Geez, I sound like danabren ....
syele and I had been talking about a sushi and sake night for months. We finally had time to do it last night at her favorite place. Kirala in Berkeley was spendy, but worth it.

Dewazakura Dewasansan (at the bar)and Nishida Kikuizumi sake (at the table) were both smooth with fruity notes. The Kikuizumi was a bit bolder than the Dewasansan,

Ground chicken wrapped in shiso leaves and beef with asparagus from the grill were both great and having a couple of the grilled items provided a nice contrast to the nigiri sushi we chose. That  included, hirame (halibut), sake (salmon), toro (fatty tuna), kani (shredded Dungeness crab), and because I like to be a bit adventurous and try something new when at a place one can trust to prepare it correctly, ikura (salmon roe with raw quail egg).  Everything was delicious and the ikura was, despite the fact that it was "staring" up at us off the plate like a pair of weird, cartoon eyes, a revelation. The creamy egg yolk cut the saltiness of the roe beautifully.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/07/united-breaks-guitars-hot-on-youtube.html

"Canadian musician and songwriter Dave Carroll took his year-long battle with United Airlines to YouTube this week. Now his video riff ‘United Breaks Guitars’ is not only a YouTube sensation, but United has apologized for baggage handlers crushing his guitar at O’Hare airport in Chicago last year. The airline announced on Twitter today that the video “struck a chord w/ us and we’ve contacted him directly to  make it right.” United also tweeted that the video is “excellent” and that they plan use it for training purposes, “so everyone receives better service from us.”

Meanwhile, a Canadian newspaper reports, that after watching the video, Taylor Guitars in California called Carroll to say they’d be happy to repair the damaged instrument, and they promised a deep discount on his next purchase."

Which begs the question, where is my monkey circlet?
 

On Friday I posted some links to the work of Japanese American artist Chiura Obata. Imagine my surprise when I went looking for the schedule of the San Jose Obon celebration for this weekend and found this article about his old studio in Berkeley, which was in the very building where we used to stuff ourselves with Ethiopian food before the Blue Nile closed its doors.

Still not king, still not getting any, still lose my brain when I get up in front of the o-daiko. It's stupid and frustrating and I will not back down, but ARGH! You know?

I lost the LCD hood I bought for my camera at that restaurant in SF and they never found it. Wouldn't you know the place I ordered it for no longer has the size I need in stock?

But I did find THESE!!!! (Coolest. Aunt. Ever. Yo!)

Oh, and seizure inducing eyewear!

Class proposals have been sent off to GWW and Collegium Caidis. Right after I said I was not going to bother with GWW I got an "Oh, pretty please, we promise not to suck like last year" email with copies to half a dozen people. OK, sure, let me bang my forehead against your wall one more time.

Shamelessly lifted from sasha_khan . Pass it on!

Here's the story:
http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/story/united-breaks-guitars

Professional musician Dave Carroll had his Taylor guitar destroyed by United Airlines'  luggage monsters. They denied responsibility. Caroll promised to write and produce three songs about it and post them to YouTube. One down, two more to go.

Because it really isn't always all about WTF moments and refugees from the Land of No Clue.

Candle light. Last Christmas, someone gave me one of those barrel staves with holes in it that holds six votive cups. I lit it tonight and turned off the lamps while watching "I Claudius."

bovil 's cooking. (Was this the pork tenderloin recipe you used? It was incredible.)

One of those conversations with kproche .

A post card from Dad.

Really good sashimi, good sake, and excellent company.

PM-ing about silly shit with gcmadtown81 .

An entirely voluntary cuddle from a nine year old who seems comprised entirely of elbows.

Bing cherries, right out of the refrigerator.

Bottle green Thai silk. (Must do something with it!!!)

syele 's laugh.

Borrowing a book from my father that happened to be his teaching copy, getting bits of his perspective as to what he found significant, as well as trying to puzzle out some of his more cryptic scribbles.(I've finished Galatea 2.2 and am about halfway through Little Dorrit.)

The routine coming-and-going sounds of the other tenants in the house, all of whom I get along with.

  So I cracked open the shrink wrap on the "I Claudius" boxed set and have just surfaced for air after watching the first two episodes. Gods and Goddesses of Olympus, I knew it was marvelous (which is why I grabbed it when I saw it at BB for $35), but I'd forgotten just how marvelous. (Then again, it came out in the US my freshman year of college!)
Sian Phillips, OMG, Sian Phillips!!!! She makes the descriptions of Livia Augusta in Suetonius look tame and dull. Magnificent!

Oh no, you did not just do that, Part 1:

You are bright.
You are beautiful.
You are a woman of many talents and accomplishments and if some of them didn't come attached to an academic degree, so what?
You are a force to be reckoned with.
You have raised and continue to raise two bright, beautiful, remarkable children who are that way due to YOUR influence and inspiration and daily presence in their lives.
You have a husband who adores you and who is the kind of life partner some of us only get to dream about.
You have friends who love you.
You have dogs who love you.

So if you don't stop believing you are a failure, I AM going to go upside your lovely head with the Smackity Fan. 'Kay?

****************************************
Oh no, you did not just do that, Part 2:

Dear Local SCA Group:

While I am gratified to see that my work has inspired someone, it would have been courteous to ask permission before hotlinking directly to photos from my website, which, BTW, are copyrighted by me.

Sincerely, etc.

[I am 99% certain the culprit may be the same genius who scanned a bunch of pictures out of a book and posted them to the Tousando without attribution. You would think the discussion which followed might have given him pause. Ever since he showed up on the board he has been trying to act like he's, well, me. And he's going about it the wrong way! Cite your sources, Monkey Boy!]

EDIT: Photos have been taken down, my URL has been added, and my comment to the blog has been deleted. Had these people included email contacts for their officers, I wouldn't have had to contact them via blog commentary in the first place.

The whole house smells like apples and pears and cinnamon...............

 
Just had an excellent dinner at Kamakura with karisu_sama  and didjiman , who met me out at Alameda Point to shoot pictures beforehand. We split an order of  "essence of lobster" soup which had big chunks of lobster carcass floating among the tofu, cabbage and ginger and was to die for. I ordered the sashimi moriawase appetizer, a generous assortment of sashimi, including the BEST tako (octopus) I have ever had in my entire life. I couldn't finish my roll (crab tempura, avocado and cucumber) so there are two pieces downstairs in the fridge to be enjoyed for lunch tomorrow. We also split a 350 ml bottle of Ohyama sake (dry, very nice with our meal). As happened the last time, when I ate here with mamapduck, we were served a plum wine aperitif on the house with our bill. Kamakura is not inexpensive, but so worth the splurge!

I have missed the deadline for GWW's class submissions to be published in their gate book.  Last year I submitted class proposals after the deadline and wasted time sitting around waiting for people not to show up to my classes. I will NOT do that again.

Collegium Caidis then. What I'm thinking of doing:

1. "Paint bucket" taiko
2. A waka workshop
3. An overview of period Japanese fashion and how to reproduce it for SCA use.

I'll write it up and get it in this weekend.

I was watching a preview of the new Ken Burns series on the National Parks (premiers on PBS this fall) and they excerpted a quote by a painter named Chiura Obata with one of his paintings. With the wonder of Google, I immediately began searching for more: 

http://www.hanga.com/prints.cfm?ID=53
http://obata.wilderness.net/
http://www.castlefinearts.com/Japanese_fine_arts_woodblock_prints/Chiura_Obata_Biography.aspx

Enjoy!

__________________________

"What do you mean, 'we,' tomodachi?"  Re the Helpful Hannah who thinks "we" should write a Japanese version of the Known World Handbook, I want to know: 

Whether she realizes that some of the stuff on her wish list already exists in some form or other on the internet, courtesy of various SCA contributors (including myself). A good 80% of it is already on  Sengokudaimyo.com already.

How many articles she plans to research and write, since the rest of us are obviously slacking. 

Is it a bad idea? Not necessarily, however, it will require a lot more work than I think she realizes. And there's that bit where some of it does already exist if one bothers to go and look for it.

Taiko goodness. More work on "Jisshin" bits. Must Wrap Brain Around Solo Fearlessness!

I took off work for tomorrow so I can spend it with my sister and her family before they fly home. Found a workable bus route from their hotel neighborhood to the Exploratorium, so that may be what we do tomorrow.

Came home to this on the JML: 

"Wonder if anyone could do a "kosode 101" class thing on Youtube? I think it would help alot, especially if it can be shown on a very step by step process(how to measure yourself for it, cutting the fabric, etc). From what I can tellif you can learn the kosode you can do alot more garb. Seems there a a fewJapanese garbs that is little more than a variation on the kosode (I know it is more complicated than that but you know what I mean).

Um, didn't I write this? 
 

Ganked shamelessly from syele: 

"There has been a lot of ickyness floating around in the ether lately...so I say, show(or tell) something beautiful! It can be anything...just a reminder of all the beauty that is out there."

How about two somethings?

 

Take that, IE! It WAS the security settings.  Between Internet Explorer and the Norton 360, it wasn't letting ANYTHING through. I dropped the portcullis just long enough to get Firefox loaded and I am back in business, kiddies! I don't even have to hook up the easy-upload cable again. All my bookmarks are here already!

Now if I can just get some of my old programs installed, I'll be home, sweet home....

I just realized that the Pride parade is this weekend and my sister, brother-in-law and the boys (5 and 9 respectively) coming into SFO Friday night - and their hotel is over near Moscone Center, right off the parade route. An email with a suggestion that I meet them at the Marriott EARLY on Saturday has been fired off, so we can avoid the crowds and endangerment to Mr. Inappropriate. My mom came up with that one: Alex is famed for foot-in-mouth commentary.

I did instruct them to consult a guide book or two before coming out. They know better what sort of things they'd like to do and what the boys likes and limits are.

We'll figure it out and I AM looking forward to seeing them all.

I suspect I may need to screw around with the security settings on this thing because I've been trying to download Mozilla Firefox since Sunday and I keep getting messages that it''s not available. I suspect a plot by Internet Explorer, which, by the way, craps out at least ONCE per session, which is why I want Firefox back please! I'll even sit through another evening of cabled machines so I can get all my bookmarks back where they belong.

It would not be politically expedient for me to post on some things I'm thinking about, so I won't. I could tell you but I'd have to kill you. And you over there. Yes, and you too. Besides, I guarantee it's not what you think it is anyway.

And it doesn't matter because taiko started up again tonight and whaling on a newly re-skinned drum is highly therapeutic. My sensei (both of them) said they were sufficiently impressed by how good we all looked at the recital to use this 10 week session to polish pieces we've been working on as well as maybe introduce a new one. We did some work on "O-Kaji" and "Jishin" tonight. I really, REALLY need to get my mental shit together when I face the o-daiko. II don't quite draw a blank, but I have to think too damn hard about which hand goes where and what passes for my solo is part of a drill I can do with my eyes closed on a standing drum - and TAUGHT AT A&S!!! It's stupid. Maybe I should do some air taiko in front of the full length mirror in my copious spare time. (Judging from the milling throng pasted against the wall during the last ten minutes of class, they got a whole bunch of new people for the beginner class.)


This is a 17th century tsuba (sword guard)  by Hayashi Matashichi (1613–1699). Eisei-Bunko Museum, 1796. © Eisei Bunko, Japan, currently on display as part of the "Lords of the Samurai" show at the Asian Art Museum. http://www.asianart.org/samuraigallery/samuraigallery.html
I love the torn fan motif. It's such a great image of the impermanence of existence (a classic theme in Japanese aesthetics) , and yet the damaged fans are still beautiful. I think this would look absolutely stunning on a kosode.  I've seen fans on lacquer pieces and on textiles, but never torn fans like this, and this is a post-period piece of metalwork. That said, I have some ideas on how I could use this motif to create a period-evocative garment. Besides, Ii-dono and Abe-hime gave me that amazing green silk for Christmas....

A partially set-up one. I can't wait until I have everything finally copied and loaded onto it that I want. THEN I can start deleting the software that came with this that I DON'T want.

And this plugging and unplugging the mouse and going back and forth is special.

Crown was pretty mellow, at least for someone who has no vested interest in the outcome.  I picked up layla_lilah early, we grabbed some hot beverages at Peets and got on the road at a good time and didn't have to deal with any bad traffic. We made it to site in time for AM court, and borrowed a bit of shade from the Wolfscairn folks. Got to have some nice visits with various folks, including acanthusleaf  who is always fun to chat with. Found a nice little place on 116 for dinner called the Henweigh Cafe. The bourbon flank steak was excellent.

Sunday my computers were talking to each other via cable so I went out to the Oakland Zoo. Got some great black and white botanical shots and there was an extremely cooperative chimpanzee who sat in a spot where I could shoot him without obstruction, however, I have not satisfactorily figured out how to tell my camera how to focus on what's behind the wire instead of the wire itself. Clearly more practice is needed.
  

I'll upload the batch to Flickr. Eventually.....

(Posted to SCA-West)

Please don't stand facing the King and Queen as you describe the deeds of the person being elevated. They and the peerage members are supposed to already know this stuff: you're the ones who deliberated on the invitation, right? It's the *populace* you should be telling these things and if you've got your back to us, we cannot hear you.

Please don't mosey out of court chatting to your fellow peerage members while the herald is trying to read the proclamation. Not only are you distracting people from said proclamation, your fine example simply results in cuing the populace to chat amongst themselves as well. After all, they haven't been able to hear anything of what's going on anyway, so it must not be important.

***************************
Seriously. I sat there, RIGHT  up front, less than 30 feet from the thrones and I could not hear a word of Bailey's Pel ceremony. I'm deaf but not that deaf.  Considering all the blather goes on about how the Peers Must Do More Outreach To The Populace, including the rest of us in the ceremony might be nice.

Then, there's that whole "surprise" thing, which I loathe. I know there are people who prefer to be surprised, but I believe a peerage is a job offer and should be treated as such. You want to surprise me, send me flowers. DON'T haul me up in front of a crowd and put me in an awkward position, thank you.

The other problem with the surprise gambit is that inevitably many of the candidate's friends will miss out on seeing their friend receive the honor.  As I did. As a number of people did, judging from entries posted in the last 24 hours.

Congratulations to Beli Bailey McIntyre and Vittoria Aurelii upon their elevations to the Orders of the Pelican and Laurel, whatever they might have been for.

I just got back from the "Kampai! Sake + Tea" evening at the Asian Art Museum.

"Lords of the Samurai" takes up the two ground floor exhibition rooms with scrolls, screens, armor (all Edo period), textiles (all Edo period, mostly noh costumes, a white wool dobuku with one red sleeve and a blue brocade collar, and a white jinbaori with the Hosokawa mon in black), tea-ware and other articles. It includes a number of "Book of Five Rings" scrolls, plus paintings attributed to Miyamoto Musashi. The folding screens with the geese here are in the exhibit. 

There were at least three sword blades that pre-dated the Edo period and a gorgeous matchlock musket with inlays of the Hosokawa mon all over the stock. The tsuba collection is also mostly Edo, but there were a couple of Muromachi ones as well. I understand that items will be rotated, so I definitely plan to get back to see it again later in the summer. (I did acquire the exhibition catalogue - to my dismay, the wonderful screen of dog shooting is reduced to some stupidly small photos, however, there are some excellent portraits, some of which I have not even seen).

Oh, and the eggplant sake and picnic set? There was an even BETTER one, with a silver gourd-shaped sake flask, stacked boxes and plates all nested in a lacquered carrying case.

The DJ - and the person who thought putting a DJ in the echoing atrium of a museum was a good idea - should both be used for cutting practice. It was too flippin' loud!  The tea demonstrations were packed, as in, don't even think of getting near it. I did manage to try a tasting flight of three sake ($10) early enough to be able to take my little tray, sit on a stone bench and sip thoughtfully.

Fave of the evening was "Shichi Hon Yari" (The Seven Spearsmen), Tomita Sake Brewery, Shiga Prefecture.  Darned smooth for a junmai, with fruity notes.  A very close second was "Ken" (Sword), Suehiro Sake Brewery, Fukushima prefecture. this junmai daiginjo  hit me firmly in the tastebuds like Hiroyuki Sanada kicking Tom Cruise's gaijin ass with a melon-flavored boken, though not too sweet. The "Sharaku" (Tokun Sake Brewery, Chiba) was a dry junmai ginjo. If you like dry whites, you'd probably enjoy it. While it was my least favorite of the three, it certainly wasn't bad. (Of course, I just looked all these up and they're stupid expensive! I cannot spend $53 for a bottle of sake)

It was too crowded and noisy and I was hitting critical mass by the time I came back down from the upstairs gallery, so I didn't stay for the lecture on sake and samurai.