bookofjoe

McDonald's around the world

In India you can ask for a Maharaja Mac (above) —€” a Big Mac made with chicken or lamb. Or a vegetarian burger called the McAloo Tikki.

Fish-loving Norway features the McLaks, a sandwich made with grilled salmon and dill sauce.

Parts of Canada feature a McLobster roll (above). In French it's a McHomard.

In Chile you can order a McPollo (above) —€” chicken with guacamole.

Hong Kong features Riceburgers (above), with the fillings held between not buns but, rather, two patties of glutinous rice.

[via Eatnine Ghost]

Keychain Digital UV Meter

From the website:

Keychain Digital UV Sun Exposure Monitor

Keep track of your exposure to harmful UVA and UVB rays

This digital monitor automatically computes and counts down recommended safe sun exposure times based on your skin type and the SPF level of your sunscreen.

Attach to belt, purse or golf bag with included carabiner clip.

Alerts you when it's time to apply more sunscreen.

Also displays time and temperature.

Battery included.

$29.

How to think like Lynda Barry

The surreal cartoonist, whose following rose to cult heights in her 1980s heyday before she crashed and burned in the 90s, has returned from oblivion with a new book entitled "What It Is" (above), in which she explains her method of making drawings and stories.

Here's Carol Kino's entertaining profile of this unique artist, as it appeared in yesterday's New York Times.

How to Think Like a Surreal Cartoonist

By celebrity standards the cartoonist Lynda Barry leads a reclusive existence. When she first developed a cult following in the 1980s, she cut a highly public figure, with frequent appearances on “Late Night With David Letterman” and the like. But after the market for her work began shrinking in the late 1990s, she gradually withdrew, refusing to talk on the phone with reporters or her editors. Today she draws her 30-year-old weekly strip, “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” on a dairy farm just outside Footville, Wis., where she lives with her husband, Kevin Kawula, a prairie restoration expert. Since moving there six years ago, the couple have been relatively self-reliant, growing much of their own food and chopping their own wood for fuel.

Even though Ms. Barry has a new book coming out next week — “What It Is,” which explains her method of making drawings and stories — she isn’t always eager to emerge. “I can go three weeks without leaving, or driving my car,” she said in a recent interview.

But you would never guess that from Ms. Barry’s behavior on a recent weekend here. On a balmy spring day she stood at the front of a classroom, effusively greeting 25 strangers who had signed up for her two-day workshop, “Writing the Unthinkable,” which is also the basis for her new book. “I can’t believe you’re here and you look so 3-D!” she said, grinning toothily at them from beneath thick black glasses. “I was wondering about you all last night!”

On a table behind her she had laid out scores of scribbled 3-by-5 note cards, each of which held a nugget of information that she would relay over the next several hours (like “Don’t read it over” and “An image is a pull toy that pulls you”). On the blackboard was a chalk drawing of Marlys, the spunky pigtailed kid protagonist of “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” the strip about growing up that made Ms. Barry a star of new-wave comics soon after it began running in alternative weeklies in 1978.

“Dang! I’m in Pittsburgh!” Marlys was saying in a word balloon. And Ms. Barry, who at 52 still has the habit of twisting her own curly red hair into Marlys-like pigtails, addressed her students in a similarly exclamation-mark-studded style. As they snapped open their three-ring binders, she said delightedly, “That’s the only sound I want at my funeral!”

Taking the workshop, which Ms. Barry teaches several times a year, is a bit like witnessing an endurance-performance piece. Aided by her assistant, Betty Bong (in reality, Kelly Hogan, a torch singer who lives in Chicago), Ms. Barry sings, tells jokes, acts out characters and even dances a creditably sensual hula, all while keeping up an apparently extemporaneous patter on subjects like brain science, her early boy-craziness, her admiration for Jimmy Carter and the joys of menopause.

But this is just camouflage for the workshop’s true purpose: to pass on an art-making method that Ms. Barry learned from Marilyn Frasca, her junior- and senior-year art teacher at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

It involves using a random word, like “cars” or “breasts,” to summon a memory in unexpected, filmic detail; writing about it by hand for a set time period (as she says, “Limitation creates structure!”); and then not reading it or talking about it for at least a week. Within the workshop it also involves positive feedback. As students read aloud, Ms. Barry kneels before them, head bowed, listening intently, and says: “Good! Good!” (“I was a kid who was never read to,” she explains.)

This is essentially the method that Ms. Barry has always used, not just for “Ernie Pook” but also her novels: “The Good Times Are Killing Me” from 1988, about biracial childhood friends, and “Cruddy” (1999), whose 16-year-old narrator recounts a long-ago murder rampage. She also deployed it for “One! Hundred! Demons!,” a soulful 2002 graphic memoir that she describes as “autobifictionalography.”

“What It Is,” which outlines the method in detail, could be considered a picture book for grown-ups. Using ink brush, pen and pencil drawings as well as collages and luminous watercolors, many of them on lined yellow legal paper, it explores deep philosophical questions like “What Is an Image?” (The answer, Ms. Barry says, is something “at the center of everything we call the arts.”) It also includes an activity book, instructions, assignments and several passages of purely autobiographical writing and drawing in which Ms. Barry recounts her own journey to making art.

As the book starts, we see her as a child, crouching as still as possible in a corner, waiting patiently for pictures in her bedroom to come to life. “We lived in a trailer then, and any pictures we had up were taped to the walls,” she writes. “Sometimes they fell. But this is not what I mean when I say they could move.”

Later we see her as a young adult, puzzling over the method as she learns it from Ms. Frasca. And later, on the farm with her husband, we see her battling depression and frowning as she struggles to quiet her inner editor’s voice and get back to making pictures and stories happen “in a way that didn’t involve thinking.” Meditations, stories and images float past in a random fashion, segueing between darkness and hope, or adulthood and childhood, the way they might in dreams or memory.

“I think of images as an immune system and a transit system,” she said; not only does working with them keep her emotions running smoothly, but it has also taken her to unexpected places. (As she told the class: “I am here in Pittsburgh because I drew a picture. And all of you are in this room because you saw this picture.”)

Clearly her ability to draw and tell stories was her ticket out of a difficult childhood. When she was 5, her family moved from Wisconsin to Seattle, where they at first lived with five Filipino families (Ms. Barry’s mother immigrated from the Philippines) in a house whose rooms were subdivided by bedsheets. Her father, a butcher, decamped a few years later, leaving Ms. Barry and her two younger brothers at the mercy of what she describes as an unhappy mother. (Ms. Barry said she has had no contact with either parent for more than 15 years, and “it’s been mutually joyful.”)

Although her more fictional work has always focused on children, she is not sure why. “I used to think it was easy to write about them because their world is small,” she said. “But it might be because writing about what’s happening with people my age, I’m too deeply in it.” (Surprisingly, her next novel is about a man in his 70s.)

Perhaps she has memorialized childhood because she didn’t have much of one herself. By 16 Ms. Barry was virtually independent, supporting herself by working nights and weekends as a hospital janitor. “I lived at home,” she said, “but that was it.” The experience gave her great exposure to people’s stories. “I don’t think it was good for me, necessarily, but I saw stuff, and I grew up really, really fast. And I wrote all this really sad janitorial poetry.”

With savings, a scholarship and work-study Ms. Barry made it to college, where she struck up a long friendship with a fellow student, Matt Groening, the creator of “The Simpsons.” In those days Mr. Groening was editor of the school newspaper, and she was a reporter. As a self-described hippie, “I used to love to torment him because he looked really straight,” she said.

“I always kind of mixed up drawings and words,” she said, “but college is where I definitely started to do cartoons, and it was mainly for Matt.”

In secret she began to concoct odd drawings and zany letters to the editor, which she submitted anonymously. Mr. Groening, who knew it was her all along, called her bluff and published the lot. “I had a policy of running all letters to the editor, and Lynda took advantage of it,” he said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles.

“She was very, very funny,” he said. “It seemed obvious that creative self-expression was going to be her life.”

It was a happy accident that Ms. Barry graduated just as alternative weeklies were springing up around the country and searching, as she put it, “for oddball comics.” She soon became one of a small elite, her strip appearing with Mr. Groening’s “Life in Hell” alongside the work of Jules Feiffer. At its peak in the mid-1990s her strip appeared in 75 papers. She also published books and collections, and in 1991 her theatrical version of “The Good Times Are Killing Me” had an Off Broadway run.

But her career took a nose dive as alternative weeklies fell victim to corporate acquisitions and mergers in the 1990s. “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” now appears in only six papers, and the bulk of her books are out of print. These days, Ms. Barry said, her most reliable source of income is eBay, where she sells original artwork, and MySpace, where she markets her workshops.

She hit a low point in 2002, she said, right after the publication of “One! Hundred! Demons!,” when her longtime publisher, Sasquatch Books in Washington, rejected an early proposal for “What It Is” and declined to publish more new work. “It was like an ax in the forehead,” she said. But today her career seems on the verge of resurgence. In early 2006 Drawn & Quarterly, a small comics publisher in Montreal, approached her with a surprise offer to reprint her old work and collect all the Ernie Pook strips. Ms. Barry leapt at the opportunity and proffered her new book.

The plan is to publish one Ernie Pook collection a year, starting this fall. In early 2009 another new book, “The Nearsighted Monkey,” on which she is working with her husband, will be issued.

To Ms. Barry her career trajectory still seems somewhat unbelievable. “The fact that anybody knows what I do and likes it feels surreal to me,” she said. “It feels like the Make-a-Wish Foundation.”

.....................

Here's a link to a slide show narrated by Ms. Barry about how she does what she does.

Ratchet Power Clippers

With a name like Fiskars, you know they'll do what they're supposed to do.

From the website:

Fiskars Ratchet Power Clippers

When the bushes have overgrown the walkway, these ratchet-style power clippers will make pruning a breeze.

Rust-resistant polyamide body with Teflon®-coated blade.

Perfect for those with diminished hand strength.

They'll cut up to 3∕4" branches with ease.

$16.

Helpful Hints from joeeze: The hunt for blue Febreze

Not Red October, to be sure, but nearly as elusive.

This superb laundry odor eliminator is harder to find than an Hermès Birkin bag.

I'm talking about the liquid in the blue bottle (above), a capful of which you add to your wash water — not Febreze spray, which is everywhere.

They're two different products.

I've never been able to locate an online source for the precious liquid in the many, many years I've been using it, though I do try perhaps annually to do so.

Today was this year's attempt.

At first I thought I might be on to a fresh lead, what with this February 14, 2005 blog post about this great "impossible-to-find" product.

My crack research team drilled down into the comments and found this one, from jenifir: "I work for the company which manufactures Febreze Laundry Odor Eliminator under license from P&G. It is NOT the same formula as Febreze spray. If you're having trouble locating the product locally (we are working now to expand its distribution), you can order it online at www.newfebreze.com. Currently, we have a $2 coupon you can use for an online order or download and use at your local retailer."

Could this be the long-sought breakthrough?

The team instanter headed over to www.newfebreze.com to buy some.

Good news, bad news — mostly bad.

The good news is the site is still up: seeing as the reference to it is over three years old — an eternity in internet time — that's saying a lot.

The bad news is that when you click "Add to Cart" the page that comes up says "Product not found!"

They don't have to be so excited about disappointing us, do they, using an exclamation point to drill home the news?

Of course that tantalizing tease only intensifies with the offer of "A full case of 8 bottles!" along with a picture (below)

to make it crystal clear what we'll be missing — clicking on that link takes you to the same "Product not found!" page.

So I guess it's back to the old bricks-and-mortar approach, buying up every container on the shelf when I happen to see some in Kroger or Giant.

My record, I think, is 12 or 14 bottles in one visit.

So, who wants to be famous?

Send me a link to a working site that sells the stuff and I'll feature your name in the headline of a bookofjoe post.

Promise.

Or your money back.

Silicone Lemon Press

From the website:

Silicone Lemon Press

Squeeze just the right amount of lemon or lime juice, free of seeds and without the risk of splatters.

Protects citrus halves when stored in refrigerator to retain maximum freshness.

Ideal for using over grill, yet decorative enough for tabletop.

....................

Set of 2 (do I sense a squeezing party breaking out? But I digress): $17.99.

Krystian Zimerman — 'My piano almost dreams with me'

Above, Zimerman performs the second movement of Brahms' Piano Concerto no. 2 in B flat, Op. 83, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker.

Perhaps he's not as well known as other masters of the keyboard because he avoids journalists, preferring to let his music speak of itself.

So reticent is he that he never announces his programs in advance — because he only plays what he feels like playing on any given day.

He oftimes doesn't practice a piece, instead playing it for the first time in concert.

In a rare interview with Shirley Apthorp that appeared in this past weekend's Financial Times, he alluded to this practice, noting that "It's very dangerous, and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. But for me it keeps the music fresh. The moment I start to practice something I kill it."

Here's the FT piece.

'My piano almost dreams with me'

Nobody recognises him at the Swiss airport when we meet. In the lobby of the midtown hotel where we order coffee, nobody looks twice. That is how Krystian Zimerman likes it. One of the world's most famous pianists lives in absolute anonymity in his own city.

This is a man with a titanic reputation in the music world, with 22 recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, with homes in New York, Tokyo and Switzerland, and with a list of demands as a performer so bizarre that only an artist of his stature could get away with them.

Speaking to the press is a departure for Zimerman — in the past he has tended to avoid journalists. "Basically I'm not against interviews," he says mildly. "I just don't think that a concert or a recording is a legitimate reason to go to a newspaper. I wouldn't want to talk to somebody just to fill a concert hall."

And yet it is a concert, Zimerman's recital in Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, on May 23, that has prompted this encounter. To my chagrin, I have not been able to find out the programme in advance. Perhaps he could tell me what he will play?

No, he could not.

After a pause, Zimerman takes pity and explains that he has a strong aversion to announcing his programmes in advance.

"You see, I find it difficult to pin myself down and say, 'OK, on December 23 2010 I will want to eat a steak and have tiramisu for dessert.' I try to make my programmes as late as possible, so that I only decide when I really know which piece I want to play. Otherwise people come expecting a particular piece, and I play something else, and they are disappointed."

It does drive concert promoters up the wall, Zimerman admits. But over time, an industry with no precedent for the promotion of a concert without a programme has learnt to accept his eccentricities.

He does try never to play the same pieces in the same places, so that each city on his tour itineraries receives a new programme with each visit.The matter of programming, he explains, is further complicated by the requirements of his piano. Since 1989, Zimerman has insisted on travelling with his own instrument, a Steinway concert grand to which he has made a number of modifications. As a schoolchild in Katowice (he was born in Zabrze, Poland, in 1956) he earned pocket money by helping out in a piano repair workshop.

"I started to wind strings, to repair parts of the mechanism. Poland at this time was closed off from the rest of Europe. It was the time of the cold war. You couldn't dream of getting spare parts for a Steinway. But we had plenty of Steinway pianos from the prewar era. They just needed to be repaired. So from a very early time, a piano is not just an instrument for me. I know its problems, I know what can be done to change something, and I'm not afraid to do it."

Zimerman has refined every aspect of his Steinway in order to bend it to his will, interchanging separate actions according to which repertoire he is performing. His narration would sound obsessive if he didn't couch it in such logical terms.

"You can slide out the keys and the mechanism for making the strings sound, and replace it with another one. And these keyboards have particular features. Like a human being. Every person is different, and has different ways of behaving and speaking."

Zimerman impregnates the hammers that strike the strings with specific chemicals, works on his piano's voicing and sound, has devised his own method of transportation, and permits no other technician to touch his instrument.

"I have invented my own ways of doing certain things, which are connected to the sound and its colours," he says. "It depends what the piece requires. Ten years ago, I would say that I adjusted the piano to the composer. Now I would go a step further, and say that I adjust it to a particular piece.

"Actually over the past few years, I have been moving away from sound. On one hand I'm very flattered that people like the sound of my piano. On the other hand I don't care about the sound. I'm looking for an adequate sound. If the piece is ugly, I want an ugly sound. I want the sound to do what I want, not to be beautiful. I've seen pianos like that. I sat down, the piano was beautiful, and the moment I wanted to change something, the piano was still beautiful, and I hated it — because the piano didn't listen to what I wanted to do. My piano is incredibly flexible. It almost dreams with me in the concert. I have an idea, and I don't even have to verbalise or to think how to do it. The piano reads it directly from my soul."

Music, asserts Zimerman, is not sound. Music is using sound to organise emotions in time. The visual aspect of a live performance, he adds, is an essential aspect of the experience. He has experimented by making video recordings of the faces of students while they perform.

"We rewound the tape and I played it back for this guy without the sound. And I said, 'Look at this. What is he playing? Do you think people will buy that?' The answer was, 'I'm not an actor! I'm playing the piano!'

"And I said, 'I want you to be credible. I want you to be touched by this music. Otherwise the listeners will not be touched.' That's what I mean by credibility. I'm incredibly egoistic in a concert hall. I really want to experience the pieces."

In order to achieve this, Zimerman explains, he has a simple technique: that of not practising.

"Often I don't work on a piece at home. I know what I want to do. I look at some fragments. I work on the craftsmanship, and on the piano. And then I play the piece for the first time in the concert hall. It's very dangerous, and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. But for me it keeps the music fresh. The moment I start to practise something, I kill it.

"It's like a declaration of love. If you intend to tell a person in the evening that you love her, you don't spend the afternoon in front of the mirror watching what your lips do when you form the words, 'I love you.' You don't need to. And I don't need to play the piece at home. I will tell them that I love them in the concert hall. And that's enough."

Mini Megaphone

"Slip this mini megaphone into a pocket and head off to a sporting event or other group activity where you want to be heard loud and clear."

Just don't sit behind me.

From the website:

Features:

• On/Off/volume control and power indicator light on end of megaphone

• Wrist strap and belt clip on side of megaphone

• Requires 3 AAA batteries (not included)

• Durable ABS plastic

• 5" L x 3¼" Diam.

$14.95.