in iceland, no less.

last i knew, bobby fischer was living in budapest. i arrived there in 2000 and went to meet Bob Cohen for the first time, in his bar, the Cziga Cafe. There were chess players in the back of the Cziga; Bob told me that Bobby Fischer lived in the area and was known to come into the cafe once every year or so and kick all the chess players’ asses. The rest of the time he published pamphlets elucidating his anti-semetic, hungaro-japanese master race theory.

On my second trip to the region, i had the incredible privilege of being taken out to Transylvania by Master Cohen, where we visited with master fiddler Marton Kodoba and his son Florine, of the Kodoba family band from Palatka. The Palatka style is rough & emotionally intense - Martun, coaxed to play by our offering of bootlegged plum brandy, leaned towards us as he played, eyes half-mast but making searingly direct eye contact. Here is a picture of them taken by Fumie Suzuki:

I have since learned from Bob’s blog that Marton passed away in 2003. You can see the current incarnation of the Kodoba family band at work here.

update, 2:05 pm; a challenge to speak peppery readers: be the first speak peppery reader or blogger to write a texting novel

gabe, dawn, stefan, zara, sam had a lovely walk through the cloudless, moonless, starry sky and woods for our new years night after celebrating the actual 7-8 transition itself with parents. we had a lovely time. thomas, marian, kathryn, ted, and many other friends were sorely missed all the same. happy new year y’all.

2008 is about hope. on April 4 it will be the 40th anniversary of martin luther king’s assassination. here is the fourth google image search result for “hope 2008″

One thing I admire about Sonny Rollins is his continual willingness to sacrifice the quality of his music in favor of the quality of his life. That’s good, right!!

from Wikipedia:
“Tantra is an accumulation of practices and ideas which has among its characteristics the use of…in some sects, transgressional acts, and the use of the mundane to access the supramundane.”

For example, as I learned from Ed’s cultural guru at the Pashupati temple outside of Kathmandu, some tantric guys eat dead bodies, and “to us, they are eating a dead body, but to them, maybe it is some delicious fruit!”

Transgressional acts: Rollins’ masterpiece is the record “Sonny Meets Hawk,” from 1963 - a duet album with Coleman Hawkins, the first great tenor saxophonist and a major influence/mentor to Rollins. By this time Coleman Hawkins was aging gracefully. The entire album consists of standards performed by the two of them together (plus Paul Bley, Henry Grimes, & drummer), Hawkins playing beautiful soulful lines with his swing-era tone, and Sonny playing along with him - in a completely bizarre free jazz parody of Hawkins’ style! wow. i really like to think about that. What a beautiful record, would you like to hear some right now?

Here (note also the mindblowing paul bley solo)
[audio:02 All the Things You Are.mp3]

Word has it that Dan Baum, a contributor to the New Yorker since 2003 (ish?) and correspondent from New Orleans since the h-cane, has been let go because, according to Baum via Gawker, David Remnick wasn’t happy with his writing. As we used to say, Jigga what? I am disappointed in this decision by the New Yorker.

In other news I fell off my scooter yesterday in a rain storm on my way home from work. That I am totally fine, as is my scooter, is basically a miracle! (I drive a Honda Metropolitan and I was going about 30 mph! I hit a street-car track and got stuck in it and skidded out of control) All I have is a skinned knee. I am still committed to scooter commuting as it costs $3 a week in gas.

Please no one tell my mom about this.

the best album i have heard so far this year is “double up” by r. kelly. it explores themes of dualism and multi-dimensional doubling. it includes:

 -a song where two guys discover they are messing with the same chick

 -a song about ‘doubling up’ with a couple of fine chicks from the club

 -a song where R. finds out that his friend has a fine girlfriend and tells him to “hook it up” and find another one just like her, for him

 -a conversation with an ex-girlfriend wherein he discovers that she’s doing his best friend,

 -and “having a baby,” wherein his girlfriend tells him she’s pregnant, and he says, “oh, i’m so happy/and i’m so happy to be the baby’s daddy” and is excited about doubling himself, i.e. creating “robert junior.”

this weekend in nepal: we visited the famous hindu temples pashupati and guheswari.  pashupati is the temple of shiva in his incarnation as protector of the animals. guheswari is a temple that was built for the anus of a famous goddess, sati, becaus it fell out of the sky and landed there.  Sati was a lover of Shiva. After she died, she was carried around by Shiva on his shoulder because he was so sad.  eventually her body decomposed and there are temples all around india and nepal for whichever body part happened to fall there. the asshole happened to fall near kathmandu and we got to visit it.

Overheard in New York: “It’s true that my mother does have a very full bush.”

Mom reports from Islamabad:

My room is very swish, but the usual regional oddities come out around the edges. There’s a watercolor landscape on one wall, mostly taken up by a large pine in the foreground. It’s hung horizontally, so the pine reclines along the bottom edge.

Here’s a great line for you from the Balochistan “child assessment form” ..
Examiner: Say to the child “Using alternative arms and legs, skip, with a little hop motion.”

[youtube]qUJwNYlIRY0[/youtube]

Who doesn’t love a song that has an accompanying dance? One of the many advantages to living in the South is that dance crazes “sweep the land”, early 1960s-style. I don’t know anyone here, with the possible exception of my PhD candidate husband, who does not know how do this spring’s dance, the Cupid Shuffle. By the singer Cupid, who is from Lafayette, La.
This dance is simple (in excellent song-with-accompanying-dance form, the song tells you what the moves are) but in fact the simpler the dance, the harder it is to make it look right.

I watched a bunch of Cupid Shuffle clips before choosing this one.

In the South, there are two fast-food chains, Checkers and Rally’s, which are owned by the same company. I didn’t know much about them, except they seem pretty popular and they sell something called a Big Buford.

While reading my favorite food-service trade paper, Nation’s Restaurant News, I just learned about their new corporate mascot, who stars in an (apparently very successful) ad campaign on TV. It is called Rap Cat. It is a cat puppet who raps.
If you go to Rally’s or Checkers and buy some food, they give it to you in a paper bag that is printed with the pattern of Rap Cat’s cat-jersey. It has perforated holes in it so that you can take the bag home, punch out the holes, and dress your own cat in the paper-bag jersey. If you want, you can take a photo of your cat in its paper-bag jersey and email it to rap-cat.com, and they’ll post it on the page.
Unfortunately, there are no photos on the page yet. But soon! In the meantime, you can check out some music videos starring Rap Cat.

I see that we have Frank Bruni’s blog on our links list.

*crickets chirping*

*people thinking, ‘what, you got a problem bitch?’*

I read the Brune, for sure, absolutely. Nothing can stand between me an his weekly wisdom-drop.
But. Does anyone else feel like he needs to start having more fun? He’s such a consummate professional, his labors are so laborious, it gets me to thinking, Has the New York City restaurant scene become so rarefied, so ass-clenchingly competitive, that nobody is just enjoying talking and eating and drinking anymore? I know they are, of course, but Bruni’s voice is just too shrilly complainy sometimes. There is a place for bitching in food writing, obviously. But it should, ideally, be balanced out by some kind of larger existential appetite, or at least the impression the writer knows how to have a good time. Which, in Bruni’s case, I wonder about.

In keeping with my mother-in-law Louise’s tradition, this morning after breakfast (I made my first brioche! French cooking can be so… self-flagellatory), we got in the car, drove to the other side of the Mississippi and down into the swamp to a nature preserve, for the customary Christmas day Walk. We walked along raised boardwalks that snake through the underbrush and along the creepy waterways. Down By Law country. There was a sign saying it was closed Christmas day, so no one was there but us.

 We hadn’t been walking for long before we came upon a deer that was sitting at the edge of the boardwalk.

 It was a male deer with a full set of small antlers. It had its legs tucked under it and it sat there looking at us without really moving. Its fur looked very soft and clean. Gray walked right past it without noticing it, and literally could have accidentally kicked it in the face, that’s how close it was to our pathway. God, it would have been terrible if he had kicked it in the face. I gasped and managed to stutter to him that there was a deer right there, and we all kind of stood there looking at it, and it at us, and then gradually we walked past it, one at a time, hoping not to upset it.

That’s the whole story. We saw a deer that maybe was sick, or injured (but it looked perfectly healthy and alert), or maybe a bit retarded. But it seemed kind of like a person, or an incarnate thing besides a deer.