Towse: views from the hill

Victoria Strauss snoops around and discovers — Qu’est-ce que c’est? Quelle horreur!!! Quelle surprise! Really! Yikes! — IILAA isn’t quite all it claims to be.

Been eating too much deep-fried Coke and not enough fruits and vegetables?

Not getting enough exercise?

Put the GJ toilet seat on your wish list.

The Great John Toilet from the Great John Toilet Company of Laredo, TX, has a seat with >150% more sitting area than the standard toilet seat. The toilet has tested as carrying at least 2000 pounds and comes with extra anchors and a super wide base.

Robust. Stable. Sturdy. Comfortable.

Ain’t America a special place?

Just when you thought the world had its ultimate deep-fried treat (deep-fried candy bars, deep-fried Peanut Butter, Jelly and Banana Sandwiches, deep-fried Twinkies), Abel Gonazles, Jr. comes up with his latest hit:

Deep-Fried Coke.

A fat laden, high calorie snack that hasn’t taken off in the States (yet!) is the artery-clogging Ukranian chocolate salo.

I’ve voted — absentee.

Have you?

No October/November surprises for me.

If you call to tell me whom or what I ought to vote for, I’ll tell you it’s too late. …

If you can’t tell me a month ahead of time that my girl’s been tainted by seven years of late nights at a “questionable” bar down near Castro Street, well, you don’t deserve my attention.

Rove’s October surprise?

Rove’s November suprise?

Go for it, Mr. Rove.

Folks, you are too late to influence the likes of me. I done already voted.

And I’m not the only one …

May Good triumph over Evil.

May each and everyone of you have a happy, healthy, prosperous new year.

photo © Manan Tuli for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike

Diwali sweets and more…

PJ Parks would like everyone to know that she has the perfect gift for someone who has impossibly high standards or who is difficult to buy for or who is just a giant softy or who could buy anything they wanted if they only knew what it was or who is in need of some home cooking or who is need of some warm fuzzies or who needs some downhome talking to about relaxing for a bit and making some memories and enjoying family.

That’s right. Buy that special someone a copy of Welcome Home: Recipes, Memories, and Traditions from the Heart a memoir/cookbook/survival manual written by our PJ.

Sound like you might know someone Welcome Home would be perfect for? Buy one! Buy two and give one to Grandma. Get a third and give it to your new college graduate who is allzasudden out on her own and calling home at inopportune times, asking how to make oven pancakes.

Click on that photo — right now — and order a copy or two or three …

Sale 14244 – The Private World of Truman Capote. New York, 9 Nov 2006.

The catalog describes a varied collection of stuff including scraps of paper with notes, postcards addressed (mainly) to Joanne Carson, ex-wife of Johnny Carson and longtime friend of TC’s, his passport, his MasterCard, clothes, ephemera, memorabilia, sketches, paintings, silver, pillows, cigars and suitcases.

Lot No: 1104. Ed Ruscha. Dish, (E. 67), 1973
Lithograph printed on Rives paper, signed in pencil, dated and numbered 32/250, with the blindstamp of the publisher, Cirrus Editions, Los Angeles, printed by Ed Hamilton, with full margins, in apparently excellent condition, framed (not examined out of the frame). 10 x 13 1/2in sheet

I’d love it, but Estimate: $1,000 – 1,500.

I’d also love the copy of A signed Esquire magazine featuring “La Côte Basque 1965″.

“La Côte Basque 1965″ was the short story that promised a peek at what Capote intended to do with ANSWERED PRAYERS. That peek caused his high society friends to break off long-lived friendships and snub him for the rest of his life for being a gossip and a tale monger.

The catalog itself has bits of quotes from Capote and from people who knew Capote that don’t show up on the Web site.

An interesting quote from Aileen Mehle reads,

When I went to stay with him in Palm Springs, he was writing ANSWERED PRAYERS, the shocking book I thought ruined his life. “Want a peek?” he asked me one night after a few margaritas, showing me what he had written in his crabbed little hand on a yellow legal pad. Describing Henri Soule, the famous New York restauranteur whose chic establishment La Côte Basque (which figured in ANSWERED PRAYERS) drew the tippy-top elite of the city, he had called him “a fat pink marzipan pig”. “My God, Truman,” I said, “You can’t do that. Soule is still alive. You go to his restaurant all the time.” “Never mind,” said Truman, “a writer writes what he thinks, knows and feels. He’s given a special license.” And that, as we all know was that.

Indeed.

If you’re planning to bid on any of the lots, be sure to take the added Important Notice under advisement.

Last Thursday afternoon we were due at a SF Botanical Society reception at the Strybing Arboretum, so we decided to head over after noon to the park and take a look at what was happening at the de Young, sip some tea at the Japanese tea garden and just sort of wander until we were due at the Strybing.

We walked down to Washington Square and caught the 30 to Stockton and Market Streets, where we got off and ducked into the Powell Street Muni Metro station. Multiple Js, Ks, Ls and Ms came and went while we waited for what seemed far longer than we should’ve for the N-Judah.

Hopped off at 8th and Irving and walked over to the de Young.

Snapped a couple pictures of the in-progress new California Academy of Sciences complex, scheduled to open in late 2008.

The Quilts of Gee’s Bend show lived up to its buzz. We roamed around checking out other work in the de Young before heading up to the top of the tower to see the amazing view on such a clear and sunny day.

After we checked out the goods in the museum shop, we headed out to the public art in the garden where we (Serendipity-doo-dah #1) bumped into Steve Berger and Paula Hughmanick, long-time East Bay-based friends whom we know from years and years (and years) of SSC-Fallenleaf Lake Week 11s. If we’d been a few minutes earlier or later or taken a different path, we would’ve missed them. Always nice to see them. Sitting on a wall in the sunshine, we caught up on each other’s news.

The day was too nice for them not to go up in the tower to check out the view, we told them. Paula admitted that they’d seen the view in the fog and seen the view at night, but never on a glorious day like Thursday was. Off they went.

And off we went too. We moseyed over to the Japanese Tea Garden to mellow out, sipping oolong tea and munching cookies at the pavilion. His nibs reminisced about sipping tea and munching cookies over sixty years ago when he was a young child and would visit the garden with his mother and grandmother.

We decided to wander around the garden for a while before heading over to the Strybing reception. The garden had been expanded and given a facelift since the early days his nibs remembered.

Halfway through our walkaround, we heard a familiar voice call out to his nibs. Turns out his cousin Meredith and her friend Suzanne had picked this day to come up from Santa Cruz and visit the Quilts of Gee’s Bend exhibit.

(Serendipity-doo-dah #2) If we’d been a few minutes earlier or later or taken a different path, we would’ve missed them. If they hadn’t decided to visit the tea garden — Meredith, having grown up in San Francisco had fond memories of the garden herself — or if we hadn’t, if we’d lingered longer over the tea or swilled it down, our paths would’ve never crossed.

After catching up on the years that had passed since we’d seen Meredith and exchanging childhood memories of the park, we parted ways. Meredith and his nibs swapped contact information and promised to meetup for lunch one of the two days a week he’s working down in Campbell, near where she works in Los Gatos.

We walked over to the Strybing and wandered in the gardens until it was time for the reception.

I checked out possible victims for our deep shade garden and took pics of Mahonia blooming. Mahonia is one of the best “good neighbor” hedge bushes of all time … no bratty kids will plow their way through those spiky leaves. …

After the Botanical Society reception wound down and before we ruined our appetite too much with tasty wine and yummy food from Angelina’s Catering, we grabbed a return N-Judah downtown and stopped off for dinner (sweetbreads in lemon and capers for me, sweetbreads with mushrooms for his nibs) at Sam’s.

A walk in the park: photos

Wandered down to the convention center area on Saturday to watch the roadies set up tents on Howard Street, which has been closed off between 3rd and 4th to give Oracle some extra space for Oracle Open World, which opened yesterday and runs through Thursday.

Oracle-ites have already reserved virtually every hotel room in San Francisco during the week – 65,000 hotel stays — said Jennifer Petrucione, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s spokeswoman.

Virtually? Really? No one else in town except Oracle-ites?

500 local temp jobs. $50 million cash tossed into the city economy. There’s a reason the City decided they’d give Larry the extra room he was asking for despite the grumblings.

The weather’s been beautiful. The sun is shining, after the fog burns off.

Chartered buses plastered with Oracle signage are cruising down to Fisherman’s Wharf and over to the ferry building.

We had Sunday brunch at butterfly at Pier 33 on the Embarcadero and had to walk through the shouting, raucous mill of pickets outside Pier 31 1/2.

Hornblower’s ferries to Alcatraz are packed despite the milling, sign-carrying pickets from the union. If you come to San Francisco but once in your lifetime, you have to be pretty sympathetic to the cause to “do the right thing” and give up your trip to Alcatraz as the pickets are demanding. Shouting at people and waving placards in people’s faces probably doesn’t change many people’s minds one way or another.

When we came out of the restaurant, after brunch, the pickets were gone.

Between the 42K people that Larry Ellison’s brought to town and the 15K+/- runners who raised $16 million for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society with a marathon and half-marathon yesterday and whoever else is in town, the F-line’s packed, the Embarcadero’s packed, the new Westfield Shopping Mall on Market’s packed, and we’re on the lie low until the weekend.

A note came to me in e-mail today from a long-time friend.

I’d been reading the papers. I’m aware that there’s a buildup of ugliness in Iraq and elsewhere right before our elections.

I’m aware that people are asking why. I’m aware that in this runup to the election there’s been a political spin to the questions.

Is the ugliness an attempt to influence the elections? If so, who would “they” want to win? Are “they” wanting the Democrats to win because the Democrats are soft on defense and ready to cut and run? (Well, so say Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and others of the Benevolent & Protective Order of Ilks of the USA as they warn us to stay the course and vote Republican because “they” would like us to do elsewise.)

My guess is that “they” would want the status quo to win because the status quo is, afterall, the best recruiting mechanism they have … but then I’ve been a chess player since pre-school.