Where Can I Buy One?

Those whacky Swiss. First Einstein, now Yves Rossy.

Rossy, aka Jet Man, designed this personal, portable jet engine. Just watch this amazing video and know that DaVinci's vision of man unshackled from gravity and free as a bird has been realized:

La buona Tavola/The Art of Cooking

First of all, I would like to thank my readers, Leslie and an anonymous who left me a message few weeks ago to let me know that they tried the orange & beet salad and liked it very much.

Now I feel good, I have asked my self if anybody was reading my recipes. Apparently you do and I appreciate it very much.

Spaghetti ai frutti di mare/Spaghetti with seafood



When I was kid, before the time we used to spend our summer vacation on the island of Ischia, my family did not own a minivan or SUV, cars did not have seatbelts and people did not wear helmets when driving a motor bike. Safety was not a concern in those days. My father owned only a vespa and in the summer time when we went to the beach, we go there on the vespa.
My oldest brother, Gabriele would stand front of my father and hold onto the handlebars with his legs, he also held a large bag with a change of clothes inside for each of us. I would sit behind my father, holding onto him. Behind me was my mother holding a bag in each hand. We used to spend the entire day at the beach. I loved to go under the water and looking for fresh clams and mussels. At that time there was no problem with pollution, so we used to eat shellfish row, just with a splash of lemon. In the evening we would get changed and eat dinner at a local restaurant sitting outside on the patio. Our view was the beautiful bay of Naples. In the dining room there were “I posteggiatori” a duo singing Neapolitan songs, with guitar and mandolin, walking around the tables. One night while we were eating spaghetti with seafood, my father said: This is the perfect scenario. A beautiful night with people that I love, we can hear the noise of the sea, smell of the sea and in the background romantic music. Now close your eyes, imagine yourself eating the same dish in a noisy restaurant somewhere in the country side, mountain views and snow, no Neapolitan music but German music. No smell or sounds of the sea. Do you think this dish would taste the same?


Ingredienti (per 4 persone):
600 gr. Or 1 &1/4 pound seafood (mussels, clams),
200 gr. Or half pound of prawns,
Half cup of fresh chopped parsley,
2 gloves of garlic
2 ripe fresh tomatoes,
3 table spoons of olive oil
1 pound of spaghetti
1/2 glass of white wine
Salt & fresh ground pepper.

Method:
First Scrub the mussels and claims, clean and remove the shells from the prawns. Pour the olive oil into a large pan, make sure the flame is moderate, add the garlic. When the color becomes brown add the clams and mussels and the white wine and cover. Wait until the shells open, 5 or so minutes. If any do not open, it means that there is sand inside, discard them. Meanwhile add the prawns, the fresh tomatoes and parsley and let them cook for approx. 7 to 10 minutes,
Did we forget about the pasta? I guess so. Fill up a large tall pan with water, add salt, I suggest you to use sea salt. When the water is boiling add the pasta. About 10 minutes later, when it is al dente, drain and mixed it with the sauce.


A nice bottle of Orvieto (Italian white wine) would be perfect to drink with this dish. If you are on a date and not at the beach, you may want to consider to play some music with ocean sounds as background.

Buon appetito

Legend of Charman

The Youtube Revolution is breaking down barriers everywhere. Not only can anyone with a Mac and video camera shoot films of astounding quality, but now they can get instant worldwide distribution. What a great age in which we live!

For further proof of our good fortune, and the talent which can emerge without having to go through the arrogant gatekeepers of old, check out this work by some kids from Happy Valley School:

Aging Hipsters

A friend once said, "There's nothing sadder than an aging hipster." I resemble that remark - I may sue him for definition of character. But seriously, I disagree. Starting with a war in Iraq and genocide in Sudan, my list of sadder things than aging hipsters would be a long one. But then that's exactly what you'd expect an aging hipster to say.

As someone who was always on the outside looking in, I would hardly qualify as a hipster. Better to be a trenchant observer than a poseur, so I thought. Like that Waterboys song, "I pictured a rainbow, you held it in your hands, I had flashes but you saw the plan. I wandered out in the world for years while you just stayed in your room. I saw the crescent you saw the whole of the moon." But I was the first kid on my backwoods block to listen to Gary Numan, Thomas Dolby and Machine, was among the first 200,000 households in MTV's second-round test market in northern Denver in 1981, was in a band myself, hung out in London's Camden Palace and Dingwalls pretty much every weekend for four years. So I did have some street cred during a distant age when dinosaurs like The Pixies, Pavement and The Replacements stalked the earth.

No hipster's cool quotient could withstand the following sequence of events: getting married, getting a mortgage, having children, coaching Little League ... and so on. But for those that think adopting the trappings of conventionality are a copout, I all I can say is, you don't know real courage until you stare a 30-year mortgage in the face.

It interests me how some music stands the test of time, while other music does not. And only in the fullness of time do the classics get sorted away from the discount bins at Sam Goody and into the ears of the next generation. Anyway, let that stand as a long-winded introduction to one of my favorite power-pop hipster songs of all time, The Replacements "Bastards of Young," and one of their characteristically minimalist anti-MTV video of all time:

Cassadagas - North and South

Conor Oberst is coming out with a new Bright Eyes album April 10th, called Cassadaga. The new work is named after a Spiritualist community in Florida near where the album is recorded.

But the original Cassadaga is a tiny village of 700 adjacent to the tiny village where I grew up, and which is now buried beneath 10 feet of snow. It is a land of rolling hills and three beautiful glacial lakes, thickly forested right up to its banks. It looks much like it belongs to Canada's Laurentian shield, a couple hundred miles north. No wonder that it is home to many summer camps and fishing shacks, and now, thanks to the proliferation of snowmobiles, has become a year-round resort.

During the summer the area is also inundated with hundreds of mediums, psychics, seers and fortune tellers, tarot readers and astrologers. They flock to Lily Dale, perhaps the Spiritualist capital of the world, for the summer and to Cassadaga, Florida, for the winters. Not a bad life, I imagine.

Here's a video from his previous album, "Lua." Oberst is not only a great poet and musician, but is perhaps the first to bridge disparate genres of shoe-gazing folk and high lonesome country.

Love Songs for V-Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Last night, my husband rhetorically asked, "What are you getting me for Valentine's Day?" I answered with, "I dunno, what do I usually get you?" And he didn't miss a beat, "Same thing I always get you, nothing!" We just don't do Valentine's Day I'm afraid. I think it's more of a Hallmark Holiday than anything really. But the sentiment is not completely lost; he wished me a Happy Valentine's Day this morning before heading off to work.

The New York Daily News has posted the Top 100 Most Romantic Love Songs of all time. Unfortunately, our favorite song, The Smith's, "A Light That Never Goes Out," didn't make the cut. What could be more romantic than these lyrics: "And if a double-decker bus/crashes in to us/to die by your side/is such a heavenly way to die./And if a ten-ton truck/kills the both of us/to die by your side/well, the pleasure, the privilege, is mine." Romantic, funny and sad all at once.

Here are the top 10:

1. "My Girl" - The Temptations
2. "I'll Be There" - The Jackson 5
3. "Wonderful Tonight" - Eric Clapton
4. "I Just Called to Say I Love You" - Stevie Wonder
5. "You Are So Beautiful" - Billy Preston/Joe Cocker
6. "In My Life" - The Beatles
7. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" - Roberta Flack
8. "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" - Elvis Presley
9. "Michelle" - The Beatles
10. "I Can't Stop Loving You" - Ray Charles

What's your favorite love song? What are you doing for V-day? Do you have a V-Day wish for anyone?

P.S. Bill: Will you be mine?

Rick Rubin Rules

Despite the slanderous if not entirely untrue allegations of some (you know who you are, Matt) that Grammy voters are bunch of whiny libs who wanted to make a statement of support for the Dixie Chicks as a protest against Pres. Bush, the fact remains that the Chicks' latest album was an incredible piece of work from talented musicians and songwriters squarely in their prime.

A lot of that credit for "Taking the Long Way" winning five Grammies goes to producer Rick Rubin. Rubin first hit the hit-making radar in 1986, by fusing hard rock and rap with Aerosmith and Run D.M.C. Nobody in the record business has a better record of churning out hits. He is the maestro of the boards, the man with the golden ear.

Rubin came up with the idea of having Johnny Cash do a cover of Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nail addiction ballad, "Hurt." It may be the saddest song of all time, haunting, lyrical and owned and inhabited completely by Cash, just weeks before June's death and months before his own.




Here's the Dixie Chicks' defiant, eloquent and melodic response to their critics:

This is My Country

It's become a fad of late to bemoan the selling out of country music's rich legacy to pre-packaged posers like Kenny Chesney and Tug McGraw's son. But the fact remains that country music is the home of some of the most vibrant and talented artists working in America today.

Like many pseudo-sophisticates in the late 1970s, I pretended to hate country music with a passion typically reserved for disco. But even then I secretly loved listening to my dad's favorite AM station, which played a steady lineup of Hank Jr. and Marty Robbins to Cole Waggoner and Dolly Parton. It was tuneful, lyrical music telling timeless stories. The one country star of the era who was safe to acknowledge admiration toward was the tragic Gram Parsons, who did such great crossover work with the Rolling Stones and other rock acts.

Then along came Willie and Waylon, Dwight Yoakam, Lyle Lovett, even Nashville giants like Randy Travis, Garth Brooks, et al. And I no longer had to pretend not to like country music, even without that interesting "alt-country" tag that defined acts like Uncle Tupelo, or "roots" like Emmylou Harris or Gillian Welch. Good music will never be restricted by genre, not unless we let it.

Here's a few countrified acts that deserve a wider audience and defy pigeonholing: Ryan Adams, Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy), Rhett Miller, Sam Beam, Iris Dement, Sexsmith & Kerr, and plenty of others.

Here's Iris Dement, the voice of the Great Plains, with Emmylou, the Red Dirt Girl herself, on "Our Town":

O Canada! Oh Rise Up Our Mighty Neighbor to the North!

What great fun I had Saturday night at Theater 150! The O Canada concert was a real gem - not just the usual suspects like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell but selections from the songbook going back to the mid-19th century. Loved Jaye Hersh and friends singing that melancholy song about St. John's, Newfoundland.

Lots of sweet little moments throughout the show - Peter Bellwood opened the show by singing the Canadian national anthem in French, and all 15 performers closed the show with a stirring, sweet version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." J.B. White, who produced the show, should be mighty proud indeed for harnessing such exquisite talents.

Canada's music scene is so vibrant, the real test for J.B. would be narrowing it down to a two-hour show. Just in Montreal alone, the following first-rate bands have recently come out with albums — Wolf Parade, Islands and Arcade Fire.

J.B. White gave us a few good Canadian jokes, but when it was the audience's turn to reciprocate, we couldn't come up with a single one. I wanted to tell one, but the moment passed. So here's my chance. I grew up near the border, so we always had a few 'nuck jokes up our sleeve. Here's one from the olden, colden days:

A Canadian is walking down the street with a case of beer under his arm.

His friend Randy stops him and asks, "Hey Dave! Whatcha got that case of beer for?"

"Well, I got it for my wife, you see?" answers Dave.

"Wow," exclaims Randy, "Great trade."

Here's a video for "Rough Cut," by Montreal's latest export - Islands. They are no joke:

The Big "Get" with Gore

Last night I was on the red carpet for the Gore/Guggenheim screening of An Inconvenient Truth at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Flash bulbs nearly blinded me and seasoned veteran reporters at every turn could have easily scooped me, but I was tenacious (okay, I was lucky). I blurted out my question and Al Gore came face to face with me with his answer. He was eloquent and passionate and spent several minutes with me. And I was the exact opposite, scribbling and shaking. Tune in for the full report (I'm still deciphering my cryptic notes) soon! This is the photo I snapped before my camera ran out of batteries of Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim as they continued on down the red carpet (it's no Rob Clement photo, but I suppose it will do). Also check-out a red carpet podcast with environmentalist, actor and former Ojai resident Noah Wyle on Radio Ojai.

La Buona Tavola/The Art Of Cooking

Antipastini a base di pesce. Fish Appetizers

Insalata di polipetti: Baby Octopus Salad.
Ingredients:
3 lbs. baby octopus
1 cup olive oil
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic
2 tbs. fresh lemon juice

Preparation:
Clean the octopus well by turning it inside out and removing the eyes and the small bone at bottom of the head.
Boil them in a small amount of salted water, between 30-40 minutes, depending on their size. Drain, Peel, skin and cut the octopus in small pieces. Season with chopped garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and all the parsley. Lets stand for a few hours before serving to allow the octopus to become tender by absorbing the dressing. The salad is also excellent served immediately, while still warm.

Some of us do not like octopus, Therefore let's have:

Canape` Al Salmone/Salmon Canapes

It is also very easy to prepare
Ingredients:
4 ounces smoked salmon
6 tablespoons butter,
1/3 cup freshly grated parmigiano reggiano,
1 tablespoon lemon juice,
6 pitted black olives, sliced in half,
12 slices bread, 1/2 inch thick,3 to 4inches wide.
Preparation:
Put all the ingredients (except the olives) in a food processor or blender and spread on a slice of bread.
Garnish by placing a black olive in the center of each canape`.

Buon appetito,

Let me know how it goes.
You can reach me at rfalvo@troop.com

Ciao

Biker Gang Invades Ojai

Yoga Matt sent me this link to a wild pack of Ojai kids filming themselves bouldering on their bikes in, around and over Ojai.

I once busted these kids in a local park and came to the sad realization that I had, indeed, turned into my father. So let me balance it out by posting a video they shot of themselves and let us all, after our stern finger-wagging is over, celebrate this incredible talent on display. This looks a lot more difficult than skateboarding, and a lot more fun. Be warned - listen with the sound off, the Rage rap soundtrack may be a bit much for the tender ears of anyone over the age of 20.