Words Say the Darndest Things
By Paul Chimera
Every Sunday The Buffalo News must be filled with, what, hundreds of thousands of them? Millions, maybe?
Words. They’re like relatives; unlike friends, you can’t really pick them, but you’re pretty much stuck with them.
And we’re stuck, moreover, with some clumsy – often unwittingly funny – situations as we navigate through the morass of odd phrases and clunky clauses, idioms and idiosyncrasies along the way to making sense of our world through what we write and read.
Certain conventions are hard to break when it comes to the terms we use. Recently, while tarrying in my kitchen, my sister and mother referred to tin foil. Wait, I insisted. That’s old-fashioned. It’s aluminum foil now, and I defy you to find a box of the stuff that says “tin foil” on it.
Sitting down, the discussion led to davenport. That’s what I heard growing up in my house. Especially since ours was white, and shoes defiantly left on while playing couch potato on the davenport meant a prompt rebuke. Now there’s a prefix that puzzles: “re.” We re-shuffle, we re-unite, we re-invent ourselves. But do we “buke” a second time?
A wordsmith friend of mine delights in the odd couple, flammable and inflammable. Don’t they mean the same thing? Yet sensitive and insensitive surely don’t. What a crazy language we’ve got.
I’ve actually come up with two very common words that mean the exact opposite – yet can be used to mean exactly the same thing! Don’t believe me? Check it out:
See if you can do better next time.
See if you can’t do better next time.
Can, and the contraction for cannot. Opposites? Um, not always.
This reminds me of the pesky “it’s and “its” conundrum. If I had a chicken wing for every time I see those words misused, I could open an Anchor Bar franchise. It’s is, of course, a contraction for “it is.” Its, by contrast, is a personal possessive pronoun, as in "The dog chased its tail.” No apostrophe needed.
The confusion comes in because normally possession requires an apostrophe, as in, “The dog’s tail was long.” But not when it comes to pronouns like its, or for that matter, hers and ours and theirs.
But you get a gold star if you can answer this question: what else does “it’s” mean? How about when it’s used this way: It’s been fun! Now it means “it has.”
Told you our language is weird.
Did you notice I used the word “tarrying” earlier? There’s a bunch of words that sound like people’s names, sometimes regrettably. Consider the sound of a very common name when one must answer nature’s call and go to the “John.” Or to the “Lou,” thanks to our British friends (of course, they spell honour with a “u”, so what do they know?).
A “Jim” is where you play dodge ball, while we sing a “Carol,” “Bob” for apples, “Mary” our spouse, and even – this is reaching way back on history’s dance floor – do the “Freddy,” for Pete’s sake! (There are naughtier ones, such as “Mary Jane,” but I’m not here to Philisbuster).
These strange relatives, these peculiar words that populate our language, must give those learning English as a second language the challenge of a lifetime (which is a euphemism for “constant headache!” See section on euphemisms later in this article). Consider, for instance, how many words are spelled exactly the same but have entirely different meanings.
We swim in a pool; pool our resources; join a car pool; and notice that someone’s trousers are pooled around his ankles (don’t peek, lest you reach the peak of voyeurism).
Some of my favorite wordgasms (I just made that one up) are ones that don’t need to be there at all. In journalism school, beginning reporters learn never to write “completely destroyed.” How can anything that is destroyed be partially destroyed? It’s either destroyed, or damaged, but not completely destroyed.
The next time you hear about an offer to receive a “free gift,” ask yourself: if it’s a gift, isn’t it free by definition? And saying something is “very unique” suggests there are levels of uniqueness. There aren’t. If something’s unique, it’s one of a kind. If there were two, they wouldn’t be unique.
There’s even some multi-nationalism in this war of words. Our neighbors to the north report that someone is “in hospital,” omitting the word “the”. Yet that sounds awkward and just plain wrong to Americans.
By the same token, though, we say that our child is “in school” – not in “the” school. Hey, maybe the Canadians have it right after all.
If they do, a lot of TV newscasters – ostensibly the bastions of “proper pronunciation” – clearly don’t. If I had a dollar for every “perspective” I’ve heard them say – when it should have been “prospective” – I could get a second Anchor Bar franchise. (HINT: the root word of prospective is prospect. So, if someone is a good prospect for the job, he or she is a prospective candidate).
Perspective, meanwhile, means your view of the situation – as in “You’re looking at that from an interesting perspective.”
Notice I said “he or she” in the preceding paragraph. Before it became politically correct, not to mention sensible, to be gender-neutral when it comes to these masculine and feminine pronouns, “he” was used exclusively: Every single person had his book turned to page 24.
But now we must write “his or her” or “her or his” or “his/her.” I’ve even seen the painfully clumsy: s/he when referring to she or he. (HINT: think plural. Instead of each person had “his or her…” try, All the students had their books turned to page 24.)
If all these individual words weren’t trouble enough, along come those menacing oxy-morons and effusive euphemisms (try to say that five times fast!). You know the classic oxy-morons: military intelligence and jumbo shrimp come to mind.
But euphemisms are my favorite. That’s where you try to soften the blow, as it were, in an effort to say something in a more innocuous manner. Thus, a military document might refer to an aircraft as having “impacted with the ground prematurely.” You and I might say it crashed (I don’t mean to pick on the military – really).
I’ve seen ads hawking “TVs with non-multi-color capabilities” (a.k.a., black & white), and of course cars that are “pre-owned” (sounds so much kinder than “used”).
Oh, how we could go on. “Adverse” and “averse” are constantly misused, as in this goof: I am not adverse to having you stay over. It should, of course, be “averse” (just think of the word “aversion,” as in I have an aversion to people who overstay their welcome). In fact, sometimes I have an adverse reaction to it.
But not all is wicked in Wordville. Think of some of the new words that have joined the family in recent times. It was only about six years ago when we welcomed (with trepidation) Y2K into our vocabulary – an alphanumeric combo that now has a distinct, if dubious, reputation. And consider “blog,” which only months ago meant nothing to us, but now is as ubiquitous as, well, chicken wings in Buffalo.
A “blog” connects (clumsily) the word “Web” and “log,” forming an entirely new word that essentially means an online diary.
Hey, there’s a thought: I ought to create my own blog. News readers hungering for more wild wordplay could go nuts. Of course, you’d run into some relatives, but mostly you’d be among friends.
###
Paul Chimera is an Amherst-based writer and part-time instructor at Daemen College. His biggest pet peeve is when people say, “I could care less.” They really mean to convey that they couldn’t care less.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
I Wrote This and Read This to My Kids, So Many Years Ago Now . . .
CAPTAIN DRAGGIN’S PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE
By Paul Chimera
Copyright 2006
Captain Draggin’s perpetual motion machine
It’s shiny and brilliant and quite squeaky clean
It jumps and it bumps and it reels and it dips
And races through tunnels and turns funny flips
It careens around corners and leaps over trees
And toddles and bobbles and jumps when you sneeze!
Captain Draggin’s perpetual motion machine
It’s tireless and fearless and floats like a song
Down highways and byways and roads miles long
It trundles down turnpikes and lumbers down lanes
It picks up more speed than a runaway train!
Captain Draggin’s perpetual motion machine
It cannot, it will not, it simply won’t stop
Not for red lights or snowstorms or uniformed cops
It has a mind of its own, its own power source
It’s a tenacious, outrageous and powerful force!
It thunders relentless past houses and farms
And screeches up hillsides and down people’s arms
It swims where there’s water and clumps where there’s mud
Such a messy contraption, all covered with crud!
Captain Draggin’s perpetual motion machine
It’s shiny and brilliant and quite squeaky clean
Except when it plays in Farmer Jacobson’s crops
Oh, then it needs washing with three hundred mops
It jumps over turnips and sits on the squash
And rolls in the cabbage and could sure use a wash
It tugs at the string beans and teases the corn
And plays with the pickles until it is morn’!
It never gets tired, it never grows weak
Just keeps right on moving, week after week
It requires no gas and needs never to rest
It never falls short ‘cause it’s always the best!
It can take to the air like a seagull in flight
And drift with the ease of a child’s bright kite
It can choose to chase rainbows and leap lofty clouds
And jump over caverns and cities and towns!
If you look out your window it’s bound to be seen
This majestic perpetual motion machine
But don’t try to stop it, don’t ask it to halt
For this stubborn contraption is driven to a fault!
Captain Draggin, however, well he’s another sort
He’s tall and he’s thin and he’s fat and he’s short
He’s easy to spot with his head of green hair
And his short stubby legs that come two in a pair!
He needs his machine, his motion machine
To comply with his wish to be heard but not seen
For while his contraption is out moving ahead
Captain Draggin’s at home comfy curled up in bed!
He seldom goes out, he likes staying inside
Especially when his machine is outside for a ride
It suits him quite nicely, it suits him just fine
To let his perpetual machine pass the time!
Captain Draggin is home and all smiles today
Knowing his machine is outside hard at play
It makes him so happy, it makes him serene
It’s Captain Draggin’s perpetual motion machine!
___
By Paul Chimera
Copyright 2006
Captain Draggin’s perpetual motion machine
It’s shiny and brilliant and quite squeaky clean
It jumps and it bumps and it reels and it dips
And races through tunnels and turns funny flips
It careens around corners and leaps over trees
And toddles and bobbles and jumps when you sneeze!
Captain Draggin’s perpetual motion machine
It’s tireless and fearless and floats like a song
Down highways and byways and roads miles long
It trundles down turnpikes and lumbers down lanes
It picks up more speed than a runaway train!
Captain Draggin’s perpetual motion machine
It cannot, it will not, it simply won’t stop
Not for red lights or snowstorms or uniformed cops
It has a mind of its own, its own power source
It’s a tenacious, outrageous and powerful force!
It thunders relentless past houses and farms
And screeches up hillsides and down people’s arms
It swims where there’s water and clumps where there’s mud
Such a messy contraption, all covered with crud!
Captain Draggin’s perpetual motion machine
It’s shiny and brilliant and quite squeaky clean
Except when it plays in Farmer Jacobson’s crops
Oh, then it needs washing with three hundred mops
It jumps over turnips and sits on the squash
And rolls in the cabbage and could sure use a wash
It tugs at the string beans and teases the corn
And plays with the pickles until it is morn’!
It never gets tired, it never grows weak
Just keeps right on moving, week after week
It requires no gas and needs never to rest
It never falls short ‘cause it’s always the best!
It can take to the air like a seagull in flight
And drift with the ease of a child’s bright kite
It can choose to chase rainbows and leap lofty clouds
And jump over caverns and cities and towns!
If you look out your window it’s bound to be seen
This majestic perpetual motion machine
But don’t try to stop it, don’t ask it to halt
For this stubborn contraption is driven to a fault!
Captain Draggin, however, well he’s another sort
He’s tall and he’s thin and he’s fat and he’s short
He’s easy to spot with his head of green hair
And his short stubby legs that come two in a pair!
He needs his machine, his motion machine
To comply with his wish to be heard but not seen
For while his contraption is out moving ahead
Captain Draggin’s at home comfy curled up in bed!
He seldom goes out, he likes staying inside
Especially when his machine is outside for a ride
It suits him quite nicely, it suits him just fine
To let his perpetual machine pass the time!
Captain Draggin is home and all smiles today
Knowing his machine is outside hard at play
It makes him so happy, it makes him serene
It’s Captain Draggin’s perpetual motion machine!
___
It IS My Bag, Man . . .
Duffel Bag Memories
By Paul Chimera
In a day of disposable cameras, computers crying for replacement every couple of years, and other examples of engineered obsolescence, my trusty old black duffel bag remains pretty heroic.
You see, I’ve had my duffel bag since junior high. That makes it handily over 40 years old. Battle-warn and undeniably misshapen, its still rugged constitution is a marvel of old-fashioned craftsmanship.
“They don’t build ‘em like they used to,” adults would lament about then modern Pontiac sedans or particle board masquerading as real wood furniture. But when my parents handed me my duffel bag for gym class and especially for my diving days on the swim team, they never knew it would endure so improbably beyond its life expectancy.
Ounce for ounce, it’s as tough as a bulldozer, and – though slightly split in two corners – could still pull its weight, if it were asked to. It has, well, grit.
Unsightly by Today’s Standards
It’s an indefatigable old bag, nostalgically emblematic of a proud time when “made in America” meant something the rest of the world admired.
I can’t bring myself to part with it. Despite how – compared with today’s roomier, more flexible, more colorful canvas bags – it looks like the frumpy medical bags doctors would carry when they made that anachronism known as the house call.
By any measure, my old duffel bag is unsightly. Ugly might be more accurate. After all, look at it! Coal black vinyl exterior, scuffed and dusty and shriveled. An industrial-looking zipper whose steely teeth are menacing in the way they growl upon opening and closing, which now doesn’t come without a mighty tug.
The durable black plastic stirrup-like handles attach to rectangular metallic loops that fasten to the bag’s side, with stitching that remains admirably unraveled after more than four decades. It did a lot of tough duty in my hometown of Buffalo, New York.
The bag’s underside features five heavy-duty chrome studs – in each corner and one in the middle – all collaborating to render this bad boy battle-ready and poised to take no prisoners. It was designed for the big leagues, not for looking comely at the spa or health club.
Inside, its canvas sides are only slightly faded teal, and the granite-tough fiberboard bottom is a little cracked but stubbornly functional. That bag has carted more chlorine-soaked swim trunks, sweaty sneakers, wet towels, and foiled-wrapped bologna sandwiches than one could calculate.
Though it’s been empty for years, it’s packed with memories. Swim meets at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School and Kenmore East Senior High. My duffel bag, with “PC” boldly painted in white near the handles, journeyed with me to college, too. First at the University of Wisconsin, then for three more undergraduate years at Ohio University in Athens.
Those diving days found me on team bus trips to places like Racine, Wisconsin; Kalamazoo, Michigan, and other towns I’ve forgotten.
Of course, during all those junior and high school summers, and while on break from college, my dogged duffel bag worked tirelessly, masterfully performing the utilitarian task for which it was intended. It accompanied me to town-sponsored summer diving meets, Junior Olympics competitions, and family trips to the beach, both domestic and Canadian. We never made it to Europe or Mexico, but I’m sure if we had, my duffel bag would have continued to perform with aplomb.
Nostalgic Symbol
Many years later, before my wife and I upgraded our travel gear, it continued to see action, toting cameras and toothpaste and cans of cashews on more than a few memorable vacations and impromptu over-nights.
These days, though, my once dutiful duffel bag occupies a corner of a walk-in closet. The heavy lifting is over. It had a long run, far more than anyone could have imagined. It exceeded expectations like a decathlon champion.
My old black duffel bag is a nostalgic symbol of special years gone by. I could no more part with it than I could with the memories it reawakens every time I see it, peeking from behind sports coats, shirt and trousers that hang in front of it like a stage curtain.
Sometimes, when I look inside – maybe I left something behind? – I hear the splash of a wiry 14-year-old boy doing pike somersaults off the diving board. The sound of my parents’ cheering me on. And carefree family laughter I never want to forget. Just like my old black duffel bag itself, now sitting unceremoniously in the corner of my bedroom closet.
I think I’ll keep it around a few more years.
###
By Paul Chimera
In a day of disposable cameras, computers crying for replacement every couple of years, and other examples of engineered obsolescence, my trusty old black duffel bag remains pretty heroic.
You see, I’ve had my duffel bag since junior high. That makes it handily over 40 years old. Battle-warn and undeniably misshapen, its still rugged constitution is a marvel of old-fashioned craftsmanship.
“They don’t build ‘em like they used to,” adults would lament about then modern Pontiac sedans or particle board masquerading as real wood furniture. But when my parents handed me my duffel bag for gym class and especially for my diving days on the swim team, they never knew it would endure so improbably beyond its life expectancy.
Ounce for ounce, it’s as tough as a bulldozer, and – though slightly split in two corners – could still pull its weight, if it were asked to. It has, well, grit.
Unsightly by Today’s Standards
It’s an indefatigable old bag, nostalgically emblematic of a proud time when “made in America” meant something the rest of the world admired.
I can’t bring myself to part with it. Despite how – compared with today’s roomier, more flexible, more colorful canvas bags – it looks like the frumpy medical bags doctors would carry when they made that anachronism known as the house call.
By any measure, my old duffel bag is unsightly. Ugly might be more accurate. After all, look at it! Coal black vinyl exterior, scuffed and dusty and shriveled. An industrial-looking zipper whose steely teeth are menacing in the way they growl upon opening and closing, which now doesn’t come without a mighty tug.
The durable black plastic stirrup-like handles attach to rectangular metallic loops that fasten to the bag’s side, with stitching that remains admirably unraveled after more than four decades. It did a lot of tough duty in my hometown of Buffalo, New York.
The bag’s underside features five heavy-duty chrome studs – in each corner and one in the middle – all collaborating to render this bad boy battle-ready and poised to take no prisoners. It was designed for the big leagues, not for looking comely at the spa or health club.
Inside, its canvas sides are only slightly faded teal, and the granite-tough fiberboard bottom is a little cracked but stubbornly functional. That bag has carted more chlorine-soaked swim trunks, sweaty sneakers, wet towels, and foiled-wrapped bologna sandwiches than one could calculate.
Though it’s been empty for years, it’s packed with memories. Swim meets at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School and Kenmore East Senior High. My duffel bag, with “PC” boldly painted in white near the handles, journeyed with me to college, too. First at the University of Wisconsin, then for three more undergraduate years at Ohio University in Athens.
Those diving days found me on team bus trips to places like Racine, Wisconsin; Kalamazoo, Michigan, and other towns I’ve forgotten.
Of course, during all those junior and high school summers, and while on break from college, my dogged duffel bag worked tirelessly, masterfully performing the utilitarian task for which it was intended. It accompanied me to town-sponsored summer diving meets, Junior Olympics competitions, and family trips to the beach, both domestic and Canadian. We never made it to Europe or Mexico, but I’m sure if we had, my duffel bag would have continued to perform with aplomb.
Nostalgic Symbol
Many years later, before my wife and I upgraded our travel gear, it continued to see action, toting cameras and toothpaste and cans of cashews on more than a few memorable vacations and impromptu over-nights.
These days, though, my once dutiful duffel bag occupies a corner of a walk-in closet. The heavy lifting is over. It had a long run, far more than anyone could have imagined. It exceeded expectations like a decathlon champion.
My old black duffel bag is a nostalgic symbol of special years gone by. I could no more part with it than I could with the memories it reawakens every time I see it, peeking from behind sports coats, shirt and trousers that hang in front of it like a stage curtain.
Sometimes, when I look inside – maybe I left something behind? – I hear the splash of a wiry 14-year-old boy doing pike somersaults off the diving board. The sound of my parents’ cheering me on. And carefree family laughter I never want to forget. Just like my old black duffel bag itself, now sitting unceremoniously in the corner of my bedroom closet.
I think I’ll keep it around a few more years.
###
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Amazon Review of DALI DVD: Surrealistically Spot-On!
Customer Review
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Serious Dali for the Serious Dali Connoisseur, August 6, 2008
By Paul Chimera
The Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius
By Paul Chimera
One of the benefits of the passage of time, especially when it comes to as controversial and flamboyant a personality as Spanish Surrealist Master Salvador Dali, is that it allows us to gain perspective, jettison trivial side-show nonsense, and focus more appropriately on the serious body of work the artist has left behind.
If, therefore, you're looking for a lot of crazy, zany, performance-art antics from the madcap limp watchman of Surrealism, you're going to be a little disappointed. Refreshingly, this 75-minute documentary brilliantly shines a light on the more serious side of the Catalan painter, whose thoughts and creative expressions were deeply steeped in science.
Don't misunderstand, however. It would be impossible to have Salvador Dali the scientifically minded genius and painter, without also having Salvador Dali the eccentric showman. Each side of his personality fed the other, and what's that they say about the oh-so-fine line between madness and genius?
But The Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius is a long overdue treatment of Dali's career as it set out to harness, in a serious and inventive way, the various discoveries and phenomenon we've gained from the scientific community.
Personally, I think this is the best documentary ever made about Dali, and credit goes to filmmakers Joan Ubeda, Susi Marques, and Eli Pons, plus narrator Joseph Nuzzolo, president of The Salvador Dali Society, Inc. (www.dali.com), whose organization holds exclusive North American distribution rights to the film.
The video is heavy on classical music, making the presentation nearly as impressive on an auditory level as on a visual one. "The words and concepts used by scientists and the way they talked - it was like violin music to him," a co-narrator declares, adding that musical notes have a direct relationship with numbers: the numbers are science, the sound is art. You'll get more insights about that metaphor when you watch the film.
There are appearances from the likes of J.D. Watson, who together with Frederick Crick unraveled the double-helix genetic structure of the DNA molecule, and discusses the concept before Dali's monumental canvas, Galacidalicidesoxyribonucleicacid - a jaw-breaker of a moniker and the longest single-word title of any Dali painting. A delightful anecdote informs us that Watson once sent a letter to Dali, announcing, "The second brightest man in the world wishes to meet the brightest."
Great stuff!
We also learn how Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and theories of quantum mechanics suggest that relativity is determined by what the observer decides to observe. "Certain information always slips through our fingers, no matter how hard we seek it," we're told, and that realization must have greatly inspired Dali.
Rare footage abounds in this documentary, which - while intelligently focused on the serious scientific nexus between the laboratory and the studio - is smartly entertaining. This is not a college lecture hall with microphone and camera turned on, but rather a fast-paced, richly nuanced production that paints a picture of Dali as a man of science, while never losing the importance of pacing and drama that keep viewers wide awake in their seats.
If it were a book, it would not only be profoundly informative but simply a darn good read!
I was positively enthralled to see Dali in front of his breathtaking painting, The Sacrament of the Last Supper - one of his most famous works - explaining how he applied Rumanian mathematician Matila Gyka's principles of the Golden Section to the construction of this uber-precise oil on canvas. Standing with him is a man immortalized in a portrait by Dali: Chester Dale, the great collector of French Impressionist paintings, who donated Dali's Crucifixion to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Speaking of Crucifixion, which incorporates a hypercube fusing with the body of Christ, there's one scene in The Dali Dimension where Thomas Bonchott - a mathematician friend of Dali's and a pioneer in computer-generated images - discusses a paper hypercube. Narrator Nuzzolo reminds us, with a distinct passion and measured sense of drama in his voice, that "Dali had already painted a hypercube" 20 years earlier - suggesting how far ahead of his time the artist had always been.
The documentary transports us to Pubol, a town near Dali's Port Lligat home and of which he was officially named Marquis, and we're exposed to a brief explanation of Rene Thom's Catastrophe Theory. The curves of Thom's equation were depicted in what is considered Dali's last painting: The Swallow's Tail.
It's truly fascinating to observe, often for the first time, how this film shows us the direct connections between Dali's works and the scientific findings that influenced them.
One eye-opening highlight of The Dali Dimension is a congress of researchers who convened at the Teatru-Museu Dali (Dali-Theatre Museum) in Figueres, Spain, in 1985 - an important event Dali observed intently via closed-circuit TV, as he sat in his special room contiguous with the museum's grand foyer. The milestone event - which I had never known about or seen prior to the screening of this documentary - was organized by physicists from the University of Barcelona. The experts discussed Dali's immortal soft watches and the painter's creative debt to Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.
Sprinkled throughout The Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius are such scenes as workers unwrapping Dali's immense The Madonna of Port Lligat, which had to be hoisted through an upper floor window of the Carstairs Gallery when it arrived in New York from Europe; Dali discussing his thoughts about the genetic code; part of a revealing and amusing interview with journalist Mike Wallace; a glimpse of Dali's iconic Christ of St. John of the Cross being dusted off prior to an exhibition; and various views of Dali and the enigmatic Gala Dali, his wife, muse and leading model.
Little wonder this film took first prize in the Tele Film Festival in the Czech Republic in 2006, among a handful of other important industry honors. At the end, we see the Maestro himself - old, weak, but deeply grateful, who, over a TV screen, declares to the congress of physicists, artists and others at his Teatru-Museu Dali: "Thank you, my dear friends, for according me this great honor."
I've seen most every documentary film on Salvador Dali. This one, in my considered judgment, is the best.
###
Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Serious Dali for the Serious Dali Connoisseur, August 6, 2008
By Paul Chimera
The Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius
By Paul Chimera
One of the benefits of the passage of time, especially when it comes to as controversial and flamboyant a personality as Spanish Surrealist Master Salvador Dali, is that it allows us to gain perspective, jettison trivial side-show nonsense, and focus more appropriately on the serious body of work the artist has left behind.
If, therefore, you're looking for a lot of crazy, zany, performance-art antics from the madcap limp watchman of Surrealism, you're going to be a little disappointed. Refreshingly, this 75-minute documentary brilliantly shines a light on the more serious side of the Catalan painter, whose thoughts and creative expressions were deeply steeped in science.
Don't misunderstand, however. It would be impossible to have Salvador Dali the scientifically minded genius and painter, without also having Salvador Dali the eccentric showman. Each side of his personality fed the other, and what's that they say about the oh-so-fine line between madness and genius?
But The Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius is a long overdue treatment of Dali's career as it set out to harness, in a serious and inventive way, the various discoveries and phenomenon we've gained from the scientific community.
Personally, I think this is the best documentary ever made about Dali, and credit goes to filmmakers Joan Ubeda, Susi Marques, and Eli Pons, plus narrator Joseph Nuzzolo, president of The Salvador Dali Society, Inc. (www.dali.com), whose organization holds exclusive North American distribution rights to the film.
The video is heavy on classical music, making the presentation nearly as impressive on an auditory level as on a visual one. "The words and concepts used by scientists and the way they talked - it was like violin music to him," a co-narrator declares, adding that musical notes have a direct relationship with numbers: the numbers are science, the sound is art. You'll get more insights about that metaphor when you watch the film.
There are appearances from the likes of J.D. Watson, who together with Frederick Crick unraveled the double-helix genetic structure of the DNA molecule, and discusses the concept before Dali's monumental canvas, Galacidalicidesoxyribonucleicacid - a jaw-breaker of a moniker and the longest single-word title of any Dali painting. A delightful anecdote informs us that Watson once sent a letter to Dali, announcing, "The second brightest man in the world wishes to meet the brightest."
Great stuff!
We also learn how Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and theories of quantum mechanics suggest that relativity is determined by what the observer decides to observe. "Certain information always slips through our fingers, no matter how hard we seek it," we're told, and that realization must have greatly inspired Dali.
Rare footage abounds in this documentary, which - while intelligently focused on the serious scientific nexus between the laboratory and the studio - is smartly entertaining. This is not a college lecture hall with microphone and camera turned on, but rather a fast-paced, richly nuanced production that paints a picture of Dali as a man of science, while never losing the importance of pacing and drama that keep viewers wide awake in their seats.
If it were a book, it would not only be profoundly informative but simply a darn good read!
I was positively enthralled to see Dali in front of his breathtaking painting, The Sacrament of the Last Supper - one of his most famous works - explaining how he applied Rumanian mathematician Matila Gyka's principles of the Golden Section to the construction of this uber-precise oil on canvas. Standing with him is a man immortalized in a portrait by Dali: Chester Dale, the great collector of French Impressionist paintings, who donated Dali's Crucifixion to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Speaking of Crucifixion, which incorporates a hypercube fusing with the body of Christ, there's one scene in The Dali Dimension where Thomas Bonchott - a mathematician friend of Dali's and a pioneer in computer-generated images - discusses a paper hypercube. Narrator Nuzzolo reminds us, with a distinct passion and measured sense of drama in his voice, that "Dali had already painted a hypercube" 20 years earlier - suggesting how far ahead of his time the artist had always been.
The documentary transports us to Pubol, a town near Dali's Port Lligat home and of which he was officially named Marquis, and we're exposed to a brief explanation of Rene Thom's Catastrophe Theory. The curves of Thom's equation were depicted in what is considered Dali's last painting: The Swallow's Tail.
It's truly fascinating to observe, often for the first time, how this film shows us the direct connections between Dali's works and the scientific findings that influenced them.
One eye-opening highlight of The Dali Dimension is a congress of researchers who convened at the Teatru-Museu Dali (Dali-Theatre Museum) in Figueres, Spain, in 1985 - an important event Dali observed intently via closed-circuit TV, as he sat in his special room contiguous with the museum's grand foyer. The milestone event - which I had never known about or seen prior to the screening of this documentary - was organized by physicists from the University of Barcelona. The experts discussed Dali's immortal soft watches and the painter's creative debt to Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.
Sprinkled throughout The Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius are such scenes as workers unwrapping Dali's immense The Madonna of Port Lligat, which had to be hoisted through an upper floor window of the Carstairs Gallery when it arrived in New York from Europe; Dali discussing his thoughts about the genetic code; part of a revealing and amusing interview with journalist Mike Wallace; a glimpse of Dali's iconic Christ of St. John of the Cross being dusted off prior to an exhibition; and various views of Dali and the enigmatic Gala Dali, his wife, muse and leading model.
Little wonder this film took first prize in the Tele Film Festival in the Czech Republic in 2006, among a handful of other important industry honors. At the end, we see the Maestro himself - old, weak, but deeply grateful, who, over a TV screen, declares to the congress of physicists, artists and others at his Teatru-Museu Dali: "Thank you, my dear friends, for according me this great honor."
I've seen most every documentary film on Salvador Dali. This one, in my considered judgment, is the best.
###
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Wednesday, December 23, 2009
The College E-Paper I Mentor . . .
I'm faculty adviser (mentor) to The INSIGHT -- the online student newspaper at Daemen College in Amherst, New York, near Buffalo. Take a look-see!
http://www.daemen.edu/studentlife/insight/Pages/default.aspx
http://www.daemen.edu/studentlife/insight/Pages/default.aspx
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Tip of the Iceberg . . .
The pair of articles here will give you just a glimpse of my writing style. The tip of the iceberg, as it were.
But there's plenty more. Literally hundreds more: news and feature articles; marketing materials; web site copy; even a book I wrote about journalistic interviewing.
I'm an all-around writer. Virtually anything non-fiction (except technical writing. I don't do technical writing). Everything else is cool -- from speeches to sell sheets, investigative stories to light human interest fare, newsletters to web sites, press releases to white papers, brochures to advertisements.
I'm equally comfortable and creative when writing for the ear, too: radio & TV spots; corporate videos -- that sort of thing.
Oh, I'm also an adjunct professor of media-writing at a private 4-year college. And I've given many seminars on writing in the workplace.
Contact me at: chimera1@verizon.net. I'll help you all-around.
Thanks.
But there's plenty more. Literally hundreds more: news and feature articles; marketing materials; web site copy; even a book I wrote about journalistic interviewing.
I'm an all-around writer. Virtually anything non-fiction (except technical writing. I don't do technical writing). Everything else is cool -- from speeches to sell sheets, investigative stories to light human interest fare, newsletters to web sites, press releases to white papers, brochures to advertisements.
I'm equally comfortable and creative when writing for the ear, too: radio & TV spots; corporate videos -- that sort of thing.
Oh, I'm also an adjunct professor of media-writing at a private 4-year college. And I've given many seminars on writing in the workplace.
Contact me at: chimera1@verizon.net. I'll help you all-around.
Thanks.
Always Wanted to Profile Someone Who Gets Paid to Eat!
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
An Interview with Janice Okun
By Paul Chimera
All photos in this article by Jim Bush.
As much of Janice Okun as we can reveal. All photos in this article by Jim Bush.
“I’ve had a wonderful time,” Groucho Marx once remarked, “but this wasn’t it.”
Food critic Janice Okun can relate.
She remembers one of her biggest disappointments, when she and a group of fellow restaurant critics dined together in Lyon, France. Master chef Paul Bocuse was the evening’s impresario, and they were sure they were in for a culinary tour d’ force at his four-star restaurant.
Instead, only the first course dazzled. It was a wild mushroom soup served with a cap of puff pastry. Bocuse had originally developed the dish for French president Mitterand. “It was fabulous,” Okun conceded. “But it all went down hill from there.” The food was so undistinguished that neither Okun nor her companions can remember the main course. They do remember that a waiter noisily cleaned and stacked plates right at their table throughout the meal.
And so Janice Okun—normally mild-mannered restaurant reviewer for The Buffalo News—got rowdy with her friends. The food editors began sharing restaurant horror stories — admittedly under the influence of generously flowing wine. “I’m sure they wanted us to leave,” Okun reminisces with a slightly mischievous smile.
The following day she ran into the celebrated chef at an outdoor market. To his query about how she enjoyed last evening’s repast, she called it as she saw it: she’s had wonderful dining experiences, but, well, this wasn’t one of them.
“There’s a restaurant in this area for every mood, appetite, and level of budget,” Okun believes. “We’re blessed with a huge variety of good restaurants here, which is amazing for a mid-size city that’s not very economically sound.”
Dining out for Janice Okun isn’t quite like it is for the rest of us. In the nice-work-if-you-can-get-it department, her job takes the cake: getting paid to eat at restaurants. She’s been on the food beat at the News for twenty-six years.
It’s a unique career, and she loves it. “I like to think I’m helping readers spend their money wisely. My aim is to get people thinking about the food they eat—to become more demanding,” Okun explains. “They’ll then ask more of restaurants. And that’s good. Criticism improves restaurants in the community.”
Dining out is huge business. The National Restaurant Association reports that Americans are spending a staggering $1 billion per day in restaurants!
A healthy share of that collective check is being picked up by Western New York’s thriving food culture. “There’s a restaurant in this area for every mood, appetite, and level of budget,” Okun believes. “We’re blessed with a huge variety of good restaurants here, which is amazing for a mid-size city that’s not very economically sound.”
Enjoying Buffalo’s rich variety of cuisines is one thing. Publicly declaring whether a restaurant gets a four-star “excellent” rating, or the dreaded single-star badge of disrepute is quite another. It’s a responsibility a lot of people wouldn’t want.
How does she deal with pressure from restaurants?
“No matter who calls me to review a restaurant, I’m not compelled to review them. I decide what and when,” insists Okun, who’s of Russian descent and speaks forthrightly yet with a disarming manner that’s more grandmotherly than veteran journalist in tone.
Indeed, she is a grandmother—to 7-year-old William, “the world’s worst eater.” Her daughter, Jane Seidenberg Lenk, lives in Portland, Oregon, where she’s program director of a school for developmentally challenged children. Her son Robert J. Seidenberg is president of Mammoth Records in Los Angeles. And her husband of 46 years, Randolf (“Bud”) Seidenberg, is a manufacturer’s representative for non-prescription sunglasses.
Okun emphasizes that Buffalo News management take a hands-off policy when it comes to who gets reviewed—whether they advertise in the city’s monopoly daily newspaper or not. She’s thus free to tell us that the comfort food at Hennesseys Irish Pub in Williamsville “is mostly pretty bland.” Or to corral Buffalo Police officers as taste-testers—ranking Krispy Kreme donuts number one, while dunking long-time Buffalo mainstay, Tim Horton.
That donut drama drew the ire of at least one News reader: “Obviously sponsored by Krispy Kreme to make Tim Hortons look bad, your article was a mockery of honest journalism,” he wrote. To which Buffalo News editor Margaret Sullivan responded in a column: “I doubt that anything will convince him otherwise, but I’ll say it anyway: That’s not how it happens around here ... whether the subject is doughnuts or presidents, we do everything in our power to play it straight.”
Said Okun, reviewing her long career here: “There have been so many restaurant flaps, I can’t remember them very well. None were very serious, though.”
“She’s well respected within the newsroom,” says Dan Herbeck, who reports on federal courts for the paper. “She seldom slams a restaurant. She doesn’t want to ruin a restaurant’s reputation with one review.”
But Okun, who’s a regional panelist to help select the James Beard Foundation Restaurant Awards, rejects the notion that her pen is powerful enough to irreparably skewer a restaurant. “I don’t feel a reviewer can close a restaurant,” she says. “I think a restaurant closes a restaurant.” Besides, she reasons, “I can only tell people what I like or enjoy. They may or may not agree with me. The words are not written in stone.”
Tom Sietsema, restaurant critic at the Washington Post, concurs. “In this day and age, with so many sources of restaurant information, readers have a lot more material by which to gauge a restaurant,” he told me. “The lead reviewer on a primary newspaper is listened to, but I have to agree with Janice—a bad restaurant closes itself ... Yet there are also bad restaurants that go on and on and on!”
Okun, who has a home economics degree from Cornell University and has traveled extensively, says she looks at all price ranges, neighborhoods, and types of restaurants to give readers the broadest possible picture. “When a new restaurant opens, people are curious about it. I write from the point of view of the diner. I don’t see why diners shouldn’t have perfection.”
“I’m interested in what they say when restaurants call to complain. But I tell them I call it as I see it, and that I’ll be back. It’s all my opinion. What gives me the right to do this? I’m eating! I have long experience tasting food. I can bring an objectivity to it. And I’m more adventurous that the average diner.”
Okun always dines with a companion or group and works at maintaining her anonymity. She has a credit card in a bogus name—standard operating procedure for “foodies.” And due to Caller I.D., she no longer makes dinner reservations from her desk at One News Plaza.
As much of Janice Okun as we can reveal. All photos in this article by Jim Bush.
She makes only mental notes while engaged in a meal, but may jot down some observations when she gets to her car. Having others with her allows wider food sampling and draws less attention to her.
“She’s reviewed us a couple of times, with a two-and-a-half-star rating. And she once did an ‘A-Team’ article that put us on the team as being a traditional Italian restaurant that’s consistent, with no surprises,” says Lee Federiconi, co-owner of Lebro’s Restaurant in Amherst. “She’s pretty objective. But if she gave me bad press, I might be on the other side of the fence!”
Which brings up a good point: how does she handle irate restaurant owners who feel she’s done them wrong? “I don’t feel any pressure from them,” she says confidently, fidgeting with a paper napkin during an interview in the Buffalo News cafeteria. Her nervous energy manages to knead the napkin into a spindly strip.
“I’m interested in what they say when restaurants call to complain. But I tell them I call it as I see it, and that I’ll be back. It’s all my opinion. What gives me the right to do this? I’m eating! I have long experience tasting food. I can bring an objectivity to it. And I’m more adventurous that the average diner.”
The secret to most dishes, she opines, is balance. No single flavor should dominate. Texture is equally important. “Meat should not be mushy, and neither should pasta, which mustn’t be overwhelmed with sauce.”
Okun’s food adventures have taken her to some far-off places, sometimes with unusual results.
She went to India convinced she wouldn’t like the food. And friends warned her about the drinking water. “I went with some other food editors and brought 50 bottled waters from Wegman’s. But I found bottled water everywhere in India, and a boy on our bus sold it. So I ended up buying from him. At the end of the trip, I still had 40 unopened Wegman’s bottles. I left them behind.” She found the food fabulous, by the way—“and, no, it didn’t make me sick!”
Then there was the case of the dubious lobster in Mexico. She, her husband, and son were dining al fresco at Cuyuca-22 in Acapulco. Their waiter announced he had only three lobsters left. That suited them just fine.
But when they were about to be served, the waiter dropped one of the lobsters on the ground. He picked it up, disappeared briefly, then returned. “We’ll, um, just share the two lobsters,” they told the waiter. To their horror, when they were leaving and another American couple was seated, they over-heard the same waiter declare, “Good evening. We have one lobster left.” The Okuns never said a word—just a quick “Adios!”
In 1979, Okun visited mainland China — one of the first American food editors to travel there. It was her first time eating snake. Despite conventional wisdom that compares the serpent to chicken, she found it tasteless. But when she was offered baked guinea pig in Brazil, she drew the line and opted for something a bit more appetizing. Even an adventurous palette has limits.
What the News food critic loves, she states unabashedly, is junk food. Charcoal-broiled hot dogs are a stand-out. A bologna and onion sandwich is her top choice from The Hatch on Buffalo’s waterfront. She’s also crazy about caramelized onions. “I have no ‘favorite’ food, though,” she notes. “I’m practically omnivorous. What I don’t like is raw carrots. They give me the hiccups. I like them in soups and stews, though.”
“Vongerichten, who owns...the superb Jean Georges restaurant in Manhattan (in the Trump International Hotel) is a bona fide culinary genius. But I can’t believe too many of us are going to search out the tamarind puree called for in his Veal Stew with Pineapple and Tomato.”
Okun, who did stints as hostess of the “Plain & Fancy Cookin’” show on Channel 4 and as assistant director of the Dairy Council of the Niagara Frontier, considers herself a good cook, but doesn’t do much of it these days, what with her children gone and spending so much time in restaurants. Tough duty.
She also has an irrepressible sweet tooth and vows she’ll come back in her next life as a pastry chef, recalling dreamily the pear tart with caramel sauce she had the night before.
Since joining The Buffalo News in 1974, Okun has observed a number of trends and astonishing growth in Buffalo’s cuisine and restaurant scene. “Immodestly, I’ll say it’s in large measure due to restaurant criticism plus a huge national movement and interest in food.”
At the time she came to the paper, there wasn’t much interest in fresh vegetables—in restaurants or homes, she recalls. “It was usually just peas, green beans, and corn. You never saw anything else. Now look at the variety we have! Even the most modest restaurants have three kinds of lettuce today.
“No one ever ate fish either—except fish fries. And it was usually frozen, due to the limited transportation systems. These days the general interest level has peaked. Chefs today are heroes. Now you have the Food Network on TV. In Buffalo we have a whole generation of chefs, thanks in part to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park.”
Okun served as national president of the Association of Food Journalists and is co-editor of “The Best Places to Eat in America,” published by Harper & Row. She not only does restaurant reviews for the News, but covers consumer and nutrition issues and writes culinary features. None stands out in her mind as one she regrets or that elicited undue praise or disdain. “It’s a body of work. It is what it is. I’ve never had the belief I was unfair.”
She pleads guilty, however, to criticism voiced by some that she rarely discusses the quality of a wine list or what wines she and her meal mates ordered and how well they accorded with their dinner. Okun responds with characteristic candor: “It’s true, we don’t spend as much time on our wines as we should. There’s limited space in the paper, for one thing,” she says by way of partial justification, yet acknowledging this may be an area she and her editor, Susan LoTempio, may need to pay more attention to.
While on the subject, she favors Amarone, “a powerful (red) wine from Italy that has an almost bittersweet flavor. And it costs a lot.” She doesn’t much care for white wine, but leans toward two from the Loire in France—Sancerre and Pouilly Fume—“which are tangy but dry.”
An occupational hazard is the battle of the waist line. She admits it’s “a constant, terrible problem.” On evenings she’s on assignment, she tries not to eat all day. As to her weight, one colleague at the News put it this way: “She’s not fat, she’s not thin.”
Okun’s story ideas are as limitless as the foods she gets paid to eat and critique (her sojourns to foreign lands are bankrolled through her own resources, not by The Buffalo News). And she doesn’t sugar coat her opinions. In one piece on chefs’ cookbooks, she wrote, “Vongerichten, who owns ... the superb Jean Georges restaurant in Manhattan (in the Trump International Hotel) is a bona fide culinary genius. But I can’t believe too many of us are going to search out the tamarind puree called for in his Veal Stew with Pineapple and Tomato. Let’s face it, there is food that tastes better in fancy restaurants and food that tastes better from a home kitchen.”
In a review of the Restaurant at the Calumet downtown, while adoring her dinner there, Okun groused, “... desserts were a bit of a letdown here. They were presented on a tray, a technique that has probably outlived its appeal. (Things always look so embalmed.)”
Her writing is laced with levity and a dash of sarcasm, echoing her easy sense of humor.
Janice Okun’s advice to anyone new to the food criticism beat is, “Eat, eat, eat everything! Try to find unusual dishes ... figure out what makes them distinctive. Also,” she dead-pans, “join a health club.”
Paul Chimera is an independent writer and editor, based in Amherst.
An Interview with Janice Okun
By Paul Chimera
All photos in this article by Jim Bush.
As much of Janice Okun as we can reveal. All photos in this article by Jim Bush.
“I’ve had a wonderful time,” Groucho Marx once remarked, “but this wasn’t it.”
Food critic Janice Okun can relate.
She remembers one of her biggest disappointments, when she and a group of fellow restaurant critics dined together in Lyon, France. Master chef Paul Bocuse was the evening’s impresario, and they were sure they were in for a culinary tour d’ force at his four-star restaurant.
Instead, only the first course dazzled. It was a wild mushroom soup served with a cap of puff pastry. Bocuse had originally developed the dish for French president Mitterand. “It was fabulous,” Okun conceded. “But it all went down hill from there.” The food was so undistinguished that neither Okun nor her companions can remember the main course. They do remember that a waiter noisily cleaned and stacked plates right at their table throughout the meal.
And so Janice Okun—normally mild-mannered restaurant reviewer for The Buffalo News—got rowdy with her friends. The food editors began sharing restaurant horror stories — admittedly under the influence of generously flowing wine. “I’m sure they wanted us to leave,” Okun reminisces with a slightly mischievous smile.
The following day she ran into the celebrated chef at an outdoor market. To his query about how she enjoyed last evening’s repast, she called it as she saw it: she’s had wonderful dining experiences, but, well, this wasn’t one of them.
“There’s a restaurant in this area for every mood, appetite, and level of budget,” Okun believes. “We’re blessed with a huge variety of good restaurants here, which is amazing for a mid-size city that’s not very economically sound.”
Dining out for Janice Okun isn’t quite like it is for the rest of us. In the nice-work-if-you-can-get-it department, her job takes the cake: getting paid to eat at restaurants. She’s been on the food beat at the News for twenty-six years.
It’s a unique career, and she loves it. “I like to think I’m helping readers spend their money wisely. My aim is to get people thinking about the food they eat—to become more demanding,” Okun explains. “They’ll then ask more of restaurants. And that’s good. Criticism improves restaurants in the community.”
Dining out is huge business. The National Restaurant Association reports that Americans are spending a staggering $1 billion per day in restaurants!
A healthy share of that collective check is being picked up by Western New York’s thriving food culture. “There’s a restaurant in this area for every mood, appetite, and level of budget,” Okun believes. “We’re blessed with a huge variety of good restaurants here, which is amazing for a mid-size city that’s not very economically sound.”
Enjoying Buffalo’s rich variety of cuisines is one thing. Publicly declaring whether a restaurant gets a four-star “excellent” rating, or the dreaded single-star badge of disrepute is quite another. It’s a responsibility a lot of people wouldn’t want.
How does she deal with pressure from restaurants?
“No matter who calls me to review a restaurant, I’m not compelled to review them. I decide what and when,” insists Okun, who’s of Russian descent and speaks forthrightly yet with a disarming manner that’s more grandmotherly than veteran journalist in tone.
Indeed, she is a grandmother—to 7-year-old William, “the world’s worst eater.” Her daughter, Jane Seidenberg Lenk, lives in Portland, Oregon, where she’s program director of a school for developmentally challenged children. Her son Robert J. Seidenberg is president of Mammoth Records in Los Angeles. And her husband of 46 years, Randolf (“Bud”) Seidenberg, is a manufacturer’s representative for non-prescription sunglasses.
Okun emphasizes that Buffalo News management take a hands-off policy when it comes to who gets reviewed—whether they advertise in the city’s monopoly daily newspaper or not. She’s thus free to tell us that the comfort food at Hennesseys Irish Pub in Williamsville “is mostly pretty bland.” Or to corral Buffalo Police officers as taste-testers—ranking Krispy Kreme donuts number one, while dunking long-time Buffalo mainstay, Tim Horton.
That donut drama drew the ire of at least one News reader: “Obviously sponsored by Krispy Kreme to make Tim Hortons look bad, your article was a mockery of honest journalism,” he wrote. To which Buffalo News editor Margaret Sullivan responded in a column: “I doubt that anything will convince him otherwise, but I’ll say it anyway: That’s not how it happens around here ... whether the subject is doughnuts or presidents, we do everything in our power to play it straight.”
Said Okun, reviewing her long career here: “There have been so many restaurant flaps, I can’t remember them very well. None were very serious, though.”
“She’s well respected within the newsroom,” says Dan Herbeck, who reports on federal courts for the paper. “She seldom slams a restaurant. She doesn’t want to ruin a restaurant’s reputation with one review.”
But Okun, who’s a regional panelist to help select the James Beard Foundation Restaurant Awards, rejects the notion that her pen is powerful enough to irreparably skewer a restaurant. “I don’t feel a reviewer can close a restaurant,” she says. “I think a restaurant closes a restaurant.” Besides, she reasons, “I can only tell people what I like or enjoy. They may or may not agree with me. The words are not written in stone.”
Tom Sietsema, restaurant critic at the Washington Post, concurs. “In this day and age, with so many sources of restaurant information, readers have a lot more material by which to gauge a restaurant,” he told me. “The lead reviewer on a primary newspaper is listened to, but I have to agree with Janice—a bad restaurant closes itself ... Yet there are also bad restaurants that go on and on and on!”
Okun, who has a home economics degree from Cornell University and has traveled extensively, says she looks at all price ranges, neighborhoods, and types of restaurants to give readers the broadest possible picture. “When a new restaurant opens, people are curious about it. I write from the point of view of the diner. I don’t see why diners shouldn’t have perfection.”
“I’m interested in what they say when restaurants call to complain. But I tell them I call it as I see it, and that I’ll be back. It’s all my opinion. What gives me the right to do this? I’m eating! I have long experience tasting food. I can bring an objectivity to it. And I’m more adventurous that the average diner.”
Okun always dines with a companion or group and works at maintaining her anonymity. She has a credit card in a bogus name—standard operating procedure for “foodies.” And due to Caller I.D., she no longer makes dinner reservations from her desk at One News Plaza.
As much of Janice Okun as we can reveal. All photos in this article by Jim Bush.
She makes only mental notes while engaged in a meal, but may jot down some observations when she gets to her car. Having others with her allows wider food sampling and draws less attention to her.
“She’s reviewed us a couple of times, with a two-and-a-half-star rating. And she once did an ‘A-Team’ article that put us on the team as being a traditional Italian restaurant that’s consistent, with no surprises,” says Lee Federiconi, co-owner of Lebro’s Restaurant in Amherst. “She’s pretty objective. But if she gave me bad press, I might be on the other side of the fence!”
Which brings up a good point: how does she handle irate restaurant owners who feel she’s done them wrong? “I don’t feel any pressure from them,” she says confidently, fidgeting with a paper napkin during an interview in the Buffalo News cafeteria. Her nervous energy manages to knead the napkin into a spindly strip.
“I’m interested in what they say when restaurants call to complain. But I tell them I call it as I see it, and that I’ll be back. It’s all my opinion. What gives me the right to do this? I’m eating! I have long experience tasting food. I can bring an objectivity to it. And I’m more adventurous that the average diner.”
The secret to most dishes, she opines, is balance. No single flavor should dominate. Texture is equally important. “Meat should not be mushy, and neither should pasta, which mustn’t be overwhelmed with sauce.”
Okun’s food adventures have taken her to some far-off places, sometimes with unusual results.
She went to India convinced she wouldn’t like the food. And friends warned her about the drinking water. “I went with some other food editors and brought 50 bottled waters from Wegman’s. But I found bottled water everywhere in India, and a boy on our bus sold it. So I ended up buying from him. At the end of the trip, I still had 40 unopened Wegman’s bottles. I left them behind.” She found the food fabulous, by the way—“and, no, it didn’t make me sick!”
Then there was the case of the dubious lobster in Mexico. She, her husband, and son were dining al fresco at Cuyuca-22 in Acapulco. Their waiter announced he had only three lobsters left. That suited them just fine.
But when they were about to be served, the waiter dropped one of the lobsters on the ground. He picked it up, disappeared briefly, then returned. “We’ll, um, just share the two lobsters,” they told the waiter. To their horror, when they were leaving and another American couple was seated, they over-heard the same waiter declare, “Good evening. We have one lobster left.” The Okuns never said a word—just a quick “Adios!”
In 1979, Okun visited mainland China — one of the first American food editors to travel there. It was her first time eating snake. Despite conventional wisdom that compares the serpent to chicken, she found it tasteless. But when she was offered baked guinea pig in Brazil, she drew the line and opted for something a bit more appetizing. Even an adventurous palette has limits.
What the News food critic loves, she states unabashedly, is junk food. Charcoal-broiled hot dogs are a stand-out. A bologna and onion sandwich is her top choice from The Hatch on Buffalo’s waterfront. She’s also crazy about caramelized onions. “I have no ‘favorite’ food, though,” she notes. “I’m practically omnivorous. What I don’t like is raw carrots. They give me the hiccups. I like them in soups and stews, though.”
“Vongerichten, who owns...the superb Jean Georges restaurant in Manhattan (in the Trump International Hotel) is a bona fide culinary genius. But I can’t believe too many of us are going to search out the tamarind puree called for in his Veal Stew with Pineapple and Tomato.”
Okun, who did stints as hostess of the “Plain & Fancy Cookin’” show on Channel 4 and as assistant director of the Dairy Council of the Niagara Frontier, considers herself a good cook, but doesn’t do much of it these days, what with her children gone and spending so much time in restaurants. Tough duty.
She also has an irrepressible sweet tooth and vows she’ll come back in her next life as a pastry chef, recalling dreamily the pear tart with caramel sauce she had the night before.
Since joining The Buffalo News in 1974, Okun has observed a number of trends and astonishing growth in Buffalo’s cuisine and restaurant scene. “Immodestly, I’ll say it’s in large measure due to restaurant criticism plus a huge national movement and interest in food.”
At the time she came to the paper, there wasn’t much interest in fresh vegetables—in restaurants or homes, she recalls. “It was usually just peas, green beans, and corn. You never saw anything else. Now look at the variety we have! Even the most modest restaurants have three kinds of lettuce today.
“No one ever ate fish either—except fish fries. And it was usually frozen, due to the limited transportation systems. These days the general interest level has peaked. Chefs today are heroes. Now you have the Food Network on TV. In Buffalo we have a whole generation of chefs, thanks in part to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park.”
Okun served as national president of the Association of Food Journalists and is co-editor of “The Best Places to Eat in America,” published by Harper & Row. She not only does restaurant reviews for the News, but covers consumer and nutrition issues and writes culinary features. None stands out in her mind as one she regrets or that elicited undue praise or disdain. “It’s a body of work. It is what it is. I’ve never had the belief I was unfair.”
She pleads guilty, however, to criticism voiced by some that she rarely discusses the quality of a wine list or what wines she and her meal mates ordered and how well they accorded with their dinner. Okun responds with characteristic candor: “It’s true, we don’t spend as much time on our wines as we should. There’s limited space in the paper, for one thing,” she says by way of partial justification, yet acknowledging this may be an area she and her editor, Susan LoTempio, may need to pay more attention to.
While on the subject, she favors Amarone, “a powerful (red) wine from Italy that has an almost bittersweet flavor. And it costs a lot.” She doesn’t much care for white wine, but leans toward two from the Loire in France—Sancerre and Pouilly Fume—“which are tangy but dry.”
An occupational hazard is the battle of the waist line. She admits it’s “a constant, terrible problem.” On evenings she’s on assignment, she tries not to eat all day. As to her weight, one colleague at the News put it this way: “She’s not fat, she’s not thin.”
Okun’s story ideas are as limitless as the foods she gets paid to eat and critique (her sojourns to foreign lands are bankrolled through her own resources, not by The Buffalo News). And she doesn’t sugar coat her opinions. In one piece on chefs’ cookbooks, she wrote, “Vongerichten, who owns ... the superb Jean Georges restaurant in Manhattan (in the Trump International Hotel) is a bona fide culinary genius. But I can’t believe too many of us are going to search out the tamarind puree called for in his Veal Stew with Pineapple and Tomato. Let’s face it, there is food that tastes better in fancy restaurants and food that tastes better from a home kitchen.”
In a review of the Restaurant at the Calumet downtown, while adoring her dinner there, Okun groused, “... desserts were a bit of a letdown here. They were presented on a tray, a technique that has probably outlived its appeal. (Things always look so embalmed.)”
Her writing is laced with levity and a dash of sarcasm, echoing her easy sense of humor.
Janice Okun’s advice to anyone new to the food criticism beat is, “Eat, eat, eat everything! Try to find unusual dishes ... figure out what makes them distinctive. Also,” she dead-pans, “join a health club.”
Paul Chimera is an independent writer and editor, based in Amherst.
Earthquake Story Shakes it Up in Buffalo SPREE Magazine
COOL STUFF
Tracking ‘the big ones’
By Paul Chimera
Photos courtesy of Dr. Robert Jacobi,
University at Buffalo.
Buffalo native Cheryl Freed, who’s been living in Los Angeles for twenty-seven years, remembers it all too well.
“The Northridge quake of 1994 felt like it was never going to stop. It was scary as hell. I was under my dining room table for what felt like an eternity, but lasted only about a half-minute or so,” she recalls. “A lot of my friends had significant damage. I was lucky: one glass slid off the counter into the sink, and my hot water heater started leaking.
“That was early on a Monday morning,” adds Freed, a speech/language pathologist with family in the Town of Tonawanda. “The following Saturday afternoon, as I was in a movie theater, we had a sizable aftershock. It rattled everyone’s nerves and heightened everyone’s awareness as to where emergency exits are in all public places.”
During the notorious 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Police Sgt. Jesse Brown Cook observed the chaos downtown: “All about us, houses were tumbling, and falling walls and chimneys and cornices were crushing men and horses in the street. The district at that hour was crowded with produce wagons, and through the uproar of the earthquake, you could hear the cries of people and the whinnying of horses that were hurt or killed.”
Meanwhile, back in Buffalo, we check weather reports for impending snowstorms. We’re mindful of the occasional flash flood alert. We watch out for that rare funnel cloud over land or water. But thank god we don’t have to concern ourselves with something as unexpected and unforgiving as an earthquake. Right?
Not so fast.
There’s something you should know: the Buffalo region is situated on a significant fault line, known as the Clarendon-Linden Fault System. This seismic zone runs from Lake Ontario southward to Rushford Lake in Allegany County, cutting west of Rochester and through such Genesee and Wyoming County towns as Batavia, Linden, Attica, Dale, and Pike.
Exactly what is an earthquake? And could we find ourselves in the same boat our city did on September 4, 1945, when, according to a news report at the time, “Startled Buffalonians, when they felt their beds shaking and saw pictures dancing on their walls … wondered if the city was being rocket-bombed”? That earthquake was centered midway between Massena, New York, and Cornwall, Ontario, causing an estimated $2 million damage.
An earthquake is the shaking of the ground, caused by an abrupt shift of rock along a fracture in the Earth. It’s called a fault, and within seconds a quake releases stress that has slowly accumulated within the rock, sometimes over hundreds of years. Dr. Robert Jacobi, a geology professor at the University at Buffalo, acknowledges that “nobody’s sure why the Earth has such stress, but it does.” What he does know is there are hundreds of statewide faults, “maybe thousands of them. No one would believe us, if we didn’t have all these faults. Swarms of them.” Clarendon-Linden, he points out, is clearly the more active one.
Just how seriously seismic is Western New York? What has history taught us? Should we be worried, or merely curious? Answers vary, depending on whom you consult. Mark Castner runs the Braun Seismograph Station at Canisius College. “We do have and feel earthquakes in Western New York. Is there a major fault in Western New York? No,” Castner says.
Jacobi views things differently. He cites a 1997 Southern Ontario report by the Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada (whose board he served on). Probability studies were conducted of what magnitude earthquake might occur in different regions. Regarding the Clarendon-Linden Fault System—whose epicenter you drive over when you travel east on the thruway, just past Genesee Community College in Batavia—the Ontario study predicted a forty percent probability there will be a 6.5 magnitude earthquake here … sometime.
The “if” is somewhat predictable; it’s the “when” that everyone wishes scientists could answer. “We think we know where the faults are,” Jacobi states. “The question is, how many are seismically active, and to what extent?” Some answers came with a shake and a shutter on August 12, 1929, in nearby Attica, when 250 chimneys were toppled after strong shock waves. According to the World Data Center for Seismology in Denver, Colorado, “There was some damage at Batavia and other points at similar distances. A wall was cracked at Sayre, Pennsylvania. The earthquake was felt throughout most of New York and the New England states, northeastern Ohio, northern Pennsylvania, and southern Ontario.”
Jacobi notes that, if that forty percent Canadian-based prediction of a quake along the Clarendon-Linden fault system were to occur, data suggest it would likely be a 6.5 magnitude. By comparison, a 6.5 magnitude quake struck Sylmar, California, in 1971, causing a hospital wing to collapse. A 6.7 “event” collapsed an overpass in Kobe, Japan, in 1995, and a 7.1 earthquake in 1989 brought down the I-880 bridge in Oakland, California, killing forty-one motorists.
It’s important to understand, Canisius’s Castner explains, that there are three magnitude scales, consistent with the original Richter Scale. Going from a 5.0 to a 6.0 magnitude means thirty times more energy at the 6.0 level. “It was a 7.0 quake in California during the 1989 World Series. If there were a 5.0 magnitude quake in Youngstown, Ohio, that would be 1/900th the amount of energy of the California quake,” Castner notes.
Inevitably, there are political tremors shrouding earthquake talk here. The Allegany County Board of Legislators got involved when the nexus of nuclear waste and seismology made headlines. A front-page story in the Buffalo News, Nov. 13, 1989, reported that “a major fault system cuts through Allegany County, where three sites are being considered for storing low-level nuclear waste, so more study is needed before a decision is made on a storage site, two University at Buffalo geologists say.
“‘The evidence there is a major fault system raises the potential for problems of seismic activity,’ says [Dr. John] Fountain … ‘The active seismic potential must be determined prior to any further action on that site.’ According to the report, the fault is actually ‘two major fault systems,’ known as the Clarendon-Linden Fault System.”
Scientists seem to agree that the recurrence rate—the interval between earthquakes—is so low (often hundreds of years) that earthquake prediction is virtually impossible. “You can predict that you’ll have a 7.0 magnitude quake—every 800 years,” says Jacobi. Files from the Peoples History Union list significant earthquakes in our region’s history, including one on September 20, 1946, registered in Niagara Falls, which geologists later fingered as weakening a fault behind the Schoellkopf Power Station in the Niagara Gorge, promoting its collapse ten years later.
A more recent event occurred May 25, 1996, estimated at 3.0 magnitude and felt mainly in North Buffalo and Tonawanda. If the vantage point of so much of this is hindsight, it may be due to the dearth of seismographs here. Besides the one at Canisius College, there’s one at Mount Morris Dam in the Genesee River gorge, and another at SUNY-Geneseo. “The decisions made are political in nature and not based on science,” laments professor Jacobi. “It’s based on how much money society thinks it can spend on this problem.”
Since significant local earthquake activity is infrequent, it’s not surprising government support isn’t robust. Still, grant money helped establish MCEER (formerly the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research) at UB, which seeks ways to build structures better able to withstand ground motions. Donald J. Goralski, senior program officer, Business Development & Strategic Partnerships, affiliated with MCEER, says of earthquakes: “It doesn’t have to happen here to create problems here.” The center uses three shake tables to measure the effects of earthquakes on structures and nonstructural components—sprinkler systems, for example—and seeks “usable solutions,” says Goralski. “We’re not successful unless we can enact change out there.”
Change in our region’s ability to better anticipate seismic activity hinges on whether financial priorities will shift. Says Jacobi: “There’s the potential here for small-magnitude events. We can safely say that, because they’ve already occurred here. The question is, where will the large-magnitude event occur? We don’t have enough seismographs. If we did, we’d be able to better predict when, if, and how bad.”
Mark Castner at Canisius College—whose seismograph is sensitive enough to detect quake activity in Australia—makes a case for why earthquake prediction is dodgy. “The San Andreas fault in California has moved 100 miles over millions of years. For something that’s moving that long and that slowly, how can you say it will happen next week?”
In WNY, Castner adds, “we have earthquakes often enough where the general public says, ‘This must be earthquake country.’ But a lot of it is folklore. If the Clarendon-Linden fault ruptured here, I’d not be expecting any buildings to fall, except maybe a barn. But if I lived in Attica or Batavia, I’d strap my hot water heater to the wall, and connect taller bookshelves to the wall. I would do common-sense things.”
Paul Chimera is an independent journalist, marketing writer, and adjunct professor of media writing at Daemen College in Amherst.
Tracking ‘the big ones’
By Paul Chimera
Photos courtesy of Dr. Robert Jacobi,
University at Buffalo.
Buffalo native Cheryl Freed, who’s been living in Los Angeles for twenty-seven years, remembers it all too well.
“The Northridge quake of 1994 felt like it was never going to stop. It was scary as hell. I was under my dining room table for what felt like an eternity, but lasted only about a half-minute or so,” she recalls. “A lot of my friends had significant damage. I was lucky: one glass slid off the counter into the sink, and my hot water heater started leaking.
“That was early on a Monday morning,” adds Freed, a speech/language pathologist with family in the Town of Tonawanda. “The following Saturday afternoon, as I was in a movie theater, we had a sizable aftershock. It rattled everyone’s nerves and heightened everyone’s awareness as to where emergency exits are in all public places.”
During the notorious 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Police Sgt. Jesse Brown Cook observed the chaos downtown: “All about us, houses were tumbling, and falling walls and chimneys and cornices were crushing men and horses in the street. The district at that hour was crowded with produce wagons, and through the uproar of the earthquake, you could hear the cries of people and the whinnying of horses that were hurt or killed.”
Meanwhile, back in Buffalo, we check weather reports for impending snowstorms. We’re mindful of the occasional flash flood alert. We watch out for that rare funnel cloud over land or water. But thank god we don’t have to concern ourselves with something as unexpected and unforgiving as an earthquake. Right?
Not so fast.
There’s something you should know: the Buffalo region is situated on a significant fault line, known as the Clarendon-Linden Fault System. This seismic zone runs from Lake Ontario southward to Rushford Lake in Allegany County, cutting west of Rochester and through such Genesee and Wyoming County towns as Batavia, Linden, Attica, Dale, and Pike.
Exactly what is an earthquake? And could we find ourselves in the same boat our city did on September 4, 1945, when, according to a news report at the time, “Startled Buffalonians, when they felt their beds shaking and saw pictures dancing on their walls … wondered if the city was being rocket-bombed”? That earthquake was centered midway between Massena, New York, and Cornwall, Ontario, causing an estimated $2 million damage.
An earthquake is the shaking of the ground, caused by an abrupt shift of rock along a fracture in the Earth. It’s called a fault, and within seconds a quake releases stress that has slowly accumulated within the rock, sometimes over hundreds of years. Dr. Robert Jacobi, a geology professor at the University at Buffalo, acknowledges that “nobody’s sure why the Earth has such stress, but it does.” What he does know is there are hundreds of statewide faults, “maybe thousands of them. No one would believe us, if we didn’t have all these faults. Swarms of them.” Clarendon-Linden, he points out, is clearly the more active one.
Just how seriously seismic is Western New York? What has history taught us? Should we be worried, or merely curious? Answers vary, depending on whom you consult. Mark Castner runs the Braun Seismograph Station at Canisius College. “We do have and feel earthquakes in Western New York. Is there a major fault in Western New York? No,” Castner says.
Jacobi views things differently. He cites a 1997 Southern Ontario report by the Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada (whose board he served on). Probability studies were conducted of what magnitude earthquake might occur in different regions. Regarding the Clarendon-Linden Fault System—whose epicenter you drive over when you travel east on the thruway, just past Genesee Community College in Batavia—the Ontario study predicted a forty percent probability there will be a 6.5 magnitude earthquake here … sometime.
The “if” is somewhat predictable; it’s the “when” that everyone wishes scientists could answer. “We think we know where the faults are,” Jacobi states. “The question is, how many are seismically active, and to what extent?” Some answers came with a shake and a shutter on August 12, 1929, in nearby Attica, when 250 chimneys were toppled after strong shock waves. According to the World Data Center for Seismology in Denver, Colorado, “There was some damage at Batavia and other points at similar distances. A wall was cracked at Sayre, Pennsylvania. The earthquake was felt throughout most of New York and the New England states, northeastern Ohio, northern Pennsylvania, and southern Ontario.”
Jacobi notes that, if that forty percent Canadian-based prediction of a quake along the Clarendon-Linden fault system were to occur, data suggest it would likely be a 6.5 magnitude. By comparison, a 6.5 magnitude quake struck Sylmar, California, in 1971, causing a hospital wing to collapse. A 6.7 “event” collapsed an overpass in Kobe, Japan, in 1995, and a 7.1 earthquake in 1989 brought down the I-880 bridge in Oakland, California, killing forty-one motorists.
It’s important to understand, Canisius’s Castner explains, that there are three magnitude scales, consistent with the original Richter Scale. Going from a 5.0 to a 6.0 magnitude means thirty times more energy at the 6.0 level. “It was a 7.0 quake in California during the 1989 World Series. If there were a 5.0 magnitude quake in Youngstown, Ohio, that would be 1/900th the amount of energy of the California quake,” Castner notes.
Inevitably, there are political tremors shrouding earthquake talk here. The Allegany County Board of Legislators got involved when the nexus of nuclear waste and seismology made headlines. A front-page story in the Buffalo News, Nov. 13, 1989, reported that “a major fault system cuts through Allegany County, where three sites are being considered for storing low-level nuclear waste, so more study is needed before a decision is made on a storage site, two University at Buffalo geologists say.
“‘The evidence there is a major fault system raises the potential for problems of seismic activity,’ says [Dr. John] Fountain … ‘The active seismic potential must be determined prior to any further action on that site.’ According to the report, the fault is actually ‘two major fault systems,’ known as the Clarendon-Linden Fault System.”
Scientists seem to agree that the recurrence rate—the interval between earthquakes—is so low (often hundreds of years) that earthquake prediction is virtually impossible. “You can predict that you’ll have a 7.0 magnitude quake—every 800 years,” says Jacobi. Files from the Peoples History Union list significant earthquakes in our region’s history, including one on September 20, 1946, registered in Niagara Falls, which geologists later fingered as weakening a fault behind the Schoellkopf Power Station in the Niagara Gorge, promoting its collapse ten years later.
A more recent event occurred May 25, 1996, estimated at 3.0 magnitude and felt mainly in North Buffalo and Tonawanda. If the vantage point of so much of this is hindsight, it may be due to the dearth of seismographs here. Besides the one at Canisius College, there’s one at Mount Morris Dam in the Genesee River gorge, and another at SUNY-Geneseo. “The decisions made are political in nature and not based on science,” laments professor Jacobi. “It’s based on how much money society thinks it can spend on this problem.”
Since significant local earthquake activity is infrequent, it’s not surprising government support isn’t robust. Still, grant money helped establish MCEER (formerly the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research) at UB, which seeks ways to build structures better able to withstand ground motions. Donald J. Goralski, senior program officer, Business Development & Strategic Partnerships, affiliated with MCEER, says of earthquakes: “It doesn’t have to happen here to create problems here.” The center uses three shake tables to measure the effects of earthquakes on structures and nonstructural components—sprinkler systems, for example—and seeks “usable solutions,” says Goralski. “We’re not successful unless we can enact change out there.”
Change in our region’s ability to better anticipate seismic activity hinges on whether financial priorities will shift. Says Jacobi: “There’s the potential here for small-magnitude events. We can safely say that, because they’ve already occurred here. The question is, where will the large-magnitude event occur? We don’t have enough seismographs. If we did, we’d be able to better predict when, if, and how bad.”
Mark Castner at Canisius College—whose seismograph is sensitive enough to detect quake activity in Australia—makes a case for why earthquake prediction is dodgy. “The San Andreas fault in California has moved 100 miles over millions of years. For something that’s moving that long and that slowly, how can you say it will happen next week?”
In WNY, Castner adds, “we have earthquakes often enough where the general public says, ‘This must be earthquake country.’ But a lot of it is folklore. If the Clarendon-Linden fault ruptured here, I’d not be expecting any buildings to fall, except maybe a barn. But if I lived in Attica or Batavia, I’d strap my hot water heater to the wall, and connect taller bookshelves to the wall. I would do common-sense things.”
Paul Chimera is an independent journalist, marketing writer, and adjunct professor of media writing at Daemen College in Amherst.
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