Make Something Up - Part 2

"Crap," John said. "Make something up."

The three college students were getting antsy--one of the girls stood up to leave but was coaxed back onto the couch by the other two. John had promised them I would play some real jazz if they came over to the party.

Except... John was a country boy from Corinth, Mississippi, raised on grits and country music, and nothing made him happier than music that allowed him to clap his hands and laugh and stomp his right foot. He didn't have a clue about jazz, and neither did I (other than I couldn't play it).

He and I would go to big bluegrass parties on Wye mountain, with guitar players and banjo players and fiddle players in the big back yard of our friend's house. John was the master of ceremonies, the person who told jokes and yelled things like "Hot damn" while we were playing. At the time I was learning to play bluegrass fiddle. I wasn't particularly good, but I'm pretty sure that John didn't realize this. Music was just music to John.

Purists, on the other hand, have a different mindset--they are on a mission, and it doesn't matter what has captured them: sound systems, motorcycles, jazz, wine. They can be a little... critical. These three students were jazz purists. I had listened as they argued over the relative merits of Bud Powell and Bill Evans, and I had shrugged my shoulders as if anyone knew who was best, when in fact I didn't have a clue.

I was boxed into a corner. Who knows, maybe I could play something that would entertain them. I did know a jazzy version of "Someone to watch over me." I moved toward the piano bench.

Here's Art Tatum playing Little man you've had a busy day.

Make Something Up

Years ago our band was playing music in a seedy nightclub, the kind of place you'd never ever go--an ugly concrete box on a dirty street in a mean section of downtown Little Rock where only bikers and construction workers felt at home--when, just as we were playing our last song, my roommate John T. came into the club followed close behind by two girls and a guy, the three them huddled closely together.

John had met these three at a college party and discovered they were jazz lovers, so he convinced them to come with him to see us play. In particular he told them several lies about me--how I was such a great jazz player (when I fact our band just played cover tunes and I could not play real jazz piano at all). John was a first-class liar.

I could easily have set the record straight but it was late, I was depressed about the dull, sad state of my life, and I was a little jealous of these brightly polished people out on a break from medical school and never before in a nightclub and certainly never in a place like this. Why not let them like me a little? So we all talked jazz, how we liked Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson, and I was very cool about it.

About an hour or so later, 30 or 40 people had gathered in my house for a party, yet another party fueled by John's excessively enthusiastic personality. I had my grand piano in the living room. The three students were there, still stuck closely together and now sitting on the couch a few feet away from the piano. An assortment of drunks and other musicians wandered about in their normally stupid fashion.

John and I stood at the far end of the room, far away from my piano. "I told them you were going to play," he whispered into my ear like a kid on Christmas morning. He didn't have a clue about jazz or my inability to play it. In Vietnam, John was a general's assistant, so he never saw combat. "Vietnam was a big party for me," he liked to say.

"They're going to leave," John continued, still grinning his goofy grin. He was always smiling. "Play something."

"I don't know any jazz, John," I said. "That's the problem."

"Crap, make something up."



Exactly.

My Bread

I cut myself this morning. Not bad. I was preparing the toast portion of my morning coffee and toast break with Willow when the bread knife just slipped off the top of the bread. I have a nice, sharp serrated bread knife but it suddenly seemed very dull. When I pushed harder, the knife skimmed over the crust of the bread and hit my other hand. The crust of the bread did not show a mark at all.

Just yesterday I cut a piece no problem, so I wondered what could have happened to my knife. OK, then. I pulled out a butcher knife. Since this is a flat bread loaf, I thought I'd just chop off a few pieces (keeping one hand behind my back).

Then I decided to get the video camera.


Oddly enough, the bread tears apart with no problem and is tender on the inside. Tastes good, too.

Gramp, part 2

I was thinking more about my grandfather this week.

My brother and I were leafing through a Sears catalog, sitting there in Gramp's living room years ago, and he asked us what we were looking at. I said a swim mask and snorkel--I can't remember what David said. Gramp stood up and walked out to his car and returned later with the swim mask and David's present. We were bug-eyed and excited to be sure, but he just returned to his newspaper, and I'm sure he told us to "get the hell out" soon after.

My mom was treated unfairly once by the bank--I can't remember the specifics, but she said Gramp got in his car, drove to the bank and told them "I'll be taking out my money now. All of it." Other stories included how he produced or threatened to produce a shotgun for one reason or another. True or not, the stories have a sort of Godfather theme.

I'm sure he had moments of weakness, of self-doubt, but I'm not sure if he ever allowed anyone to know about them. Today it's OK for grown men like me to blog and blubber on like teenage girls. But I wonder if it is such a good idea.

Unfortunately, we don't get an opportunity to play the Godfather very often or to become bigger than life. But I suppose I should just tell myself to quit crying and shut the hell up and quit writing this crap.

On Choosing a Team

When Cheryl is away on one of her school trips, as she is this weekend, I could just go out to eat, but that's no fun. Better to cook something, hibernate and watch movies.


Light night I started, as usual, with a saute of garlic and olive oil. (The kitchen just doesn't smell right otherwise.) Then I took a big handful of roasted almonds and threw them in my 2-horsepower mega blender with chicken stock, reducing them to liquid, which I poured over the garlic. In the meantime I had a collection of chili peppers (anaheims, poblanos, serranos, habeneros) roasting in the oven. And in a little while I skinned them and chopped up fine and into the pan. After a slow simmer for an hour, I opened a can of crab meat and put some in a bowl and covered with the soup.

So what movie to watch? It's occurred to me, more than once, that I really don't belong to a team (i.e., vampire or werewolf). And so I risk becoming irrelevant in the modern culture, not that Cheryl cares because she's declared herself to be beyond team-choosing in this case and refuses to watch the movie, even though she consumed the books like I consumed my soup last night. No, I finally had to watch the movie by myself.

From what I can tell, my wife and other adolescent females seem to have their own bizarre notions (that I certainly can't imagine), while I can only approach the issue logically and with some practicality, which is to say that we (you and me) are most likely to join a team that reflects our inner qualities, at least as we imagine them, right?

And though I'm not one to make hasty decisions, or to swear allegiance to an unknowable or generalized concept (especially when there is still one movie to go), it does appear that I'm closer to one team than another. With the image of a muscled puppy boy on one hand, and a pensive, glittery ponce on the other, I don't have much choice, do I. But then again, neither did she...

Tonight I'm making pizza.

Bread. Good.

This week I finally made some whole wheat bread that tasted like real bread. OK, so the loaf spread out instead of up, but it had a really nice taste. Even Cheryl ate some, and she is a tough sell when it comes to food.

During the process we discovered that our oven wasn't cooking as hot as we thought--the bread recipe called for 450 degrees, but the oven thermometer I bought (actually I bought two of them) showed that the temperature was only 375. (I found out how to calibrate it.)

My new bread book (thanks again, Gisah) describes how whole wheat flour contains the whole grain (gluten, germ and bran), while white flour has the nutritious germ and bran removed. The rise of popularity of the high-carbohydrate white flour (and the emergence of pretend foods like Wonder Bread and Twinkies) can be traced back nearly 100 years and to a simple fact: while flour has a longer shelf life than whole wheat, especially when certain chemical enzymes are added.

Like with countless other examples, our current food culture is the direct result of the corporate control of all food. Since white bread can be transported greater distances before it goes stale, it can be baked in a few big corporate bakeries instead of several local bakeries. Corporations can kiss my butt. (Oh, wait. I am one.)

White flour also puffs up like a balloon (this is because the gluten helps trap the gases created by yeast). Whole wheat flour is notoriously difficult to transform into a light loaf of bread, and I've had one failure after another, untl now.

So I'm really happy to have a decent whole wheat loaf. In this approach I put an iron skillet in the bottom of the oven to get hot, and then pour in some water when then bread goes it, creating some steam.

I'm trying again this weekend.