L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Wag of the Tongue

I have reached the age where the urge to self-edit retreats into the hazy horizon and is replaced by a sunny indifference to public opinion.

Last night was case in point. I was out walking with my visiting sister-in-law, Chris. Several blocks up the hill an impossibly adorable puppy dashed excitedly towards us. Eleven weeks old, all wiggle and tongue. Chris scooped her up and carried her back to her person, a 20-something guy standing in the driveway with a buddy.

I scritched her head as she squirmed happily, twisting to slather my hand with puppy kisses. Her owner laughed. “She really loves licking,” he said.

I replied without forethought and with some gusto, “Who doesn’t!”

It’s nice to know boys still blush.

-=-=-=-

Share a story. What have you blurted without regret that would have mortified your younger self?

Ass, Elbow. Elbow, Ass

From a recent story in the New York Times

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.

…for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.

“A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers,” Dr. Hasher said. “We believe that this characteristic may play a significant role in why we think of older people as wiser.”

Ahh, I get it now. The constant wandering about the house trying to remember what I was looking for is actually a sign of broadening wisdom. This is really good news. I thought I was losing my mind. It turns out I’m expanding it. On the down side, I’ve noticed that the mind is not the only thing that expands with age. Science ought to look into the implications of this study with regard to the mind/body connection (mind/booty connection?) I’d look into it myself, but I forget.

However, in a stellar example of the broadening attention span of the aging mind in action, the above story popped back into my mind when I read this one:

The crook of your elbow is not just a plain patch of skin. It is a piece of highly coveted real estate, a special ecosystem, a bountiful home to no fewer than six tribes of bacteria. Even after you have washed the skin clean, there are still one million bacteria in every square centimeter.

But panic not. These are not bad bacteria. They are what biologists call commensals, creatures that eat at the same table with people to everyone’s mutual benefit. Though they were not invited to enjoy board and lodging in the skin of your inner elbow, they are giving something of value in return. They are helping to moisturize the skin by processing the raw fats it produces, says Julia A. Segre of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Read that last bit again: “They are helping to moisturize the skin by processing the raw fats it produces.” Think about it for a minute. There are bacteria in the crook of your elbow that eat your body fat and moisturize your skin. It’s a body fat burner! It’s a skin moisturizer! It’s two… two…

Loitering about the crook of the elbow when they could be doing so much good elsewhere is a crime. My elbows are pretty sleek already. (coincidence?) Let’s get those little buggers on the road south. Pronto.

Whaddaya say, Science?

Folklife 2008

Another year, another Folklife under our belts. (A friend asks, “Forklift? Are you desperate?”) /me shrugs. Maybe. Over a quarter of a million people descend upon Seattle Center for four days of, um, self-expression. It’s one of the largest festivals in North America and surpassed only by the Fremont Festival in June (which we will also be playing) for attracting Seattle’s most eccentric. Saturday was sunny, hot and jammed.

The fountain is a kid magnet even on a cool day.

Heartbreakers in training:

Heartbreakers, semi-retired:

Secrets from beyond the divide. If you’re an official Folklife performer you can get into the hospitality center. (And with four days of continuous programming at 19 official stages these coveted buttons are as rare as hen’s feathers.) The hospitality center is a large, poorly-lit, stuffy barn with the single distinct attraction of half-price beer. This is enough of an inducement to even override the Perpetual Cotton-Eyed Joe Jam of Doom (below). We’ve been performing (and swilling hospitality beer) at Folklife for 11 years and the Jam of Doom is always going on. Always. Every time we’ve been there. The individual players change, but the song never ends. I firmly believe it has been going on, unbroken since the dawn of time. And if it ever stops, the world will come to an end.

Cheetah pelt: $995
Delux Dreadlock Starter Kit: $70
Assorted gourds: $249
Being nine CD sales away from quitting your Microsoft dev day job: Priceless.

Sunday Night: Balkanarama closes the annual Balkan Party. Sunday was less jammed than Saturday, despite fine weather. Something about news of flying bullets puts a damper on enthusiasm. But even that doesn’t seem to affect the Balkan party (what’s a few rounds among enemies?): The place is packed with some 500 dancers. w00t.

Ferko and Mike lead the way:

The full band (phew! Kevin arrived from another gig, bass in hand, not more than a minute before downbeat). Paul Beck (right) sits in on cymbalom – an annual treat for us.

Afterwards: Lug gear the quarter mile to the peformers’ parking coventry, drive home and do a body check for random piercings, tie dye, fairy wings or tattoos in Sanskrit. You never know.

Not British, Apparently

Are you British in bed? Take the test and find out!

I took it and apparently I’m 63% Swedish in bed. Which is something I need to ask my eastern European parents about. (All these years of garlic-infused lamb when I could have been chowing down on lutefisk!)

According to the test results on the site, being Swedish means:

“You have no inhibitions in the bedroom! For you the naked body is to be used as a medium of expressions, like painting or sculpture. Indeed, if you had your way all underwear would be banned, even on old ladies during winter.”

This underwear theme is starting to dog me. But speaking as a freshly minted Swede, I’d have to agree. Especially if this is the underwear.

är det till räckligt bra?

The Point of the Needle

We (Balkanarama) played the closing party for the 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems. I didn’t give it too much thought – a gig for a bunch of engineers. But when I mentioned it to friends the consistent reaction was “How cool is that?”

Pretty cool it turns out.

First of all, it was at the top of the Space Needle:

Our backdrop was a panoramic view of Seattle from the Cascades to Puget Sound. Loading in was a time consuming and somewhat sobering experience. We were definitely the hired help here – not rock stars (though the service elevator has as good a view as the tourists). We’d been told we could leave our cars with valet parking for free but valet parking had an attitude and the attitude was “Why should you park free when you gettin’ paid?”

Then there was the event. It wasn’t just a bunch of engineers. It was over a THOUSAND engineers from all over the world. I’ve never seen a more international collection crammed into one room. (And crammed they were – the Observation Deck of the Space Needle is not THAT large.) The elevators disgorged them in heaving, camera-wielding masses. Today there are there are a thousand tiny flash drives wending their way homeward with pix of us snuggled into their recesses.

Ferko came prepared with a slew of new band names for us based on the session titles from the ISCAS symposium:

• The Circuit Breakers
• Turbo Trellis and the Decoders
• Tony Memory and the Flip-Flops
• Blind Signal Lemon and the Wavelets
• Low Power Logic

Votes?

Then there was the response. We played songs from eight or nine different countries and for every one, someone was astonished. The first was a man from Serbia who looked like he was mentally pinching himself most of the evening. We sang his favorite song and handed him the mic.

And it turns out, with enough liquor, even Chinese engineers will get up and shake their groove thang:

We actually steamed up the windows of the Space Needle. How cool is that?

Trick Guy Chocolate

Guess the gender:

1. Chocolate? Yeah, it’s fine. But it’s just another flavor.
2. Mmmmmm…. oooohhhh… ohmygod….

What is it about chocolate and gender? I hardly know anyone who doesn’t like it, but a mouthful of rich, dark chocolate can create the kind of response in a woman most men wait a lifetime to cause.

Here’s a possible piece of the puzzle: A good friend of mine started life as a man but is now a woman (my song, Switcheroo is dedicated to her). She told me that her reaction to chocolate changed significantly when she began gender reassignment hormone therapy:

“Well, it used to be that chocolate was a very nice treat. It satisfied the sweet tooth. But now it’s considerably more. And the difference between kinds of chocolate have become significant.”

Could it be hormonal?

Most of us can only try to imagine life from the other side. I am happily and undeniably female, but I would jump at the chance to inhabit a man’s body for a few hours. And I’d lay odds most men would be curious to know what if feels like to be a woman (as long as they’re absolutely guaranteed to get their junk back at the end of the evening).

An actual body switch is not a viable option for most of us, but in the area of chocolate, I came across an interesting recipe – a kind of trick chocolate that would mimic for men the appeal of chocolate for women: Chocolate covered bacon.

It sounds vaguely repellent to me, though I’d try a bite out of curiosity. But I ran a test by my husband. At the words “chocolate covered bacon” his face went all soft and his eyes got this misty, far-away look. He murmured the words… chocolate… covered… bacon… yeaaaaahhhhh… Score!

What would be an equivalent reverse recipe? Something guys adore that leaves women scratching their heads wondering what the big deal is? Maybe I’m missing the real lesson here. Perhaps I should start a line of bacon clothing. This could have solved my underwear problem last week.

What do you think I could get for a bacon thong?

Commando Week

You wouldn’t think you could find the Ends of the Earth in California, but I think it may be there. Is that a good thing or not?

When I arrived at the Sea Ranch for a week’s escape and opened my suitcase I discovered I’d neglected to pack a single pair of undies. There’s a sleepy little tourist town nearby – Gualala. Gualala has not one, but two markets, a gas station, art galleries and several cafes, so it’s no ghost town. But when I asked one of the locals where one might purchase panties, she thought for a looooong while and then ventured, “Did you check at the bait and tackle shop?”

It turned out not to be a bad thing at all.

The Earth Moved

Tokyo was rocked by a 6.8 earthquake followed by a 5.3 aftershock this week. No major damage or injuries were reported, but my attention was riveted anyway, since my son Alan is there now, studying (twister, karaoke and probably some Japanese as well).

Things are a tad different from when I was a 20-year-old student getting into trouble in Europe and the USSR (alone!). I’m sure my parents would have preferred I go with a nice safe group or at least with a girlfriend or two. If I had a lick of sense, I would have given myself a good shake and a firm talking to as well, but I’ve always leapt off cliffs and assumed I’d sprout wings before I hit the ground. I think I called home (with great difficulty and expense) twice over the course of three months. They have no idea to this day some of the, ahem, adventures I had. And it’s probably just as well, though now that it’s in the blog I may get interrogated.

But that was then. Alan blogs regularly and is in my IM window almost daily, so I didn’t have to wait too long to know he was OK. Not that I was worried, mind you – the news reports put even a mom’s mind at rest – but I grew up in earthquake country and there’s always the post-quake entertainment where you contact everyone you know and trade “how was it for you” stories. It’s part of the fun.

It reminded me that we’re still in earthquake country. We looked it up and the San Andreas Fault runs UNDER our vacation house. The San Andreas Fault is the longest and most active earthquake fault in the world. There’s a lovely interpretive trail just down the street. The fault moved 13 feet laterally and 10 feet vertically along 300 miles of its length during the 1906 7.8 quake. If you know what to look for you can sill see the effects.

We walked by, across and inside the fault. At one point i looked up the jumbled slope from the trough of the fault and about fifty yards straight up was a house. On stilts. I couldn’t quite see for sure, but I think it’s named “Hubris House.”

They’ll have a great ride one day.

Sky Lights

The Sea Ranch is a lovely, private community on the rocky, seal-scattered shores of the northern California coast in Sonoma County just south of the Mendocino County line. My in-laws live here and we visit at least once a year. I highly recommend getting yourself some in-laws who live in a place like this rather than, say, Myanmar.

It’s only taken us a quarter of a century to figure out how to do it up right though.

In the beginning, we’d strap the kids into their carseats after dinner, red-eye the 10 hour drive up from L.A. and collapse on the hilly sofabed in the studio downstairs.

This time we rented our own little Sea Ranch house for the week (called, appropriately, “Moonscape”). The best thing about it, aside from absolute privacy, is the hot tub on the deck. I know I’m probably going to Carbon Footprint Hell, but damn, 105-degree water, bare skin and open sky… Turn the jets up, honey.

There was a waxing crescent moon this week with plenty of earthshine on the dark side. We renamed the constellations. The new ones are: The Mousepad in the north. Straight overhead there is The Pencil, though one of the stars in that one moved over the course of the week, so it was a more like a pencil than we knew when we named it, getting stubbier each day. Just to the south of the Pencil lies the three stars of the Aeron Chair.

I think if we had another week the names would change to happier subjects. The Wineglass? The Hot Tub? The Silk Scarf?

Drunks on a Plane

Just back from a week at the Sea Ranch, California – a lovely and much-needed escape.

There are a number of points where I tell myself “NOW I feel like I’m on vacation.” The first is the ride to the airport, but that’s not really it. The second is after running the security gauntlet, repacking, dressing and finding my gate, but that’s not really it. The third is treating myself to an extra-dark mocha from Dilettante (a latte from Starbucks will do). Closer, but still not really it. Getting on the plane? Wheels off the ground?

We flew down from Seattle to Santa Rosa on a small turbo-prop plane run by Horizon Air. A friend commented to me once that a boarding pass is an interesting device. One moment it’s the single most important piece of paper in the world and in an instant it’s useless. I assert it’s not entirely useless. Boarding passes make the best bookmarks.

One nice surprise from Horizon: Free local wine and microbrew beer in coach. They give refills too.

NOW I’m on vacation.