Wisco Film Festival and Red Curry Sweet Potato Soup

Alright. The dishes are washed, but I want to stay up later. K. came over for dinner and a movie tonight. We watched Adam's Apples, a slightly twisted Danish black comedy. The menu included:

• red curry sweet potato soup
• sautéed greens (a mixture of mustard, spinach, collard greens, and turnip greens)
• crostini with a selection of cheeses (feta, grana padana, herbed Happy Cow), roasted garlic, marinated artichoke hearts, and black olives

Red Curry Sweet Potato Soup
(from Real Simple)

Ingredients
* 1 1/2 lbs sweet potatoes, rinsed (about 3 large potatoes)
* 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
* 1 onion, roughly chopped
* 4 tablespoons fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
* 1 tablespoon red curry paste (found in the international section of markets)
* 1 (15 ounce) can unsweetened coconut milk
* 3 cups chicken broth or vegetable broth
* 3 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
* 1 teaspoon kosher salt
* 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
* 1/2 cup fresh cilantro stem

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 400°F Put the sweet potatoes on an oven rack and bake for 50 minutes or until tender. Remove from oven and let cool. Heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Sauté the onion and ginger until the onion softens, about 5 minutes. Stir in the curry paste and cook for 1 minute. Add the coconut milk and broth and gently bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, partially cover, and cook for 5 minutes. Skin the potatoes and cut into 1-inch chunks. Add the potatoes to the soup and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice and salt. Ladle the soup into serving bowls. Drizzle the sesame oil evenly over the servings. Garnish with the cilantro.

A few notes: The Co-op lacked cilantro, so I omitted it. Had it been available, I would've gladly used it. Cilantro is a magically delicious herb. I used low-fat coconut milk, replaced red curry paste with garam masala, substituted fresh lime juice for lemon juice, and threw in a few handfuls of spinach ribbons (another recipe suggested it...so I claim no credit for that). Close enough, I say.

Wisconsin Film Festival

In mid-April, I attended four films at the Wisconsin Film Festival. Here's a little recap:

OSS117: Lost in Rio is a French satire of 1960s-era spy movies. It especially pokes fun at Sean Connery's tenure as James Bond. If you can get ahold of a copy, I'd highly recommend it.

Romania's The Happiest Girl in the World was less entertaining. It centered on a teenage girl who wins a car in a contest put on by a juice manufacturer. She and her parents go to Bucharest to film the commercial for the juice company and to claim her prize. However, tensions arise because her parents want to sell the car to advance their lot in life and she just wants the independence and freedom afforded by a car. It's a lot of bickering and watching her shoot and re-shoot the commercial, but it was interesting to see a movie about the Romanian people as they navigate their rather new relationship with capitalism.

Mid-August Lunch from Italy was the charming story of a middle-aged Roman man and his mother who agree to care for his building administrator's elderly mother over the mid-August holiday (Ferragosto) in exchange for some of his overdue condo fees. When the administrator shows up, he brings his mother and an aunt. And then the local doctor asks if he can add his mother to mix while he works the late shift. It's endearing to watch the man try to keep up with these feisty ladies, often with the addition of a glass (or three) of wine.

In Masquerades (Algerian), Mounir is just trying to make a life for himself and his family in a small Algerian town. In a drunken outburst, he announces to the whole town that he's found a stellar match for his sister, Rym. (She lives with them and has bouts of narcolepsy.) Rym is in love with Mounir's best friend, but he doesn't know it. The fake story about the wealthy match is exaggerated as it moves from person to person in the town, and soon gets out of control. It was a sweet little film.

Technogeek Moments and John Mayer

Holy technogeek moment, Batman! I believe I just imported this blog into my Facebook account, so let's see if it works. Testing. Testing. One, two. One, two. John Mayer's a douche bag! (Isn't douche bag a lovely term? It's so deliciously crass.)

Hee. Hee. I know that's not a routine mic-testing sentence, but it should be. Alright. I just needed a segue into discussing John Mayer. I am referring, of course, to the now-notorious Playboy interview wherein Mayer makes some bizarre, if not outright sexist and racist, comments. To me, his tidbits about race were particularly disturbing and offensive. Here's the passage that has received the most flak:

PLAYBOY: If you didn’t know you, would you think you’re a douche bag?

MAYER: It depends on what I picked up. My two biggest hits are “Your Body Is a Wonderland” and “Daughters.” If you think those songs are pandering, then you’ll think I’m a douche bag. It’s like I come on very strong. I am a very…I’m just very. V-E-R-Y. And if you can’t handle very, then I’m a douche bag. But I think the world needs a little very. That’s why black people love me.

PLAYBOY: Because you’re very?

MAYER: Someone asked me the other day, “What does it feel like now to have a hood pass?” And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass. Why are you pulling a punch and calling it a hood pass if you really have a hood pass? But I said, “I can’t really have a hood pass. I’ve never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, ‘We’re full.’"

PLAYBOY: It is true; a lot of rappers love you. You recorded with Common and Kanye West, played live with Jay-Z.

MAYER: What is being black? It’s making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that’s seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you’ll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude’s.

PLAYBOY: Do black women throw themselves at you?

MAYER: I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.

PLAYBOY: Let’s put some names out there. Let’s get specific.

MAYER: I always thought Holly Robinson Peete was gorgeous. Every white dude loved Hilary from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Kerry Washington. She’s superhot, and she’s also white-girl crazy. Kerry Washington would break your heart like a white girl. Just all of a sudden she’d be like, “Yeah, I sucked his dick. Whatever.” And you’d be like, “What? We weren’t talking about that.” That’s what “Heartbreak Warfare” is all about, when a girl uses jealousy as a tactic.

Let's get an insignificant issue out of the way first: Even if he believes this crap, isn't the boy bright enough not to say it in a major magazine interview? Yeah. Apparently not.

The next distasteful statement is that African-Americans love him because he is so "very." I'm not sure what the hell it means to be "very." Very what? If he's wanting me to fill in the blank, I can present several choice adjectives after reading that interview. I am curious to know precisely what attribute in in his noggin because he's generalizing an entire group of people based on it. And I'm convinced that the African-Americans who did like him prior to this interview are not particularly fond of him now, despite his Twitter apology. (Who chooses a medium that limits you to 140 characters for a genuine apology?) At least he then has the good sense--after making broad generalizations about African-Americans again--to say that his so-called struggle is not "like the collective struggle of black America." Really? I can safely say that I never, ever thought that John Mayer's "struggle" was equivalent to the struggle of African-Americans. Just for the record.

Next, he refers to a "hood pass"--a term that I fortunately had not previously encountered--and then flippantly drops the N-word. The latter is simply unacceptable, especially for a white person, and we'll just leave it at that. As a term, the former implies that a white person can access and own the often traumatic history of African-Americans by being a cool pop star. In his own inarticulate fashion, he rejects this notion, but does so with an example of racism (being refused at a restaurant) that is so mild that it makes me wonder if he's ever heard of slavery and racism. If being refused at a restaurant was the worst thing that occurred during slavery and the ensuing years of oppression, we'd be in much better shape.

Then there's the "Do black women throw themselves at you?" question. When I first saw excerpts of the interview, the snippet would begin with this question, and I always wondered why Playboy was asking such a bizarre question. Well, now that I've read the larger interview, it makes a bit more sense, but it's still a demented leap in the dialogue. Then again, it is Playboy. I guess I wouldn't expect them to be grilling Mayer about his feelings on Anna Karenina.

And here we are at my favorite part, the piece where he compares his penis to a white supremacist. Talk about wandering into all kinds of dangerous territory. By adding the sexual element (i.e., referencing his penis) he brings to the surface all kinds of crazy history. Off the top of my head, I think of the historically fraught relations between white men and black women and between black men and white women. More specifically, it summons black slave women suffering rape at the hands of their male owners and the lynchings and violence perpetrated against black men as punishment for alleged and/or imagined crimes against white women. I could go on.

Even apart from that, his comments that he doesn't "open [him]self up to" the attentions of African-American women, that his heart is a Benetton ad* (read: multicultural and open), and that his penis resembles David Duke are bizarre. The last detail is really the worst for me. Bringing a prominent KKK member into the equation upped the creepiness quotient about a thousand-fold. A charitable interpretation of his comments would be that even though at heart he is a tolerant soul, he's just not physically attracted to African-American women. (I find this hard to believe because of Halle Berry, at the very least. I am attracted to Halle Berry. That woman is stunning.) On a side note, I was under the impression that desire emanates from one's heart and brain. Can't that Benetton heart override his penis? (Insert joke about men thinking with their penises.)

And then he lists a few exceptions. By name. Is naming a few women that would be worthy of his attentions--if he could "start dating separately from [his] dick," that is--supposed to cancel out the fact that he has just said he is not attracted to any African-American women? He then insults white women with the "white-girl crazy" line and ends with on a charming note by pulling this horrendous train wreck of a discussion back to a shallow plug for his song.

Whew. On that note, I'll wrap it up. I know Mayer is just a singer and not a political and historical brain trust, and I guess we shouldn't expected him to be. And why devote so many words to the putz? I just wish that people in general would be a bit more thoughtful about the ideas they espouse. This especially applies to celebrities because their status confers a degree of authority (or if not authority, at least significant media time). And that authority can influence people's opinions.

Note: Farai Chide at The Huffington Post had some insightful commentary: http://huff.to/aPjIEw. And this article (http://bit.ly/aukSBE) by Andrea Plaid from Racialicious was also interesting.

*The Benetton ads are problematic representations of diversity, but that's for another article.

It's All in the Pajama Pants

This past week, I achieved a minor life goal: to wear pajama pants to work. On Wednesday, I had a physical therapy appointment, and when I woke up, wearing anything besides soft, comfy pajama pants seemed out of the question. So I did it. And the world did not fall apart. Makes me think I should do it more often.

Also this past week, Laura and I had a crappy meal at Babe's. The waitress wasn't exactly surly, but she was painfully awkward. We ordered hoops (their version of onion strings), Asian chicken salad, and Cajun chicken salad. My Dreamsicle martini was yummy and watching the middle-aged women get plastered was entertaining, but I wouldn't recommend eating there. The trouble is that the far east side has a dearth of decent restaurants unless you're into crappy chains.

What else? I watched Auntie Mame in its entirety for the first time, and she's my new role model. Also, while I'm talking movies, I saw two great ones last week that I forgot to share with you: Sita Sings the Blues and Happy Endings. Sita is an animated retelling of the Ramayana juxtaposed with the contemporary story of the director's divorce. Several different animation styles are utilized, yielding one Sita that resembles Betty Boop and belts out bluesy numbers. I never buy soundtracks, but I'm considering buying this one because it features original 1920s recordings of singer Annette Hanshaw. There's also some great debates about the true meanings of the Ramayana. Happy Endings also discusses the vagaries of contemporary love, but with a heavy dose of reality. In other words, this is not your typical chick flick.