Blog Traffic Jam, Part 5 of 5: "American" pizza is better than American pizza

I met with some old friends in Westminster last Wednesday (sorry for the late update!), and we were looking for a place to go eat. We walked past Parliament Square (where a group of Tamils were still protesting, though their numbers had greatly decreased since the week before, and we were halfway down the next street when I saw a sight for sore eyes. It was presented in a different way than I was used to, but it still conjured in me the same feelings for taste, goodness, and pepperonis: Pizza Express.

Now, food might be my favorite thing in the whole world. That could be because I only just got out of my teenage years & I’m still young, but the same can be said for a lot of people older than me. (Like Emeril. Or anyone who watches the Food Network.) I think the real reasons are because it’s necessary, so there HAS to be at least some affinity for it, and because it’s everywhere. (That last fact is the result of a lot of luck, grace, and the invention of refrigeration, and I’m eternally grateful for that.)

But just because it’s everywhere doesn’t mean that it’s the same across the world. It doesn’t even mean that foods that fall under the same name are the same. American biscuits are by no means the same as British biscuits, American Chinese food is uniquely American, and Pizza Express (now Pizza X) in Bloomington doesn’t even compare to Pizza Express in Westminster.

In fact, I’m gonna blaspheme. I’ve had a dish called “American Hot” pizza in two places in London: Pizza Express by Westminster on Wednesday, and Soho Pizzeria on Carnaby Street the next day. I believe I can safely say that British “American” pizza is better than pizza in America.

There. I said it. Sue me if you want.

(Say what you will about small sample sizes. I acknowledge that this wouldn’t stand up to peer review under any other name than a case study. But it’s good enough for MY experience.)
Let me describe for you the best (and second-best) “American” pizza I’ve ever had:

It is doughy, but it’s thin, so the bread tastes wonderfully without overpowering the toppings. The sauce works with the bread to keep it soft and doughy, but it stays separate enough that it retains its own quality. The pepperonis are thick, so they keep their entire internal flavor. (And I mean their ENTIRE internal flavor.) The outer crust is a little hard, which, given the flimsiness of the inside, gives the whole pizza structural integrity; it’s not crumbly, though, so it retains some of the doughy qualities of the underbelly bread.

(<- I got halfway through my pizza before I thought of taking its picture. That’s how good it was.)

My pizzas had something hot on them (jalapeños at Pizza Express, green peppers at Soho Pizzeria), but even if they didn’t have that spiciness, I still would have called them the best two pizzas I’ve ever eaten.

So, my rankings for Best Pizza:

1. American (Hot), Pizza Express, Great Britain
2. American (Hot), Soho Pizzeria, Carnaby Street
3. Anything else; they all are far too inferior to the top two for me to rank.

*In the interest of full disclosure, the Pizza Express pizza beat out the Soho pizza because I had gelato with it. Dave, you’re right. I could eat it all day!


Quotes

“I don’t have to eat… anything… ever again.” –Alex Farris
“I’m not sure if my taste buds will accept any other food.” –Emily Ivers

Blog Traffic Jam, Part 4 of 5: Lost in (and Slightly Because of) Evening Prayer

On Saturday we visited Dover & Canterbury. Photos are here, but one incident avoided photography. …Well, lots of stuff avoided photography (conversations, lunch in Canterbury, a stop by an Army surplus store, sleeping on the bus), and for those things that’s good, but one thing stands out. For me, anyway.

After we toured the Canterbury Cathedral, the seat of the Anglican Communion, we could wander around the town as we pleased until 4 p.m. I and a few other people lied outside the church in the grass, taking a quick nap or getting some sun or simply relaxing. I fell into the third group, until I thought of sitting in on evening prayer. It would start at 3:15, but because it was a Saturday night (and the night before Pentecost, even), it would last longer than usual (4:15). I made sure a few people knew where I was in case I returned to the bus late, and I made my way into the church.

I’ve done evening prayer before. Even before a small group of us did evening prayer at St. Paul’s last weekend, I had prayed the Catholic liturgy of the hours off and on for the past three years. (Admittedly, it was more “on” during senior year of high school and more “off” in my first two years at IU, but even now I sneak it in once in a while.) I knew the basic outline of such a service: an invocation, a couple psalms, a New Testament canticle, a reading, intercessions, one of three more special canticles (Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis), and a closing prayer. (Roughly. It depends on what time of day.) I felt pretty prepared.

I’ve never done evening prayer like this. Everyone was ornate and ornamental and… slow. Three things account for my inexperience: I was always by myself and able to control the tempo when doing these prayers, whereas this was in Canter-freakin’-bury Cathedral; I always said the psalms etc. to myself, whereas there was a boys’ choir doing everything (I mean everything. We didn’t sing or say anything at all.); I was always in my room, whereas… this was in Canter-freakin’-bury Cathedral. It was a slightly moving experience, “slightly” because I would have gotten more out of it if I could participate.

Because the group was leaving at 4, however, I resolved to leave at 3:45. That brought me through the entrance (with about 20 boys of the choir and five to ten adult celebrants), four psalms (twice as many as I expected!), two readings, the Magnificat, and the Our Father. I skimmed the rest of the schedule during one of the longer psalms, and I found I was going to miss a full page of intercessions.

Oh, well. Interceding was not as important as making sure the bus didn’t leave me in Canterbury. I slipped out the door at 3:45. That was all well and good, making sure that I left early enough to get to the bus on time…

…Assuming, of course, that I knew where the bus was. Unfortunately, I hadn’t figured that out before heading into the service, so I had to rely on my photographic memory to return me to the group. And that failed me. I started down the right road, but two wrong turns later I texted someone and asked where I was supposed to go. He said the coach parking lot was at the top of the map, so I started my way north after I had been walking south after I had been walking north after I had made the second wrong turn. I made it, fifteen minutes late (even though I ran a little). I walked up to the bus, and I saw the driver waiting outside. I asked, “I guess everyone else is here, right?” He said, “Yah!” I walked onto the bus, and someone said (jokingly), “Boo that man!” Then the group leader asked (jokingly, again), “Was she pretty?”

Well, the church was pretty, I thought. I sat down and slept a bit on the way home, the 150th Psalm running through my head.

Blog Traffic Jam, Part 3 of 5: Three Weeks at the Science Media Centre

I hate to put things into categories before they’re finished. Developments can happen further down the line that paint what has already been processed in a different light; oftentimes, that light is more accurate than the names you had forced events under previously. This is the edge that historians have over journalists: even though journalists keep the advantage of timeliness, historians have the great expanse of other events that provide the right context for the period they study, so their assessments of what happened at a particular point are usually more in-depth, well-rounded, and (sorry, fellow journos!) fact-based.

That said, I’ve begun to categorize my internship time with the Science Media Centre. (Now I'm used to calling it "centre," not "center.") Even though the work is continuous and carries over from week to week, the long “weekends” I have in between stints there serve as fairly reliable bold lines between stages of work. (Due to visa restrictions that everyone in the group has to follow, I can only work three days a week, which means I’m only there on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.) It happened by accident, with little willing on my part, which might lend some credence to the categories as correct representations instead of artificial constructs in my head.

So, without further adieu, this is how my three weeks have been. They’ll just be a paragraph each so I don’t do too much pre-processing.


Week One (12-14 May): Thrown into the Fire

I got to my internship at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 12. There was a press briefing at 10:30. …a.m. There were two press briefings on Wednesday, and another one followed on Thursday. For each one (except one of the Wednesday ones, since it overlapped the other one), I welcomed journalists and panelists, got journalists’ names, and sat in on the briefing. Also, each day I skimmed all the major London newspapers (Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Mail, Independent, Sun, Mirror, Express), found the science stories, and wrote a synopsis of them to send to the other staff members. Along with that, I made up a coverage report of all the press that the first briefing had gotten. (Sadly, none, but still, it was something to do.) By Wednesday afternoon, I also was given the task of aggregating all the press work we had done during a week of swine flu coverage (27-30 April) to send to the scientists who had helped us.

…Wow. Looking back on that, I realize I did a lot. They trusted me! They really trusted me!


Week Two (19-21 May): Little Ado About Nothing

I did considerably less during the second week. There were no press briefings, I finished the daily science news reports quickly, and I finished the swine flu report the first day. The only major thing that happened was a big meeting among all the departments in the Royal Institution, which despite our technical independence from the RI we attended. (Ha, I said “we!”) But apparently, I got there early in the “volunteer season” (my words), because we had another volunteer (who also works at Nature) working during the week, a third one in on Thursday, and a fourth one who had meant to come in for an interview on Thursday but got sick.


Week Three (26-28 May): Much Ado about Something Big

There was another briefing on Tuesday, which started to bring me back into the groove of lots of work. Frankly, I was missing that, because the first week was exhilarating. (And getting journalists’ names at the briefings reminds me of taking photos for the IDS! Except it’s harder to get the names spelled right because “David Derbyshire” sounds like “David Darbishure.” I’ve asked someone’s name four times because of that. Don’t worry, I’ve gotten better.)

On Wednesday, the SMC director asked me to help advertize the World Conference of Science Journalists that a few people in the office are helping to organize. I jumped at the opportunity (internally, of course!) and started sending e-mails that afternoon. I’ll be doing that work until the end, when hopefully the reward will be free entry to some seminars, some free food, and maybe a trip to a science destination. Yay! [← This explains the banner and icon appearing on my blog now. They have them for free on the website.]

Also, the volunteer that got sick the week before came in on Thursday. She’ll be there Thursdays and Fridays, so our schedules will overlap for one day a week. It’s good to get someone closer to my level in the office: She’s 24, and ::gasp:: she’s a journalist!


So that’s what I’ve done so far. The people in the office are pretty laid-back and good at their jobs, and the other volunteers are cool, too. I’m predicting a great next four weeks.

Blog Traffic Jam, Part 2 of 5: Language Barrier Overcome (Barely)

Or "When they say, 'Italian church,' they mean, 'Italian church".

I had meant to go to Westminster Abbey for Pentecost services this morning because, even though it’s Anglican, it’s Westminster Abbey. I hadn’t been to a Catholic Mass in three weeks, but I figured that since I had been busy the first two Sundays here and I had gone to evening prayer at St. Paul’s Cathedral last weekend, I hadn’t become too much of a heathen and I could go somewhere else again.

But then I woke up later, and moved slower, than I wanted to this morning. Given the amount of time it took to make & eat my eggs & bacon, and given that I’d meet with crowds at Westminster because it’s Pentecost… at Westminster Abbey… I decided to go more local. There’s a small Italian Catholic church called St. Peter on the north end of our street, so I decided to go there instead. Our area used to be called Little Italy because of the influx of Italian immigrants in the last century, so I figured that I’d be able to see something interesting. The journey would be shorter than the one to Westminster (two minutes compared to 15-30 minutes), and I’d have a better chance to get a good seat.

I left the flat at 10:45 for the 11:00 service. I walked up Hatton Garden and turned right, and there was a pure-white Gothic-style church waiting for me. I walked up the steps, past a middle-aged couple standing on the sidewalk, and saw the list of Mass times. …I mean, the lists of Mass times. One list was in English, and the other was in Italian. Next to the listing for the 9:30 Mass was, “(English and Italian)”, and I said to myself, “Oh, good! They acknowledge their history. I like them already!”

I entered the church, which had gold all over the altar area, large paintings behind the altar & on the outer walls, and icons of saints along the sides. I walked past St. Anthony of Padua and noticed that instead of that spelling, the nameplate said, “S. Antonio di Padova.” I was heartened by the knowledge of their roots, but I also began to think differently about the “(English and Italian)” tag.

I sat down, found that both the pews and the kneelers were made completely of wood, said a quick Hail Mary in English, and sat down. A few other people were scattered amongst the pews, and just to test my worry, I listened in to a few conversations. That didn’t work, because I was in a church & people were whispering. So, I kept looking around, hoping to find proof that everything would be all right linguistically.

More people shuffled in. Some of them sat in front of me, so I leaned in (inconspicuously!) and listened. Sure enough, they spoke Italian. As if to drive the point home, they had in their hands a foldout to follow the Pentecost Mass, and it was entirely in Italian. I buried my face in my hand, hoping that my Spanish would pull me through.

And then I thought, “It’s a Catholic Mass. It’s universal. I’ll be able to follow this.” But to make myself more sure, I kept in plain sight the Mass guide of the churchgoers in front of me, which meant I read over their shoulders.

The organ sounded, the priest walked down the aisle with the acolytes, and he reached the altar, where he said, “Nel nome del Padre, e del Figlio e dello Spirito Santo.” Ha! I told myself. I know that answer! “Amen.”

“La pace, la carità e la fede da parte di Dio Padre e del Signore nostro Gesù Cristo sia con tutti voi.”

Umm… What is it in Spanish? “¿Y con tu espíritu?”

Nononononono, it’s, “E con il tuo spirito.” But I was close. I blended in enough.

“Fratelli, per celebrare degnamente i santi misteri, riconosciamo i nostri peccati.” Hey, I know that last word! It’s “pecado” in Spanish! Sins! Oh, right, silence.

“Signore, pietà.” “Signore, pietà.” Hey, it’s a call-and-respond!

“Cristo, pietà.” “Cristo, pietà.”

“Signore, pietà.” “Signore, pietà.” That was easy.

Then the Gloria. I couldn’t even hope to follow that, especially with the singing. I said it to myself in English.

I peered over the shoulder of the woman in front of me to catch a glimpse of her Mass guide during the first reading. Fortunately, I had heard the story of Peter & the apostles speaking in multiple tongues at least 20 times, so I couldn't miss anything. (I especially didn’t miss the irony!) All I had to do was say the response at the end, following the reader’s “Parola di Dio.” “Rendiamo grazie a Dio,” I said.

Then followed the psalm, and with great luck the woman in front of me held her Mass guide in unobstructed sight so I could sing the refrain, “Manda il tuo Spirito, Signore, a rinnovare la terra.” The second reading was easy enough (the usual one about the fruits of the Spirit dalla lettera di san Paolo apostolo ai Gàlati), and I responded with the previous reading’s “Rendiamo grazie a Dio.”

And then the Gospel. “Il Signore sia con voi.”

“E con il tuo spirito.”

“Dal vangelo secondo Giovanni.”

“Gloria a te, o Signore,” with the crossing of head, mouth & heart.

I could understand bits & pieces of Gesù’s promise of the Advocate with help from the woman’s Mass guide, but after responding with, “Lode a te, o Cristo,” I feared for my linguistic sanity. The homily’s coming! No foldout can help me now! I tried to grasp it for a few minutes, but eventually I resigned myself to letting my mind wander, occasionally catching references to “no partido politicano,” “tuo Spirito,” and “risurrezione.” I also resigned myself to reciting the Creed to myself in English.

I wandered in and out of understanding until the main part of the Eucharistic rite. Because I had seen it happen at least fifty times a year for more than 20 years, I knew the visual cues that would lead to the bells tolling for the elevation the bread/Body & the wine/Blood, so I had something to look forward to. The words, though, were lost on me (Spanish wasn’t helping!), and the woman in front of me didn’t always keep her Mass guide in the same place, making it harder to follow.

But (Godsend!) the man next to her laid his copy on the pew during the Padre Nostro! I could look down and say it with everyone! Yay! “Sia santificato il tuo nome! Tuo è il regno, tua la Potenza e la Gloria nei secoli!” I excitedly gave “pace” to everyone around me. I was back in the game. If you can call Mass in a foreign language a game.

Communion came up, and I saw chaos. I had forgotten that not everyone takes Communion in an orderly fashion. I found that out when my cousin married into a family of Colombians and everyone on my side feared that during the wedding Mass they would all go up to the priest at the same time instead of wait in line. The same happened here: people came from the sides to the middle aisle, people sitting in the back rushed to get to the front, and there was a Los Angeles bottleneck next to my pew. I got up, shuffled my way down the aisle like everyone else in order to blend in, and received the Eucharist, surprisingly without any bruises!

One more call-and-respond, one more look over a shoulder, one more “Rendiamo grazie a Dio,” and the Mass was over. It was quite a linguistic adventure, one that I’ll recall during my first Mass in Spain next spring. I took home a copy of the Mass guide I never had, just for my personal records.

Next Sunday, I think I’ll go to the church on the other end of the street. I hear they say Mass in Latin!

Just kidding. I’m thinking Westminster.

Blog Traffic Jam, Part 1 of 5: Father Knows Breakfast

I haven't blogged in five days, so, as if to match with the time I've missed, I've built up five new entries concerning that stretch. The first one appears below; the other four, which will cover the first three weeks of my internship, my experience with pizza, maintaining my tourist side, and today's trip to Canterbury and Dover, will follow in the next day or so.

***

Thank you, Dad.

Now, that's a pretty blanket statement. "Of course you're thankful for your father," you say. "What for?" I respond with an acknowledgment of his teaching me to love sports & work, his pushing me to be an Eagle Scout, and his dedication to his family. But I add one more critical thing that has come in handy over the weekends here:

Thank you, Dad, for breakfast.

Thank you for starting most weekend mornings with the smell of bacon and eggs, that I may learn to love waking up to such sweet nose-ticklers. Thank you for making the bacon and eggs so well that I regret eating them in less than five minutes. Thank you most especially for teaching me, after you had considered me worthy and able, to cook the bacon and eggs. I've made them every weekend morning here in London, and because I will always associate home with a good breakfast, those mornings bring back memories of Eagle Meadow Drive like none other. I haven't been pining for a return to the States because I haven't been homesick, but when the need comes of a small taste of home, those breakfasts hit the spot. (And my flatmates like the smell, too!)

Thank you. Very much. And yum.

Art Apology... Or Not.

Our group took a semi-grand tour of London on Saturday. We visited St. Paul’s Cathedral, Covent Garden Market, Buckingham Palace, and Green Park before heading back home, but in the middle of our trip we stopped at Trafalgar Square and took a gander at the (free to enter! but no photos...) National Gallery. Me being a visual person, I absorbed every old painting I saw… and…

I was both amazed and disappointed. Amazed, in that each painting paid great attention to details in the backgrounds, the faces, and the light sources, and in that I marveled at the talent and dedication needed to paint each picture. Disappointed, however, in that some of those weren’t good technically. The light source made half the face lie in shadow, or the whole painting was too dark, or insignificant parts shined with brilliant light while the focus didn’t have enough exposure.

I caught myself saying, “This guy (or that guy, or such-and-such woman) could have bumped up the exposure a bit. That would have struck my eye better.”

Artists and art critics aren’t supposed to talk like that. They’re supposed to focus on composition, brushstrokes, and color. I, on the other hand, had focused on the lighting and, even worse, had spoken in the language of photography. I told myself that with a few turns of the aperture dial and a press of the shutter button, I could have made a better copy of these otherwise impressive paintings in less than a second.

Once I came to that conclusion, my shoulders sank with what I had come to realize. So, in the spirit of atonement that has taken some hold in the politics on both sides of the pond, I, as a photographer, apologize on behalf of my profession for killing the painted arts.

Because frankly, modern art sucks. It’s too much out of left field, it relies too much on the artist’s individual perception & ignores universal means of interpretation, and on the whole it doesn’t have any direction. With painted portraits and landscapes and such, there is at least the aim of re-creating the visual world using materials that don’t seem visual at all. (Honestly, whodathunk that liquid from flowers and colored near-paste could create something like The Last Supper? Simply the possibility is mind-boggling!) But now that anyone could do that with any medium-quality camera, visual art (or at least painted art) has nothing to strive for.

* * *

That’s what I was gonna write. I wrote down the idea for it on Saturday, drafted the beginning on Sunday, and had it all mapped out yesterday morning (Monday).

Then yesterday afternoon I visited Tate Modern, the (free to enter! but no photos...) modern art gallery on the south bank of the Thames. I now wish to take back my apology. Photography did wonders for artists, because it made them think outside the boxes that their media (canvas, paper, etc.) had corralled them into.

Now, I’m not saying that still cameras saved art. Given the cultural feeling at the beginning of the modern art movement and the technological progress humankind had made by then, something was going to change art. The world’s culture needed to be re-invented to adapt to all the changes, and not even the absence of photography would have prevented artistic change. I’d even go so far as to say that photography played a bit part, although an important bit part, in providing the cultural changes that prompted the modern art movement.

I’m saying that the still camera freed artists from the need to strive for the perfection in painting that I alluded to earlier. Since images perceived through human sight could be reproduced almost exactly through a camera (not exactly, of course, given the artificial frame every photo requires), artists didn’t need to work toward visual faithfulness. They could focus instead on different dimensions of human perception besides strict vision.

***

Take the Tate’s Red Flocked Wall by Keith Sonnier. The artist pasted thick layers of plaster six feet high and three feet wide on a wall, covered it with red painted sawdust, and pulled the plaster sheet partially off the wall. The end result is a near-vertical shag carpet of sorts, with the top edge still clinging to the wall while the bottom is tied to the floor a foot away from the origin.

My first thought was, “Lame. This says nothing to me.” I had seen much of the same thing at the Art Institute of Chicago, when I came across a red wooden two-by-four leaning against a wall. Seriously. That was all.

Really, REALLY hoping that there was more to this than just a feigned artifact of the 70s, I read the placard next to it. The placard for the red board in Chicago hadn’t helped me at all (it didn’t say anything!), but this one enlightened me to no end. Apparently, Sonnier has to remake the piece everywhere it goes. When it moved to the Tate, he layered the wall in plaster, covered it in red sawdust, and peeled the bottom part of it off the wall. Before the Tate, when it was somewhere else, he layered that wall in plaster, covered it in red sawdust, and peeled part of it off the wall, but not in the same way. Maybe it bulged in the middle, or maybe the top was pulled off and rolled down a little bit, or maybe Sonnier only pulled off one corner. Such varied repetition meant to stress the impermanence of a work of art and such work’s relation to its environment.

***

Now, you may say that a piece of art should be able to astound the viewer by itself. It shouldn’t need a card. Previously, I would have agreed with you. But no. Just as you can’t grasp an entire cataclysmic event by reading one newspaper report, and just as you can’t conclude that they should put iodine in the water after one scientific study extolling its benefits, so you can’t describe an entire experience or concept just in a piece of art. Artists through the years have tried to say everything on one canvas and have failed because they didn’t realize the limitations of staying in one medium or two dimensions.

Modern artists know this (or at least Keith Sonnier knows), and when they try to convey something like impermanence, time, or mobility, they know they have to rely on more than just their work. They have to use all of their resources (including, if necessary, multiple walls in multiple buildings) to convey their ambitious message, and as long as the viewer can grasp the message… eventually, I’m okay with the unorthodoxy.

I take back everything negative I’ve said about modern art. Specifically, I take back the quip I shared with Chris Kaiser in Chicago, that modern art pieces are nothing more than conversation starters. Red Flocked Wall and other pieces at Tate Modern changed (and started) my mind. My bad.

Damn, I'm Missing the Indy 500!

I saw a lot of Facebook status updates (seven in the last hour) celebrating Carburetion Day specifically and race weekend generally. That made me think of the roar of cars at O'Reilly Raceway Park, the mass of humanity at 16th and Georgetown, the cheers of fans as the 33 racers cross the start line, the screams of the same fans when the winner crosses the finish line. I've only been to the race in the past three years, but after living a mile from the race park for my whole life and going to high school in the middle of everything race-related, May has come to mean frantic excitement. (And a bit of hillbillyism, but then again, doesn't everyone have a little bit of backwater in him?)

This May has meant frantic excitement, too, but in an oh-my-God-I'm-in-London! sense, not in an oh-my-God-cars-are-gonna-crash-into-each-other-at-225-miles-per-hour! sense. It's still excitement, but nevertheless I have this feeling that I'm missing out on something. I've experienced it all my life, but missing it once makes me love it and want it even more. Next year I'll hopefully be able to experience that brand of eye-popping awesomeness again, and I'll appreciate it more than ever.

Have fun at Carb Day and the race, all you Indy people! And for those who don't get to feel the thrill of the month of May, I have one thing to say: You are deprived and unfortunate people. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Except London. Or anything overseas.