When Food Scraps Dream

I did not know an ad campaign could be endearing. One does not expect to gaze up at a billboard, enchanted. And the kinds of ads that purport to serve the public with positive messages are usually the most loathsome. So I can really appreciate the triumph that is:



This was the first ad I saw of the Alameda County Waste Management's Food Scrap Recycling campaign, and, as we say on Passover, it would have been enough. It came out around the time when a compost fairy visited every house in the land and left little green pails at the curb. (Free green pails! Eee! Talon hands!) In the early days, they were just warming us up to the idea of "recycling" food scraps. The scraps go in the pail, that they may someday become joyous sunflowers.



The old artichoke goes back to the farm. (Technically, I think its re-ordered molecules--sorry, I don't understand science--go to local gardens via the Davis Street Dump, but I quibble.) They went seasonal in October, which was more than awesome:

I regret that I never saw this versión en español in action: (If it wasn't on a bus shelter on Fruitvale or International Blvd, where was it?)

Aren't you glad to live, or don't you wish you lived, somewhere with ads for composting spent jack-o-lanterns that say "Qué te pasa, calabaza?"

The shitty economy is a boon to PSAs. No one can afford to rent that billboard space any more. So Waste Management can just churn out the quippy food scrap recycling ads with abandon. I do wonder why they don't call it composting. Does the word carry some stigma I'm unaware of? Sound too dirt-nasty? Or did they use the word "recycling" to make a quick link in the public brain from the gray bin to the green one?


Okay. Here's where they go advanced. So we get it about the banana peels and the corn husks. They go in the green pail, which then gets dumped into the green bin at the curb and gets turned into compost--or, to be coy, "goes to the farm." Now we are ready for some next-level ish: bring on the food-soiled paper products. Used paper coffee cups, for instance.

Or pizza boxes. For the coup de grace, Waste Management has even put out a custom pizza box, instructing its holder to place it in the green bin when the fun pizza times are through. I only know about the boxes because yesterday one such was stuffed, ironically, into my gray recycling bin. (Ooh: so close.)

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In the Healing Waters of Nodrambama

Obama was like the jeans we tried on at the store in a skinnifying mirror and thought, wow, these jeans are perfect and will make me whole. Thus the inevitable flood of buyer's remorse when they were but jeans. The very finest, perhaps, but still: jeans. Working with what they've got. Incapable of miracles.

But perhaps now we are settling in. Obama has been through the wash a couple times and we are beginning to think he wears quite well after all. We still have our fat little gams and entrenched casino capitalism, but he is trying to show us our best national self--as we are now and as we could be.

Compare it to the Bush era and you'll realize what a warm bath this new political atmosphere is. We've been through quite an ordeal, and are not at all well, but we finally get to soak in Epsom salts and essential oils and begin the healing. It's that turning point in a cold when you know you're starting to get better and all you have to do is tend yourself, enjoy the hot soup and let healing proceed apace.

Our shoulders can finally fall from that tense position we had been holding them in since circa 2001, because, really: we are in good hands. We can be children dozing in the back seat as Barack and Michelle drive us home, soothed by the murmurs of their voices talking about grown-up things.

How's this for soothing:

Mr. Obama has begun to sketch a vision of where he would like to drive the economy once this crisis is past. His goals include diminishing the consumerism that has long been the main source of growth in the United States, and encouraging more savings and investment. He would redistribute wealth toward the middle class and make the rest of the world less dependent on the American market for its prosperity. And he would seek a consensus recognizing that an activist government is an acceptable and necessary partner for a stable, market-based economy.

We are still keyed up from Bush times, adapted to all the fussing and fighting. It can be hard to recognize the progress we've already made toward the promised land of No Drama: the stable good intentions, the reasoned decision-making. The economy has not gotten worse in a while. The White House lawn has a food garden. Gay marriage laws are quietly passing and in the current climate no one quite wants to be the bigot to object. The president does a bro handshake with Hugo Chavez and Fox wants to whip up a froth, but those days are done. Obama smiles with his big teeth, lets it blow over.

And the dangerous metaphor-mixing experiment is now complete.

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Ode to the Bitchy British Songbirds

Now I know you feel betrayed But it's been weeks since I got laid
This doesn't mean
I don't think you're a fool
-"Never Gonna Happen"

He left no time to regret
Kept his dick wet
With his same old safe bet
-"Back to Black"

Wrap it up cause I ain't
Carrying your embryo
-"Wait a Minute (Just a Touch)"

If you can imbue caustic, obscene lyrics like those above with easy charm, you must be a Bitchy British Songbird. These ladies can don fabulous earrings, deball a man, and write a fetching song about it on any given afternoon. They can also do the vulnerable vocal equivalent of languishing on the couch with an ice cream pint. That's range.

No matter how much of a laughingstock she becomes, I keep loving Amy Winehouse. When someone is willing to rip open her soul for my listening pleasure, I forgive just about anything. Hence I still want to set Amy up in a little hutch in the backyard with some fresh straw and clean water and care for her until she gets better. Sure it's irrational. But if you were off listening to Mary Wells and the Shangri-Las when the other little girls were on Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, hearing that Motowny girl group sound coming from a sassy, contemporary London Jewgirl is too much to resist. In interviews about her hypothetical next album, Winehouse has said it will be like Back to Black, "but with more ska." Which makes me want to cry, because I would like to hear that so very, very much, and its future existence is dubious.

Not that I mind listening to Back to Black even yet more. The title track manages to chop and screw chipper Motown into the darkest of lamentations on love lost: We only said goodbye with words/I died a hundred times. (Of course she's talking about that fuckup Blake guy, but never you mind.) And "Wake Up Alone" is a slow jam straight out of the secret Kellerman's staff party in Dirty Dancing. She really croons on that one:

If I was my heart
I'd rather be restless
Second I stop the sleep catches up
And I'm--breathless
This ache in my chest
As my day is done now
The dark covers me
And I cannot run now

The sensational Estelle also harkens back to all my favorite old soul. But if Amy is widely known as cracked-out "Rehab" chick, the general listening public knows Estelle as just the popstar of "American Boy." Only marginally less of an underestimation. Her Shine album reminds me so much of Aretha's Sparkle that I have to wonder if the one-shimmery-word title thing is coincidental. The splendiferous "More Than Friends" samples the Queen of Soul version of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," so it had me at hello. Then it overclosed with tender lyrics and Estelle's sultrily earthy rapping:

Don't play me like a extra
I got speaking roles
I am not that ho
I am so much more

And the "American Boy" thing is no joke. Seems every big man on the American music campus wants to musically date Estelle. Her "(feat...)" stable includes John Legend, Kanye West, Wyclef and Sean Paul. And the latter sounds especially excited to introduce the two of them (Sean-a-Paul and ESTELLE!) at the beginning of the "Come Over" remix.
Lily Allen's offerings remind me not of my old Motown tapes, but of driving out to Orange County for ska shows in high school. Her first hit "Smile" does, anyway. And come to think of it, I wish her new album, It's Not Me, It's You sounded more like "Smile" and less like microwave popcorn with fake butter. (You can say something mean like that to her, because she can dish it out, hence she can take it.) She may be lightweight, but she is just the perfect confection. A vanilla meringue, spiked with vodka.
Brits are always better at using the language, and Londoners seem to specialize in rich, cussy slang. Why say "lots of diamonds" when you can say "fuckloads" like Lily? (Amy also enjoys nouns that employ the "fuck-" stem, as in, What kind of fuckery is this?) The BBS's use those dirty mouths to dress down men, which is a healthy tonic if you listen to fuckloads of misogynistic rap, as I do. There's nothing quite like Estelle's final blow at the end of "No Substitute Love": You need to grow a couple boy/You ain't bout nothin boy.

It's Not Me, It's You goes ahead and takes it there by having a song entitled "Fuck You." It's about a bigoted individual to whose racism and homophobia Lily Allen is saying "fuck you very much"--but you know that theme was an afterthought. The girl wanted to have a song called "Fuck You." And then she was like, well it would be too obvious if it was another of my deballing tracks, so I'll go in this unexpected political direction. She never tires of using her cherubic voice to say something demonic, and I haven't tired of it yet either. If and when I do tire, I'll write her a saccharine-toned grenade of self-esteem demolition. Because she can dish it out.

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Pesach, Baby

Passover begins tonight! Swill the Manischewitz and enjoy last year's post on this theme.

4/14/08: Pesach, Baby

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Wow, America, so all it took for you to be into your president again was for him to go out on the world stage and flirt with some other countries? Old Europe lines up to blow him and suddenly you're like, "I got it!" Entire editorial pages of eager fellation. Those nose hairs and the porcupiney technocrat he picked for Treasury aren't bothering you quite so much now. Mmhmm. Relationships 101 trick right there.

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...I will unplug stuff more...

I unplugged some stuff and I was like, wow, that felt so amazing. I'm doing my part. What made me want to do that? Oh yeah, it was that friend of mine. Great lady. She's got like these barely tamed red curls and we were talking and she told me she was planning to unplug stuff more and I was like, wow: yeah. I'm gonna do that too.

And then, after that, I left the car at home. I had been meaning to do that more. I don't know why. No, wait. I do know. It was because of my neighbor. She has this amazing cocoa butter complexion and she said she was planning to leave her car at home more, and I was like, yeah, she's so right on. I want to do what she's doing.



The last time I felt this healthy and right was during my Thrive phase, when I had this mysterious compulsion to eat blueberries and catch frisbees on the beach and do yoga in the park.

I saw this flock of geese flying in like an inverted V-pattern and I got this warm feeling like there was something really positive about that shape. For some reason, it reminded me of going to see The Nutcracker at the Paramount Theater. At the end, they gave every audience member these little boxes of chocolates? And it was like, wow, so generous. And on the box there was a symbol like that. And a word. I want to say it was...CHEVRON.

Yes! That was the word. My mind was spinning. In a flash I knew the redhead and the cocoa butter lady and the Nutcracker chocolates magically intersected at this word. That the redhead was not my friend but my guardian Chevron angel. I felt the aura of this Chevron everywhere, encouraging the use of solar power, funding the local arts institutions, asking me to join. What was this extraordinary force for good? What shape did it take? I knew not. I asked around and apparently they are running this virtue factory right out of nearby Richmond.

I will visit sometime.

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