Happy Birthday Beegee!

Earlier today my grandmother Eugenia (Genie) Levi turned 90 years old. She was born in Buffalo, NY, in the year 1919, the same year as the signing of the 19th Amendment (giving women the right to vote), and the Treaty of Versailles (ending World War I). Today she lives in Stevens Point, WI, in a small house on Sunset Avenue. When I was a child I could not pronounce her name correctly, hence the suspiciously familiar nickname. She is my only surviving grandparent. I love her more than words can say.



Other people turning 90 this year include: J.D. Salinger, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Doris Lessing, Pete Seeger, and Andy Rooney,

I had my first Jonathan Richman sighting at work today! Apparently he shops there all the time. I resisted following him around with all my might...

This is really happening.

There is a Spider-Man musical in the works.  It will open at the Hilton Theatre in New York City on February 18, 2010.  It will be directed by Julie Taymor (of Lion King fame) and feature music and lyrics courtesy of Bono and The Edge (of Where the Streets Have No Name fame).  Appartently it cost 40 million dollars, making it the most expensive broadway production ever.

. . .

Did I mention that it was a Spider-Man musical?  And that Bono was writing the songs?  It's official name is Spider-Man:  Turn Off the Dark. 

. . .

Get back to me in a week or so and I'll have made up my mind about this one.   

In other surreal comic superhero news:  Only 10 days until Watchmen!  I still can't believe it. . .

Friendly Mutton Chops.

I've been in somewhat of a rut lately.  It's the middle of winter, all my old friends are far away, all my new friends seem to be either moving away from SF or on some deep hibernation shit, and it's been raining for almost 2 solid weeks.  So I had no choice but to shave my neck and chin this morning and construct some friendly mutton chops, if only so my facial hair would be smiling.

My Dream Last Night.

Started out like any other anxiety dream:  I was scheduled to perform at a large outdoor music festival.  I was to play three songs on piano.  I haven't played the piano publicly for probably 20 years.  The only song I know by heart is "The Rose."  I had somehow lost the sheet music for the other two songs.  Even if I had found the sheet music could I even read it?  It doesn't matter.  I'm looking everywhere for it.  Then someone runs into the room.  "Andy.  People are starting to leave.  You've gotta go on now.  Everyone's leaving."  I'm still frantically looking for the sheet music.

Now, this is usually the point in the dream where I would have woken up.  Never to have gone on stage.  Never to have even tried.  But something was different.  This time something was different.

I stopped looking for the sheet music.  "Alright," I said.  "I guess I can just play 'The Rose' and then improvise for a few minutes."

I walked out on stage.  True, some people had left but not as many as I had feared.  And imagine my surprise when I saw a drum kit waiting for me instead of a piano.  Well, it was actually a piano as well.  It was kind of a drum kit with keys.  Or a piano that you played with sticks.  Did I mention I was dreaming?

So I cue the rest of the band, say a few friendly words to the crowd, and go into a spirited rendition of "The Rose."

I got to the end of the second verse before I woke up.

The Wave Organ.

The great thing about living in a town like San Francisco is that you never really run out of places to see and things to do.  In fact, it's the exact opposite of that. 

Take the Wave Organ for example.  I've been meaning to visit this acoustic sculpture for almost as long as I've been in SF (3 years next month!) and just got around to it today.  

After my dentist appointment (no cavities!) and under warm grey skies (which reminded me of home) I pedaled my bicycle down to the bay.  After passing sailboat (yea!) after yacht (boo) after sailboat (yea!) after yacht (hiss) I resolved yet again to seek out sailing instruction, for I hope to one day own a boat of my own.  At one point in my life I wanted to take my entire 40th year off and sail around the world.  I've scaled back on my promise, but not by much.  Now I hope to take the year off and bicycle the length and breath of Japan.  But that's another post altogether.

Suffice to say I eventually found the organ.  It's tucked away at the very end of a small spit of land no wider then a two lane road.  To find it you must first brave the Golden Gate Yacht club and it's environs, and then, beyond that, a gravel road pockmarked by craters (and, on this particular day, mammoth puddles) and surrounded on both sides by pounding surf.

Constructed from various stones which were salvaged from the demolition of Laurel Hill Cemetery, the Wave Organ is truly a sight to behold.  25 organ pipes made of pvc and concrete protrude into the bay at various heights and depths, allowing for the rising and falling of the tides.  These pipes funnel and amplify the sounds of the waves, producing a symphony of rumbles, gurgles, sloshes, and hisses.  I arrived at a relatively peaceful time (neither high nor low tide) and so the symphony was quite subdued.  I sat for a while, swaying to the sounds of the sea, before I noticed an ugly cloud formation headed over the headlands and across the bay.  By the time the first pellets of rain hit I was already speeding away on my bicycle to seek refuge at a nearby Irish pub where I was served a 6 dollar Guinness.

It was all worth it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Cutting Parmigiano Reggiano.

So for those (all two) of you who don't know, I'm a cheesemonger by trade. It's pretty much the bee's knees (as you can imagine) but it's also really hard work. Really. One of the most difficult tasks (it almost boarders on a liability) is the cutting of Parmigiano Reggiano.

Dubbed "the king of the cheeses," true Italian parmesan is a force to be reckoned with. It can only be made in a precise "zona typica" in central Italy between the 1st of April and the 11th of November. There, in 650 small factories called "casellos," skilled cheesemakers use a traditional method that has changed little since the 13th century to produce between 4 to 10 80 pound wheels of Reggiano per day per casello. Only the raw milk of cows which feed solely on fresh grass, hay, and alfalfa can be used.

After 12 months in an aging room a master grader inspects each and every wheel of Reggiano using only a hammer and his ear. By tapping the cheese at various points he can correctly identify cracks and voids within the wheel. Only those parmesans which pass this strict inspection can be stamped with the name "Parmigiano Reggiano." The best wheels never leave Italy.

So this morning I had to cut one of these beasts. Our cheese shop goes through a wheel about every three days. I mentioned it weighs 80 pounds, right? This is how we cut it.

You start by hoisting your Reggiano onto your cutting platform. This is a draining task in and of itself but remember pilgrem, you're just getting started. Note the assortment of badass looking knifes to the right of the wheel. Just wait till you see the double handled knife that is at this moment heating up on the heat sealer. More heat = an easier cut!

The first thing you do is score the cheese.

Then you plunge the most dagger-like of your badassed knives into the very heart of the Reggiano. Just like Van Helsing.

You then take the knife which has a slightly thicker blade and wedge it in the corner of the cheese, working it back and forth along your score. Things have stopped being polite and started getting real.

The cheese will eventually give up the ghost and split of its own accord, in its own time. Think about it: That golden interior has not seen the light of day for at least 18 months. Pay your respects. Then pop a little in your mouth.

Remember that double handled knife I mentioned eariler? Well hopefully it's nice 'n hot by now because it's all hack and slash from here on out. First you cut the half in half. Like P. P. Arnold said the first cut is the deepest. Then you cut the half of the half in half. What you're going for here is a good cheese to rind ratio.

Then you cut some big wedges. It is impossible to keep from snacking at this point.

Then you cut the big wedges down into manageable pieces. Note the cheese to rind ratio.

In the end, you will have a beautiful piece of Parmigiano Reggiano. PS I wasn't closing my eyes the whole time. That was just bad flash-timing.

Maybe I better explain this. . .

So when I was younger (as in, like, four years old) my brother (he would have been two) and I would bathe together. Afterwords (as she was handing us the towels) we would give our poor mother the slip and run down the hall to our bedrooms. We would then proceed to jump up and down on the beds, naked as the day we were born and laughing like hyenas all the way. On the days in which she chose to play along, our mother would follow us down the hall exclaiming "Nackebuhs! Nackebuhs! Sie sind nackebuhs!" My mother is German.

For years (28 of them, to be exact), I always assumed that "nackebuhs" meant "crazed naked children running amuck" in German. I mean, doesn't it sound like it should? So of course I had no choice but to name this blog Nackebuhs (What's Eating Ugly Kid Joey was already taken).

The correct spelling was paramount. I tried googling "nacaboos," "nacabus," "nakaboos," and about 5 more permutations (with no luck) when I attempted to approach the problem from the other direction. I went to an online English/German dictionary and started typing in "babies in the buff," "children running stark raving naked mad in the streets," ect, ect. I knew it wasn't simply "buck-naked," it had something to do with being a loony kid as well. It was a term of endearment.

Well I finally did the sensible thing and wrote my mother:

Hello Mutti! Wie gehts? Say I have a quick question for you, how do you spell "nacaboos" (the German word for "naked" that we used when we were children)?

(I didn't want to remind her of its berserking context.)

Well imagine my surprise when she wrote back:

It's "nackebuhs" - I think. It's not a real word, so to speak.

Alles Liebe, Mutti

This floored me. I mean, I had been telling this story for years and years, always under the assumption that nackebuhs was a real German word! It was actually one of my favorite German words, alongside cocosnuss (coconut) and fressen (to guzzle or to gorge). I guess I could go into a conversation now about the past and what is real and what is imagined but I really don't feel like it. This humble post is just about explaining the title of this blog. If you want to know how to correctly pronounce it you'll have to call me. Or my mother.

Lunacy.

No wonder I felt like I was losing my mind during my drum lesson this evening (well besides the fact I had to read some brand new tablature in 2/4, the time signature of the insane): there's a full moon out tonight!

Flying Pigs and the Power of Nostalgia.

This morning I treated myself to a Miyazaki film in bed, which is somewhat akin to sprinkling your sundae with sugar. The name of the film was Porco Rosso. It's an older work of his (having come out in 1992) and for some reason I've never seen it before (despite being a huge fan). Now I'm down to only not seeing one of his films (Kiki's Delivery Service). Other (non-Miyazaki) films I can't believe I haven't seen yet include:  Citizen Kane, Gone With the Wind, Grey Gardens, North By Northwest, The Holy Mountain, and It's a Wonderful Life (all the way through).

The plot goes something like this: Porco, an Italian WW1 flying ace turned chivalric bounty hunter, spends his days defending cruse liners from air pirates in the impossibly blue Adriatic Sea. His nights are spent at a sea-pilot's club and hotel run his old friend (and would-be romantic interest) Gina. While repairing his airplane he befriends a young engineer named Flo and eventually must defend her honor against a hotshot American pilot named Curtis. Porco has been cursed with the face of a pig for reasons never fully explained.



It was a fantastically entertaining film (of course) but what really got me was the last two minutes. I really don't know how much I want to say about it for a few reasons, chief of which is that I don't want to spoil it for any (all two) of you. Suffice to say that a voice over is involved, as well as a 30 year jump forward in time. And that can mean only one thing: the invoking of nostalgia.

I've always been a nostalgic person, but I've never understood what purpose it serves in my life. Perhaps I'll find out when I am an old man and the only currency I have left to spend are my memories of people and places that once were.

The enchanting Yma Sumac.

A singer with an amazing four-octave range, Yma Sumac (Quechua for "How Beautiful!") was said to have been a direct descendant of Atahualpa, an Incan princess that was one of the Golden Virgins. Other sources claimed that she was a Limanese housewife named Amy Camus (Yma Sumac spelled backwards). In actuality she was born Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo in Ichocan, Peru. Ichocan is 4,585 miles away.



She died late last year from complications arising from colon cancer, in Silver Lake, California, at the age of 86. Silver Lake is 313 miles away.

Valentine's Day is just around the corner. . .

He was always. . .

living one moment ahead of the moment that was about to happen.

This manifested itself in sore calves, darting eyes, fluttering palms, and all the other small tensions of the body that do not benefit.  

Sometimes he stopped altogether, but this benefited him even less.

Like a stone, sometimes he sank.

Like a stone, sometimes he flew.

And sometimes, and these were the rarest times, he felt completely at peace.

BARN DANCE!!!

Last Saturday I attended a Barn Dinner/Show/Dance in Winters.

The Crowd

The Heaters

Little Wings

The Sarees

Karl Blau 

THE M.F. RUCKUS

. . . and the beautiful morning after, in which I came up with some Big Decisions.

Lots more images and information and inspiration here:

http://ribbonsribbons.blogspot.com