Category Archives: doing it wrong

Wednesday night I did my bread baking class, which I expected to be awesome and I loved way more than I expected. It was the advanced class which means that we worked with sourdough for our leavening instead of yeast.

I took lots of notes and would tell you more except I am so tired right now I can barely keep my eyes open. A couple of details that I will mention are that the first thing they did when I walked through the door for class was take my coat and hand me a glass of wine: then I was certain it was going to be great. While there I bought a kitchen scale which will hopefully help me troubleshoot my perpetual baking problems, and a big new shiny chef’s knife, pictures of my gouged fingers will surely follow. The people in the class and the teacher who is the head baker at Pearl Bakery were TOTALLY into it. We learned a lot in a few hours. Then we made sandwiches with our bread and asked more questions and visited while we were eating.

The teacher is doing a pie making class in Spring and I plan to be the first one enrolled.

Meanwhile, I fed my starter a few hours ago for weekend baking and I think I already screwed up but we’ll see. I always panic during new cooking/baking adventures.

I got home at 10pm on baking night and took awhile to wind down and get to sleep. Then off to the office the next morning and then we went to Arts & Lectures last night.

The speaker was Suzan-Lori Parks who was fantastic – very funny and very real. She didn’t seem to take herself too seriously. Told great stories. I’ve never read anything by her but she read a little bit at the lecture and now I’d like to track down some of her stuff.

But again, we got home late and I was wired and couldn’t fall asleep right away so I’m a little drag-ey ass today. I’m going to go try napping and see if I can perk up a little for the rest of the afternoon/evening.

Last weekend during my day of cooking I broke out the vinyl again and listened to Dramarama Cinéma Vérité which I listened to once last year and still think sounds great.

The album includes a hit called “Anything Anything (I’ll Give You)” which at least three different times in my life was discovered by a radio station I listened to frequently and played to death and then some. I loved the song the first time I heard it and I love it still but I can recall the feeling of “enough enough (already)” if I hear it more than once in one day.

[Huge aside: Bob has got me hooked on The Tube a music TV station that plays actual music videos and a huge mix of fun stuff including Led Zepplin and lots of the 80’s dawn-of-an-era stuff like Duran Duran and INXS. The other night I saw a U2 video where Bono is sporting the mother of all mullets. I’ve found myself glued to the The Tube a couple of times with that old, “just one more to see who’s next” and the only thing to save me from being there still would be Phil Collins or a simliar horror such that I fled the TV. More than once I’ve complained about too much Billy Idol but last night they had a video of his ballady song called Sweet Sixteen, which I had completely forgot about and sounded fabulous.]

Back to Dramarama: when I graduated from college and lived in L.A. I wrote live show reviews for a free music newspaper. I could swear I’ve written about that before but my feverish searching hasn’t come up with a previous post. I’ll have to dig up some of my reviews.

Before I wrote for the newspaper I wrote reviews for myself in a notebook because it was my dream to be a writer for a music magazine or something in the music business and this was how I prepared.

I saw Dramarama headline a show at the Country Club in Reseda. The date says March 6, 1981 which can’t possibly be right since (a) according to Wikipedia the band didn’t form until 1982 (although I always was ahead of the curve … ha!) and (b) I was in high school in 1981 and was probably not even allowed to drive to The Valley to see a show.

The date we’re going with is March 6, 1987. The show featured one of my favorite local bands at the time Love/Hate which is a topic for another post. I remember nothing about third band on the bill: MIA.

Much as I loved the music, I was not impressed with the band as illustrated by my unfinished review.

It seems to be a rule of blogging that you always need about 20 more minutes than you have on any given post. My allotted time is up. But here’s my masterpiece, typed up from the orginal, carefully printed in pencil on white notebook paper:

DRAMARAMA, MIA, LOVE/HATE
MARCH 6, 1987

MIA suffered if only from a lackluster response from the Drama-Audience.

Toga Party
In the most current issue of Sunset magazine there is an insane full page ad with George Hamilton. I thought about scanning it but the scanner was put away and it seemed like a lot of trouble. I was sure I could find it online. So far no luck. However, I can describe it to you.

George is standing there in a bright white toga with giant sleeves trimmed with gold ribbon that looks like it was put together by a costumer in 5 minutes using glue and safety pins. George’s head is crowned with what I guess is an olive wreath? And he’s holding the new product: Pita Thin Toasted Chips and the quote is “Golden toasted with impeccable taste. Just like me.”

I don’t even know where to start.

So I guess the idea is ancient Greece=pita? This seems like a stretch to me. And why George Hamilton? Maybe he fits with the Sunset demographic which is no doubt women my age and older.

While I was searching for the ad so you could enjoy a chuckle with me, I had the fun of finding the Nabisco® website. You can sign up for a logon and password. Why would you possibly want to do that? Special subscriber content? Member only Oreo contests?

The Pita Thin stuff which is in the “no fry zone” shows George either standing in his white terrycloth bathroom eating pita thins OR in snappy golf togs in the middle of a sand trap with his packet of chips. You can ask his magic golf ball a question.

My question was, “George, why the toga?”

The answer: “I can’t tell you now. The paparazzi are listening.”