Hamblog

In March of 2001, I accompanied my good friend Danny P to Europe. He was touring some of his movies on a whirlwind blitz of Germany, Holland, and Belgium. His rock star wife Alison was too large with child to travel with him (she produced the ever-wonderful Henry later in the summer), so I got to go. As we were doing the indie mad dash, there was very little free time, but on St. Patrick’s Day, we found ourselves with some time to kill in Brussels, Belgium.

I’ll have to ask Danny how we came upon it, but we had the great good fortune to experience the open air flea market on Rue Blaes.

It was magical. Antique apothecary bottles, displays of French combs, colorful chamberpots, vintage encyclopedias.. when I saw the Dutch "Diabolo Robot" board game, I gasped. Incredibly, it was mine for about 5 bucks.

After I made the purchase and started walking down another aisle, Danny grabbed my arm and muttered "you want another one? then walk away, fast!" He had spied another Dutch robot board game at a different stall. He shooed me away, wisely knowing that the seller would probably up his price if he perceived me to be the collector of Dutch robot board games (which I had, at that very moment, become.) Danny scored "Robot Geeft Het Juiste Antwoord" for me for another five bucks.

The boxes are at left and upper right in the picture. The picture at lower right shows the content of one of the games — a playing area with questions in the one circle, answers in the second. One positions the robot on the mirror and it points to the right answer!

It was a great trip and a lucky time and the very best flea score ever.

Postscript: This happened at the start of our trip. Not only did I buy the two games, but I also scored a bulky vintage Italian ceramic piece, with lid. With the extra weighty baggage, running for trains became less a joyous "Hard Day’s Night" jog and more of something that I will be expected to do in hell when I get there.

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Gazpacho. I’m mad for the stuff. Cold vegetable soup might not be your bag, and if this is the case, back out now and I’ll regale you with my usual non-recipe ravings shortly. If you’ve not had it and are curious, or have had it and are mad for it yourself, keep reading!

There are as many recipes for gazpacho as there are stars in the hot summer sky. The instructions below are for the most magical blend of all. It is based on the Moosewood Cookbook recipe, with tweaks and suggestions by my friend Kevin C and myself. If I can master making gazpacho, anyone can, especially if you have a food processor. Here’s a text version of the recipe with no pictures nor editorial comments. Below is a more “interesting” version with “helpful” visual elements.

The recipe mentions mincing, but feel free to make your pieces larger, more on the chopped side. I prefer my soup this way.

Cucumber, 1 medium. I used the whole of a big English cucumber, because I love the cuke. Chunk it up as skillfully as you see here and throw it in the processor. Or, if you’re doing it the amish way, chop away. Leave a few larger chunks if you love the cuke. The recipe recommends removing the seeds; if you use an English cuke, you don’t need to do this step. I’m sorry I used the word cuke so much.

Garlic, one clove. Here, I’m throwing in a healthy dose. Note: After this gorgeous photo was taken, I threw this spoonful into the processor to get the pieces a bit smaller. Not a fan of the big chunks of raw garlic.

Scallions, 4. This is where Kevin makes a suggestion to the recipe: omit the suggested onion and increase the scallion amount (about four of them.) I’m never clear on how much of the green part you’re supposed to use, so I kind of go halfway. They’re a bitch to food-process, so I sigh heavily and reach for my knife on this one.

Lime and lemon juice, oil. I am trying to distract you from the fact I used juice from a plastic lime by posing it a movie card from Night of the Iguana. Recipe calls for juice of 1/2 lemon and 1 lime. Whatever, just freeform! Also, add 2 TB olive oil. I don’t know if this really is necessary — I often forget and can’t tell.

Spices, herbs, and … honey? My pepper test tube is labeled as saffron. Try not to be confused. Add some salt and some pepper. Add 1/2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp tarragon. Who am I kidding — I don’t know what tarragon is, and refuse to spend money on it, so I throw in some sage. (Same diff! said the culinary dimwit.) Chop up parsley and basil, and may I suggest some cilantro? Also, the recipe calls for 1 tsp honey. Sometimes I throw in the honey, sometimes 1/2 tsp sugar instead, sometimes nothing. Oh, back to the cumin — go easy on it unless you want the gazpacho to stray from its spanish roots and go little more salsa-like.

Corn. This is Kevin’s genius addition. White corn — throw into boiling water for about 7 minutes, strip the kernels off 1/2 an ear. Go mad from the delicious sight, stop your preparations to eat the other half of the ear [pictured]. Oh, man: SUMMER, GOOD.

This is where you can free form. Try some minced radish, the way Kevin likes it! Or celery, like I had at the Beachside. Or beets, like the Soj.

Tomatoes, tomato/vegetable juice. Dice a couple tomatoes, throw them in. Then cover the whole mess with 4 cups of tomato or V8 style juice — latter is preferred by me. Ironically I am not the hugest fan of the tomato.

Chill in non-metal bowl. Chill the soup, overnight if you possibly can stand it. Wait until you’re super hot and sweaty and cranky then sit down and sip a bowl. Heaven.

Eat, eat! Get some ciabatta bread from My Florist in Ventura, maybe broil a couple pieces topped with the best cheese in the world, and freeze some grapes. Drink some iced water in an awesome glass you found at the flea market. Stare out the window. Sing a little tune. Get yourself some more.

You might have to go ahead and trust me, me the culinary non-genius, on the deliciousness of this.

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Right now, my browser has three Wikipedia tabs open:

• Sigue Sigue Sputnik
• Cotillion
• Leslie, Austin’s most famous vagrant cross-dresser

I am nothing if not an eclectic gal.

The photo above is from about the time that I started attending Cotillion training in Phoenix. I wore white gloves, learned how to converse in high-brow small talk with boys, and danced the foxtrot, waltz, hustle, and Mexican Hat Dance. If I had stayed in Phoenix, I would have come out as a debutante at the St. Luke’s Ball.

In this picture, I am wearing some kind of Sorority sleeping garment, origin unknown. I am unusually skinny here, as my mother made me go to Weight Watchers at the age of 9.

What? You, too? Crazy!

Related hamblinks:

• peculiarities of the place in which i grew up [four parts]

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So, there was a reason that I have been decluttering my home workspace. I am generally not the sort to go the extra organizational mile without major motivation.

I quit one of my university jobs today, in preparation for becoming the Media and Communications Specialist for a non-profit for which I used to work last year (but in a different capacity). This job is vast in scope, but some of the more interesting things I’ll be doing is working with youth to produce video pieces and podcasts. As this is a part-time gig, I am keeping one of my campus jobs (because I love physics and I love the full benefits package!) I am excited and nervous, and giddy at the prospect of working from home for half the week.

I do not lie when I say my commute (a round-trip drive of 85 miles and 2+ hours, five days a week) has decreased my quality of life. My health and well-being has suffered from the sitting and the wheel-clutching and the and the petroleum-company-pocket-lining and the time-sucking and the stop-going and the simmering rage. I’d insert a rant here about the meager local public transportation options, but I just don’t have the gumption. With my new university schedule, however, there’s a good chance I will be taking a bus, which will bring my car use down by about 98%.

The tide has turned and I say hoo[it’s about frickin time]ray!

Photo: Working Stiff, by I Love Milwaukee. Thanks for letting me use it!

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My father was a complicated man and a difficult human at times to love. Recently, my sister A and I had an epic online conversation about our dad. Much of it is a little too raw to reprint here, especially as we approach the soft-focus la-la Father’s Day. But here’s an excerpt I think he would have liked — a reimagining of his funeral, Theatre of the Absurd style.  Jim possessed a deep and very dark sense of humor, something I can say that I am proud to have inherited — no strings attached.

A [After discussing dad’s funeral]: I started thinking about the other eulogy, the real one that would have been in the movie.

B: The mind reels at the movie version of our family saga

A: The movie version of that service at Mt. Auburn Cemetary! Yeah!!!

B: I feel like there needs to be a Greek Chorus.. but who?

A: How about all of our stepsisters?

B: I was totally thinking that

B: My eulogy would involve a Powerpoint presentation and some handouts

A: Har!

B: “Now is the time to put on your 3D glasses included in your packet”

A: Can we leave in the part where I start laughing during the hymn? [this is true; A started giggling and our brother had to put his arm around her and pretend she was crying]

B: oh YES, laughing.. then.. breaking out into song?

A: “We are here to celebrate Jim’s life. Please put on your 3Ds.”

B: HA! “and please put on the protective ponchos”

A: “Any children under the age of 35 should leave the premises..”

B: “Anyone with allergies to wild animal fur should use the side exits..”

A: “Ethel, would you like to start?” [Ethel, not her real name, is a close family member who did not attend the funeral]

B: “Ethel? … Ethel?…”

A: “OK. …Elmer?” [Elmer, not his real name, is another close family member who did not attend the funeral]

B: [a tumbleweed rolls across the stage]

A: I am paralyzed with laughter

A: The Irish are good ones for laughing at the dead, aren’t they? You can’t really laugh with the dead…

B: True.. Do they POINT and laugh, however?

A: No, but they should.

Related hamblinks:

• smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye
• disturbing immensity [you are welcome to ask for the password if you would like to read this post]
• ripped out of normalcy [you are welcome to ask for the password if you would like to read this post]
• thank you mudda thank you fadda
• Today, I remembered my dad

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New word alert: Can someone explain hambox, please. Never heard the expression before. I didn’t find anything by Goggling!

– A confused member of a message thread on flickr

Eternal thanks to US Magazine’s subscription department, who mangled my last name those twenty years ago. When Haycox became Hambox, comedy alchemy was performed.

The nickname stuck after I posted a letter from Publisher’s Clearinghouse on my refrigerator (”Rebecca Hambox! You may already have won this sports car!”) Alison, do you remember losing your shit after seeing that on the fridge? It was just so damn funny!

Related hamblink:

• archive 1999: www.hambox.com

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So something may have happened in yoga class last night. I’m not pointing, nor flexing, any fingers at anyone, but I got hurt. In the head-al region. At the time of the alleged injury, I was in a headstand. I felt a little toing, a little odd shift of the muscles in the back of my neck. Very minor, totally painless.

Painless, of course, until I woke up in the middle of the night to the most clenching, shooting, burning maelstrom of pain that engulfed my neck, head and brains. None of my varsity-level painkillers even poked at the horror. Punctuating the head-clutching were fitful sleeps and dreams involving:

…an old boss, who came to my office reporting that she was a serial killer and needed me to clean up the latest bodies. And she would not pay me comp time.

…my buddy DP and I walking along the beach, la la la, and suddenly there are dozens of tornedoes bearing down on us. I run after DP, shouting “is it basements we’re after? because there aren’t any basements in this town.” And we laugh, running from the certain, funnelly death.

Yikes! Blogging about maladies (boring) and dreams (boringer.) Let’s go for the hat trick: here’s a transcript of an IM conversation with someone with whom I IM:

me: my head it huuuurts .. i had a yoga-ma-accident
him: oh no
me: why did my teacher piledrive me? that’s not a very buddhist thing to do
him: all buddhists are trained killers
me: ah, hence the stab-stab-stabbing during final rest phase
him: yes they are very stabby

PS. After one last Advil, a hot shower, and a cola beverage, I’m feeling better to the point of eerily better. The Professor pointed out that I am way too perky to have gone through what I went through, but what I can I say. I’m just glad the tornadoes didn’t get me.

Related hamblinks:

• om shanti om yeah
• nesting dolls of dreams
• hambox dream-lab conducts joke experiment in sociological context
• these are the dreams i dream when i diet
• wherein i relate last night’s dream like a short work of fiction

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Photo: Piano crunch by Olivander. [click on the picture to read another story about a piano]

I spent a good part of the weekend being all swoony and wistful and soundtracking my frame of mind with my favorite piano music. Echoey, lovely, sad. Erik Satie. Scott Joplin, as played by the wonderful Alexander Peskanov. Chopin. Beethoven — oh, the sonatas!

If I had a old, tattered wedding dress I would have worn it, and I would have drunk gin from a jelly jar, and run my hands along the dusty, faded family portraits. And invited young southern men into my parlor to “set a while.” And I would have twirled and twirled.

Well, maybe I twirled a little, even without the crazy-spinster accoutrements.

I was forced to take weekly piano lessons from ages 8-18, even though it was clear the pathway between my neural note-interpretation and my fingers was a murky one. It did not help that I very rarely practiced.

At 17, my teacher (the last of many) decided that I should learn to play “Maple Leaf Rag” by Joplin — the full version, featuring octave-plus finger reaches that were especially difficult for me, as my hands were (and are) very small. As much I would like to blame my parents, my teacher, or my wee hands, I have no one to blame but myself — as recital time drew near, I had better things to do than practice, such as skip school, swim at Jones Beach, and sneak off into Manhattan to do some New Wave dancing!

My dad, smelling disaster, and in no mood to be an unconditionally supportive parent to his surly and counting-the-seconds-till-leaving-home daughter, opted to boycott the recital. So alone I went to the show, without sheet music (not allowed! I should have memorized it by then!) and drooling slightly from that day’s dentist appointment.

I was, by far, the oldest performer there. My teacher saved my song till the last, as a special treat for the audience, who had winced their way through a legion of 7-year-olds pecking out “Hot Cross Buns.”

Although this was the 80s, it was not an 80s ending. I did not dig deep, nor wow the crowd with a perfect performance. I was hoisted on no shoulders. My father was not standing just outside the hall, tears streaming down his proud face. There was no fadeout on my triumphant freezeframe, caught mid-jump, little fists pumping in the air.

The real story is that I labored through the first few lines of the piece, over and over, trying to remember the next part. I kept trying, until the teacher told me to stop, and to leave the stage. Which I did, to polite golf-applause and utter humiliation.

So, yeah, I can read music. And I listen to music. But I don’t play music.

And I twirl, and twirl again.

5 comments

I am a wind-sprinter — I can be dormant and lazy for a long stretch, then bust out with insane amounts of productivity. Let’s just say I work very well under deadline pressure.

This was the weekend I got sh*t done in my home, for once! My living room before was passably put together, but there was a pocket of chaos and mediocrity swirling around my home office setup in the corner. This was, in part, due to a misguided craigslist purchase: an oversize corner desk — huge, heavy, and horribly designed. Plenty of surface area to pile crap upon, and not one drawer. Against the wall to the left of the desk, I shoved a small table — the table itself was cute, but it only served as a repository for more crap-piling, on top and underneath. God.

So when I spied the “Oriental Style Dresser” on craigslist this weekend, I thought hm. Maybe I could overlook the terrible headline, and maybe the dresser could serve as a pretend credenza (pretend-za!). And by gum I bought the sucker and by gum it did. Drawers, thank you for being invented and hiding my crap!

This purchase led to a frantic flurry of purging, organizing, photographing (goodBYE, horrible corner desk! back to the craigslist pond with you!), paper sorting (at 3am!), moving, measuring, and Advil-taking.

That cute table is now my desk (at right), everything has a place, and oh my gracious how a little organization can make one such a happier person!

Next: bedroom. But I may have to go dormant for a bit, first.

And, PS, a tip? If you use a feed reader you can subscribe to specific pages on craigslist (like I do for the “furniture” listings in my area). That way, you can scan the listings easily, and JUMP on the deal! I would not have gotten my “Oriental Dresser” otherwise.

Oh, AND! While the awesome Violet was here today, she rubbed some luck off on me and I won an awesome “Mid Century Danish Modern Teak Tension Pole Lamp Eames” for an awesome deal! Awesome! It might be time for me to go outside!!

Related hamblinks:

• Today, I organized
• florid prose
• ass cradlers and time keepers
• …and nobody wants your awful recliners, either.

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My Uncle Joe died this afternoon.
A life-long sheriff throughout a number of small midwestern towns.
Tall, carved wrinkles and a voice that rumbled from below his belt,
He was my mom’s oldest brother.
She called him Punk.
He tied his own flies and told remarkable fish stories.
A handsome man, whose stuffing was coming undone.
I’ll miss Uncle Joe, and the unique way I would see my mom
Whenever she was with him.
The Little Sister.

The picture above of my Mom’s Father.
He lost his leg in WWII. He’d get odd jobs as a pirate for films in Hollywood.
He died when my mom was 12 and Uncle Joe was the next closest thing my Mom had to a Dad.

Thank you, Darling Andrew, for your guest entry, and I sure do wish I could have met these men in your family. And thank you, too, for contributing the 400th post to hamblog!

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