der Spiegel

Lately, I've been feeling as if I'm constantly looking into a really unforgiving mirror. You know, the kind of cheap mirror that makes you look short and wide. Unfortunately, it's not the surface details that I'm noticing. Instead of my ass looking too big, I have been faced with my character defaults and I can't seem to find a break from this examination. This endless rain isn't helping matters.

I'm trying to move away from the way I tend to self-reflect. I allow my thoughts to consume me. I find it a challenge to be able to let these observations in without them taking the wheel. I don't know if it's a matter of becoming mentally and emotionally disciplined or treating myself with greater compassion during these periods or a combination of the two in order to relieve myself. I know that I do not want to stop it entirely but I need some room to breathe sometimes. Insight is hard to balance. It's not like you can schedule it to occur during an appropriate time and it's not like you have the insight and then you're done with the process. Experiencing it on all levels is what makes it a reality. Insight as thought only is incomplete.

I came across a strange website for something called a 'true mirror". Supposedly, it shows you things as they appear, not their mirror image. According to the testimonials, people come close to having breakdowns when they are shown for the first time how they appear others. Part of me is very curious to see for myself what I look like in this mirror but I think I'll wait until I'm no longer seeing reflections of myself everywhere I look.

der Jimmies

Growing up in this area, I was taught to call the sprinkles on ice cream "Jimmies". Every summer, my parent's would often take my brothers, my sister and I to get soft serve ice cream from a drive-in joint called the "Cuckoo Clock". Which was shaped just like one with a bird the size of a german shepard at the very top. I would always get a vanilla cone with chocolate Jimmies. My husband and I have been trying to figure out if "Jimmies" is a regional slang term. I found an interesting article from the Phila. Inquirer trying to untangle the mystery of Jimmies vs. Sprinkles. See below...

The beloved jimmy could be lost
A sprinkling of history for a name that's melting away.

By Michael Vitez Inquirer Columnist

Which came first, the jimmy or the sprinkle? Evidence suggests the jimmy. A far more important question for local readers is: Which will endure? Sadly, the sprinkle. The jimmy - at least as a piece of slang, an expression of local flavor - is doomed.

"If it's not a dead term, it's a dying term," said Peter Georgas, vice president of Can-Pan Candy, the Toronto-based company that sells a million pounds of sprinkles every month. "I will rarely, rarely get on the phone with somebody who asks me for a jimmy," he said. "And if someone does ask me for a jimmy, he's an older man." The fact is that jimmies and sprinkles are the same thing, which is almost nothing, a wisp of sugar, oil, emulsifier (don't ask!) and coloring.

But by any name, the world consumes about 50 million pounds a year, according to an industry expert - about 1.3 trillion sprinkles or jimmies, give or take a few hundred million. Mostly, they're sprinkled on ice cream. But if laid end to end, they would stretch 2.3 million miles, enough to circle the Earth nearly 100 times. This region - from Philadelphia to the Jersey Shore - historically has been jimmies territory. Jimmies - not sprinkles - have been on the menu for 53 years at the Custard Stand on Ridge Avenue in Philadelphia. "I don't bother people who call them sprinkles," said Vince Joyce, 21, a jimmies loyalist and employee for seven years. "But if you call them shots or dots or ants or black beads, I say something: 'You mean jimmies, right?' "

Right across Ridge Avenue, at rival Dairyland, jimmies have been on the menu since the establishment opened 30 years ago. The present owner, Michael Kiedaish, 32, grew up with jimmies and says he will never change: "When someone tells you that something's a jimmy, it's a jimmy." But hints of extinction are everywhere, even in his own store. "The college people... they're all sprinkles," said Laurie Taylor, 23, who has worked the counter at Dairyland for eight years. "And the yogurt people are sprinkles. And kids all say rainbow sprinkles because it sounds more fun. "I grew up saying jimmies," she confessed, "but from working here so long, I've started calling them sprinkles." Sprinkles are encroaching everywhere. Old reliables like Kohr Brothers on the boardwalk in Ocean City are holding firm with jimmies, but upstarts like Ben & Jerry's on Rittenhouse Square? Sprinkles.

At Daddy-O's Dairy Barn in Mount Laurel, owner Rob Cotton grew up in Northeast Philadelphia calling them jimmies, but on his menu he lists them as... sprinkles! "The distributors all call them sprinkles, so that's what I put on the menu board," he said. "This is the No. 1 question: Is there a difference? And where does the name come from? I must hear that three or four times a week."

Here is some history: Back in the 1930s, the Just Born candy company of Bethlehem produced a topping called chocolate grains. The man who ran the machine that made these chocolate grains was named Jimmy Bartholomew. "Thus, his product became known as jimmies," said Ross Born, the chief executive officer. He was told this story by his grandfather and company founder, Sam Born. Just Born registered jimmies as its trademark, and continued producing jimmies until the mid-1960s - which is why the name was so popular here. The trademark expired and soon after, Just Born stopped making jimmies. This account, however, has been disputed.

The Boston Globe investigated the origin of jimmies last winter after a reader inquired about a rumor that the term originally was racist - the idea being that some people refer only to chocolate ones as jimmies, and rainbow ones as sprinkles. Perhaps, the reader surmised, the word descended from Jim Crow. The Globe found no evidence of this, but did cite a commentary in 1986 on National Public Radio by the late Boston poet John Ciardi, who claimed: "From the time I was able to run to the local ice cream store clutching my first nickel, which must have been around 1922, no ice cream cone was worth having unless it was liberally sprinkled with jimmies." Ciardi, the Globe said, "dismissed Just Born as claim-jumpers looking to trademark someone else's sweet inspiration." His jimmies had come first. The truth may never be known.

But what is undeniable, according to industry experts, is that jimmies gradually gave way to sprinkles, a more vivid and appealing name. For example, a world leader in sprinkles is QA Products outside Chicago. It started making sprinkles 10 years ago - under the brand name Sprinkle King. When Vince Joyce of the Custard Stand on Ridge Avenue gives his customers jimmies, he gets them from a Sprinkle King box.

Shaggy Dog Stories

I was reading a film review this morning in Time Out New York and the reviewer likened the movie to a "Shaggy Dog story". I had never heard of this expression, so I looked it up this morning when I got into work. A Shaggy Dog story is a long-winded tale leading up to a really bad pun.

Supposedly, Disney's Shaggy Dog and the Shaggy D.A. are shaggy dog stories of sorts and if anyone knows bad puns, it's Disney! A boy who becomes a dog and then grows up to become a D.A. Classic!

We had to watch these wretched movies in Catholic school. They were considered holiday treats for us. So every Christmas, Easter, and Valentine's Day we would go to the auditorium after lunch and watch the films and then go back to class. There was "That Darn Cat", "Escape From Witch Mountain", "The Shaggy D.A." and a few others that I've apparently blocked from memory.

Dioramas

Dioramas were a favorite class project of mine. Although, I've always wondered if they were a cop-out assignment from teachers because the bulk of the work is on the student. It makes for very easy grading, especially if there is no written report to go along with it. I hated the diorama-report combo! I just wanted to make things all the time and dioramas were an extension of the stuff I did at home to amuse myself anyway.

In 4th grade I had to make a diorama for our history class. At the time we were studying the Civil War. I loved studying this period because I was obsessed with the South after watching Gone With the Wind. For some reason though, I decided to do my diorama on sharecroppers. Sharecroppers being terrorized by the KKK.

I made all of the figures out of clothespins and the sharecroppers' hut out of popsicle sticks. Actually it was all pretty much popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, and clothes pins with a random game piece in the shape of a pig. The sharecroppers were defending their land and the KKK had torches and a sign that said "Get Out!" I have no idea why my mom thought this was a suitable subject for me to depict in a diorama. In fact, she helped me build the house.

I brought it to class with me and it sat untouched for the two periods that I was in that classroom. By the time I had gotten back from lunch someone had the pig standing on the house and one of the KKK hitting the dad sharecropper on the head with the sign.

Upside-down, Inside-out, and Round and Round

I don't know if it is due to the endless fucking rain or if I'm just yet again face-to-face with myself but I am having one of those days where I'm not certain about anything! For instance, I look at my last post on intimacy (within the context of conversation) I totally question whether I have a real sense of intimacy at all.

Here's what I do know, I do know that I am a very open person. I feel comfortable with myself to be upfront with another on just about anything. I'm not embarrassed by another's personal details and for the most part I do not sit in judgment or at least I work hard not to. For me, that makes for some pretty interesting conversations.

What I am reconsidering is what is my understanding of intimacy in these situations? Now before I go any further, please note that I'm not referring to established, "intimate" relationships. I'm talking about intimacy within our day-to-day encounters, with co-workers, associates, and strangers.

I think that as Americans existing in a VERY open culture, we are accustomed to saying whatever comes to mind or expressing whatever we may be feeling. Other cultures don't do this. Most other cultures, including other Western cultures have established ways of behaving and expressing themselves. We don't. It's a fucking free-for-all! And to not be able to express ourselves in the way that we need to is an infringement upon our rights.

What does this have to do with intimacy? Well, intimacy becomes involved because in our right to express ourselves we feel that we can share just about anything with anyone and it not only be appropriate but also somehow be completely understood and valued. In our minds this establishes an intimacy. In fact, the best way to find out something personal about someone is to share something personal with them about you. Most people feel compelled to return the gesture. Is this intimacy? Not really because intimacy has more to do with an established honesty between others and not simply the sharing of personal details. By this definition, there isn't a whole lot of intimacy amongst us.

That's where I am beginning to finally understand my own struggles, that is because I choose to be open with my feelings the expectation will always be that I will be respected and that I will be accepted and understood. Not so! First and foremost, I have to understand that it is my choice to share personal thoughts and feelings with others but until I let go of any expectation I may have of how others receive me, I'm going to be very disappointed.

There are so many ways to establish an honest intimacy. I want to discuss this further in future posts.

The Lost Art of Conversation

There is nothing I love more than a good conversation. I love to talk about any subject with the exception of popular sports. I'm very open in my conversations but never to the point of being inappropriate, or at least I've never gotten the impression that I was. Maybe while drunk or high, but even then I can still hold my own.

There is a project out of Oxford, England that I would love to participate in! Portrait of Oxford hosts Conversation Meals where you are randomly seated amongst other participants and the conversation part of the meal is moderated by providing attendees with a menu of questions designed to strip away the artifice of typical, polite conversations.

I love meeting people and hearing their stories. I'm the type of person that random strangers share their stories, totally unsolicited. I have heard some of the most beautiful and interesting things. I guess I give off an honest vibe. So because of my exposure to these private details, I'm bored to tears by people who can't or won't conversationally share themselves or even give their honest opinion on things. I don't really want to know what your favorite band is, where you bought your sweater, or why you hate your job. Those surface details don't make you a real person in my eyes and they definitely don't make for a long exchange with me.

In Our Time

This was in my parent's book collection and I have been fascinated with this book since I was a child. My parents did not place many restrictions on me and I was allowed to read or look over any book that they owned, regardless if it was suitable for me or if I even comprehened the content. Not only were they lax in limiting my exposure but they weren't very good at explaining things to me either. I remember watching a movie about the Scarlet Letter and then being moved to draw A's on my and my sister's chests with an indelible marker. I remember being punished for it but not knowing why it was wrong.

So, "In Our Time" falls into the categories of unsuitable and incomprehensible but completely intriguing. Mostly, I loved Tom Wolfe's drawings. There were famous people featured like Carol Doda and Howard Hughes that he rendered into really grotesque caricatures but NO ONE would ever tell me who they were other than that they were famous people. So I was left to create my own stories about some exotic dancer and a strange man-baby.

Honestly, I don't know why my parents ahd this book in the first place. Neither of them are people who would enjoy Tom Wolfe's commentaries and sketches of urban, intellectual, or cultural america in the 70s. My parents are NOT intellectual at all! I'm not saying that this is somehow a lacking on their part but that kind of thinking simply does not interest them. They must have gotten it as a gift from someone. Probably my Aunt Jackie, who is a raging intellectual, gave it to them in hopes that the accesibility of this book would appeal to them and finally she would have something to talk about with them.

I think I was the only one in the house to ever read it. I found it again when I went to visit them this weekend and the dust was literally an inch think. I asked my Dad if I could borrow it. He said, "Sure, I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I'm not missing out on anything."

Alinea- Chicago

I read an article this morning in Gourmet magazine about an up and coming restaurant in Chicago called Alinea. The food itself sounded like most high-end foodie fare of unusual and contrasting tastes and textures, but the novelty behind Alinea is its creative rethinking of presentation and utensils. Martin Kastner, a Czech-born jewelry designer, is working with chef Grant Achatz to produce novel service ware.

I wish I could find a picture of the instrument they use to serve a dish called "PBJ". PBJ is a single grape enveloped in peanut butter and a bread coating not unlike tempura. The grape is hanging off of a vine and suspended in what looks to be like a whisk with the wires cut open at the top.

I love food. I live for good food but I am no foodie and I cannot deal with novel or gimmick restaurants. I simply can't embrace food as entertainment be it high or low brow. I thought the foam cuisine from Spain a few years ago was revolting. I know I should at least try these foods before I pass judgement but something like the foam food violates my basic principles of food attraction.

As far as novelty of food is concerned, the culinary world has always pushed us to move beyond our comfort zones to redefine eating for ourselves. In most cases I agree that it is very important that we try new foods but not before we have an understanding of what food does for us. How can we redefine food and eating for ourselves if most of us have no clue about eating on any level?! Without this fundamental in place, novel cuisine becomes just a high-end food version of "Fear Factor".

I have a hilarious image of my father completely baffled by a tempura cage settled over some pretentious vegan meal. Both my parents agreed to go to a vegetarian restaurant with my husband and I for my 30th birthday. My father stared at this cage for a good 10 minutes trying to figure out what it was and how he should eat it. Practical and completely unselfconscious, my father picked up the cage with his hand, shoved it into his mouth and ate it. Brilliant!

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

I got into a very interesting discussion with my husband this morning about the Catholic obsession with pain and suffering. Both my husband and I were raised Catholic but neither of us remained with the faith. Actually, when we were first dating he and I got into a heated debate because he said that he had rid himself of guilt. I didn't believe him. Growing up, I never really grasped the teachings or beliefs of Catholicism. Too many inconsistencies, too much reliance on mysticism and relic worship and basically too many limitations without reasonable cause. Eternal damnation wasn't a convincing threat after a certain age.

But there is that lingering Catholic guilt that I have never been able to rid myeslf of. This morning's discussion about pain and suffering had me wondering why do Catholics put themselves through the wringer physically and menatlly for their faith. Why is this glorified? Any kid who attended Catholic school or even CCD would remember the "Lives of the Saints" books they gave out to us. A sort of Little Golden Book of all of the Catholic martyrs and the horrible, physically tortorous ways they proved their devotion to God.

I need answers to this because I feel that I have unwillingly participated in this masochism of self most of my life to alleviate some transgression or another. For what?! Why would this be the solution?

Excepts from "Pain, Suffering, Mind, Body, and the Jesus Thing"

St. Sabastian, for example, was shot through with arrows until it was said, "he was covered with barbs like a hedgehog." A Christian widow miraculously nursed him back to health, whereupon he was again ordered to be put to death, this time by stoning, whereby his certifiably lifeless body was thrown into a sewer.

I don't want to minimize or seem dismissive about Christ's suffering, which must have been horrific: even before Jesus was mounted to the cross, it is said he was beaten with leather whips loaded with bone and metal; death came slowly over many hours; the cause of death, exhaustion, a slow depletion of the body. Cicero described the crucifixion method as " 'the most cruel and frightful of punishments,' combining, as it did, extreme bodily pain, the tortures of hunger, thirst, heat and insects …" But what to make of this sacrifice? Like all physical experience, the pain itself is set in a context, and it is this context that ultimately drives the crucifixion story.

Pain has been described as "sensory," that is, the sensation itself, and "affective," meaning how the person feels about it, how the consequences of those physical stimuli manifest and reinterpret the person's life. 3 It is the affective nature of pain, I think, that we most often think of in relation to the crucifixion - the way that Jesus suffered as an innocent, the suffering chosen as a solution to a redemptive end, and perhaps worst of all, the suffering born of a knowledge that this was the script he was asked to play.

The traditions of our faith have been wonderfully adaptive to the rigors of life, and it is this very adaptive quality that I believe led to the idea that identifying with the suffering of Christ had resonance to our forebears.

Imagine life in the Middle Ages when the threat of plague was at your doorstep, and produced an agony that was described as "so painful…it was equal to the most exquisite Torture;…some not able to bear the Torment, threw themselves out at Windows, or shot themselves… others vented their Pain by incessant Roarings, and such loud and lamentable Cries…that would Pierce the very Heart to think of."

Pain of this magnitude was too grand to be considered manufactured by the body alone, and in a day when the mind, body and spirit were not fragmented as they are today, the assumption was that the afflicted was under assault from outside forces. The English word "pain" derives from the Latin poena, meaning "punishment," and so it was believed that inflictions came as "divine visitations" from which one hoped to be "delivered." 5 It's not hard to see how this kind of reasoning was no distant cousin to the gods of antiquity who seemed to make sport of humans and their vulnerable bodies. The primary - and critical - difference, of course, is that God brought these visitations not for divine amusement, but for some Godly purpose.

Extending that possibility led people like Saint Teresa of Avila to embrace pain as an invitation to communion with God, making possible a kind of "visionary pain" that frequently bordered on the erotic (and who would want to give that up?) Taken to the extreme, religious flagellants didn't even wait for the affliction, but took matters into their own hands, beating their backs mercilessly, and paving the way for an S&M variation.

Finding meaning in suffering is at the very core of the story of Job. He asks for deliverance from boils and worms and scabs and sleepless nights, and loss of property, family and community standing. This punishment without justification, for remember Job is a righteous and faithful man, presents only one explanation: God is testing him, it is some twisted divine test of obedience. Job struggles to understand why God has forsaken him, and just what he's supposed to be learning from the experience. The ordeal is finally over for Job when he essentially gives up, and in the words of the singer Iris DeMent, decides to "just let the mystery be."

That physical affliction has divine roots, either through punishment or in teaching a lesson or for communion with God, has been our inheritance up to the modern age. It is rooted in this most human of needs - to give meaning to all this, to understand why bad things happen to good people, bad people, and the rest of us.

Capote

I can't wait for this film to come to Philadelphia. I have been a fan of Truman Capote since high school.

I went through a period of two years where I did not read any books at all. I was always a voracious reader growing up and the reading embargo was a very strange period. It came about after a really long struggle with myself while in jr. high. After I came out of that period, I avoided any solitary activity at all costs. I was just so tired of being in my own head that I needed to be doing something with others at all times and that did NOT include reading.

Finally, I was told that I needed to read a book to complete an english course requirement or I could expect to make it up in summer school. I went to the library and started looking through the fiction aisles. I came across Truman Capote's "Short Stories" and saw in his bio that he and I share the same birthday. That was enough for me and I signed out the book.

That was it, the embargo was ended with "Miriam". After reading the book in two hours, I looked through my parent's books and found "Other Voices, Other Rooms".

I'm glad that Philip Seymour Hoffman is playing Capote. From the trailers I have seen, it looks like it will be excellent.

Freaks and Geeks

I never watched the show while it was aired and for some reason avoided it when it was first released on DVD but Freaks and Geeks has now become one of my all-time favorites.

The writing, the ensemble cast, the music... all of it created an absolute perfect picture of high school, puberty, the early 80s, parents and children, and of middle America... F&G was on for only one season. Whatever the reasons were for not extending the run, it actually ended just when it needed to.

I love subtleties. I need it to be present in things like music, art, design, literature. I have come to expect it in performances in theater and film but I have no expectations of subtlety when it comes to TV. That's why F&G is so mindblowingly good! There is an absolute balance between humor and drama in this show and the shifts between the two are so deft! Perhaps the setting of high school allows for this to occur. There is always the humor of someone who takes themselves too seriously and what teenager doesn't take themselves seriously? Or for that matter, how buffonish the rest of the world appears to them?

I don't even know if I have a favorite episode. Last night, I watched the episode where Neil's dad (a dentist) is having an affair as part of his mid-life crisis. He's a clown with his red sports car and gold-digging blonde but the scene where he tries to explain his philandering actions to Sam (Neil's good friend) is heartbreaking. And it takes place while Neil's dad is cleaning Sam's teeth with Sam's mouth propped open with a mouth guard! How this scene works on all of these level is beyond me.