A Weekend With Dad

I've had a busy weekend.

On Friday night, the eve of Black Friday (which sounds to me like a stock market crash, not a favorable shopping day), Dad and I went to see Lillian Hellman's Little Foxes. The streets were swarming with consumers, easily swayed by the lure of advertising. I should have realized what a certain young lady was doing the day after Thanksgiving. The play itself featured the intrigues of a Southern family more beholden to Mammon than mercy and kindness. The play was well executed, but the slew of plays about Southern decadance has somewhat diluted the dramatic impact of that milieu. Perhaps my overexposure to serious plays has leached the color for me.

On Saturday night, Dad and I went to the San Francisco Symphony's presentation of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights as it would have been at its premiere. A "silent" film, proeprly presented, was scarcely silent, since the score involved a thirty-piece orchestra. It was strange to hear laughter in such normally somber halls, but Chaplin's comic genius as actor, director, and composer shone. One could describe the plot either as cheap melodrama or as deeply tragic drama.

On Sunday afternoon, Dad and I went to see Borat! It was a good movie, but the joke only remained funny until halfway or two-thirds of the way through the film. It was a good thing Mom didn't come with us - she would have hated it.

Quand il pleut

Quand il pleut dure et sans cesse, il me semble que je dois étudier plus facilement. Mais le ciel somber s’a rappelé à la nuit somnolente. J’ai parti de mon apartement pour ètudier dans mon café favori, mais il est fermé. Je n’ai pu pas me rappeler si cet café est fermé toujours à lundi, mais je buvais dans un autre café en face de l’avenue Clement.

Et c’est Rimbaud que je m’ose, non Baudelaire.

Okra and Earthquakes

I prepared okra for Sunday dinner today. The process was disgusting, even if the product was delicious - and I'm not at all sure it was an inverse relationship. Clearly my destiny is not as a chef. The okra was dipped in egg yolk and flour, creating a sticky mess which congeals on the fingers. I stared at my hands, appalled at the moist mess. My digits froze up, like a rheumatic old woman's. The task did reach completion, and we enjoyed the dinner.

I spent the afternoon at the centenary lecture of the AIA. I entered the Arguello Gate of the Golden Gate Park, and set off down the road as I had so many times. Too many years, unfortunately, had passed since I had done so, and therefore a level of uncertainty remained. I walked along the road, with toddlers biking up and down the newly paved road. I caught sight of the tower of the de Young, which struck a discordance by its height which loomed above the trees. It was not unattractive, but the height was so untraditional for the park. The swing music blazed from the back of the de Young. I found the cavernous lobby a bit disorienting, and I was a little too early.


The centenary lecture was prefaced by a recitation of the history of the SF branch of the AIA. Its first lecture was delayed by a certain 1906 earthquake. The lecture was about the instability of much of SF's soil, the conflict between practical reconstruction and real estate value.

At the reception, I didn't really get a chance to talk to Barbara McLaughlin, my former archeology professor, since she was busy hobonobbing with the other directors of the AIA local chapter. But I'm sure I shall see her again at other AIA/SFSU events.