H. Hsu Word Salad

Food travels…and winds up at my house.

“The world in my dining room” is what goes through my head as I examine the row of fixins’ assembled before me on Thanksgiving morning.A row of little tubes, powders, bottles, and fresh bits.Coriander, fish sauce, kaffir lime (galangal), garlic, ginger, lemongrass, cashews, and more.I dice onions until I am teary eyed.I use scissors to snip the thinnest, finest possible bits of kaffir lime leaf, while fantasizing about a food processor.

Manchurian/Guangdong Mom drives on over with an all American Honeybaked ham crusted with sugar.The Chinese Southerners (as in Georgia and Kentucky) come over and help me fry up Thai corn and tofu fritters.Besides their culinary expertise*, they bear Chilean wine & Kahlua bundt cake.

I modify a Chinese American Pineapple fried rice recipe with vaguely Indian flavors using imported curry powder & cashew nuts, and throw in some Mexican grown bell pepper.

The turkey we won last weekend is baked after a drenching in Australian Chardonnay, Italian Olive Oil, and seasoned with Peppercorns my former student brought from  her hometown in Vietnam, and Bay leaves from Turkey.

A tomato and onion stuffed Pilipino fish arrives with my beautiful nieces, who are more interested in eating mini Nathan’s hot dogs which I’ve baked into Pilsbury croissant dough, or in the Central American bananas.The turkey skin winds up being a big hit with the kids as well.P’s cousin comes with Thai snacks, sugared and dried Tamarind fruit pods and spicy cuttlefish strips.

We drink shots of 21 year old Scotch and brew green tea leaves from Taiwan, chamomile from Poland, and serve Heineken beer and Italian blood orange soda.

Geez. No wonder it’s so difficult to be a locavore!

*ancient Chinese / Atlanta secret:

How to tell if the pool of oil in your wok is hot enough to properly fry stuff like corn fritters in yet.Stick an unvarnished wooden chopstick, yeah, one of those cheapo restaurant ones, into the oil.If a mass of little bubbles form around it, it’s ready for fryin’!

Regular readers will recall that DM the legitimate spouse, of my beloved office spouse, was my Guns ‘n Roses cohort.Imagine my joy when he invited me to Metallica, one of the only, one the greatest bands, DM has not yet seen in live action.Office spouse says that “angry” music like Metallica and Rage Against the Machine etc. makes her feel “agitated”…kinda stressed.I suppose I can understand that.After all, angry music sometimes works to power me up Mission Peak around the Lake Run with B is not available to keep me company.

DM is teased by office spouse as “mild –mannered” (a term that always brings to mind Clark Kent).But he says that after a big, screaming, loud and nihilistic show, he feels almost sort of cleansed.James Hetfield pretty much put it that way himself when he ended the encores by whipping up the pit-to-rafters jam packed stadium into a participatory frenzy:

“You don’t have to take any of this energy home, leave it all here-that’s what we’re all here for tonight isn’t it!?”Then he prompted everyone on how to scream the three word chorus to SEEK AND DESTROY.

Cheery pre-Christmas outing!

The summary:

DM and my office spouse have the 2 cutest kids ever.Not that I am biased or anything.Little D and I have talked about Star Wars for ages, and this weekend he was discovering Bakugan.I took the family for a dinner at yummy Mint Leaf in Alameda (lemongrass chicken & garlic noodles, coconut rice claypot… mmmm) & then off to the show.Rain check to office spouse for a boozy girls’ night out sometime when she isn’t child caring.

Dinner with little ones ran late and we missed opening band #1 Sword.We took a long hike in from the outer fringes of the lot and immediately into a wall of pot smoke.Waited outside with the sold out crowd to be let slowly into the building, as a little army of Coors Light cans and bottles accumulated beside the line.

We caught the last part of Lamb of God, who were frankly totally unintelligible.But they looked pretty freaking awesome, wailing away like construction workers on their instruments, 4 long-haired, sweat-flying, screaming dudes.What they were screaming was beyond me, but the crowd was appreciative and they looked killer.

As DM and I sought our seats, more smoke of all kinds, and I feared we’d both have to drive home to our respective honeys with a contact high.DM keeps walking down, down, down the winding stairs. Much to my disbelief.I’ve been on a grad school budget most of my life, and always have nosebleed section tickets.Despite coming to shows in Oakland since I was 16, I have never sat this far front.

We are a mere 6 rows back from the mosh pit, where pasty men are gleefully throwing themselves at one another, elbows out, teeth bared.Close enough to see the action without being a part of the coronas of sweat emanating from stage and pit.Hats and clothes and beer cups and humans are flung about the pit, and our row chuckles at the side show.DM talks about a previous mosh pit experience which entailed total body muscle exertion merely to stand ones ground. “I think I was sore for like a week after that show.”

At long last…Metallica!Metallica whose magazine photos were up in my Cupertino high school bedroom.Metallica, whose Master of Puppets T-shirt was one of my favorite tops.Just as loud or louder than any other metal band, but with the musical, lyrical, and topical skills to outlast them all.This is after all, the band that has performed with the SF symphony, Sinofonica, and Montreal Orchestra.I made P watch “Some Kind of Monster” with me last week, the Metallica documentary.It was a fascinating view of these Gods of Metal going through intensive group therapy, playing with their kids, stumbling through the creative process etc.And while it was not so cool to see them dressed like dorks loping around their ranches and studios (not the handsome, scary, muscled & black clad junkie hardasses of their youth), I had new respect for them as talented musicians and newly sober and creative adults.

We are close enough to see every facial expression on band members, and to feel the blasts of heat from the flaming pyrotechnics that stun us all as the opening to “One” (the only music video that has made me want to cry). The thousands of fans rock to all songs with glee, but we all go crazy when the first few chords of our faves are played like

“Master of Puppets” (of course), or “Enter Sandman”.

When Metallica does lasers and pyrotechnics, it’s not like other shows.The lasers here are pinpointed beams timed with music, the flames are dangerously hot and high.Gigantic coffin shapes (as on the cover of Death Magnetic) fixed with more light effects come swinging and rotating down from the edges of the huge stage.

I can’t help but ponder not only the incredibly agile control of the musical instruments, for which they are well nigh world famous, but also the fantastic quads of one Trujillo.He’s the newest member, with the long dark hair of a romance novel cover boy, and one hell of a bass player.One never actually sees his quads since he wears long shorts, but he spends the whole show bending over backwards, or squatting, or otherwise contorting so incredibly that I suspect he could kick my ass in yoga…all without missing a note.

At the end of the rowdy encores, the crowd roar echoes off the stadium walls and huge black beach ball orbs emblazoned with “Metallica” come pouring out of the rafters.People jabbing their devil horns and fists punch them around and the band kicks them off the stage, but soon fans are grabbing and hoarding the giant balls as souvenirs.

Suddenly, stage crew bolts acrossthewide stage, with….cream pies in hand??Before the crowd even registers what’s changed, drummer Lars Ulrich is tearing across stage and into the gray are between bouncers and crazed mosh pit.Within a minute, he’s caught, and finally walks onstage so utterly creamed with pie and shot with silly string that he looks like a snowman and I wonder if he can breathe.With glee, Hetfield says “we’ve all had birthdays on the road, but my friend Lars here gets out of it by having a December 26^th birthday when we aren’t touring.”He then leads thousands of people in a raucous round of “Happy Birthday” to Lars, while Lars hugs his bandmates in great, big, cream smearing gestures.

We were close enough that I can’t quite hear anything right now…except through some fuzzy tunnel…That was AWESOME.

Eh….?? Are you talking to me? I can’t hear a goddamned thing!P had asked if I was bringing earplugs to the show, to which I scowled a serious “P-shaw!”I did notice them in the ears of many around us, including the teen boys in row 5.

DM drives as I phone P. “Better than Guns ‘N Roses?” he asks.

I pause.

“Yes.”I turn and tell DM P’s questions.

No pause.

“Yes!”

This pre-holiday week is marked by two happy occasions: live concerts.  I always think a true test of artistic mettle is how someone hold up live, where the creative energy is palpable and there is no place to hide performance weaknesses.  Last night I took mom to see Sarah Brightman at the Shark Tank, where memories of half marathon pervade.  For those who may not be familiar with her, the part of Christine in Phantom of the Opera was written for her by ex-husband Andrew Lloyd Weber, and she sang at the Beijing Olympics (although that huge setting did not do her voice justice, and her Chinese counterpart was dressed like a slob.)

This weekend, I’ll be at the Metallica show in Oakland (Oracle arena) - talk about spanning the genres!

Sarah was a bit spur of the moment, I didn’t even know she was coming to town, until I saw a sign at Westfield mall.  Armed with Nordstrom fair trade coffee, I caught the airbrushed, blondified, hair-straightened Sarah poster.  Hmmm.  How much I like her seems to decrease with the blonde levels.  “Free concert tickets with the purchase of $350 at Westfield”. Wow. Mom loves Sarah Brightman, and once made the effort to get a ticket, drive solo to SF (probably her least favorite place to drive) to see Sarah’s concert when promoting the Eden album.  An ex of mine played Time to Say Goodbye for me once, and I was hooked.  That voice!  I passed the CD onto mom and now she owns all of them (well, not the early Sarah weird pop).  OKey dokey, I probably spend at least 400 bucks a year on random things at Westfield…particularly things I ingest. So within minutes I had tickets in hand and a call to mom made.

Thankfully, Sarah was again her lovely richly brown-haired self again.  I’d only seen her before on rather staid PBS type specials, theatre type settings.  My expectation was for a classical experience.  I had no idea what I was in for!  Looking over the stage, mom said “I wonder if she’ll fly!”  I thought that was ridiculous.  “But she did fly and had acrobats at Luna,” mom said.

Really?

Sarah Brightman is 48 years old but looks like…a doll.   The same small pout, huge round eyes, wavy hair and smooth complexion of a doll.  Her speaking voice is actually like a doll-like as well, albeit an English one, high, lilting, abnormally cute and charming.  She thanked everyone for her 30 year career and then launched into a spectacle of the dramatic.  I won’t give a play-by-play, but by the end of the evening, we had seen a 20 foot train on her dress, Sarah elevated on a huge trapeze thing dangerously high, dancers wielding canes, Japanese parasols, huge red balloons, and red ribbons, visually stunning “underwater scenes” done with reflective trickery and computer images, falling rose petals, glitter, and snow, an electric guitar solo, a giant bed, freaky Alice in Wonderland scenes, and a previously unknown creepy gothic Sarah in a red cape on a bicycle with ghouls around her in a short bit that left the audience agape-she could have been Evanescence.  There were white short dresses, a can-can multi-hued one, butterfly, red, flowy, iridescent,corseted, green, black ones.  Capes of all kinds, enchanted forests, butterflies, rain.  And not least of all, duets with 2 astonishing men: Fernando Limas (Sarah of the soaring voice referred to him as ‘the voice of an angel’) and Mario Frangoulis.

As the drama levels rose I could hear the audience around me exclaim, “This is insane!” Followed shortly by “So AWESOME!”  It was dazzling enough to border on cheesy at times, but hey, if a holiday time spectacle of a show is what we came for for, this was more than we bargained for.

I’ve heard she is the top selling soprano of all time.  Perhaps so, if the audience last night was any representation of her fans.  All ages, all races, all states of dress…just spellbound by that voice.  Sometimes  people screamed “I love you!” and “Bravo!” wildly, other times the entire shark tank was holding its breath as that siren’s call silenced all thought.  “A gift from God” is how mom put it.  Wikipedia states that her voice spans a three octave range, and in the bit from Phantom of The Opera last night, she hit, held, and continously elevated notes that were practically inhuman.  In moments like that, she was truly, completely stunning.