My son the auteur

My son Ben and his friend Dan have entered the Heinz Top This TV Challenge. Give it up for the next generation of stop-motion animators:

Heinz Untoppable, by Ben Leddy and Dan Shick (YouTube)

Tofu : chef :: canvas : painter

Barry Greenberg, Iowa Memorial Union executive chef and director of IMU Food Services at the University of Iowa, has won the Culinary Challenge of the National Association of College and University Food Services:

Each chef had 75 minutes to prepare her or his entrée using this year's featured ingredient: extra firm tofu.

When the dust settled, Greenberg emerged the victor with his entrée, Asian Bento Box, composed of tofu sushi, seaweed and tofu salad, edamame shumai, smoked shiitake spring rolls, mango and ginger tofu smoothie, and miso soup.

While Greenberg, who has spent 15 years with the IMU Food Services, felt that some chefs may have chosen not to compete because of their unfamiliarity with tofu, he had no difficulty in making the food his own.

"When you work with a product like that, it's a blank canvas; it will take on the flavor and texture of what the chef wants to do," Greenberg said.

Morgan Lucero, the meeting and logistics coordinator at the food-service association, said the competition's venue and featured ingredient change each year.

"We have a culinary-challenge committee that is made up of representatives from each region, as well as a committee head," she said. "The committee mulls out the suggestions of the chairperson and eventually decides on a protein."

The featured ingredient usually follows the theme and locale of the contest. For Seattle this year, the theme was fresh and organic, so tofu was a natural choice, Lucero said.

"Next year's theme is striped sea bass and will be in Washington, D.C.," she said.

Note: Every dish Mr. Greenberg prepared would appear to be vegan or vegetarian.

UI chef nobody's tofu fool (Daily Iowan)

Review: Charles Mingus at Cornell

Charles Mingus Sextet, Cornell 1964 (2 CDs)
Blue Note (2007)

Charles Mingus, bass
Johnny Coles, trumpet
Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute
Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone
Jaki Byard, piano
Dannie Richmond, drums

Recorded March 18, 1964 at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

ATFW You (Byard) (4:26)
Sophisticated Lady (Duke Ellington) (4:23)
Fables of Faubus (29:42)
Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk (15:05)
Take the "A" Train (Billy Strayhorn) (17:26)

Meditations (31:23)
So Long Eric (15:33)
When Irish Eyes Are Smiling (Olcott-Graff-Ball) (6:07)
Jitterbug Waltz (Thomas "Fats" Waller) (9:59)

All compositions by Mingus except as noted

Like the 2005 releases Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945 (Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker), Cornell 1964 is a newly-discovered concert recording. And as with those 2005 releases, the performance just happens to be extraordinary. I'm past the two-dozen mark when it comes to buying Mingus recordings, and I think that Cornell 1964 is the most exciting Mingus music I've heard.

What a concert those lucky students were given:

"ATFW You": Jaki Byard's fleet, witty parade of Art Tatumisms and Fats Wallerisms.

"Sophisticated Lady": for bass. Mingus never stopped paying tribute to Duke Ellington.

"Fables of Faubus": A Weillian send-up of Orval Faubus, segregationist governor of Arkansas. The lyrics here are, alas, inaudible. (A sample: "Two, four, six, eight, they brainwash and teach you hate.") A very lengthy "Fables," dipping into various streams of musical Americana along the way. Here, as elsewhere, Mingus and Richmond are the most inventive bass-and-drums pairing in jazz, changing tempos and textures and thereby pushing soloists to dig deeper: the rhythm section as personal trainer.

"Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk": One of Mingus's most beautiful compositions, with overtones of Ellington, "Blues in the Night," and "Body and Soul."

"Take the 'A' Train": I think it's here that everything rises to a very high level of energy. As Clifford Jordan begins his second chorus, Mingus calls to Johnny Coles and Eric Dolphy: "Join in," and the band takes off. Jordan is the great surprise on this performance and on the rest of the recording, playing with greater intensity and freedom than on the European tour recordings (or at least the ones that I've heard). And Coles, who missed much of the European tour with a stomach ulcer, is brilliant here and elsewhere. I'm only now realizing that he was an influence on Lester Bowie, one of my favorite trumpeters.

"Meditations": like "Orange," a composition in markedly different sections. Particularly powerful solos from Byard and Dolphy (bass clarinet).

"So Long Eric": Twelve-bar blues. Mingus plants the endpin of his bass in the floor, and not for the first time: "Well, we got several holes now." The tempo here is slower than on other recordings of this tune. Mingus calls to Johnny Coles: "Come on, Johnny." He calls to Jaki Byard: "By yourself," and bass and drums drop out. No problem: Byard turns into Art Tatum and Erroll Garner. It's Clifford Jordan's turn to solo: "I know you swing," says Mingus. And before Dannie Richmond's solo: "Go!"

Two encores follow, the first featuring "the only Irishman in the band," "Johnny O'Coles." (Note the concert date.) And finally, a giddy, slightly wobbly "Jitterbug Waltz," the elegant Fats Waller melody that Eric Dolphy loved to play.

For a newcomer to Mingus's music, Cornell 1964 is a perfect start: three major Mingus compositions ("Fables," "Orange," "Meditations"), some blues, some strong evidence of Mingus's reverence for his musical ancestors, and a charming novelty, all played by what many listeners regard as Mingus's greatest band.

What are you waiting for? Go!

Cornell 1964, with 18 minutes of streaming music (Blue Note)

Related posts
Charles Mingus in Norway
I dream of Mingus

Proust: "the azure light of her eyes"

As she walked beside me, the Duchesse de Guermantes allowed the azure light of her eyes to float in front of her, but undirected, so as to avoid the people with whom she was not keen to come into contact, but whom she could sometimes make out in the distance like a menacing reef.

Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, translated by John Sturrock (New York: Penguin, 2002), 70-71

Likewise small-town residents navigating supermarkets (azure aside).

All Proust posts (via Pinboard)

The American Package Museum

Ex-residents of the "dowdy world" will enjoy an online visit to the American Package Museum. Curator Ian House describes the Museum:

The primary objective of this website is to preserve and display specimens of American package design from the early decades of the 20th Century. The secondary objective is to establish a community for those interested in such an endeavor. It is my hope that this website will eventually develop into a significant archive of corporate heritage and branding.

The Museum features 142 items, beautifully photographed against a dowdy background (fabric? wallpaper?). I'm not sure that everything here is from the early 20th century: I remember the Canada Dry Wink bottle from kidhood.

There are several items beginning with q: Q-Tips, Quaker Oats, Quaker Yellow Corn Meal, and Nestlé's Quik (now Nesquik).

The American Package Museum
All "dowdy world" posts (via Pinboard)

Shopping by letters

A Google search that led someone to Orange Crate Art today had me puzzled:

things to buy at wal-mart that begin with the letter g

Well: gelatin, Geritol (yes, they still make Geritol), giblets, gin, ginger, ginger ale, glassware, glue, goat's milk, Goo-Gone, graham crackers, Grape-Nuts, grapes, gum.

Gosh, thought I: Google, like the cellphone, really is ruining self-reliance (which you can't buy at Wal-Mart).

Then I realized that I'd misread, misled by the underlined search URL in my blog stats. This Google search was for items beginning with the letter q. That's a bit more difficult. Here's what I've thought of: Q-Tips, quad-ruled pads, Queen CDs, queen-size sheets, Quiet Riot CDs, quinoa. And now I'll quit.

What else?

Related post
What you can't buy at Wal-Mart

Birds of Academe

The negative attitude of the University establishment was not so much directed against his Lamarckian theories, but rather an expression of the usual hostility of the grey birds in the groves of Academe against the coloured bird with the too-melodious voice.

Arthur Koestler, The Case of the Midwife Toad (NY: Random House, 1971), 49-50.

My friend Aldo Carrasco quoted this wonderful observation on academia in a letter (August 17, 1982). All these years later, I decided to track down its source.

Related post
Letters from Aldo

Background
The Case of the Midwife Toad (Museum of Hoaxes)

A late addition to the pantheon

Dinah: goddess of short-order cooking.

Overheard

"That was projectile speaking."

All "Overheard" posts (via Pinboard)

Syllabi

Adviser and adjunct instructor Monica D'Antonio proofreads other people's syllabi at Temple University:

When I was an undergraduate, I was always afraid of a professor with a detailed syllabus. To me, the longer the syllabus, the more work I was going to have to do, and the more thorough the professor was going to be.

That isn't always true. But after proofreading so many syllabi, I have concluded that the professors with the most detailed syllabi sometimes did require the most work but were also the ones who seemed most approachable and helpful.

Read it all:

If Your Syllabus Could Talk (Chronicle of Higher Education)