Lunamania

The highlight of this weekend was a lounge about cocktail birthday celebration with friends and fish. The friends part was great to just enjoy the sun and company of good peoples and the fish was just icing on the proverbial cake. A surprise fish! What better way to top a lazy afternoon with friends? That's just special. We were hanging out on the back lawn and our neighbor happened to be grilling. I guess he's one of those hunter gatherer types and had returned from a fishing trip to Alaska. I know it's strange, but he grilled a whole fish and just gave it to us. Below is what remained after 15 minutes with our crowd. The fish did not die in vain.

I infused a magnum of lychee vodka for the occassion (birthday, not fish) and am a bit bummin' because I didn't figure out the perfect lychee cocktail until last night. But in the spirit of sharing, here are some lychee vodka variations:

The lychee martini--it's the new cosmo...
-- 2 ounces of lychee infused vodka. That's fancy talk for taking a can of lychees and tossing them in a magnum of vodka. Store in a cool dark place for one week. 2 ounces is the big end of a cocktail jigger. But really, who's counting.
-- Ice in a shaker
-- If you want to add some color, a dash of grenadine. If you like it sweeter, a touch of lychee juice.
-- Shake
-- Pour and serve w/a twist of lemon.

Peoples this is a martini, which means nothing is cutting the alcohol content so this is in essence straight vodka. Light weights beware.

The better use of the lychee infused vodka cocktail...
-- 5 mint leaves
--2-3 fresh lychee--remove seeds
-- sugar or simple syrup
--a bit of lemon
Take the above ingredients and muddle. That's bar talk for mash it around.
--Fill glass with ice.
--If you like it really sweet (in case anyone wants to know, I don't like it sweet), a tiny spoonful of lychee juice from the can.
--2 ounces of lychee infused vodka
--1 ounce of club soda or seltzer
Stir.

Note to self: It is tempting to each the lychee that have been soaking in vodka for over a week; however, pickled lychee--generally a very bad idea...
Note to self part deux: Some recipes call for "lychee syrup" which is a pain in the ass ingredient that involves tossing lychees in a blender, pressing puree, then sifting all the pulp out with a fine sieve. I did it. Highly over-rated. If you can find fresh lychee, just mash some up and figure out a way to mix it with alcohol. If you can't, the lychee juice from the can is super sweet, but does the job.

Posted by at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not saying I have an answer to the "bomb everything and everyone in sight" war maniacs in Israel, nor am I saying it's ok for Hezbollah to bomb civilians--which let us remember is exactly what Israel is doing on an unconscionable scale, but to stand alone in the international community and not demand a cease fire--in other words to condone this raining of bombs on civilians in Lebanon and Gaza is FUBAR (for those not militarily inclined, that would be fucked up beyond all recognition.

Speaking of evil empiers, there may be justice yet. Today I received a class action notice for a lawsuit accusing BarBri and Kaplan of violating anti-trust laws. From what I can gather, the allegations are that BarBri and Kaplan cut a deal to not venture outside of their respective specialties of bar review and LSAT prep. Then BarBri went and bought out West Bar, effectively neutralizing all competition. The end result is a $3000 price tag for bar review classes. If you've taken a Barbri class to prepare for the Feb. 1998 bar or any subsequent bar exam, you're included in this class. I wonder what the back story behind those class representatives is? I know my classmates griped plenty about the conspiracy and the price. With any luck I'll get a check for $10 or a free barbri class that I will never use.

Posted by at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Was the central query in 12th Night. Catherine, Laura and I spent a sunny Sunday afternoon watching Sam embody Fest/ the fool in this gender bending and kinda incestuous Shakespearean classic. Staged by the Women's Will company, the all-female cast put on a fun show in a parking lot turned ampitheatre in Hinkel Park, Bezerklee. I have memories of seeing various Shakespeare performances --in movies (Midsummer Nights Dream) and 12th Night (w/Julia Stiles and Benjamin Bratt) with Amy and Elaine. Good summer times...

Shakespeare makes me appreciate good wordplay and general poetic expression. English is so boring nowadays. We should all demand evil-doers to "separate themselves from their misdemeanors" or greet summer fun and romance with "this is very midsummer madness."

So go enjoy some Shakespeare--here's a schedule.

Posted by at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My Dad works for a Japanese broadband/cellphone company. It may seem strange that a Japanese company is looking to clunky US cellphones for design inspiration, but this weekend he was charged with reviewing and procuring phones that met some criteria that seemed suspicously like, "whatever we think is kind of neat." Excellent.

For a gear weenie like me, this was a dream come true. We hit up every cell phone carrier in the mall--Sprint, Verizon, Cingular and T-Mobile. After much exploration and several sophisticated product review dicsussions that went something like:
Dad: "This Motorola Q is so THIN!"
Luna: "But it uses windoze mobile so it's start up time is about 5 and a half years."
Dad: "It's so thin! Only 113mm!"

Dad: "The Treo...I guess Americans are OK with big phones...the Motorola Q is so THIN!"
Luna: "I wish they could merge the design of the Motorola Q with the functionality of the Treo 700p..."

Five hours later we left with a Treo 700p, a Motorola Slvr (the candybar version of the Razr), and the very thin Motorola Q. We spent the rest of the evening playing, I mean reviewing, phones. My vote goes to the Treo.

Posted by at 7:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm too cheap to get cable. This means I also don't have TV reception. Which all puts me in an alternate, time-delayed universe devoid of the dramatic tension of American Idol, deprived of the antics of Emeril--the cooking Ewok, and the very important discussions lead by the women on The View.

More relevant to this post, it also means I am years behind my fellow geeks on the Joss Whedon bandwagon. No, it wasn't Buffy or Angel that sucked me in. It was Firefly/Serenity. Firefly was a GREAT show that only ran on season. Outraged fans launched a campaign that eventually resulted in Serenity, a feature length movie based on the show. Whedon also wrote the Astonishing:X-Men series which is the one that is the basis for the latest X-Men movie. I'm told Whedon really draws out the mutant/queer people analogy a lot more than the movie does. Go Joss.

Anyway, Whedon always has strong female characters and here's a clip of him chatting about that.

Posted by at 7:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was here tonight:

home: exploring belonging
a new visual exhibition

Exhibit Runs July 11 - August 31, 2006;

Opening Reception: Tuesday, July 11th, 6.30 - 9.30PM
KSW's space180, 180 capp street, 3rd floor, @ 17th street, SF

It's a cool show. My favorites were a series of paintings by Amy Lee and this fireplace installation with removable bricks loaded with mp3 recordings of people talking about Kearny Street Workshop. You gotta see it to know it. Info above and more on the show here.

Posted by at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rumors are flying that Materazzi--recipient of the world's most famous head butt--provoked Zidane by calling him a "dirty terrorist"

I've been wondering where the FIFA lip-readers are and found and interesting post here on a blog about racism and sports. Apparently the lip readers make out insults about Zidane's sister and the oh so clever line "big Algerian shit." I don't know much about European soccer, but according to this posting, Materazzi has a history of being a Class A asshole. Makes me want to rock a Zidane jersey myself.

Posted by at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In North America, summer games involve the NBA finals and then it's all about baseball. (Go Mets!) Although I love me some baseball, I've come to believe the singular focus on what admitedly can be a slow sport is yet another illustration of USA-centric stupidity. I mean this country is really missing out. Between June and July of 2006 some of the most mind-blowing atheticism will be on view: World Cup soccer (Go Froggies!), Wimbeldon (Go Mauresmo the ol' "Half man" dyke! yay!), the US Open--for golf and tennis, and the Lance-less, but no less exciting Tour de France. Oh and of course, my mini-triathlon.

I'm not some kumbaya fool who thinks sports will transcend geopolitical hatred, but it's kinda neat to often hidden communities emerge during the World Cup. Who knew there were so many Irish in San Francisco or Koreans in the East Village?

Posted by at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that Alison Bechdel is with a large publisher, her work is no longer relegated to indie bookstores and is getting some positive mainstream media attention. Yay. I've read a couple of reviews of Fun Home that broadly characterize the book as "lesbian daughter explores her relationship with gay dad who ends up dying (was it a suicide or not?) soon after Bechdel comes out." Oh, but it's so much more. I have many thoughts which in my fantasy world would be shared with you faithful readers in the vein of Michiko Kakutani or the wonderfully snarky Manhola Dargis. However, this is Lunamania and I have neither their skillz nor time, but here are my random thoughts.

First, this dyke comic strip writer totally put herself out there. Hello--Ms.Bechdel might as well be wearing a sign that says "Hi, My dad was a pedophile. Oh, and I like girls too." I mean who actually asks for that kind of attention? And how daunting is it for writers (or anyone for that matter) to tell stories of their families without it being a) traumatic for all involved, b) trite and done already, and/or c) just boring. Anyway, in some circles Bechdel is a lesbonic icon on par with Melissa Etheridge and Ellen. She could have continued comfortably with Dykes to Watch Out For (DTWOF for those in the know), but decides to share with the world that her father not only had sex with other men, but had relationships with the babysitter and his students? Oh and she incidentally pushed that graphic novel genre to a whole new level. Makes me wonder what I will ever accomplish with my life.

Second, Bechdel is a genius at drawing/telling the many conflicting truths that make up life -- and queerness in particular. Her primary framework is her relationship with her dad, but there's something in there about complicating just what it means to be "gay" or "queer" and what we make of our communities and familes. Bechdel illustrates her father's bad choice/s and the not so fun consequences with a complicated empathy that reveals the book to be not some Jerry Springer-esque story of a pedophile's daughter--which leads to point 3. There's a lot of talk of how this is a gay dad-gay daughter reconciliation story, but that's not quite it. Dad chose to continue sleeping w/young men and making regular visits to Chelsea, but never identified as gay--at least in the current Chelsea/Castro boy sense of the word. But he was definitely queer in that his choices about his sexuality were outside of the normative understanding of a hetero-nuclear family. I guess nowadays we'd call him on the DL , downe or MSM. There's some point I'm not articulating there about the evolution of queer identities and communities. Need more headspace to name my point.

Third, there are some masterful pages about a girl coming of age and reflecting on the intangible signifiers of queerness that in many ways have nothing to do with who one sleeps with. There's a scene where a 10 yr old gender queer Bechdel visits New York. She doesn't name this as her lesbionic awakening, but she does feel some post-Stonewall "liberation" that she juxtaposes with drawings informing the reader that this was right around the time patient zero emerged with what was not yet known as HIV. She also shares a memory of a visit to some construction crew doing blast mining or somesuch enviromentally sound activity. She's with her two brothers and upon catching a glimpse of a pin-up calendar, she senses some sexualized danger. She takes her younger brother aside and demands that he call her by a boy name. She doesn't explain that she wants to pass or why she feels anxious, but the safety in boy-ness was obvious even to her 10 yr old self. It's a sick world we live in.

Fourth, Catherine and Laura went to see Bechdel read and apparently she is a genuinely nice person who geeks out with Photoshop. I mean what more could I want? OK, I want Moe to be less neurotic and to buy/knit/find a new shirt.

Posted by at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

At one point in my life, this would have referred to the application of post-modern theory coupled with a dose of some not so sharp analysis of differentiated power and material well-being as it relates to one's raceclassgendersexualorientation. Yes, it's said like all oneword.

These days my focus is to turn my theoretical triathlon into a reality. Don't worry peoples, it's only a sprint distance--I'm stupid, but not insane. I've theorized endlessly about how to "train", whether to get a heart monitor watch (loves the gear), learned that I over-pronate when running, and been mildly amused by the proliferation of spandex triathlon related clothing. Given all the brain space utilized, I should actually register this. Yes, that is the LUNA bar triathlon. Is it a sign? Am I only in it for the free Luna Bars? Do I have an unhealthy obsession w/my name?

Posted by at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)