Been a while since I've done this.  Too long probably.  Not really much to write about.  The holidays came and went.  I've been trying to review each book I read on GoodReads and FaceBook as I finish them, but I'm two books behind now.  Nothing about family to write about.  Just working.

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I had an interesting start to my day.  I was going in to have a quiet day in the office and stopped off at Barney's Beanery in Pasadena to have breakfast.  As I was having a nice breakfast and coffee, one of the waitresses came up to me and asked me if I drink alcohol.  This was so out of the blue that it took me a bit to make sure I understood.  When I answered that I did, she came back with a beer and gave it to me.  She was getting a draft beer for another customer and had poured the wrong one by mistake.  Rather than just throw it out, I got a free pint of Belgian Chimay Triple.  A $10 value.  And a really good beer.  Free beer for breakfast, go figure.  Going into work on a Sunday was even harder after that.

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Since the boys are out of school tomorrow, I'm thinking about taking them to the Childrens' Garden at the Huntington Library.

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Last month, on December 16th, I went to see Amanda Palmer perform at the Music Box at the Henry Fonda Theatre.  This was the final show of her North American tour promoting her new album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer.  Great, great show.  She performed with an Australian performance art troupe named The Danger Ensemble.  The opening band was The Builders and the Butchers.  Then rock (punk) cellist Zoe Keating (formerly of  Rasputina).  Zoe Keating also performed with Amanda Palmer, as did violinist Lyndon Chester.  Steben Mitchell-Wright of The Danger Ensemble acted as the MC for the evening.  Right before Amanda Palmer came out, Neil Gaiman took the stage and did a reading of the piece he wrote for the liner notes of the Who Killed Amanda Palmer album.

I had a great time and managed to stand with a great group of people.  Amanda played the songs:

Astronaut
Ampersand
Blake Says
Girl Anachronism
Strength Through Music
I Want You, But I Don't Need You
Oasis
Trout Heart Replica (an completely new song written before the previous day's performance in San Francisco)
Coin Operated Boy
Half Jack
Drive (during which The Danger Ensemble did a great performance piece in the audience)
I Google You

For encores, there was a piece with Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl," a cover of Rihanna's Umbrella (-ella-ella), and Leeds United.

Just a great night.  I went by myself.  Although it would have been nice to go with somebody (and I had asked a friend to go), it was nice going by myself as I didn't have to worry about whether my companion was enjoying herself.  I was able to just focus on enjoying the whole experience.

The show let out at about midnight.  I didn't hang around to see Amanda Palmer in the signing line.  I was dead-tired and my contact lenses were completely messed up and blurring.  I did, however, stop off at the Denny's in Arcadia on the way home to get a late night snack (I'd skipped dinner) and something to drink.  As I was finishing up, I saw two girls (maybe 17 - 19 years old) come in and I recognized them from the line before the show.  They had probably waited for Amanda Palmer and left after me.  After some hemming-and-hawing, I went over and introduced myself by showing them my ticket stub.  We talked for a few minutes about the show.  They had had a great experience as well.  I was probably a bit abrupt when I left, but I claim fatigue as my excuse as it was after half past one by this point.  The night was a great experience.

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I made some notes before the concert.  Since October, 2006, I've been to nine concerts:

10/10/6 - The Dresden Dolls - The Orpheum Theatre
6/30/7 - The Dresden Dolls (True Colors Tour) - The Greek Theatre
3/25/8 - Abney Park - Bar Sinister
5/21/8 - The Dresden Dolls - The Wiltern Theatre
5/25/8 - Abney Park - The Edison Downtown
6/25/8 - Lucent Dossier - The Edison Downtown (OK, this wasn't really a concert, but it was still a lot of fun.)
8/4/8 - Amanda Palmer - The Troubadour
10/3/8 - Great Big Sea - The House of Blues
12/16/8 - Amanda Palmer - The Music Box at the Henry Fonda Theatre

Not bad.  There were a number of other shows in 2008 I would have liked to have gone to, but that I missed.  Still, I've probably seen more shows in the last two years than in the preceding decade.  I'm not totally sure that's true, but it's a pretty fair estimate.

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I'll leave you with this.  I saw Amanda play this at the Music Box and loved it.

The book blog on the LA Times website pointed out that, for some reason, the LA Public Library has a reference archive of restaurant menus.  I would have glossed past this, but the graphic they used was from a menu for:
 

 
This was the family restaurant that was run by one of my dad's cousins.  I remember going there a lot when I was a little kid.  One of my mother's favorite stories to tell is about the time when we went there one night and they couldn't find me.  They had the whole staff searching the restaurant until they found me behind the bar in the upstairs banquet room happily munching away on Maraschino cherries.
 

 


And this obituary from the LA Times.  I remember her smile well.  She spoke very little English.

'Mama' Quon; Chinatown Restaurateur

By Myrna Oliver

July 16, 1999 in print edition A-22

The legendary "Mama" Quon, a fixture of Los Angeles' Chinatown after its 1930s move from what is now Union Station to the Hill Street and Broadway area, and matriarch of the Grand Star Restaurant family, has died. She was 99.

Quon, whose formal name was Yiu Hai Seto Quon, died July 9 in Montebello.

She was one of the first Chinese women to arrive in Los Angeles' original Chinatown when she immigrated in 1922 with her Chinese American husband, the late Him Gin Quon. She was the daughter-in-law of Quon Soon Doon, whose Tuey Far Low restaurant at Alameda and Marchessault streets (where Union Station now stands) was one of the earliest local Chinese eateries.

Quon and her husband, who lived in a three-bedroom house on Figueroa Street, in 1946 established the Quon Bros. Grand Star Restaurant on Sun Mun Way in Central Plaza between Hill and Broadway. The restaurant replaced a penny arcade a few years after 28 so-called "founders" established the pagoda-roofed commercial and tourist center June 25, 1938.

Developing since the 1860s when laborers were brought in to build a wagon road near Newhall, Los Angeles' Chinese community had originally settled on the Union Station site near Olvera Street. But by 1934, they were evicted for construction of the current railway terminal.

Four years later the Los Angeles Chinatown Corp. opened "New Chinatown" with 18 stores and a bean cake factory centered in the Hill-to-Broadway plaza. (Younger generations of Chinese Americans now refer to that area as "Old Chinatown" as the community continues to expand throughout the Los Angeles Basin.)

Quon was among the handful of surviving founders honored 11 years ago by the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California during the area's 50th anniversary observance.

She was also one of only four of the city's Chinese pioneers honored in 1994 by artist and photographer Carol Nye in the photo mural series "Chinese American Women of Los Angeles" for the Metro Plaza Hotel in Chinatown.



[Here's one of the photos that was used a banner for a public art installation at the Metro Plaza.]

Nye told The Times in 1994 that she honored Quon and the others to offer contemporary Asian American art in the area, raise community awareness about Chinese American women's historic contributions, provide role models for young people and counter stereotypes portraying Asian women as "sensual objects or housewives."

Quon was the chef at her family's restaurant for decades, and one of the first to popularize Chinese food by adding her own American touches. By her 90s, she spent part of her time sitting near the door greeting customers, but she did not fully leave her kitchen until felled by a broken hip two years ago.

She gained fame - as did her restaurant - for her "Mama Quon specials," including oxtail soup, pork hash with duck liver, winter melon soup, Peking duck and other Cantonese dishes that fans referred to as "Chinese soul food." She pan-fried chow mein and egg foo yong for hungry crowds that included such Hollywood celebrities as Charles Bronson and Tony Curtis.

"Mama" to the whole community, she raised seven daughters and the two sons, Wallace and Frank, who still run the family restaurant.

She influenced them all, including widowed son-in-law Jon Hom, a retired San Diego industrial engineer who wrote an innovative cross-cultural cookbook, "Renegade Wok," in 1997.

"Mama Quon was quite a figure in the restaurant," Hom told The Times when his book was published. "She has inspired me through the years."

Quon's two sons and four of her seven daughters survive, along with 25 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the Chinese American Citizen Alliance of Los Angeles.

Funeral services are scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday at the Wah Wing Sang Mortuary, 611 W. Cesar Chavez Ave., near Chinatown."

We have a new President.

Actually, we will shortly, on January 20, 2009, have a new President.

I voted for him.  I voted a straight Democratic ticket this year.

I have every hope that he will be a new FDR ushering in a New Deal for all Americans.

I hope those who opposed him can get past the election issues and work to that end.

And yet ...

I know it's wrong, but part of me ...

the cynical, cynical part of me ...

can't help but think ...

deep in the back of my mind ...



But I hope not.

Hail to the Chief.

This pretty much sums up America right now.  I found it on the Philosopher's Playground blog.  As I said a while back, I'm reading books about philosophy illustrated by popular culture.

The quote:


<*sigh*>

Sometimes it feels like I'm living in Weimar Germany, except without nearly as much cool decadence.

I must need to go to the Edison or Bar Sinister again.

While I was reviewing stuff for a case tomorrow, I treated myself and watched the Criterion Collection edition of Terry Gilliam's film Brazil.  Just a marvelous film. 

Sometimes it feels very much like I'm working for the Ministry of Information.  Thinking about it, I sometimes wish I could use in my cases the same methods as used by Information Retrieval at the Ministry. 

I up and joined the Goodreads website.  If you want to check out my library and what I'm currently reading you can find my profile at:

http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1473731

I've gone back and input a number of the books I've read over my life.  I had trouble deciding whether to just look at my reading forward from the date I joined and only list books in my library that I obtained and read from that date forward or whether I should just add all my books that I have or that I can remember reading.  I ended up doing some of the latter.  The first few days after I joined were a mess of adding books as memories came back to me or as I looked at the bookshelves/stacks around me.  I'm up to 1,094 books cataloged as of today. 

My goals with this are:
Keep track of the books I'm currently reading.
Keep track of the books I obtain or add books I find that really were noteworthy to me.
Write a short review of comment after I finish each book I read.

The last one is the important one.  I want to manage to jot down a few thoughts or comments on each book I read before it goes back onto the shelf, into a stack, on a pile, or in a box. 



So, help me with this.  After I finish my current main book:



Should I read -



- or -

...but I really am selfish sometimes.

I was supposed to be going camping with my family this weekend.  In fact, my wife and the boys did go.   They're up in northern Santa Barbara County camping with my wife's parents and my wife's sister (and boyfriend).

I, however, am down here pleasantly comfortable in SoCal.  In front of the computer.  Glass of ice tea.  A nice deli dinner in my recent past.  They're up there fighing the heat and humidity and voracious bugs.

Between this coming Monday and the next Monday after that, I have three trials scheduled to start.  I had a legal motion that had to be completed.  I have three major and a couple of minor reports to get done.  I should be doing planning for a charity I'm involved with.  So, it comes down to, when you add it all up, I have too much work to do right now to get away for a full weekend.  Especially, after going away last weekend (to LegoLand).

I'm not sad I wasn't able to go camping.  I am a bit p.o.'d about having to work and work getting in the way.  I would rather be with my family right now.  I spent all today at the office.  I'm going back tomorrow.  And I could use even more time if it came to me. 

I wish that darn lottery ticket would come in. 

They say that getting a huge amount of money like suddenly like that warps you.  It twists your values, makes you do crazy things, ruins your life.

I say this: Put me to the test.  Give me the money and let me see if it's true.

I promise to do my very best.  If it doesn't work out, then you may feel free to say, "I told you so."

I may have been a bit premature with my last post.  I haven't yet found any sort of confirming info on the 'net.  Perhaps it's not the end of the Brechtian Punk Cabaret.  I hope not.  I wanted to see them touring again.  I was thinking about it earlier today.  No matter how amicable an ending would be, no matter how good it would be for them and their art to move on, the fans will always be left watching Mommy and Daddy split and will wonder "What becomes of us now?"  I don't want it to be over yet.

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And then there's this from Hovis Bread.  122 years of British history in  what should become a classic advert.



Nothing like this in the US.  I'm not sure how classy a US product could make it.  The only comparable product that might work would be Coca-Cola(tm).  I really like this for the feel and texture of the history the ad brings to life.

Check here for the higher quality version on the Hovis website: http://www.hovisbakery.co.uk/our-ads/
 

Es verdad?

Ist das die Wahrheit?

Can it be true.

Between Beth Hommel's posting for September 23rd (http://bethofalltrades.livejournal.com/) and this interview:


The conclusion seems inescapable.  I'm looking through the 'net for something confirming.

I can always hope for a tour in the far future.