Moonlight

Here is a poem I wrote in the Narragansett language:

ntauhaunanatinnehòmmin sowwaníu wequáshim

yo mesh nowékeshemcuttineapúmmishen

wetapwâuwwas uppansìnea

ewo npepeyup

cowaûtunumun wauontamesumun

aquie mishommoke

i cannot search for moonlight in the southland-

i have gone thus far and it only passes by.

"sit and talk with us,"

i ask the moon.

he is innocent and

i have been here long.

"i want to understand you,"

i tell him.

but he is wise,

and will not name the dead.

Las flores a fin de abril

Sanremo, Italy

The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again. George Miller

This summer I am going to spend the month of June in Sanremo, Italy. During the weekdays I will be teaching an English language workshop to Italian students, while hopefully spending the nights and weekends exploring the Meditereanean city. It's a pretty good, short term job that will enable me to do several things that I love to do-travel, eat, work with languages, teach, explore, and cook.

I will be staying in the home of an Italian host family. Here, I hope to learn a few Italian home cooked recipes to bring back to the USA with me (research for my Big Yellow Taxi restaurant menu).

Tonight I made baked stuffed ricotta and parsley manicotti. It was delicious! And since it's also always fun to photograph melted cheese, I thought I'd put up some pictures.

Bad Yearbook Photos

Notes on True Blood

I'm really getting into Season 1 of HBO's television drama True Blood. It's a type of hybrid vampire fiction based off the remnants of various vampire legends of popular culture. These vampires are VERY sexual (well, so are the humans) ala Anne Rice; they can not enter homes uninvited, stand the sunlight, silver or stakes through the heart in Buffy the Vampire Slayer fashion. Like the Twilight series, there seems to be a mysterious dog that could potentially be the mortal enemy of vamps (though I am not far enough in the series to make what's what of this emerging story line).

Susan Sontag in Notes on Camp writes, "I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it." I feel the same with True Blood. It's intertextul genius aside, the thing that makes True Blood unique, in my opinion, is its over the top self-conscious and unapologetic smuttiness, which is totally repulsive and yet enticing at the same time.

"Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is too much," and I am reminded of Jason Stackhouse's pasty white body banging away at the backside of another female conquest. Are we to take every Stackhouse (and if you think that name is camp, what about his sister Sookie!?) scene where he wakes up with another set of bouncing breasts as good ole' boy humor, or is there something serious in HBO's attempts to portray all the humans' dirty little past times? I am inclined to believe the later.

In my heart of hearts I am convinced that True Blood truly believes it is making an important political statement about human rights, race, sexual freedoms. "Camp is the attempt to do something extraordinary."

Sontag writes, "among the great creative sensibilities is Camp: the sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of experience. Camp refuses both the harmonies of traditional seriousness, and the risks of fully identifying with extreme states of feeling." From the commitment phobic Southern accents of the young actors, to its hillbilly representations of Louisiana natives, its dappling in voodoo mysticism, to its ludicrous B-movie sex scenes, to the old fashion Dandy-boy character Bill, to it's weird Chris Isaac-sounding music set to a Nine Inch Nail's-like opening credits, everything about this show seriously fails at its attempts at serious vampire drama.

With its dilapidated set designs, gran's pecan pie (or the fact that she's called gran), an overly saturated film grain, HBO's inflated attempts to ride the shirt tails of post-Katrina New Orleans, Stephanie Myer and Harry Potter, and maybe even Sex and the City (only with vampires), is laughable, obvious, and brilliant.

As Sontag concludes, "The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful . . ." is exactly why I can not drag myself from True Blood this weekend.

Ensopado de Bacalhau

Bahia's dishes are famous for their rich blend of African flavors: palm oil or dendê, coconut milk, ginger, chiles of various grades of hotness, and other flavors found throughout Brasil.

This dish I prepared tonight was FANTASTIC! It's a cod fish stewed in a tomato, onion, cilantro, lemon, red and green chiles, and coconut milk. Dendê provides a unique taste to this plate but unfortunately it is difficult to find in the United States. Peanut oil can easily be substituted.

Definitely pair this with a cold Latin American beer, a blue sea, and a warm day.

getting out of this bohemia

          antennas as coat hanger
       as foil ball
         as put your foot on this crate and wait
       wait ‘til the picture stills
    when the mice haven’t done their dishes
          and you’re eating punk rock lasagna
        left over
         bags of wine
      in washed out jelly jars
          and all the art in the icebox has spoiled
                                  you know it’s time leave