Naked as a clam.

I'm reading "Don’t sleep naked — the nine best tips on how to sleep in the heat/Struggling to drop off then waking at the crack of dawn? Boiling nights can be a challenge. Here’s what to do" (London Times).

9 tips are needed because air conditioning is not one of them. In first place is the one that begins the headline, "Don’t sleep naked." We're told "Wearing loose-fitting cotton PJs is a better option than sleeping in the nude, according to the sleep consultant Alison Jones, a spokeswoman for the sleep technology company Sealy. 'A light fabric helps to wick away moisture so that you are less likely to feel clammy,' Jones says."

I think the phrase "Don't sleep naked" is just click bait. If cotton were good for "wicking away moisture" then those who like the freedom of naked sleeping could just cover ourselves with a cotton sheet. But didn't cotton lose that reputation. Hikers these days are advised to avoid cotton. It may wick moisture, but it stays damp. And isn't that what we mean by feeling "clammy"?

By the way, were clams called "clams" because they were seen as clammy or did the word "clammy" postdate the use of "clam" as the name for the familiar mollusk, so that things were being called "clammy" because they seemed clamlike?

"While reading 'Spring Rain: A Life Lived in Gardens,' by Marc Hamer, I often found myself wondering how old its author was..."

"... in part because the arc of the book follows Hamer getting too old to work as a gardener anymore. However, I hesitated to research his age. In Chapter 10, titled 'Gardener,' Hamer mentions the discovery, in 2006, of the world’s oldest living creature, a clam. The clam, named Ming, was five hundred and seven years old. It had been found off the coast of Iceland, and died when the scientists who discovered it tried to ascertain its age."

Writes Rivka Galchen, in "How Gardens Promise the Renewal of Life—and Its End/In 'Spring Rain: A Life Lived in Gardens,' Marc Hamer wonders what he leaves behind him" (The New Yorker).

"How to Build a Sex Room is technically a home-makeover reality show like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Flip or Flop, and Fixer Upper — complete with sledgehammering walls..."

"... ripping out unsightly wallpaper, and introducing spendy sofas.... But... it’s also sex-positive sex ed.... Very sexy sex isn’t aspirational enough anymore; people demand a dream home to have it in.... The show mixes it up, featuring queer couples, married couples with teenagers and toddlers, a recently engaged couple, a polycule, and a recent divorcee in her 50s....  [Designer Melanie Rose] asks about her clients’ favorite positions, their kinks, what they’re curious to explore. 'We’re clam chowder with a dab of Tabasco,' Wesley, a law-enforcement officer, says about his sex life with his wife, Hannah, a real-estate agent.... When it comes to conceiving of a pleasure-room design, Rose has a few rules: no carpet — not even a stainproof one. She recommends tile (and installing a drain 'if there’s going to be that much bodily fluid').... 'If you’re installing a sex swing, do it on a ceiling joist'.... 'I’m very much a touchy-feely person,” Rose says.... 'I like to smell the leathers, pick up the vibrators and the dildos.'"

From "So You Want to Build a Sex Room …" (Curbed).

Very sexy sex isn’t aspirational enough anymore.... Noted. I'm glad people are aiming high. And have drains to hose it all down in the end.

Polycules? you ask. What are polycules? Come on. It's a portmanteau. Don't you see it? Polyamory + molecule. 

ADDED: Clam chowder... and I was just doing the new New Yorker crossword where 43 Down is "______ Bucket (unappetizing-sounding rival of the Krusty Krab, on 'SpongeBob SquarePants')." I don't watch that show, and my first guess was "Clam." Spoiler alert: It's "Chum." Good thing Wesley the law-enforcement officer didn't liken his wife to that.

"To be fair to my doctors, they did ask me, 'Are you working with anything toxic?' And I’d say, 'No no, I’m working with all natural materials, and we’d all move on,'"

"I was so certain that these mussels, which the government said I could eat safely and buy in the market as food, could never be bad for me."

Said Gillian Genser, quoted in "An artist suffered mysterious symptoms for years. Then she realized her sculpture was poisoning her" (WaPo).

She felt agitated. She’d wake up nearly unable to move. Hearing vanished from one ear. Her muscles cramped and her speech slurred....

For 15 years, Genser had been grinding up mussel shells to create a sculpture of Adam, the first man... By using a natural material, like mussel shells, to depict a biblical character, she wanted to comment on humanity’s skewed relationship with the now-contaminated natural world.

But the shells contained lead and arsenic from the polluted environment, and she was inhaling the dust. It's very sad that this woman got poisoned, but I don't think inhaling shell dust is ever a good idea. She was working 12 hours a day for years grinding shells with a dentist's drill, and I'm not seeing that she used any sort of respirator or dust-protection mask. And some of her description of the intention of the artwork seems like an after-the-fact grasping at greater meaning:

“The work was an environmental statement. It’s about reconsidering what people’s first perception of the ecosystem should have been, rather than this idea that we have dominion over all the animals,” she said. “So it’s very interesting and ironic that Adam, as the first man, was so toxic. He poisoned me. Doesn’t that make sense, because we poisoned the world starting with this very poor notion?"

But what isn't an after-after-the-fact grasping at greater meaning? Why are we talking about "Adam" in the first place?

ALSO: What sort of doctors accept the idea of "natural materials" as a good enough answer? There are many toxins and allergens in nature!

Metaphorical thinking about the secret House memo.

I'm reading Axios. Boldface added:

The coming release of a secret House memo, hotly sought by conservatives, will intensify the great muddying of the Russia investigation in the public's mind.

Why the memo matters: Trump's allies are betting that when all is said and done — and when special counsel Bob Mueller has completed his report — the American people will be so thoroughly disgusted with everyone that the political outcome is a wash.

I have been flooded with email from conservatives who have been ignited by the #ReleaseTheMemo campaign that has flourished online, fed by Fox News.

That smoldering fire ignited yesterday after the House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines to release the memo, with the final decision up to President Trump....

Last night, I saw how hot the House was burning when I interviewed Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the Intelligence Committee's top Democrat....

The first metaphor is "muddying." The memo isn't making anything clear, just part of a strategy to disorient and confuse.

The second metaphor is water. There's a "flood" and maybe all the confusing mud will just be resolved by declaring the whole thing "a wash."

Third, there is fire, and that's just political fervor. The water could take care of the fire as well as the mud.

When did we start using "wash" like that, to mean "A balanced outcome; a situation or result which is of no net gain or loss"? The OED has that meaning only as a draft addition. It calls it "U.S. colloq." with the first usage in 1976:

1976 National Observer (U.S.) 10 Apr. 5/4 If Humphrey were the more Democratic nominee, it would be more or less of a wash, because Humphrey is an old Washington hand too, and he carries many of the same scars as Ford.

By the way, did you know the word "wash" can refer to a measure for oysters and whelks? "Each smack takes about 40 wash of whelks with her for the voyage" (1879). What's a "smack"? Some kind of woman? No, the "her" is for a ship — "A single-masted sailing-vessel, fore-and-aft rigged like a sloop or cutter, and usually of light burden, chiefly employed as a coaster or for fishing, and formerly as a tender to a ship of war."

Oh, the things we are learning today. I'm so glad I have existing tags for "mud" and "mollusks."

"For the Ohio governor, the campaign against Trump never stopped. And it won’t till 2020."

Writes Lisa Miller at New York Magazine.

The debates were ridiculous,” he told me recently over dinner at an Italian restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia....

It had been a long day, and Kasich was hoovering his spaghetti and clam sauce like a man who eats for fuel. “I wasn’t pitching myself. I was being myself.” ... He came to his point: “I have a right to define what it means to be a conservative and what it means to be a Republican. I think my definition is a lot better than what the other people are doing.”

In Kasich’s view, the election of Trump and the complicity of party leaders represent a widespread abandonment of good American values — “a momentary lapse of reason,” he says, “to quote Pink Floyd.” A believing Christian, Kasich talks about his contrasting vision as a “revival”; he has a yearning to restore to American citizens the “basic principles of caring, of love, of compassion, of connectedness, of a legacy … There has to be a fundamental change, in my opinion, with all of us. I’m willing to be part of that. I want my voice to be out there. I want it very, very much.”

Spaghetti, clams, Pink Floyd, believing Christians... I think I'm going to puke, reddish pinkly.

I watched Kasich on "Fox News Sunday" yesterday, and he came across as desperate. I had trouble understanding why he looked and sounded so desperate. Here, maybe you can see what I mean:



He keeps asserting that he is sincere and has high moral values, but it doesn't work. And I am saying this as someone who wanted to have a moderate Republican to vote for in 2016. Kasich seemed as though he was the one who would fit that slot, but he is hard to warm up to. Interesting to know he's never stopped striving. But that does not make him appealing.

In the news: Women going where they don't belong.

1. "Republican leaders 'visibly annoyed' after Ivanka Trump enters Oval Office during debt ceiling talks" (Washington Examiner).

According to a Democratic aide, the conversation over spending ended when Ivanka Trump entered the room to say hello. "The meeting careened off topic," the aide said. "Republican leaders were visibly annoyed by Ivanka's presence."

A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., rejected the idea that GOP lawmakers were annoyed by Ivanka Trump's presence. "This is false," said Ryan spokeswoman AshLee strong.

2. "Democrats dread Hillary's book tour" (Politico).

“Maybe at the worst possible time, as we are fighting some of the most high-stakes policy and institutional battles we may ever see, at a time when we’re trying to bring the party together so we can all move the party forward — stronger, stronger together,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, a Democrat who represents a Northern California district. “She’s got every right to tell her story. Who am I to say she shouldn’t, or how she should tell it? But it is difficult for some of us, even like myself who’ve supported her, to play out all these media cycles about the blame game, and the excuses... There is a collective groan... whenever there’s another news cycle about this.”...

“I’ve always been a looking forward kind of a guy,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), asked the same question on Wednesday. “I think I’ll leave it at that."....

“I look forward to going to every place where she appears,” Sen. John McCain of Arizona said sarcastically. McCain pointed out that he didn’t write a book after losing the 2008 presidential race....

3. This one tips the other way. A woman has her own ultra-special woman's room, and a man is invited in (BBC):

No-one is precisely sure how or why the women in Vigo’s family started weaving byssus [the razor-thin fibres growing from the tips of a highly endangered Mediterranean clam known as the noble pen shell, or pinna nobilis], but for more than 1,000 years, the intricate techniques, patterns and dying formulas of sea silk have been passed down through this astonishing thread of women – each of whom has guarded the secrets tightly before teaching them to their daughters, nieces or granddaughters.

After an invitation to visit Vigo’s one-room studio, I suddenly found myself face-to-face with the last surviving sea silk seamstress, watching her magically spin solidified clam spit into gold.

I slowly approached the small wooden table where Vigo worked, walking past a 200-year-old loom, glass jars filled with murky indigo and amber potions and a certificate confirming her highest order of knighthood from the Italian Republic cast aside on the floor.

“If you want to enter my world, I’ll show it to you,” she smiled. “But you’d have to stay here for a lifetime to understand it.”

"… there’s a weird number of people battling snails from medieval times … Why is this?"

"We don’t know. Seriously. There are as many explanations as there are scholars."

One answer is: "Since human knights are often seen trembling before—or, indeed, losing to—the harmless, slow-moving snails, it makes sense that the image is a way to emphasize cowardice."

"This article is an embarrassment to the Post. It's sensationalist fluff, from the picture of a snarling mountain lion and the dime-store novel title through the complete absence of useful information."

"Beyond the *possibility* that it a mountain lion entered a house to eat a dog and the fact that most of CA is a habitat for mountain lions, there is little of use about the article at all. How did the animal get inside? How many attacks have there been on pets in recent years? On humans? This story is the fluff journalistic equivalent of the movie 'Jaws,' demonizing an animal for shock value. This kind of shoddy journalism is not why I bought a subscription to this paper."

That's the most-liked comment on a Washington Post article titled "‘Shadow of an animal’ creeps into sleeping homeowner’s room, snatches pet dog, leaves trail of paw prints."

Looking at the sidebar, the "most read" list, I think I'm glimpsing what's happening at WaPo:



Perhaps readers have become averse to clicking on the political articles that crowd the front page, even when the teaser headline try to make something sound like it's about a scary animal — "Trump’s no populist. He’s a swamp monster" — or dessert — "Trump’s cake and golf presidency." (Those are actual headlines on the WaPo front page right now.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd offers an alternate headline: "Dog Dies In Darkness."

"Scientists discover world's oldest clam, killing it in the process."

The clam was 507 years old, and the scientists were screwing around with it in their effort to research climate change — because old clams are (as the Christian Science Monitor puts it) "palimpsests of climate change."

[T]he lines on its shell to estimate its age, much as alternating bands of light and dark in a fish’s ear-bones are used to tell how old the animal is."

The clam "born in 1499." (Are clams born?)

This is the same year that the English hanged a Flemish man, Perkin Warbeck, for (doing a bad job of) pretending to be the lost son of King Edward IV and the heir to the British throne. It’s also the same year that Switzerland became its own state, the French King Louis XII got married, and Diane de Poitiers, future mistress to another French king, Henry II, was born.

It's not like the clam could reminisce about such things. What could the clam say? What's one century or the next to a clam? It's one eternal moment down there. Is it not? Do you revere a clam because it is 500 years old? Does it have a greater clam to continued life than all the little clams in the last bowl of chowder you gulped?

Oh, but those are not little clams in your chowder. Those are cut up large clams, often ocean quahogs like that Oldest Clam in the World, and probably often over a century old.

ADDED: I see I wrote "Does it have a greater clam to continued life." For years, I've had an uncanny tendency to write "clam" for "claim." Taking notes in law school, I used to sometimes need to stifle a laugh. But I don't think I ever wrote "clam" for "claim" while writing about clams. The claims of clams.

What does that clam claim?

Mary Burke's job-creation claim rated "Half True."

By the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's fact-checker.

The numerical part of the claim is on target -- Burke’s tenure was pre-recession and despite gains Wisconsin has not yet rebounded to 2007 levels. But Burke overstates the credit that she and Doyle deserve for the 2007 figure, and skips past the recession that helps explain the statistical truth.

Burke, the Democratic challenger to Scott Walker in the 2014 Wisconsin gubernatorial race, was Commerce Secretary under Doyle, the Democratic Governor who was in office until January 2011. Since Burke left in the end of 2007, she's able to make statement about her time in office that distract us from from the fact that there were 3 more years of Doyle, and the bad numbers in those years can't be pinned on Walker.

ADDED:  Typo in the headline corrected. I apologize for creating the false hope that there could be something called a "job-creation clam."

"Walnuts 'improve sperm health.'"

Some study reported by BBC.

Oh, come on. Why did they look specifically at walnuts? Here's a clue: an old Woman's Day article titled "Foods That Look Like Body Parts They're Good For."

Hey, wait. That says walnuts are good for the brain and clams are good for the testicles! I thought clams were good for the vulva....

"Supporters of the [Obama family's] getaway include Hugh Taylor, owner of the Vineyard's The Outermost Inn."

"Says Taylor, brother of singer James Taylor: 'They should just take a walk on the beach, get squirted in the face by a clam, watch an osprey. What I would like to see (Obama) do is just enjoy this place with his children.'"

***

You just call on a clam,
And you know wherever I am
I will squirt you, oh yeah baby
Right in the face.
Just take a walk on the beach,
I will you a lesson teach.
I will squirt you, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You've got a clam.

Hey, ain't it good to know that you've got a clam?
People can be so cold.
They'll hurt you and desert you.
They'll take your soul if you let them.
Oh, but don't you let them...

The Purpler Tree and the things you talked about last night.

Last night's purple tree opened a flood of conversation. Curtiss said:

Purple is the color of death.

But you know that, don't you?

I said:

I think men don't like the color purple. Women love it to excess, and men don't really understand. Death, indeed!

Palladian said:

I don't like anything Alice Walker ever wrote.

Instead of transcribing my laughter, let me give you a newer and purpler version of the tree that opened the canyons of your minds:



When I stopped my starry-eyed laughing, I said:

But quite apart from [Alice Walker], I think visual perception is partly deeply biological and there's serious sexual discrepancy about purple.

Then Meade said:

"I think men don't like the color purple. "

The professor speaks truth. And she does so in a most colorful way.

I, however, as a man am an exception to the rule: I love purple. In fact, I wear a purple hat and a purple scarf. Men leave me alone while women can't seem to keep their hands off me. That is, as long as I wear the hat and scarf.

Meade inspired me to make the new tree the color of his scarf. And to give him this advice — in case we should ever meet IRL.

Subsequently, Meade asks the guys a great question, and Curtiss gives a great answer. You'll have to go in there and find those things, but don't trip over the things Titus says he's having trouble finding.

Professor Palladian had to step back in and cool us off with this historical lecture:

The word "purple" comes to us from the Greek (via the usual circuitous route through Latin and Old English) πορφύραν, porphura, of the mollusk that produced the only bright, deep, color-fast purple dye available in the world until the mid-nineteenth century. Walk through any art museum and you'll see no bright purple color in any painting produced before then. The color to which the name "purple" referred has changed many times depending on the time period and the culture being discussed. The "Prince" sort of purple that most people think of is not the color of the purple of antiquity. The ancient purple, Tyrian purple, is more akin to the color of a fresh Welch's grape juice stain on a white cotton shirt, only much more intense. Tyrian purple is made from the fresh mucous secretion of a big sea snail that is variously known as Murex brandaris and Haustellum brandaris. It requires harvesting and killing 10,000 of these gastropods to produce one gram of the dye, hence the astronomical price and rarity of the color.

I have a sample of the dye, about 50 milligrams, which cost me nearly two hundred dollars. To put that in perspective, an extra strength Tylenol pill contains 500 milligrams of Acetaminophen alone, not counting the weight of the other ingredients.

As I said, there was no other bright, color-fast purple dye or pigment available to artists until the 19th century. The use of Tyrian purple pretty much died out by the 11th century in the West. Artists could mix purple hues by glazing blue pigments with red pigments, but as there were only three bright red pigments available to artists until the 19th century, two [1; 2] of which faded rapidly and one of which is both too opaque and too orange to actually produce a mixed purple, not many artists bothered.

What changed everything (and by extension, the world as we know it) was W.H. Perkin's discovery and production of the world's first synthetic organic dye: 3-amino-2,±9-dimethyl-5-phenyl-7-(p-tolylamino)phenazinium acetate, or Mauveine, later known as the color mauve. Perkin was, on a challenge from one of his professors, trying to synthesize quinine and failed, producing a black lump. While he was trying to clean the lump out of his flask, he discovered that a portion of the lump dissolved in alcohol and produced a bright purple. Voilà! The first aniline dye, which changed not only the world of fashion and art, but as I said before, changed the entire world. It was through Perkin's discovery and subsequent manufacture of Mauveine and the resulting proliferation of aniline dye research and industry that the first antimicrobial drugs, the sulfonamides (the early examples of which were dye-based) were invented. Not to mention Tylenol, Polyurethane and the whole synthetic chemical industry.

Not bad for a chemical that started as an accident involving a substance (aniline, phenylamine) that stinks of rotting fish. An apt smell for the chemical that was responsible for the rebirth of purple in the modern world, the olfactory memory across the millennia of those vast piles of dead, rotting mollusks that yielded the color of Emperors.

Sex, science, and art — all night long, all because of purple. And trees. You know I'm an Ann Arborist. Here in Madison.

"They're dirty little guys, and they don't smell good, but you always feel really good after you plant them."

Would you like to plant an oyster garden at home?

Pick a movie to design a meal around.

That was the challenge last night on "Top Chef," which this post won't spoil, but there are spoilers at here, where I read about it. (I haven't watched this season of "Top Chef." Maybe I'll catch up with it later. Is it good this time around?) Anyway, Jim Hu, at the link, thinks the contestants made pretty lame movie choices. They should have been less literal, more creative, and more cleverly knowing about the content of a good movie. His choices:

Wizard of Oz: Rainbow trout with artichoke hearts and a poppy seed crackers.
Spartacus. Escargot... and oysters.
Duck Soup. Perhaps an exception to the obviousness rule, but how can you not do this?
The Godfather: Fish baked in parchment.
The main entree could be Dances with Wolves Buffalo steaks. Or you could do Silence of the Lambs, but only if you serve the lamb with fava beans
Citizen Kane Rose sorbet

Commenters, surely you have some ideas! Me? Well, my favorite movie already is about dinner: "My Dinner With Andre." To be creative and knowing, we'd have to get past the potato soup and squab and come up with something from inside the stories Andre tells. Maybe something covered in coarse salt to represent sand — Andre eats sand in the Sahara Desert (and laughs). [ADDED: Actually, he doesn't laugh: "We weren't trying to be funny. I started, and then he started, and we just ate sand, and threw up. That was — that was how desperate we were."]

Let me go on to the rest of the favorite movies I list in my Blogger profile:

"Aguirre the Wrath of God." This should not be an opportunity to serve Spanish or Brazilian food. I'd be all about the seaweed. (When they're really hungry they pull algae out from between the logs of the raft.)

"Crumb." The first thing I think of here is a drawing of a can labeled "[unwritable word] Hearts." Next, I think of Maxon Crumb ingesting a long strip of cloth dipped in water (to clean out his innards). Let's skip this movie.

"Grey Gardens." Paté on crackers! [ADDED December 20, 2014, after watching this movie again: ice cream right out of the container, Wonder Bread, cat chow, and corn on the cob.]

"32 Short Films About Glenn Gould." Pills!

"Limelight." Hmmm. Limes? No, the lime in limelight is not the fruit.

"It's a Gift." Kumquats!



"Dr. Strangelove." To drink: nothing but distilled water. [AND: Pure grain alcohol!] Food: a big buffet table. And every night: a food fight. That's our restaurant gimmick: We encourage the patrons to throw food. "The Grave of the Fireflies." In this movie, a Japanese animation, children starve. Must skip. "The Nights of Cabiria." Too easy of an excuse to make Italian food. Nothing specific comes to mind. "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control." Well, we can't serve lions or mole rats. Robots are not edible. We'd have to come up with some way to make topiary shapes out of things. "Slacker." Sorting through my memories of this movie, I'm just seeing a lot of coffee. IN THE COMMENTS: The name Ted Turner comes up, and there's a suggestion that his movie would be "Soylent Green."

Madison and New York/young and old.

Last semester, as I drove my car to and from work every day, nearly every time, I listened to the album "Poses," by Rufus Wainwright. The ride is short, usually the length of one song. Sometimes I played the satellite radio, but when I did, I had to switch to the CD player a few seconds after I entered the underground garage and the car lost contact with the satellite. My Rufus Wainwright addiction began when I happened to hear the song "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk":

Cigarettes and chocolate milk
These are just a couple of my cravings
Everything it seems I likes a little bit stronger
A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me

It's a song about addiction, and I got addicted to the song. Over the course of the semester, I became strangely bonded to the entire album. Strangely, because I hadn't gotten attached to a new artist or a sequence of songs in many years. Funnily, one song on the album is "Grey Gardens," based on the movie, "Grey Gardens," which has always been on the short list of favorite movies in my profile and which I often rewatch for inspiration.

I felt very close to Rufus Wainwright from January to August in Madison, Wisconsin.

Yesterday, my sister and I were traipsing through the Village and Soho. She wanted earrings and mementos. I balked at going into one store that had big sales signs in the window and -- I took one step up toward the doorway -- looked completely chaotic inside. I'd linger in the place next door until she was done with the chaos. The place that suited me was called Theory. I prefer Theory to chaos. She rummaged through the chaotic sale store and bought nothing. Not meaning to buy anything, I found two ideal black sweaters at Theory. I resist chaos but am a pushover for a rational pullover and a Cartesian cardigan.

It's a warm day in SoHo, and I'm weighed down by a bag with two heavy sweaters that will make so much sense back in Madison in January. A few stores later, I'm hitting the wall, and I need respite, so let's find our way back to that restaurant, Provence, that looked so pretty with the tables sticking halfway out the wall of doorways. A perfect choice for someone who almost loves the idea of a sidewalk café.

But now, the restaurant has crowded up, so we can't sit in one of the doorways. But I'm happy to get a seat by a pillar, even with another table -- a big table -- crammed right up to the other side of the pillar, and, of course, I let my sister, my guest, have the seat that looks out toward the doors. I'm recomposing myself with the beautiful French press coffee, and they seat six men and one woman at the big table at my elbow.

Diagonally across from me is a man who looks like Rufus Wainwright or is Rufus Wainwright. I glance at him now and then and try to eavesdrop over the restaurant din. I hear him refer to his mother and to Lorna Luft. I could imagine Rufus Wainwright talking about his mother -- is the woman at the table his mother? -- and Lorna Luft. He talks about a party where people talk about rehab, and then seems Rufus-y. Then someone calls him Rufus. So, it's Rufus, then.

I keep trying to eavesdrop -- it's nearly impossible -- there's some talk of religion -- and to converse with my sister. Dell is looking over to the big table more than I am. It's not that she's interested in Rufus Wainwright. As I suspect, and I learn for sure later, she's never heard of him. She's interested in what they are eating. What are those powdered sugar things with the little turd-like berries? Beignets. What's that metal stand? They're getting oysters.

I think about whether I'm excited to sit for so long so near a person whose music I have so much feeling for. But no, I feel normal, as usual. I remember the time, more than 30 years ago, when I sat in a restaurant at a table next to John Lennon. The feeling was overwhelming. I am so much older now, but is it that I fell in love with Rufus's music as an older person or that I'm sitting near him as an older person? I could find out if some day I'm sitting in a restaurant and, at the next table, it's Ray Davies. Maybe Bob Dylan. But no. I think it's a theory that can only be tested on Ray Davies.

Food law.

Restaurants are suing to protect their intellectual property rights:

[Rebecca Charles] acknowledged that Pearl [Oyster Bar] was itself inspired by another narrow, unassuming place, Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. But she said she had spent many months making hundreds of small decisions about her restaurant’s look, feel and menu.

Those decisions made the place her own, she said, and were colored by her history. The paint scheme, for instance, was meant to evoke the seascape along the Maine coast where she spent summers as a girl.

“My restaurant is a personal reflection of me, my experience, my family,” she said. “That restaurant is me.”

So she copied, and then she was copied. She sues. The defendant, Ed McFarland, says Ed’s Lobster Bar is similar, but not a copy. Which is pretty much what Charles says about Swan.

Chefs are also seeking patents for things like a way to print pictures of food on paper that you can eat and that tastes like food.

Does the paper taste like the food in the picture or something else -- to mess with your mind or challenge your prejudices... like diversity jelly beans?

Oh, I just had a flashback. No, not to blotter acid! To the days of my federal court clerkship, a quarter century ago, when there was litigation about ice cream sandwiches made with ice cream between two big chocolate chip cookies. The original, called Chipwich, was easy enough to copy, and the federal court lawsuit ended with the judge telling Good Humor that if anyone looked at the Chipwichish item pictured on their ice cream wagon and asked for a Chipwich, they'd have to say, "We don't have Chipwiches; we have Good Humor products."

Oyster Awards.

For hardest to open packages. The one that took the longest -- more than 15 minutes -- is American Idol Barbie.

Watch out for snails.

Really.

UPDATE, February 12, 2009. I'm coming back to this post while adding the "mollusks" tag to things, and I see that the 2 links it contained are dead. Reading one URL, I can see that there were some "giant snails." I guess they were pretty damned big or at least quite numerous. Something amazed me 5 years ago. At least I still have this record of having once been amazed... by a mollusk.

UPDATE, August 4, 2024. I'm coming back to this post while adding another new tag — "snails." Would I have started this tag if I'd realized I had a "mollusk" tag I could have used? No, but I'm continuing with this slow — get it? — process anyway because I experienced a tiny bloggish delight while writing a post about marginalia — the first topic of discussion in the history of this blog — then clicking on the "marginalia" tag and discovering a cool old post with snails. This made me want to create a "snails" tag, because the previous post had quoted this, from the writer Elias Canetti:

"After the rain, he went out in search of snails. He talked to them; they did not creep away from him. He held them in his hand, observed them and laid them to the side where no bird could see them. When he died, all the snails from the neighborhood came together to form his funeral cortege."