understanding of what each of those is - the notion of the apple that accompanies the word - is because of what humans have done to help the plants evolve. A wild apple growing in the Kazakh mountains, it seems, isn't the sort of thing you'd want to put in your mouth. The plant we imagine to be the wild precursor to the potato isn't even edible.

All of this is fascinating enough, but Pollan approaches from what, at first, seems a bizarre angle: this plant evolution is not a product of our mastery of agriculture. Rather, the plants have been using us to further their own ends. We're honeybees, as far as they're concerned, animals enthusiastically spreading their genes further than they could alone. Agriculture may not be man dominating nature; it may be the grasses and their ingenious plan to dominate the trees, using us a tool in that effort.

Of course, he doesn't say it quite like that. Not without qualifiers. There's no intelligent, focused effort by corn and soybeans to dominate the North American continent, but their ability to gratify our needs has pushed them there. By selecting for preferred traits, and by making room for these plants, we've really helped them be everywhere. If someone hadn't noticed the proto-tulip in what is modern-day Turkey, it would still be a nearly unremarkable wildflower.

In addition to this fascinating discussion of our influence on plants, he weaves in all sorts of information about the lengths we'll go to in order to get what we want:

• Stretched to its limits, the apple is beginning to lose the battle against pests and disease. Being an example of extreme heterozygosity - the offspring being different from the parents - apples can't be directly seeded. Not unless you want an orchard of mostly inedible apples, with every tree unique. Every once in a while this produces something great, and those trees are continually grafted to new rootstocks to maintain that fruit.
  
  Every Granny Smith apple comes from a grafting of the one original Granny Smith tree in Australia. Or from a grafting of a grafting, etc. Plant those seeds, and the one thing you won't get is another Granny Smith tree.
  
  The most significant downside of this is that while we've been propagating clones, the various apple pests have been evolving their way around the plant's natural defenses. When plants can continue to evolve, it becomes a back-and-forth dance between competing species. When one can't evolve, it's just waiting to get clobbered. Apples are at that point. Only increasing quantities of chemical pesticides are able to hold back devastation, and the pests are evolving past those.
  
  One of these days, not far off, the Golden Delicious may just be a memory - just like the Black Gilliflower or the Hay's Winter Wine.
  
  
• Tulips, in Holland in the mid-1630s, drove humans to near insanity. Bulbs, and eventually pieces of paper promising futures in tulip bulbs, nearly destroyed the Dutch economy. Tulipomania. If you were lucky enough to have a very special tulip "break," you could trade a single bulb for an absolute fortune.
  
  Though none of these amazing flowers still exist, the Dutch commissioned paintings of flowers they couldn't afford, so we can see some examples. The most expensive tulip ever was the Semper Augustus, and it's indeed a very pretty flower. Worth trading your house for? It seems that some thought so.
  
  Mania, indeed.
  
  
• Oh, marijuana. What had been a fairly gentle drug in the sixties is now far more powerful. While it's still not anything particularly dangerous - since it doesn't affect the brainstem, the control center for basic life functions like heartbeats, you can't overdose - it's definitely not the same drug. That extra horsepower is due in no small part to the war on drugs, which has accelerated the development of cannabis along the same sort of lines that the apple took over thousands of years.
  
  But in a few decades.
  
  Where the apple was selected for sweetness - for eating and cider - and enjoyed, year after year, marijuana couldn't do that. Plant a big ol' garden of illegal plants, and the authorities'll put an end to that, right quick. Plus, it's a tropical plant, which makes growing it in most of the US and Europe less than ideal. For the plant, remember - this is a book from the plant's perspective. So it needed to adapt to grow faster, to be more potent, and to be smaller. Those were the human desires, and the plant rose to meet those challenges.
  
  What's very interesting is how Pollan points out that all human societies have had plant-derived intoxicants. Well, except the Eskimos, but that's only because of the complete lack of plants. Along with intoxicants come taboos, applied with an odd sort of complicated and inconsistent logic. And it's those taboos that have allowed the marijuana flower - ugly beast that it is - to end up worth more than its weight in gold.
  
  
• Monsanto, in its - in my opinion, dangerously misguided - quest to dominate the plant world through poison production and genetic engineering, has combined the two efforts. The NewLeaf⁴ potato, for example, produces its own Bt toxin - a poison to the Colorado potato beetle that's normally produced by a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis. So now, it seems, agribusiness monoculture operations are no longer satisfied by planting acres and acres genetically identical potatoes waiting for the blight to come along. They're upping the ante and helping pests evolve an immunity to one of the organic farmer's best last-ditch pest control tools.
  
  Note that any good organic farmer doesn't really have to use Bt very often. Just when an infestation is getting out of hand. But it's really useful, and there's no organic backup. When Monsanto inadvertently breeds a superbeetle, the options get pretty limited.
  
  The potato, of course, is all about control. We feel like we're completely in charge, until something - like the Irish potato blight - pulls the rug out from under us. Plant a monoculture across an entire country, and you're just waiting for disaster. The pests are busy evolving, and if our plants aren't doing the same, they're bound to lose out.

Other books I'd meant to get to, but are just going to have to wait:
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

* * * * *

¹Teetering columns of glacial ice, "some as large as office buildings," as Krakauer puts it. The climbers need to weave through a massive labyrinth of these ice spires, any of which could topple at any time. And, in the process of acclimatizing to the altitude, the climbers go back and forth through this section of the Khumbu Icefall over and over.

²Yes, the conservative Christian fundies are behind this. Has the woman spearheading this latest effort at ideological censorship actually read the book? Or any of the others on the list she's demanding be banned? Of course not! (Silly question.) She googled it. Anything to do with sex, drugs or anything else controversial, it seems, must be eliminated. Open, educated discussion and critical thinking, apparently, aren't the sort of things we should be teaching kids.

I'm hardly the first to mention this fact: high school kids are already having sex and doing drugs. Nobody's going to read Pollan's discussion of the evolution of marijuana over the past forty years and think, "Hey, I should start smoking weed!"

³I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. Not that I want to see The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn banned, or Slaughterhouse-Five, but it does get some folks reading a little more critically, with more interest.

⁴They no longer produce this little monstrosity, thankfully. What's replaced it, though, I don't know. Chances are that I don't like that, either.

Around the world in 90 days?

Chicago.

Lacking the time and the excess cash necessary, I don't get to do much traveling. Less than I'd like, certainly. It doesn't help that most travel writing I come across - through newspapers, magazines, etc. - isn't geared to me. It's for folks with lots of money to throw around, the sort who visit France and only eat at places with Michelin stars.

High class luxury. No thanks. Not so interested.

Now, though, the New York Times has sent Matt Gross to travel around the world, on the cheap, and he's writing about it weekly. It's not the cheapest travel ever - he's not a student backpacker - but it's roughly at a level I could be comfortable with. Splurge on dinner and drinks every once in a while? Sounds good to me.

The plan goes like this: Fly into Lisbon May 11th. Fly out of Beijing August 11th. Get from one to the other using whatever discount travel is available, and go wherever readers recommend. The less traveled the route, the better. Limit $100 per night for accommodations, $40 per day for food, but less is preferable. Plus, it's all supposed to be interesting.

Right now he's passing through Italy - Venice, to be precise. Interesting? Probably. Accessible? Too much so. Personally, I can't wait until he starts to make his way through Asia.

I want to hear all about the Silk Road.

Food cart blog!

Chicago.

Sitting here at my desk, feeling a little hungry, I got to thinking about A La Carte's burritos. A quick Google search reveals a brief interview with Lee Davenport, the owner, through the Isthmus. There's also a link to her blog, which is entirely food obsessed. I have no problem with this. I'm quite comfortable with the fact that someone serving me food is excited about it, is thinking about it beyond the basic level of spooning beans into a tortilla. Then again, Madison's got the reputation of being a leftist enclave, filled with all sorts of people overqualified¹ for their jobs.

For example, we've got taxi drivers with more extensive postgraduate education than I have. At least one, I hear, is able to talk grad-level math. Bet that makes for an interesting ride home - especially since most everyone I know reserves taxis for those times when they're incapable of operating heavy machinery. Everyone except Jared. I'm not sure what sort of extenuating circumstances it'd take to get him in a taxi. He once walked seven and a half miles home, late at night, in the sub-freezing Wisconsin winter.

'Cause he'd had too much to drink, and needed to walk it off. One supposes it made sense at the time.²

Also of note: Ben of the Underground Food Collective looks like he's wrestling with the economics of the catering business. I point this out because they're a talented group of folks, and I'd like to see them make their unconventional catering business thrive.

* * * * *

¹Overqualified as it's understood by the general population. The only reason I see for this distinction is the fact that we - as a general culture - tend to pay wages on a scale that corresponds with education level. And we expect it, too. That's fine and all, except when the low ends starts to dip below a living wage.

That said, I know enough to know that I don't have any grand suggestions.

²Or you could say, "You had to be there," except that I was there. And it still boggles the mind.

The big dinner - initial plans.

Chicago.

The cooking bug bit this weekend, and I think it bit me pretty bad.¹ On the heels of the elegant and excellent meal by the Underground Food Collective, I've had a hankering to do something fancy. Something that tests the limits of my capabilities. That raises the bar for the most impressive² meal I've ever made. That teeters on that edge of outright craziness.

I think the current standard-bearer was the wine party my folks threw for their friends' anniversary. Though the memories are a little fuzzy, I believe it was six courses with matched wines - courtesy of Scott, now a professional sommelier. He deals with this sort of thing every day; for me, it's a bit more abstract.

But not entirely. The Priskes have offered up the use of their kitchen, so those of us who decide to spend the night can have the run of the place.³ And, given the quantity of alcohol we'll be consuming, that's probably wise.

I pieced together a preliminary menu this past weekend, just to see how far I thought I could push it. Since things could change at any point, I intend to keep the whole thing a secret until the first course is served, but it's looking like an eleven-course meal. Four of those are amuses-bouche - something small, with lots of flavor, but not enough to fill you up. That said, it could change in all sorts of ways. It depends on what's available at the market then - early September - and whether or not some of my more unusual ideas pan out. Most of the planned courses, at this point, revolve around minimizing the total amount of kitchen time during the meal. I won't have enough free time to sit down at the table for every course, but I should be able to do so about half the time. Maybe more, and for a dinner that'll be at least three hours long, that's something.

That's often a limiting factor when throwing a dinner party. It's a social occasion, an excuse to have some friends over, and the last thing anyone needs is to be trapped at the stove. We usually serve everything family-style, and it's just a lot less complicated. Toss some burgers and sausages on the grill, open up a few beers, and everyone's happy. It certainly worked for Memorial Day.

Even so, every great once in a while I'd like to do something over the top. Unusual flavor combinations? New textures (for a homemade dinner, at least)? Course after course after course? With matching beverages? Hell yes.

Up next in the planning process: the budget. How much of the cost can I take on - labor's free, at least - without crumpling? My hunch is that alcohol's going to be the killer. Asking everybody to pony up some cash - maybe $30 a person, suggested but not necessary - is something I haven't had to do before.

* * * * *

¹This is in contrast to the actual biting insects, which went after the backs of my knees.

²Not to be confused with "best." It might be the best I've ever done, but I'm not aiming for that. If it happens that way, it happens that way.

³John and Dorothy will be invited, as well. I can't imagine throwing a dinner party in their house and not having them. Besides, I'll be making an unbelievable mess in the kitchen, so it's only fair.