PicoBlog

Hi! We’re continuing to explore more about cooking with black vinegar. This week, it’s a personal favorite and Sichuan classic: fish-fragrant eggplant. Last December, two of my college friends visited me in Chengdu, and we took a nostalgic stroll through the neighborhood near Sichuan University, where we studied a decade ago. Our lunch spot was Lao Liao Jia, a modest eatery nestled on the ground floor of a residential building.

Leading up to the holiday weekend, I thought I’d post some silly drawings. I have cats on the brain, and it makes for a good excuse to post cat cartoons. We have a new kitty, her name is Mitty, inspired by the name in the short story The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty by James Thurber. My husband and I are huge Thurber fans, and we did consider naming her Jamie.

“Richard Cory,” a poem by American poet Edward Arlington Robinson, belongs to a category I sometimes think of as the “mic drop” poems of the Western canon: verses that end on a sudden, brilliant, even shocking last line. Other entries in this genre include Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” James Wright’s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota,” and Randall Jarrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.

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Let’s stop calling dashi Japanese stock. It’s an easy shortcut, but misleading. I’ve introduced it this way for years myself. However, recently, I’ve wondered if it’s putting people off making it. Prepping a stock conjures up ideas of chopping vegetables, meat carcasses, hours with a huge steaming pot on the go and all the resulting mess to deal with. Not the case with making a dashi. It’s more of a brew, or infusion.

Comparisons are inevitable in show biz. Bob Dylan was heralded as the “new Woody Guthrie,” Bruce Springsteen had both the mantles of “the next Bob Dylan” and “the future of rock’n’roll” to overcome, and many drew an early parallel between Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. While some of these media-contrived comparisons are benign and easily traversed, some artists have found their given millstone nigh unto impossible to toss off (see Elliott Murphy and Willie Nile, both saddled, at one time or other, with “the next Dylan” tag).

There’s a scene late in the new Broadway musical, Lempicka, in which fascist thugs in occupied Paris enter “The Monocle,” a lesbian bar, as the Italian Futurist artist, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti harangues its owner, Suzy Solidor, warning her of impending doom. If not friends exactly, Suzy and Marinetti are at least friendly acquaintances, and he shrilly suggests that she abandon her bar and her patrons because he can’t protect her from what is about to transpire.

When I became aware of Matt Singer’s book about Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, I got jealous. Somehow, I felt scooped, even though the author brainstormed and pitched the idea first. The nerve! I got my hands on a copy as soon as possible, then stayed up past my bedtime savoring every page, then reached out to Matt through multiple channels, requesting an interview for this newsletter. Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever, will forever have a place on my bookshelf, next to the other books that I wish I’d written, but were claimed — and wonderfully told — by exactly the right person at exactly the right time.

The Weekly Sitrep By Sitreps2Steercos Substack Each week, I'll be diving into a variety of topics that I'm passionate about, including business, economics, education, and the military to civilian transition. I also send out job postings and military transition networking opportunities. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjbS106ucqatiqMGmsdGcpqw%3D