The Duck's Nest: online home of mizducky

Long time no blog

Good grief, has it really been almost three months since I last posted here? Well, like they say, time flies when you're having. Whatever it is you're having. And whatever it is, I've been having a lot of it.

• I'm heading into my second weekend of a three-weekend run of an evening of theatre called "Ten Minute Madness." Put on by a tiny little fringe theatre outfit called The Northpark Vaudeville and Candy Shoppe, the show consists of eight short original plays, nominally 10 minutes each. I have major roles in two of the plays, and a minor role in a third. I get to play a dog pining away for his humans to come home, and one of a pair of compulsive liars locking horns over movies and reality. Pretty danged cool if I do say so myself. If you're in the San Diego area, come check the show out! You can purchase tickets through the above link
• I got invited to join this brand-new sketch comedy and improv group, name still to be officially determined, first performance tenatively scheduled for the first weekend in May. One of the sketches we're going to do is mine--I took my spoken word piece about the First Church of Whoopie as a starting point and envisioned the church as a very wacky--and fairly smutty--cable access TV show. As soon as I have a link to post about this one, I will.
• I just got cast for a small part in Looking Glass Theatre's LGBT Pride Month 2009 offering, Paul Rudnick's Jeffrey. Alas, while this is an excellent and entertaining play, almost by definition it's not got a lot in the way of female parts (it being a play all about gay men dealing with AIDS in the 1990s). But I've got a humorous little bit, and I'll have fun with it. Again, as soon as I have a link to post, I will.
• Meanwhile I continue to be involved in online fannish activities ... in particular a very involved extended on-line roleplay based on--nu, what else?--Lupin III. I am of course playing the title role, and am also writing for Fujiko. We're up to 13 pages and counting, since getting underway the beginning of February. If you'd like to check out our progress, just look over here.
• And oh yeah, there's basic stuff like the work I do for  my actual livelihood, not to mention time I begrudgingly give to sleep, laundry, etc.

No wonder I haven't been posting here! And have put the "Fun and Thieving in Las Vegas" fanfic on hiatus for awhile. I will get back to being more regular on both, I promise. But in the meantime, I don't begrudge the interruptions when they are for such rewarding activities.

The Night Before Christmas Parody (Jewish Style)

In honor of Christmas, one of my all-time favorite parodies, celebrating the American Jewish folkway of going out for Chinese food on Christmas Day:

The Night Before Christmas Parodies XII (Jewish Style).

Have a great multi-cultural holiday love-in extravaganza, folks!

New obsession: Gaia Online

I can't believe it -- I need yet another obsession in my life like I need yet another hole in my head. Yet here I've gone and fallen for a new--and especially silly--time-sink in my life: Gaia Online. Yeah, it's kind of weird being in an online system where the vast majority of members are young enough to be my children (if I had any), but I have tracked down a few other geezers on there, so I'm not unique in this weirdness. Plus the little customizeable avatars give me the ability to take my Lupin online roleplaying to a whole new level of obsessively geeky detail. God, I'm turning into such an otaku.

Anyway--if you happen to be a Gaian too, come look me up. My username over there is loopy-chan. Yeah, I know. Geeky, ain't it?

New Horizons in Lupin swag: Look before you leap!

One of the Lupin character's more endearingly horn-doggy behaviors, as enshrined in one of the opening animations to the second TV series and repeated with many variations throughout the franchise, is Lupin's uncanny ability to leap clear out of his clothes (except for boxers and undershirt) in his attempt to literally jump Fujiko's bones. Like the Peanuts trope of Lucy always pulling the football away before Charlie Brown can kick it, Lupin's leaps for the goal are always handily thwarted by the resourceful Fujiko--usually with Lupin the worse for wear.

While this is a beloved running joke in Lupin-Land, one would not at first blush think of it as suitable fodder for a Lupin-themed toy. But ... guess again, fangeekfriends:

Lupin III Ecchi Fujiko Grabber Gun Toy anime FUNNY - eBay (item 120350744557 end time Dec-22-08 12:00:26 PST).

FYI: The "ecchi" in the listing title is transliterated Japanese slang for sexual naughtiness.

I am trying to reserve my fangeek-jones pennies for actual content, i.e. licensed DVDs, but I may actually have to break down and bid on this thing. Every time I look at it I boggle. And laugh.

Sitting outside the meeting house

Sitting outside the meeting house of my groovy church listening to the music within - as well as the music in my head :-)

(Note: Posted this via my cell phone. Apparently the little widget that allows me to post via text messaging is now working. Ah, technology ... )

Oden: Japanese comfort food

Somewhere in my Asian food explorations I stumbled into oden, a simple but yummy Japanese hotpot dish containing a fascinating-to-me assortment of fishcakes of different sizes, shapes, and flavors, plus veggies and other oddments in a dashi-based broth. I've picked up that different Japanese households' takes on what goes into this cold-weather food favorite varies as wildly as different American households' recipes for home-cooking standards. But for those too busy (or clueless, like moi) to pick out individual packages of all the different types of Japanese fish cake, there are pre-packaged oden sets complete with little packets of soup base. I saw in this month's Marukai flyer that they were having a special on such oden sets this week, so I went and got myself one.

This package contains something like a pound and a half of different fish cakes, or surimi. Here in the US, we think of surimi as those so-called "krab" legs with the rubbery texture and screamingly artificial crab flavor, but these nasty things bear no relation to the much more tender and subtly flavored surimi products the Japanese have been making for literally centuries. The Japanese surimi are more like a homey version of a quenelle. I likes 'em lots.

Anyway, so I bought this oden set, and also some ito konnyaku noodles and a kabocha with some vague idea of putting them in the oden too--but I wound up instead using up a chunk of daikon and a couple stalks of bok choy I had languishing in the fridge and saved the kabocha for another day. Oh yeah, and some clear (whitish) ito konnyaku I'd bought in a previous Marukai run instead of the dark ito konnyaku I'd bought today. Just thought it would look prettier.

Following the directions on the wrapper, I put a big soup pot on to boil five cups of water and cut up the fish cakes into bitesized pieces. When the water boiled, I added the cut-up fish cakes, plus half-moon slices of daikon and five dried shiitake broken into bits. After I'd drained my package of ito konnyaku into a sieve and rinsed it well with hot water, I added it to the pot too. Brought the whole thing up just to a boil, then backed it down to a simmer and let it go for the better part of an hour. Near the end I sliced up the bok choy and added it too.

Traditionally this stuff is meant to be eaten with a hot Japanese mustard known as karashi, but since I forgot to buy some I used Dijon mustard instead, which went quite well. I now have a bunch of yummy leftover oden waiting for me in the fridge, and a very full, very warmed tummy.

Marukai: Japanese shopping thrills in my back yard

MARUKAI CORPORATION.

I've loved this place ever since they opened a branch here in San Diego. The grocery carries all sorts of Japanese yummies--as well as lots of Hawaiian specialties (as lovingly documented by my favorite Hawaiian ex-pat, mmm-yoso). I just dropped by today and picked up some cream stew roux cubes, some daikon and carrots, some fresh fish trimmings for soup (very cheap and oh so good), and a couple of surprisingly tasty energy drinks. A lot of the fun with these places for me is just checking out the goods, giving myself a cross-cultural education by way of foodstuffs. For instance, like many stores Marukai has got its holiday food displays up and running, but unlike mainstream supermarkets, Marukai's haul includes such traditional Japanese New Year's fare as kagami mochi, which are ever so cute, like little flattened snow men. Sure beats hell out of candy canes.

Fractal Food

Fractal Food.

I've seen Romanesco broccoli in upscale supermarkets, and recognized that the startling pattern of its florettes were fractal, but this delightfully geeky guy has written a delightfully geeky appreciation of its fractal quality (along with basic cooking instructions).

Japanese Food - Aokubi Daikon

Japanese Food - Aokubi Daikon.

The Japanese pop culture cult of kawaii (cuteness) strikes again! Though I suppose an adorably anthropomorphized daikon radish is no stranger than our Mr. Potato Head. True confession time: I think the leafy topknots are especially cute.

Final post of NaBloPoMo

Well, I made it to the end of National Blog Posting Month more or less with my blogging pride intact. There was in fact a post for every day of the month. Some of them actually happened at 2 or 3am of the following morning, but as that was the end of my "day" each time, I have decided that's kosher. I did post-date such posts just before midnight of the calendar day they pertained to, more for convenience' sake than anything else -- so here's your truth-in-advertising copping to that.

So I observed the letter of the rules. Some of my posts kind of fell short of the spirit--I think you know which ones I mean, the short not-so-interesting ones meant more to put something up than to say anything deep. On the other hand, I do have several substantive posts in thsi month--not to mention a completed chapter of the fanfic on may sideblog.

I think, in hindsight, this daily blogging thing is not necessarily for me. I used to do week-long daily blogs for eGullet, but there you had a built-in subject matter about which it was easy to spew lots of words. But it also involved making an extra effort all week to play cub reporter for the blog's audience. I don't think I could maintain such a pace for longer than a week at a time.

But I am glad I did it. And I do hope those of you who have stumbled upon me because of NaBloPoMo decide to keep hanging out.