Who says you can't have a memorable 26th bday? Had lots of fun eating and drinking with friends at Yakitori Tory's. Maybe drank a bit too much, and those lamb chops at the end were probably overkill. But the appetizers, skewers, and beef tongue stew ere money. Also, we successfully tricked Joyce into eating squid liver (she liked it before finding out what it was!). Thanks for the good time guys!
Last week, The New Yorker ran a profile on novelist Ian McEwan. Having read a few of his books, I enjoyed reading about his personal experiences that provided key material for some of his stories: being inspired by Philip Roth's "sexual evil-may-care" to take on incest in The Cement Garden; being on a hike and coming across two big dogs, the basis for a central event in Black Dogs; and his apartment on Fitzroy Square and the stability of his family life as the basis for Henry Perowne's world in Saturday. I'm looking forward to his next book about a Nobel Prize-wimnning physicist who takes on global warming. McEwan describes this new protagonist, Michael Beard, as "an intellectual thief," "sexually predatory," and "a compulsive eater, a round and tubby fellow who has profound self-belief." Good stuff. Here's something he said about writing:
[McEwan] went on, "When I'm writing, I don't really think about themes." Instead, he keeps in mind a phrase of Nabokov's: "fondle details." McEwan explained, "Writing is a bottom-up process, to borrow a term from the cognitive world. One thing that's missing from the discussion of literature in the academy is the pleasure principle. Not only the pleasure of the reader but also of the writer. Writing is a self-pleasuring act." And here's some fondling from Saturday that I love:"He takes the remote, turns the set on and pushes the mute button - the nine o'clock bulletin is several minutes away yet - and fills the kettle. What simple accretions have brought the humble kettle to the peak of refinement: jug-shaped for efficiency, plastic for safety, wide spout for ease of filling, and clunky little platform to pick up the power. He never complained about the old style - the sticking tin lid, the thick black feminine socket waiting to electrocute wet hands seemed in the nature of things. But someone had thought about this carefully, and now there's no going back. The world should take note: not everything is getting worse."Checking out a cool prefab in west dub this week. It's this place: www.lostrivermodern.com. Drove out to Seneca Rocks today and did a short 3-mile hike. The hues here are all dark green, yellow, and brown, with the occasional gray rocks.
Less than an hour's ride out, we checked out Sands Point and let Chocolate loose on the beach. It was windy but mild for a February afternoon. Best of all, we finished quickly and avoided traffic coming back.
Adam Gopnik writes a Postscript piece in the New Yorker:
As well as any writer ever has, he fulfilled Virginia Woolf's dictum that the writer's job is to get himself or herself expressed without impediments—to do so as Shakespeare and Jane Austen did, without hate or pause or protest or obvious special pleading or the thousand other ills that the embattled writer is heir to. Woolf meant not that the writer's job was to write a lot, or to register the self with a splash, but to get his or her real experience down: all the private pains and pictures, the look on a loving parent's face when humiliated in a school corridor, or the way girls smell in football season—to get it down and fix it there for good. Updike, to use a phrase he liked, got it all in, from snow in Greenwich Village on a fifties street to the weather in the American world.
I'm not much of a DIY guy, but when it comes to Chocolate, I enjoy making stuff with my hands. Because the ground outside was really wet and icy yesterday, I knew Chocolate would hate walking in it. I think all the salt and wetness hurts his paws. We bought paw wax to use as protection, but I didn't think it worked that well, so I decided to make some improvised shoes using a plastic bag (matching red!) and rubber bands.
I don't think he liked it much. He kept trying to take it off and eventually started using his teeth. Maybe the rubber bands restricted blood flow. Fun photo-op though! Back to using wax I guess.
Watched this on the way to Philly the other day. I saw it back in high school and didn't appreciate it at the time. This time around, I had a lot of fun with all the macho dialogue (Pacino vs. De Niro!), the signature Mann portrayal of LA, and the super star-studded cast of characters. It's a movie that ends in predictable, underwhelming fashion, but the ride is good.
Went snowboarding in Whistler on Saturday, about a 2-hour drive from Vancouver. It'll be the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Absolutely stunning views of the mountain, and incredibly challenging trails. As a miserable snowboarder, I tried my best to pretend that I could hang with my friends on the green and blue trails. I had a few scary moments when I was close to falling off a steep ledge. I also had a slew of embarrassing flips and awkward landings on my head and face. The soreness is beginning to set in as I write this. I should start on bunny slopes and take some lessons next time.
Just uploading a few more photos from our hike at Multonomah Falls (about 40 minutes outside of Portland) on Wednesday. We were stupid enough to start on a 5-mile loop at 3:30PM and also lost our way in the snow-covered trails. We decided to turn back at 5PM but darkness descended quickly and we began to panic. We were lucky to find our way back without incident - some parts of the trail were completely obstructed by knocked-down trees and large piles of snow. For a large portion of the trail, we were one misstep from falling into the rapids that fed straight into the large waterfall. Thank goodness for light from our cell phones!
Hey there, I'm Peter.
I work at Barrel (http://www.barrelny.com).
I read and write about what I read:
http://stuffithoughtwhilereading.wordpress.com
A project we're working on:
http://www.iamkoreanamerican.com
Annual involvement:
http://www.kaffny.com
http://www.kascon.com
