The Brunch Table

I just finished reading Michael Chabon’s exquisite The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, a detective story set in the present day of a parallel universe where Franklin Roosevelt allowed the Jewish refugees of World War II to settle in Alaska. The Holocaust was therefore brought to a premature end, with two major consequences for this alternate history. First, speakers of Yiddish still vastly outnumber speakers of Hebrew. And second, without the Displaced Persons (that real-life remnant of Holocaust survivors and Soviet-trained guerillas who formed Israel’s patchwork revolutionary army), there is no Israel. Beyond the story itself, well-drawn and clever, I detected a wonderful hidden motive: to put together a world where Yiddish survived the 20th century as a living language, with its own words for cell phones and SUVs.

Having finished the book, no longer scared of running into spoilers (it is a murder mystery, after all), I promptly found this essay by Chabon, which neatly confirmed my theory. He came up with the idea for this book, it seems, discovering a Yiddish phrasebook for travellers–and realizing that such a thing no longer had a reason to exist.

Fascinating NYT article on a small Syrian Jewish congregation in Brooklyn that, beginning in 1935, decided on the strictest interpretation possible of the Orthodox intermarriage ban. They’ll permanently exclude not only the offending member, their new spouse, and their children, but all of their future descendants.

In the short term, this attempt at social engineering has been indisputably successful; the congregation is thriving and growing. But, taking a broader perspective, this Wired article suggests the long-term futility of such efforts–telling the story of the profound confusion that erupted when, in 2004, the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma attempted to genetically screen their members for “authentic” Native descent.

But if the young discipline of DNA testing has taught us anything, it’s that the very notion of race is fading, at least from a genetic perspective. The world is populated by mongrels and half-breeds. Even those who base their self-worth on being of “pure” racial stock probably aren’t. Every family tree has a thousand branches.

That’s certainly true of the Orthodox-minded Jewish folks I know personally, many of whom are forced to conceal an ancestry even more muddled than mine from their co-religionists. I hope that at least a few of them can come round by the time I produce some Muggle children.

From an A.V. Club interview this week:

“I grew up in serious, serious Appalachia, in a very small town. I was thinking about that this morning, and I thought that the thing about growing up in the South in the 1950s and early ’60s was that it produced memories that look like the 1930s and 1940s…I think that contributed a lot to my worldview, and the way I look at things as a writer. I could simultaneously see this ancient Cormac McCarthy kind of reality in this Southern mountain world, plus Sputnik and Twilight Zone on television. The gap between where I lived and the media universe was much wider than it possibly could be, now that everybody’s online.”

“I Wanna Be Famous” with Portuguese subtitles:

(direct link)

Thanks to Craigslist and the willingness of my friend Lillian to act as a scout, I’ve managed to conduct a successful apartment hunt in Toronto from all the way over here. Take a look (these are Lillian’s pictures)…!

(click to see the interactive map)

It was as unseasonably sunny and warm today as it was unseasonably cold in New Orleans earlier this week, so I decided to explore the northwest corner of the city. The route you see there took me about 3½ hours to hike, but next time I’ll just start from the bridge, since that’s where the trail and the scenery got interesting. The dramatic views of the Pacific and the bridge definitely make it a worthwhile hike for a clear day.

…I seem to be sort of learning how to cook.

I’m gonna start posting photos at:
www.fox-gieg.com/photos

And did you know that Ben Kingsley’s real name is Krishna Banji, and he’s Jewish? I guess the pre-IMDB criticisms of his ethnic authenticity in both Gandhi and Schindler’s List are hopelessly obsolete.

Well, it’s official—we’re moving to San Fran, and I’m taking a new job. Why?

• Lots of friends and acquaintances in the area
• I hate the feeling that my day-to-day life has gotten so samey that it no longer sticks in my memory
• Trading in Everett LNG explosion and Canary Island tsunami disaster scenarios for The Big One and Pacific tsunamis
• More crunk (OK, not really)
• We figured we weren’t paying enough rent here in Boston
• The artistic temperament of the area is a good match for Justina’s work

We’ll definitely miss our wonderful friends, neighborhood, and apartment in Somerville, though.

OK, so the exit I usually take at the BART stop on 24th and Mission has no escalator, just a lot of stairs. There are other exits, and I suppose any one of them could have an escalator, but by the time I stop to consider that, force of habit has already carried me far enough along to commit to the one that definitely doesn’t. This morning, I passed two people passing out flyers–a thin, unsmiling middle-aged man, stationary, with an unthin smiling young woman pacing around him. People who strayed into her orbit got a flyer placed in their hands; the few who actually looked down at it grimaced as they started up the stairs. I skirted the edge of flyer-passing range, close enough to hear the repeated words “against the war.”

I guess at this point I should mention that, on the train, the driver had asked us to stay on the lookout for a missing 290-pound autistic man. That might possibly be connected to what follows.

So I’m halfway to street level when I hear a bass bellow–”No!”–echoing up the subway exit as if it were the inside of a musical instrument. Because our long staircase is unautomated, nothing keeps carrying us forward when we all stop and turn as one to track the source of this bearish threatening noise. “No!” the roar sounds again, bigger and closer now, and a hulking red-faced man puffs into view at the bottom of the stairwell. He’s got glasses, he’s balding, he seems about equally tall and wide. He’s dressed in a white and gray gym outfit, t-shirt and shorts, too light for a cold morning. And now he’s got about a twenty-person audience.

“Don’t you know what you’re doing?” he barks at the two flyer-passers. He’s huge, and furious, but he doesn’t quite seem to present a clear threat to the pair–his voice has an autistic’s flat, unmodulated quality. Despite the arm-waving and shouting, he scrupulously refuses to close the last six feet between them. Everyone is silent. He looks up at us for the first time, and with a grand sweep of his arm delivers his next line:

“Abortion is murder!”

Now, every traveller who’s gotten this far is aware that the flyer-passers are anti-war protestors. So a wave of sheer cognitive dissonance sweeps through us, front to back, like one of those expanding fiery doughnut-shaped explosions that were so popular in late-’90s movies. The flyer woman sizes up the situation poorly, and shoots back a bit too quickly:

“War is murder too!”

But her enormous debate opponent is ready for that one. “Well, abortion is about cutting the heads off of the little babies!” he booms in reply.

“Nobody’s cutting anybody’s head off, all right?” says the flyer man slowly, moving from his spot for the first time and stepping between them. The big guy slumps his shoulders in defeat, and on that signal our communal sense of show’s-over sends us back to our stair-climbing. With his theater falling apart around him, our star rallies and gives us his very best effort.

“I hate abortion!” he screeches, his voice rising alarmingly to the register of a frightened child. “I hate the women…and the babies…and…”

He’s got us.

“…and…”

We all stop.

“…and the cunts!”

And with that he runs back into the station. I’ve read that autistics find it very difficult to tell a lie, especially about their own thoughts or feelings. Maybe today I met the world’s most honest anti-abortioneer.

Since my “day” began over 24 hours ago in Normandy, I’m about to crash. So I’ll make this quick: you can see my first pass at a photo album for the trip here.

It’s been a while since I’ve written…and I’ve been pretty mobile over the past four months, covering seven cities (Huntington, WV; Madison, WI; Montreal, Boston, Pittsburgh, LA, New York), getting to play at a couple of good shows, and accumulating rejection letters…

So I’m currently in Philadelphia, being slowly eaten alive by a pack of mosquitoes that’ve mysteriously gotten themselves indoors. (Maybe they’re fleas. Or ghost mosquitoes.) On Wednesday, I’m shipping out for San Francisco, where I’ll be blowing the rest of my grant money on rent as I keep on looking for work…

In the meantime, here are some pictures from Ask the Robot, a variety show that takes place in the bottom of a decommissioned lighthouse boat in New York Harbor. I’m filed under “Montreal Scribble Video,” which I think is an excellent name….

Uh-oh, the in-laws finally have my number—they’ve stumbled upon my fondness for odd timepieces. There are plenty of appealing clock faces out there, but I’m not so interested in anything that could be built using a standard movement. No, since timekeeping is so efficient these days that you can literally get watches in cereal boxes, it’s much more interesting to see devices whose creators have made a deliberate effort to be impractical: flip clocks, nixie clocks, binary clocks, and the like. Not only did Justina’s parents get us a marble clock, which I’ve been wanting since I first saw one as a kid, but they also gave us a nifty pin clock:

The pin clock is uses a typical 7-segment number display, except that instead of using LEDs, the segments are made up of little pins with solenoids behind them to push them forward when they’re on. The digits change with a satisfying “chunk”.

The marble clock is also interesting from an aural perspective—the nature of the mechanism means that it makes different types of clattering sounds at every minute, 5 minute, and hour increment. I think I’m going to try living with it in my office, to see whether the sounds of time passing will be helpful, distracting, or simply drowned under my music.

I just added a bunch of my favorite photos from our recent Italian trip to the photo section of joeandjustina.com. There are also a handful of wedding pictures up, with more coming soon, once we get a chance to sift through the hundreds that we’ve got in digital form (not to mention several rolls of as-yet-undeveloped film). Here’s a taste:

Update: added many more wedding photos and switched to a new photo gallery system

Latest spam finding, the “Bartlett’s Quotations” kind:

“You’re never too old to become younger.”– Mae West “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” — Robert Oppenheimer

I don’t quite know what to make of it.

So I graduated…and I’m packing up to leave this town. I’m limited to what I can take on the plane, and to whatever costs less to ship by UPS than it does to replace. My computer monitor doesn’t make the cut; I felt unreasonably sad leaving it by the curb, with a red “TAKE ME, I WORK JUST FINE” sign taped to it. (At least it almost never rains out here, so somebody’s likely to grab it while it’s still in good shape.)

But then I still had to deal with the rest of the stuff I needed to ship. It’s only a ten-minute walk to the UPS station in the strip mall, but there are those two freeway offramps–almost like old friends, by this point–to deal with. After I’ve actually lugged all my boxes there (a separate trip up and back for each), the story starts:

My clerk is a guy about my age, with a couple eyebrow rings and the standard-issue LA goatee. His tag says “Assistant Manager,” which means the older guy to my right is most likely Manager. The Manager is in his fifties, probably, lean and powerfully built with a mustache like you might see in old engraved pictures. He’s talking to a woman in a flower-print dress, about the same age as him, blonde hair and gray roots. She has a very small package that she holds out to him with both hands. “Where’s it going?” he asks, more to himself than to her, as he takes the little box. Then he sees the address on top. “Huh.”

“It’s going to Iraq,” says the woman in a very soft voice, sounding like a little kid apologizing.

“I’ve got to take a look inside. Customs.” says the Manager. He takes out a Leatherman knife.

“I know,” says the woman. The Manager takes another look at the box, and realizes it hasn’t been taped shut yet. He opens it and pokes at something I can’t see.

“Those CO2 cartridges?”

“What?”

“Carbon dioxide, compressed gas. You use them for paintball guns, things like that. You can’t send them through the mail.”

She shakes her head. “I think they’ve got enough ammunition over there. Those are chocolates.”

He nods and starts taping up the box. She looks at him, he looks at her. He puts an extra piece of tape on top of the box.

“There, that’ll keep out that Eye-raqi rainwater,” he says kindly. She laughs, then stops and covers her mouth. “We’ve got to get out of there,” she says in a whisper, almost a hiss. “We’ve just got to.” And the Manager whispers back–why are they whispering?–”We will. Soon.”

Assistant Manager looks over at them, and doesn’t whisper: “We can’t just pull out.”

“Why not?” asks the Manager, no longer whispering, exactly, but almost.

“Well, didn’t the British try that?” Assistant says. “And look what happened.”

Now I butt in. “Then we should have listened to the British when they told us this was a bad idea.”

“Oh, yeah,” Assistant shoots back, sneering. “Us Americans don’t know how to do anything on our own.”

“Once we’ve ruled the world for five hundred years, instead of fifty, we can start the bragging,” I say.

“It’s more than fifty,” Assistant comes back. “Started with Teddy Roosevelt.” He’s got me there.

“Listen to them,” laughs the Manager, clucking his tongue. He points at me and Assistant. “War games…” Then he circles himself and the woman sending chocolates with his finger. “…reality.”

“Thank you,” says the woman sending chocolates, blinking back tears, as she leaves.

The Assistant Manager and I must be staring like idiots. The Manager turns to me. “Which side is your motherboard on? You pack the machine upside down, the cards inside’ll get loose.”

So the other day, in class, somebody whistled incredibly loudly right next to my ear. This class happens in a solid-concrete basement room, and the whistler actually provided the foley whistles for the crowds in Eight Mile. (And if you’re imagining a burly dude from Detroit, she’s about half that size, which makes it extra funny.) But, of course, I could only appreciate that later, ’cause the hyperacusis kicked in and I sort of fainted for a second.

After class, somebody asked me, out of nowhere, did you know that’s a sign that you might have had Asperger’s as a kid? (I already knew that there’s a strong correlation between hyperacusis and Asperger’s.) And she–qualified, as it happens, by being the offspring of a pair of psychiatrists–proceeds to ask a couple questions about my social navigation. I answer with logical propositions, like, “He stopped when he passed me in the hall, so that means he must want to talk to me.” But, apparently, the vast majority of folks, when asked similar questions, will answer with straightforward perceptions: “I noticed she wanted to talk to me.” They don’t have to consciously process the non-verbal cues.

So the social commentary track is an alternative strategy for getting the same results with different brain hardware–sort of a Nintendo emulator for your mind?

What do y’all out there think?

Rest easy–now there’s a test you can take for your “Autism Quotient.”

16 is normal, 32 or higher is, er, not normal.

I scored 24….

So I went to a big Shabbat dinner last night, hosted by one of the music school professors…it was the first big, proper Shabbat I’d been to since my grandmother died, and our relatives in Philly kind of lost their center and drifted out to other parts of the world.

Whoops, I’m not counting the strange evening I spent with the Lubavitch in Pittsburgh, in 2001 I think…everyone seemed to be having a good time there, but the maternal-line exclusiveness of that crowd turns me off. (If I’d been born with a Jewish father and a Christian mother instead of the other way round, I wouldn’t be able to hang out with them.) A cousin of mine got dumped by his girl, who belonged to a similar fundamentalist branch, when she found out his Jewish mother was really his Jewish stepmother. As if anybody now living really has an unbroken maternal bloodline that goes back 2,000 years to ancient Judea!

I just finished reading Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee, where he argues that minority groups raised in majority populations tend to share the sexual preferences of the majority, and intermarry wherever society allows. If this is outlawed, well, people the world over tend to commit adultery at a steady, fixed rate…so one way or another, the boundaries of pure ethnic categories get nibbled away. In fact, because of this effect, you tend to share more genes with your geographic neighbors than you do with strangers who look like you–a black fourth-generation New Yorker and a white fourth-generation New Yorker are statistically likely to share more genes with each other than with their distant ancestors back in, say, Ethiopia and Germany. In other words, the maternal-line folks are just kidding themselves.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the dinner was great. And I got to hear a song in Ladino (the Latin spoken by Mediterranean Jews), too. I think this was my first taste of a real religious experience–not in any spiritual sense; it was more the experience of sitting down to dinner with a dozen strangers (about half of whom weren’t Jewish) and feeling a sort of unconditional acceptance.