Barry's Life in Napa Blog

Those with functional memories may recall the recent posting on the topic of pake . I am pleased to report that a pake was successfully constructed and consumed in our household over the holidays, and after initial skepticism, even the initial skeptics were won over. (The initial skeptics - you know who you are - are forgiven for their tendency to treat me like a dolt and tell me how to do everything, even though they had the exact same amount of pake experience I had going in - zero. I will concede that I left out the important step of placing a baking sheet under the pie tin, and received some needed support when there was a blossom of smoke in the kitchen - which turned out to be not the only smoke-filled house episode of the holidays so far, but that is perhaps another story for another time.) It should also be pointed out that my pake did not look anything like the photo I used in the initial post . That photo, according to one of the initial skeptics, was "gross." So ag...

Oh, the glorious anticipation of it all! Lying in bed knowing there was some kind of magic going on in the night, that when you woke in the morning there would be a passel of presents under the tree, that Santa would have made his visit. There was no doubt that the big day was at hand, since we went to bed having heard the local weatherman report that NORAD was tracking an object flying south from the North Pole! I you were smart you would make sure mom and dad thought you still believed long after you didn't anymore. That would insure that the presents kept coming. Why mess up good thing? But eventually the gravy train would run out, and the littler kids were getting all the good stuff and no one knew what to buy for the awkward adolescent. Before you know it, you've got kids of your own and you're re-creating old family traditions, or making new ones of your own. Nobody knows what NORAD is anymore, but you can live chat with Santa or text message the elves. The absolute ...

Christmas is like Asian food - you can get sweet and sour in the same bite. And you stuff yourself with festivity, but find you are hungry for more just an hour later. And you get a choice of steamed or fried rice. I guess that doesn't apply to Christmas so much. Let's move on from the analogy. Christmas of 1967 I was in the second grade at Stapleton School. I got a sweet and sour taste that year, all because of the Christmas production that was cooked up. It was a little play with Santa and elves and kids getting toys. There were some songs to be sung, and it was all your basic elementary school effort, to be performed for the parents. I was eager to be part of the chorus that would be featured in this masterwork - but one day the teacher called me aside and asked if I would play Santa Claus. I didn't feel like I could say no, and was devastated that I wouldn't be in the chorus. I cried and said to the teacher "You only want me to be Santa because I'm fat....

Christmas 1981 we were young and wild and crazy in love. We lived on the third floor of the Olivia Apartments on 4th and Moffet - classic old building with a tile lobby that made me feel like we were cosmopolitan. The meekest kid from my grade school lived down on the first floor. By now he had a long beard and a long coat and a drug habit. On the floor above us was a girl who had a bad reputation from high school. I don't know if she deserved it or not. I felt like I was becoming an adult, working a job and paying rent - a rent than ran $110 a month, because this was one of the nicer apartments in town. No problem, because I believe I was grossing more than $10k per annum - major moolah, in my mind, not too shabby. But that big money flowed through me like shit through a goose, always living with champagne taste on a beer budget, as Daddy would have said. No problem, because when we ran out of cash we'd just have popcorn for dinner a couple of nights. You don't need muc...

We interrupt the planned "Christmas memories" today for this late breaking news: There's always so much bad news and negativosity these days, it's reassuring when you become aware of something exciting and new - in fact, it's inspiring to learn that the great American spirit of inventiveness lives on. I refer here to the culinary break through of the decade - pake . Pake is a combination of pie + cake. (Artists' rendition of what a pake might look like at left. Pronounce it like "cake" not like Japanese rice wine.) Why did it take so long for someone to come up with this heavenly creation? This forever solves that perplexing question at potlucks and holiday family gatherings: "Which would you like, pie or cake?" My usual answer is "a little bit of both," which of course is a lie because I never want a "little bit," I want a boatload of both. If pake takes the world by storm as I expect, no longer will I need to humble ...

Ahhh, Christmas memories. Gingerbread houses, sugar-covered cookies, and an orange in the bottom of your stocking. Ornaments made from macaroni, tinsel wrapped around the roller on the vacuum, and always some fricking walnuts in the bottom of my stocking. Getting the toy you really wanted, getting a cheaper version of the toy you really wanted, not getting anything you really wanted. Getting clothes, getting clothes that are butt ugly, getting clothes that don't fit. Ah Christmas, sweet Christmas! Hope springs eternal! Of all the thoughts that visit me like Marley's ghosts this time of year, one memory of Christmas stands out above them all - how my dad hated the whole thing. Maybe there was a time when he was younger, before I was born, when he got some joy from the rituals. But by the time I was old enough to know what was going on he was in his late 40s and pretty fed up with all of it. It wasn't any of that cutesy Darrin McGavin in "Christmas Story" annoyance...

Reuters news 10/17/07 (Berlin) Germany, Mexico and Austria were world's top three searchers of the word "Hitler" while "Nazi" scored the most hits in Chile, Australia and the United Kingdom, data from 2004 to the present retrievable on the "Google Trends" Web site showed. Chile also came in first place searching for the word "gay", followed by Mexico and Colombia. Our perpetual American self hate leads us to assume that we are the most screwed up people on the planet. But I nominate instead, Chile-ers! Chile-ites! People from Chile! The nation most likely to Google the words "Nazi" and "gay" - now that's whack. (Needing empirical proof, I Googled "Nazi gay" and my top hit led me to "Scott Lively is co-author of The Pink Swastika: Homosexuals and the Nazi Party (Keizer, Oregon: Founders Publishing Company, 1995)." Do you think there are a lot of Chile-ites who are working on their Master's Th...

It's a form of "mission creep" I suppose. ( Mission creep is "the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes." Thank you, Mr. Wikipedia.) I'm talking about the Holiday Slowdown here. The initial success a few years back was the adoption of the day after Thanksgiving as a standard holiday, and the general agreement that the day before or the day after Christmas should also be time off work. So now most people don't work on these days. That's all good, but the mission creep began when people started saying "Oh, since I'm already off two days of that week I'll just take the rest of that week off, too." And that was followed by "Nobody else is working those days between Christmas and New Years Day so I'm taking that week off." All of a sudden we went from having a day off in November and a day off in December, to a five-week period when there aren't enough people on the...

76,800,000. That's how many hits you get when you Google "black Friday." I am a little agog at how this Black Friday insanity has taken root. We all know that the day after Thanksgiving has been big for shopping for many years. I remember the first Cabbage Patch doll riot, back in the early 80s - I think that happened on the Friday after Thanksgiving. But I don't think it had this name Black Friday until recently. (It refers to the idea that this the day when retailers go into the black. Imagine that, you have to go 47 weeks into the year to get to profitability? Remind me not to buy stock in a company like that.) And so once it had a name, it's become another American holidays, with ritual observances and the required pressure, tension, frustration, and exhaustion that make our holidays the treasured occasions that they are. Let's get real here, people. You're getting up at 3am so you can stand in line to buy some crap that will still be on the shelves th...

This is really random, but I ran across this most amazing photo while wasting my life on the internet. Look closely. You can get the story behind this here from Snopes. The description makes the photo even more amazing. Then you should go here to the Carl Hammer Gallery and see another 20 or so like this. Colossal. Astonishing. A real honest "wow."

"It's a terrible thing to waste a mind," said our President once, in an attempt to relate the line from that notable ad for the United Negro (yes, that's their word) College Fund. (Or was it Dan Quayle who said that? Yes, it was Dan Quayle, and the exact quote was What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is. Whatever happened to Dan Quayle? Wait, I realize I don't care.) I was using my mind a little yesterday, happily multitasking, and out of the blue the phrase "screw the pooch" popped in. There was no context, no conversation, no reason - just a curious phrase come a'visiting. I treasure these little ADD moments when I am engaged in something "serious" but gleefully follow the mental pied piper as he passes by. So off I went, in pursuit of the origins and true meaning of "screw the pooch." As is the case with so many of our most vigorous and useful phrases, "scr...

By Kimi Yoshino, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 9, 2007 The annoyingly catchy song at Disneyland's "It's a Small World" attraction reminds riders that "the oceans are wide." Whether they're deep enough is another story. Forty-one years after the whimsical ride debuted at the Anaheim park,Disneyland plans to shutter the attraction in January to give it a much-needed face-lift -- and deal with the delicate problem of bottoming-out boats. Heavier-than-anticipated loads have been causing the boats to come to a standstill in two different spots... Perhaps in an effort to protect visitors' egos, the park insists that fat tourists aren't to blame. The boats get stuck because "layers and layers" of fiberglass have built up where maintenance teams have patched and re-patched problem areas, said Disneyland Resort spokesman Bob Tucker. (Whole story here. ) Oh yeah. that's why my pants are so tight, too -...

The pigeon is one of the lowliest of creatures. I think it was the great Herb Caen who first called them "rats with wings." Rats themselves are pretty despicable. And not being much of an animal guy, I can think of lots of other critters that gross me out - frogs get no love from me, and if I never see another possum that will be fine. No matter what I think about these beasts, it doesn't seem to bother them to be what they are. You don't notice any pigeons being annoyed by all the other freaking pigeons swarming around. You don't see rats going off about how crowded the rat den has become. They just climb all over each other and keep doing whatever rats do. So what is it with is home sapiens that makes us hate on our own species so much? I pondered this issue at a meeting last night where people were up in arms because some more houses are going to be built in their neighborhood. If there's one thing we can generally agree on here in Northern California, it...

I'm in a meeting the other day and this guy is describing a part of town as "a historically a blue-collar neighborhood." He went on to make remarks about the people who used to live in that part of town and used words like "genuine." His overall tone was that to be blue collar, which equates to working class, which equates to making less money, is somehow a more honest state of being than to be white collar. (I don't know what other kinds of collar descriptions should be accounted for in today's work world, since there is a lot of diversity these days. There must be more than just blue and white, right? Are there workers with collars of other colors? What about people who work from home in their bathrobes, are they robe collar workers? Are there people who only work in t-shirts who would be "no collar" workers? Dog collar? Shock collar? I need to do more research.) I've run into this type of thinking before, the "people who work with t...

So we live in a consumer society that is driven by advertising. I get it. I participate in it. I sometimes even enjoy the feeling that I just have to go out and buy whatever new thing is being pushed, even though I'm surely old enough to know I will just feel cheap and used in the morning. What if we all suddenly developed resistance to advertising and stopped buying stuff? We would bring a curse upon all our houses - stocks would tumble (that's what stocks always do, unless they're soaring or crashing) liquidity would become a big problem (even bigger that the problem with understanding what liquidity means) and in general, the economy would go down the toilet. Now I've never been down the toilet, but there have been a few occasions when I've been up close and personal with the toilet after a particularly enthusiastic party, and it doesn't look like something you want to go down. So let's just agree we all need to keep buying stuff all the time, forever an...

I feel I owe an apology to the dozens of readers...well, tens.....OK, any individual who may read here accidentally, for being more than usually spare in my offerings. Taking note that the topic category for this post is "whining and complaining," here's why. After about six months of work, today we are scheduled to launch the new website I have been working on for the City of Napa. I say scheduled, because we have scheduled to launch several other times and had to abort. Today I think it will happen. A few months ago when it was in the news that I would be re-making the City's website, some wisenheimer wrote to the Napa Valley Register something to the effect of "any teenager with a MySpace can make a website." True in some sense, but most teenager's MySpaces don't have 300+pages and hundreds of documents, and most importantly, teenagers don't have to coordinate, coerce and cajole several dozen other people to provide, and then approve, the con...

I bought some newspapers this week. The SF Chronicle called to tell me my subscription had run out, and offered to renew it. $25 for 26 weeks, they said. I told them that sounded like more than I paid last time, and so they looked it up and sure enough, last subscription was $20 for 26 weeks but that was a "promotional" rate. So I asked if they had a promotional rate this week, and so they looked it up and said yes, and so I paid $15 for 26 weeks. A little more than 50 cents a week for the Wednesday through Sunday service, because apparently nothing you'd want to know about ever happens on Monday or Tuesday, or they can't find enough people in the Bay Area willing to work for a living to staff up and deliver all seven days. Lest you think I am now going to describe how I did my laundry or went grocery shopping, never fear, I have not become the world's most mundane blogger. (I'm still third most mundane.) There is an actual point here. Granted the Chronicle i...

I think my computer is failing. It makes these weird noises lately, lots of clicking and a little screeching, which means either the hard drive is going or it has Tourette's. Although the sudden outbursts of foul language usually come from me, so it's probably the hard drive. I always get a little panic attack when I think the computer's dying. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, since this is maybe PC number five that is suffering from end-stage hard drive error. But the panic comes from the feeling that I'm going to lose something precious - something I can't even specifically identify - that is saved somewhere in this box. Maybe it's a photo, or a song, or a piece of video, or something I started writing and didn't finish, a link to something that was really important at the moment that I have forgotten about, an email I meant to answer but haven't - somehow something's going to get left behind. I have to remind myself that although each...

My normal mode is enthusiasm on a Monday morning. When Monday rolls around, I have that feeling that if I just get a good early start, today will be the day I tie up all those loose ends and get caught up at work. Usually it takes until about 11:30am for the enthusiasm to wane. Today, the waning has already begun at 7:17am. Not a good sign. So perhaps today is a good day for some diversion, and I think I have just the ticket. It's a site called Uncyclopedia . I am a regular user of Wikipedia, and I ignore the small minds who criticize it's "wisdom of crowds" comprehensiveness, so this Uncyclopedia site is a hoot since it is a satire on Wikpedia. If you don't use Wikipedia then the whole satire thing is not going to gain much traction with you, so look, you're on your own today. In just a quick look I got some good smirks from Ice Cream Flavors Not in the Top 100 HowTo:Use IYDKWTAAMTYSUTOFRAITYTTAAMYYY to Help You Figure out What Other Abbreviations Mean Wood...

In the last week, I've heard about an old friend who's just had a big tumor taken out of his head, and another friend who is paralyzed with Guillen-Barre Syndrome (one of those afflictions you'd just as soon you'd never heard about.) These guys are both in the 40 to 45 years old range. And today there is a funeral for a local police officer who died from cancer at 39. It puts me in mind of those "storming the beach" scenes. There are always lots of troops making it through, but alongside others are falling, some wounded and some dead. Middle age seems to be that way. You keep trudging forward while the casualties mount up, wondering if there's a blood clot with your name on it out there waiting for you. With all the awareness we have of these everyday casualties, and knowing that there is inevitably some suffering just around the next corner, it's amazing that so many people can screw up the courage to keep getting out of bed everyday. And not only to...

Today I am observing Columbus Day by not getting dressed. To be more specific, not dressed for work. I could say I am observing Columbus Day by having a day off work, but I worked a few hours so that wouldn't be true. So all I can say for my "day off" is that it was really a half day off. Seems there aren't many people any more who have any respect for the 40 hour work week. Seeing as how there were lots of union guys and gals who got their heads caved in to earn the right to a 40 hour week, shouldn't we all honor that by not working our asses off 10 or 12 hours a day and half the weekend, too? Everywhere I look there are people putting in huge amounts of hours, week after week. And a lot of these people have kids, too, little ones. I worry they will be looking back very soon and wondering why they put work ahead of their kids - and we're not talking about people who are working two jobs to pay the rent, right? It's a choice, a mindset. Got to work more to...

It's been a few days since I wrote. I've been feeling kind of low since Jimmy and the other boys at the malt shop made fun of my shoes. I don't know why Janice needs to be so mean. After all, she---WAIT a minute. That's my diary entry from October 1955, not my blog post. Sometimes I forget which decade I'm writing in. Hang on there...I know I've got 2007 right here somwhere...OK, all set. Let's go. I am one of millions who are watching Ken Burns' latest documentary The War . Goes without saying that it is another masterwork, like Baseball and The Civil War . Burns is a special story teller. You've got to love a guy who makes 15 hour film projects that take seven years. (Took him longer to make the film than it took Hitler to conquer, and lose, the free world.) I'm a believer in regular review of key moments in history. Since we're always trying to make sense of the present-day world, it's worthwhile to touch base with the past and recogn...

I am living in the World Wide Web these days. My waking hours, and sometimes my dreams, revolve around building web pages, uploading files, and trying to decipher little bits of code and the lingo of the Uber Nerds around me. Along the way, one can collect some entertainment if one tries. Case in point, the offerings here, contributed by people from all over who carry the exalted title of Webmaster for some public agency. These are some actual emails from actual citizens that were actually sent to some actual public employee somewhere in this great land of ours. I think you will find them inspiring. "When is some1 comin to cut my grass? I bought this house and the grass is gettng tall. My neighbor says if I wait long enuf the city will cut it for me." (Now that's what I call good old American ingenuity! Of course, this same person will complain loudly when the City sends a bill for cutting the grass after a bunch of complaints and time-wasting paperwork, all burning up ...

If you are familiar with the myspace bulletin, this will make sense. If this does not make sense, well, you know, it's Friday and it's been a long week so get off my back! 1. What is the status of you and the last person you kissed? still married as far as I know 2. What's bothering you right now? Brenna 3. What is in your wallet? i don't have a wallet, I carry everything in my hands all the time 4. Wallpaper on your computer's desktop? i don't have wallpaper but the desktop is freshly painted 5. Background on your cell phone? well, it's a Razr and I bought it at the mall. It's black. 6. What do you want in your life right now? bowl of cereal but there isn't any 7. Listening to? the voices in my head, always the voices 8. Have you ever kissed anyone named Billy? actually yes, which might be embarassing but he's 14 months old 9. Eating/chewing? i am in favor of both. 10. What's your favorite thing to have on your bed? a canned ham 11. Do you b...

It's a little marginal for a person with a totally voluntary, non-profit blog to suggest that some people are crying out for attention, but I always say if you're going to be a hypocrite, be a big, fat, in-your-face hypocrite, so here goes. (OK, I've never "always said that" but I'm going to start saying it now.) There are two stories in the news this week that have a whiff of "gimme some attention." Story 1 is the case of this kid from the University of Florida, Andrew Meyer. He's the one who got tasered and dragged off at a John Kerry appearance. (John Kerry - he's still alive?) If you haven't seen the video... There are a couple of indications that Meyer was planning to make some kind of a scene. For one, he handed his video camera to a stranger and asked them to record him asking his question. Then, according to the police reports: "As (Meyer) was escorted down stairs (at the University Auditorium) with no cameras in sight, he re...

One of my dad's many expressive figures of speech was describing someone as a person who "woke up in a new world every day." This, surprisingly, was not a compliment. It was a way of indicating that a person did not have any wisdom, mature judgment, ability to remember what came before and act accordingly. In short, the person in question was a simpleton - unable to grasp the complexities of life. On 9/11/07, I wrote: "In my next post, I will explain in the simplest terms exactly why we are in Iraq and why we need to stay." I address this to those who believe they are thoughtful about geo-politics and US foreign policy, but in fact, seem to wake up in a new world every day. 1. The war between Islamic fundamentalism and the US did not begin with the invasion if Iraq in 2003. It began in 1979 when the Iranian revolution took place and the US hostages were taken. For those who forget, the Ayatollah Khomeini was a bad guy of the first order in our view, and his as...

This photo was taken in Iraq on 9 September 2003 by Baker Company, 7th Marines, 1st Battalion. It takes a lot for me to be appalled, but that's the best word to describe the way I felt last week. I heard someone on TV or radio doing a tease for an upcoming segment along the lines of "9-11 remembrances - when is enough enough?" A few days later I read an editorial page item with the same tone - "I can't get too worked up over the fact that 9-11 happened six years ago." Generally I'm all for living in the moment and not in the past, what's done is done, let bygones be bygones. Generally, but not absolutely. There's no statute of limitations on murder. If you want to get back in touch with the emotions of 9-11 and all that has followed in these last six years, I recommend seeing HBO's Alive Day Memories . (If you don't have HBO, it says on their site you can watch the entire film online.) This film is very simple. Ten people, male and female...

Bin Laden has a new tape out, and I'm a little disappointed. He says that all this fighting and tension can be over and we can all get along fine, if we just give up on capitalism and democracy and convert to Hinduism. Or maybe it was Buddhism. Anyway, one of those. I'm disappointed because I think ol' Bin has been playing it passive-aggressive these past six years, trying to get us to read his mind - why does it take so long to just come out and say what you want? Binny, baby, don't be coy. Now that we know what it takes to make everything right, I'm sure you will join me in renouncing those meaningless, shallow beliefs that seem to be causing all the trouble. Let's look at some pros and cons: Capitalism Pros: Any person with drive can get rich, and with drive and some brains, incredibly rich. Cons: Most of us don't have enough drive and/or brains. Verdict: Dump it. I'd much rather have a wise holy man in a beard tell me how many goats I can have. Th...

Just the other day some friends were talking about a new game they had developed in their office. More intellectual than wadded-paper-and-trash-can basketball, or the uber-nerdlinger four square that's now popular in Silicon Valley , this game is all about mixed metaphors. The objective is to come up with a combination that, while failing to make sense, is funny. The oldest example of this kind of mixed metaphor that I can recall is "smokes like a fish," which combines "smokes like a chimney" (logical) with "drinks like a fish" (not really logical since it refers to alcohol consumption and I don't think fish really hit it that hard, except on weekends.) That one's been around a long time, and I have a feeling somebody came up with on purpose. Likewise, "that's not rocket surgery!" which always tends to get a delayed laugh, feels like a line that belongs to some stand up comedian. Most of your most entertaining mixed metaphors jus...

With a scant 14 months to go, time is running out and we will soon need to make a choice for our next President. The time has come to confront the most intriguing question of the campaign, the unspoken question that everyone is quietly pondering - is John Edwards bisexual? No, sorry, that's not the question I meant to ask. The real unspoken question that everyone is quietly pondering is this - doesn't Fred Thompson look like he might just kick your ass? Sorry again, so sorry, not where I was really going. Just a little distracted today. Let's get to the REAL unspoken question, the whispered query, the question even true believers hear inside their heads, the question my pal Big Tex actually gave voice to the other day - Hillary can get the nomination, but can she win the office? Face it, even the most die-hard Dems must be tussling over this question. After all, the 2008 election is a walk-over for their party, agreed? There's nothing the Democrats could possibly do in...

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