Restaurant Review: Pho Plus Noodle House. Provo, Utah

Small and intimate, Pho Plus on Center Street in downtown Provo offers a limited menu, but since it was packed today at noon I assume it's all good stuff.

I had a bowl of the basic Pho rice noodle soup. Their broth is outstanding -- I nearly ignored the meat and vegetables just so I could slurp up the stock. They obviously make their own bone broth. Its umami is pleasingly pungent and slightly sweet.

I give the place Three Plus Burps. For a regular bowl of Pho and a fountain drink I was nicked $10.05. The one thing I noticed that bothered me has nothing to do with the restaurant itself, but the people who eat there. Most of them left their bowls brimming over with broth -- the best part! I can't understand that at all. My guess is that people are just too darn lazy to use those little ceramic spoons to slurp it all up and are too hoity-toity to pick up the bowl and drain it, like I did. Their loss.

En Strengen av Perler: The Homeless Shelter.

For part of 2012 I was forced into a homeless shelter for men. In some other universe I'll explain why.

For now, all you need to know is that I found myself in a homeless shelter in Woodbridge, Virginia.  Here are some notes I took at the time:

The Death of Miser Jeff

Sunday evenings tend to be moody, melancholy times at the homeless shelter.  A group of disengaged, lonely men, recently out of jail or rehab, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, vaguely aware of some long-ago Sabbath day traditions and expectations, which are now lost, they sit out on the patio and chain smoke, kvetching with each other over the slightest incidents.  I’ve lost the button to my last pair of summer shorts, so am trying to thread a needle to sew on a new button, which I’ve cut off from an old pair of pants someone threw in the trash. But my eyes are not good enough to thread a needle anymore.  I ask if anyone can do it for me, since they are, for the most part, thirty-five years younger than me.  Nobody bothers to answer.

I put away the needle and thread, and use a large paperclip to keep the zipper up to the button hole.  I’m throwing these shorts away when I leave on Friday morning anyways.  My legs are getting so scabby and blotched from edema that I don’t want to wear shorts any more.  My bad legs remind me of Swede Johnson, an old circus clown I knew on Ringling Brothers.  Before becoming a clown he was a lion tamer . . . until the day the big cats turned on him, ripping his legs to shreds.  He always wore long pants, even when undressing and dressing in clown alley; his wife Mabel said his legs never properly healed after the mauling – they looked like raw hamburger, and he wanted to spare everyone the gruesome sight.

The sun sets, there’s no light on the patio, and the mosquitoes are active, but no one goes indoors.  Miser Jeff, who has been closeted in his room for the past two weeks, so that no one has seen him, comes shuffling out onto the patio. He's called Miser Jeff because he collects pennies in a Mason jar. Even in the dark, I can see that his stomach is huge, and perfectly round, like a basketball.  He says, to no one in particular, that he’s always hungry but can’t eat anything because he throws it right up.  I make a sympathetic murmur, but no one else even grunts.  Then, summoning up a bit of entrepreneurship, Miser Jeff announces that he knows there will be another urine test on Monday, and he is prepared to sell his urine to the highest bidder, so they won’t ‘drop dirty.’  Mickey the pyromaniac, who just got out of jail for setting fire to a Walgreens, has been drinking mouthwash all weekend, so he agrees to pay miser Jeff twenty dollars for his clean urine.  This makes miser Jeff so happy that he immediately goes into the kitchen to make his favorite meal – ramen noodles and mac and cheese mixed together in a big, gooey pile.  He hums contentedly, and since he has a cleft palate, it sounds like angry bees in a barrel.

That is the last time I am to see Miser Jeff alive.

Monday morning I go out for a walk, right after the daily rah-rah-sis-boom-bah group prayer.  When I come back the ambulance is in front of the House.  They are carrying miser Jeff out under a yellow blanket.

He had been discovered just a few moments before in his bedroom, sprawled on the floor in a pool of black vomit.  We are told he likely died from a stomach hemorrhage. Everyone is upset, especially Mickey the firebug --- where is he going to get his clean urine now?  He begs for some of mine, but luckily before I have to say no and risk his fiery wrath it is announced that the testing is postponed until Wednesday. By then I hope to holy God to be out of here, living with one of my children.

Miser Jeff’s body will be shipped to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, for burial in the family plot.  No funeral service is scheduled for here in Virginia.

And Mickey pours several bottles of Listerine down the toilet, repeating over and over again "crappity, crappity, crappity . . . "

After the storm and the sorrow

 . . . therefore there was silence in all the land for the space of many hours.
3 Nephi 10:2

After the storm and the sorrow,
after the wreckage is clear,
some can begin on tomorrow,
while others are strangled by fear.

Silence descends like a cover;
stillness spreads like the salt sea.
Over the land now will hover
the echo of our Deity.

The keening is hushed and forgotten;
our tears are beginning to dry.
Whatever the day has begotten,
my Savior is standing nearby.

  

En Strengen av Perler: The Clinkered Alleyway.

Until the early Sixties, parts of Minneapolis had alleys paved with clinkers.

The fused waste residue from industrial coal furnaces, clinkers are black vitreous pebbles pocked with iridescent blue holes. The city dumped fresh clinkers into our alleyway every other year then had a heavy roller crush them down and even them out.

I initially thought clinkers were tiny meteorites that a merry crew of astronauts dug up from some star-swept gravel pit to lay at my feet as a reminder of the strange grandeur of outer space. My mother was only too happy to set me straight about such an innocent fantasy:

"They're nasty leftover trash from the NSP plant" she told me kindly.

 Clinkers were hell on your pants when playing kickball, or with any other activity that required you to slide or get on your knees. With sharp obsidian-like edges, clinkers could rip open a pair of jeans at the knees in an instant -- and also leave a livid line of scrapped skin oozing blood. 

My mother kept the iodine bottle handy all summer, as well as an assortment of knee patches, for when I would come keening into the house with a bloody knee.

The clinkered allway an important social haunt for boys during my young summers.

We not only played games in them, but hunkered down amidst the clinkers to speculate in privacy on the theory that all sisters were aliens in disguise getting ready to take over the world, al a The Twilight Zone. Or what the best bait was for catching carp down on the Mississippi. The consensus ran heavily in favor of a gob of Velveeta cheese mixed with canned corn. 

We also went treasure hunting through the neighbor's galvanized trash cans in search of dull kitchen knives with broken handles, unstrung tennis rackets, racy paperbacks, and, best of all, empty whipped cream cans.

A discarded whipped cream can placed in a burning trash can is a pyrotechnic marvel to rival the Fourth of July. Back in those dirty unenlightened days each household burned its own trash in a metal barrel. The fires were lit by a responsible adult, who rarely stayed around until the flames went out. So when I and my cronies would latch onto a whipped cream can we quickly found an untended trash fire. We then hurled in the whipped cream can and sat back to await the fun. First a geyser of parboiled cream would come squirting out of the can. A few minutes later the can itself would explode with enough volume to rattle window panes while ashes and burning bits of trash rocketed up and then spread out over the landscape in a pyroclastic flow.

Needless to say, I and my pals would take to our heels as soon as the explosion occurred. Safely away from the mayhem, we'd stop to giggle hysterically and think of ourselves as invulnerable ruffians. Maybe that same puerile rush is part of the appeal to modern terrorists . . . 

In the winter the clinkered alleyway was a dismal and forlorn place. The clinkers mixed in with the slush gave the appearance of a long ribbon of filthy gray slurry. It provided good traction for cars; much better than the cement pavement that replaced it. But that was of no concern to me as a boy. The trash fires smoldered so much during snowfalls that we couldn't enjoy tossing in our whipped cream hand grenades without the discomfort of asphyxiation. 

Besides, in the winter we had the ice rink warming shed at Van Cleve Park. Redolent of damp wool socks and a kerosene heater, it was a place where boys could tie granny knots in their broken laces and talk shop about how many sticks of Bonomo Turkish Taffy a guy could actually stuff in his mouth before choking. At five cents a bar, it was a feasible experiment.

My own record was six sticks -- but I made the mistake of using banana. I think with chocolate I could have gotten up to ten, easy peasy. 

To be the son of God

"And as many as have received me, to them have I given to become the sons of God"
3 Nephi 9:17

What greater gift is given than to be the son of God?
What blessing could be sweeter than our feet in peace be shod?
What can the world then offer that is half so wondrous great,
as sanguine expectation that we leave this fallen state?
Embrace the Savior, O my soul, and love him, O my heart,
that from his love and kindness I may never live apart! 

Restaurant Review: Thai Evergreen. Orem, Utah.

Located at 1360 Sandhill Road, Thai Evergreen is a Thai cafe run by Laotians that serves Chinese fortune cookies with German proverbs. Mine read: "The trees never reach the sky." Kappe zu, Affe tot.

I ate there today with my daughter Sarah, her husband Jonny, and the grand kids Ohen, Lance, and Brooke. We had massaman curry, green curry, green papaya salad, orange chicken, fishcakes, chicken satay, and lots of jasmine and sticky rice -- enough to feed all six of us and have plenty to take home -- for $60.00.

Our waitress, by the way, did not want to be photographed.

I'm giving the place Four Burps. The service was good, the food even better, and how can I complain when I get to play Foxy Grandpa to three adorable children? Tell 'em Groucho sent ya . . .

The Devil Laughs

 ". . . for the devil laugheth, and his angels rejoice, because of the slain of the fair sons and daughters of my people . . . "       3 Nephi 9:2 

If ever you are tempted to 
hear the devil laugh, then you
ought to have your head probed quick
because, friend, you are mighty sick.
The tones of mirth from that old fiend
from earthly joy will have you weaned.
It grates upon the upward bound,
and is a most depressing sound.
Invite the devil for a jest
and never more will you know rest. 

Turkeys Lay Eggs, Too, Then the Foodies Fight Over Them

I think that I shall never see

a turkey egg -- such rarity!

I might range to Timbuktu 

and never have a single view.

Vast wealth I'll offer, but alas --

they're rarer than a Latin Mass.

Perhaps in Shangri-La I might

find one over which to fight.

But should I manage one to take,

I'll drop it and then watch it break.

 

Restaurant Review: Sam Hawk Korean Restaurant. Provo, Utah.

I really foozled it on this one. The place is located at 660 N Freedom, right across the street from the Provo Rec Center, and I've been meaning to go there for months. Finally today I went late for my daily swim, and decided to do lunch there. The interior is rather stark, except for one large Korean brush painting:

I believe the characters in the painting stand for "He who chooses blindly will fall into a pit of his own ordering." That, at least, is the lesson I am taking away from today's debacle. The waitress was a pleasant and intelligent looking gal, and I should have asked her what she recommended for a first time customer. But no, I had to go gallivanting off on my own and choose two of the weirdest dishes on the menu:  Teokbokki and Soondubu Jigae. The Teokbokki was supposed to be the appetizer, but as soon as it was set before me the entre was brought out as well. This always confuses and upsets me; should I concentrate on the appetizer until it's gone, or switch back and forth, or throw a tantrum and beat my head against the wall? I asked the waitress how spicy the Teokbokki was; she said not very spicy. But the first bite blew the top off my head. The dish, as far as I could make out, is made up of gluey thick rice noodles in a red sauce that would etch stainless steel.

The other thing, the Soondubu Jigae, was some kind of tofu sludge with marrow-flavored rubber bands in it and several small dispirited shrimp palely loitering. But after the flaming appetizer I was grateful for its blandness. It came with teeny tiny sides of cold boiled potatoes, raw black beans, bean sprouts, kimchi, and thin cucumber slices.

My two dishes, plus a fountain drink, cost $21.82. I'm not going to rate this place, because I feel strongly I placed my order like a ninnyhammer. Everyone around me was enjoying succulent-looking spare ribs and platters piled high with shredded beef or pork in a rich barbecue sauce. That's obviously what I should have ordered. So I'll have to go back again for the good stuff.
But right now you'll excuse me if I go have an Alka Seltzer moment . . .

En Strengen av Perler: The History of Clown White.

Whitening the human face for comic effect has its roots in ancient Greek theater.  Comic characters were portrayed wearing white masks, while the tragic heroes were usually cast in black masks.  The ancient Romans continued the tradition until, sometime after the Visigoths sacked the city of Rome at the beginning of the Dark Ages, all masks were prohibited by the Catholic church – who thought they smacked too much of idolatry and sacrilege.

I learned all this in a theater class at the University of Minnesota during a hiatus from the circus, when I decided to trade in my slapstick for a mortar board and become a teacher. That didn't last very long; three semesters altogether. When I left to resume my buffoonery the theater faculty gratefully voted me a flea collar with the inscription: "Barba Tenus Sapientes".

But I digress. To continue with our lecture:

Players then began using minerals and plant matter to color their own faces.  Among the former, white lead was the favorite way of whitening the player’s face.  No one back then really knew about the potential for lead poisoning, but luckily players only daubed it on for brief appearances and then immediately wiped it off to put on another hue to play another character in the same play.  Thus, they never had it on long enough for the lead to seep into the skin and enter the blood stream.

All this changed during the Industrial Revolution in England.  First, because the process for making white lead became much simpler.  Before then regular lead bars were steeped in vinegar, then covered in dung for several weeks, during which time chemical reactions from the vinegar and the dung’s acids would turn the outside of the bar white.  When the bars were uncovered the white crust was scrapped off, washed thoroughly, and made into a paste with tallow.  White lead was used as a white wash and a lubricant in factories because it lasted longer and did not smolder, unlike other lubricants.  So the English factory owners paid their nascent chemists to come up with a quick and easy way to make white lead paste, and they did.  Heated and then sprayed with acetic acid, the lead bars turned white and began flaking without assistance. White lead was now to be found everywhere.

The second change was attributable to one man, the famous English clown Joseph Grimaldi.  He it was who first pranced on the stage with his face completely whitened with a combination of beeswax, paraffin, and white lead.  But Grimaldi, whose ancestors came from Italy, knew a thing or two about white lead, namely that painters who used it frequently back in Italy had a tendency to literally shrivel up and die.  From lead poisoning.

Grimaldi had a secret oil, some say it was bergamot, some say it was rosemary, that he added to his face-whitening mixture that neutered the effects of the white lead, and so he could wear it with impunity.  When Grimaldi retired he did not reveal his secret ingredient, taking it to the grave with him.  Other clowns who emulated Grimaldi’s whiteface began suffering the symptoms of lead poisoning.  These included confusion, irritability, anemia, joint pain, and in some cases seizures. These are the same symptoms that children suffer today when they ingest paint chips from old houses that were originally coated with lead paint.

My parents' house in Minneapolis, built in the 1920's, was a bonanza for both lead paint and asbestos. Plus my parents were both heavy smokers when I was a kid. It's a wonder that I and my little sisters escaped that toxic swamp with our mental and physical health intact. Or did we? My one sister uses sheets of Japanese seaweed to make organic and edible pinatas out in Oregon. My other sister is a kleptomaniac who specializes in ripping the wings off butterflies at the Como Butterfly House and putting them under her pillow. I myself am as sane as any March hare, but have a tendency to come down with the marthambles every winter. 

But white lead was capricious, troubling some clowns and ignoring others who wore it constantly.  The first whiteface clown in America, George L. Fox (1825 – 1877) began losing coordination in his early thirties, and by the time he was 55 he could barely walk and had to be taken in by his sister until he passed away.  But the Hanlon Brothers, a rowdy family circus that toured the South prior to the Civil War, and who all wore whiteface, were never troubled by the symptoms of lead poisoning.

Perhaps the most tragic victim of white lead poisoning was the Ringling clown Frank ‘Slivers’ Oakley (1871 to 1916).  After rising to the top at Ringling Brothers Circus, he suddenly developed severe knee problems and had to retire prematurely when barely in his forties.  When he tried a comeback several  years later he collapsed in the center ring during his first clown sketch and had to be carried out.  The next day he shot himself with a pistol.

As early as the Second century BC, the Greek botanist Nicander voiced suspicions about exposure to lead and its harmful effects, but it wasn’t until the early 20^th century, when automobiles came in to their own, and lead was added to gasoline to prevent engine ‘knocking’, that scientists as a group decided that lead in all its forms was deadly to mankind at high exposure levels.  Most lead mines in America were closed down immediately.  Laws were passed to remove lead from gasoline.  But no one thought much about the poor American circus clown, who was still mixing up his own whiteface makeup, using mineral oil, beeswax, and white lead.  And still suffering the effects of chronic lead poisoning, which, in circus lingo, was called ‘jake leg’.

It wasn’t until Max Factor, a Polish immigrant who settled in Hollywood to make wigs and cosmetics, came out with his ‘Safety Clown White’ in 1920, that clowns were finally rescued from chronic lead poisoning.  Having studied art in Florence, Italy, prior to settling down to the wigmaker’s trade, Factor knew that artists had eschewed the use of white lead in favor of oxide of titanium for the color white.  Max worked late into the night experimenting with oxide of titanium, until he developed a formula that gave the exact same white sheen that white lead did, and he began taking his brand of clown white makeup down to the circus lot whenever a show would play Los Angeles and give away free samples to the clowns.  It didn’t take whiteface clowns long before they noticed how much better they felt when using Factor’s clown white instead of their own concoction, and by 1927 every American ‘joey’ was using the Max Factor brand for whiteface.  ‘Jake leg’ disappeared from the circus, never to return.  Today clown white comes in many different brands, and the main whitening agent is neither white lead nor oxide of titanium, but zinc oxide – the same thing we use on bee stings and sunburn.

In fact, one of the very first things I learned in clown alley, from veteran clown Swede Johnson, was to prevent jock itch by smearing on a generous amount of clown white on my nether regions when the hot weather arrived. That kept me calm, cool, and collected while other clowns, who heeded not Swede's pearls of wisdom, itched and scratched and generally walked around bow-legged all summer long.