t-rex tragedies        

...because I made SACHER TORTE (see archives of obsession here)!

my sister found, supposedly the actual secret, original
recipe from a former Hotel Sacher Chef.

This was my third try and the only one that recognizably resembled in taste (though of course not of the divinity of the actual original). I made my little elf friends and Ping make them with their nimble little hands. Then I plunked two mice in a bucket of heavy whipping cream so their frantic paddling would whip it into cream.

P.S. While struggling through different trials I realized how essential ordering and timing of combining the ingredients were to make it even bake properly. I began to approach time as an ingredient itself, and also started to think about the potential errors in our logical processes that assume variables to be constant as we manipulate them (a+b=b+a; because...butter + eggs + egg whites ≠ butter + egg whites + egg in the sacher torte problem)...i know that seems like simple chemistry but couldn't numbers/concepts also have reactions to each other in subtle ways?

Herr Johann @NYE Party

Then our entire party (like twenty-four of us) went to a family friend's Christmas party in our sweaters. (Thanks, Charles! :)

We came home a couple hours later to our center piece on fire.
(don't forget to blow out candles!)

she's a violinist so she's meticulous about keeping her hands safe and warm, and now she can do it with STYLE! She just launched a CD in Japan -  check out her site here:  www.Esther-Kim.com

We somehow manage to keep topping the previous year in wonderfulness. 
Best Christmas yet!  
will anxiously be checking this everyday:  www.IsItChristmas.com

Happy Holidays, everyone!! :)

Look what I get to add to my book collection! A 1934 print of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. When I have it in my hands, I feel like I'm holding a relic from some enchanted land, or that it has some magical power I haven't yet deciphered. It's in pristine condition and so so beautiful...

I was instantly enchanted by the set when I saw it at Feldman Books several months ago but couldn't justify that it was the price of a designer boot. I went back yesterday just to look at it and hold it again. When I came in, the book store owner greeted me with, "Didn't you come in many months ago for the Lewis Carroll set?" and I said, "I haven't been able to stop thinking about it!" He brought it out for me again, and while I was longingly admiring it he offered me a lower price, adding "because you like it so much."

At my favorite SF spot, Bourbon and Branch, a real speakeasy during the Prohibition that covered as a cigar shop. They still require password for entry into their door that's hidden in the middle of the Tenderloin next to a crackwhore, and recently opened up the basement (which was the location of the actual bar in the 1920s). I really recommend trying to check out all four rooms at some point.

The party invites were these "Drink Me" viles filled with port, and a riddle for the password "Mister Rabbit" to enter. All the tea cakes had "Eat me" or "Try me" written on them. It was a lot of fun...but I always enjoy planning parties more than the actual events, I don't know why...

...maybe it's the difference between hopeful creation and impending end. Both seem to me an awareness of the passage of time but with very different lights. And maybe that's why youth is generally pleasantly looks upon, the illusion of a generous portion of time that in large quantities appear to be hope. Ok, side tangent, I watched this silly historian's talk who proudly found what Michelangelo looked like, pulling from the statue of David (which is assumed to be modeled after him in his youth) and the Vitruvian Man (him in old age). The absurdity of the endeavor to begin with aside, it interested me that the portraits of him as a youth and in old age didn't satisfy the audience; people wanted to know what he'd look like in his "prime." And I thought maybe people always picture themselves in their prime as the base metric; viewing old age they as a deviance from and childhood as an approach to it.

Misc Herr Johann

Check out his Car Locator app that was awarded 3rd place in the Google Android Developers Challenge!

Clothes - Check.
Shoes - Check.
Flute - Check.
Herr Johann - Check.

The T-Rexes came to see Baby Jesus right before the Three Wise Men.
They ate the camel afterward so no one really likes to talk about it.

Herr Johann prefers unsweetened whipped cream because he's European.
Pelle prefers sweetened (and a larger quantity) because he's American.

We picked this giant tub of avocados Thanksgiving morning.
After dinner we gave out "Avocado Awards" to coerce the kids to perform.
My cousin and I were offered avocados to stop playing.

The Berlin Philharmonic (cond. Simon Rattle) was playing in Davies Hall this weekend (Wagner, Shoenberg, Brahms)! They were incredible. Clean without having wiped away any poetry. And all the men in tails with every shoe pristinely polished. It was the same feeling of insulated perfection I get in some chocolatiers & patisseries, but elevated to the sublime

I remember attending a performance of Carmen Fantasy by an exceptionally terrible

orchestra last winter (some charity benefit, though I wondered if the actual charity was to offer the orchestra an audience).  It was like a realist painter, entirely due to his own ineptitude, creating something of impressionism. I tend to get disproportionately upset by things like that (like when I see a nice clothing design made with poor fabric). I think it's because I think if one decides to endeavor in some creation then they should strive for perfection or not at all.

Then I thought about my own dilettantism in dance, music (and this site), and the joy it brings me. I realized I was not recognizing the joy of creating, differentiated from creation.

..so awful orchestra and cheap clothing, you're okay, I guess. BUT, the Berlin Phil's prom queen, buddha & jesus combined.

divine in creating and creation.