Monthly Archives: November 2010

Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Pickles: The old gray market rides high

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Carlos Kalmar conducts the Oregon Symphony. We do our own bit of conducting sometimes in the form of serious scientific experiments.

By Laura Grimes

Here at Art Scatter World Headquarters, we concoct more than hot chocolate and dirty-little-secret martinis. We participate in genuine science. For weeks we’ve been conducting The Great Pickles As Social Vehicle Experiment.

Mr. Scatter made a bold declaration recently in the mainstream media about our little family enterprise.

We deal chiefly in the concoction of highly improbable stories and the manufacture and trade of gray-market pickles.

Just how is that gray matter coming along? (Not brain cells.) The experiment is kicking along in fine form with Pickle Swaps (everyone step together now) 5, 6, 7, 8.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Pickles. They’re not just for breakfast anymore.

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Salad kebobs made with dill pickled green cherry tomatoes, fresh red cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and water cress.

By Laura Grimes,
aided and abetted by Bob Hicks

Grand Unsealing of the Pickles day, known to the rest of America as Thanksgiving, went splendidly in the Scatter Household.

Mr. and Mrs. Scatter lined up a variety of preserves vintage 2010 for their first tasting to determine whether they’re naughty or nice. They carefully sniffed, twirled, nibbled, chewed and swallowed. They unanimously agreed that it is the crunchiest vintage yet for the spicy dills and sweet pickles. They suspect it’s because the cucumbers were fresh and firm, and the ones that weren’t sliced were stabbed, allowing the brine to fully penetrate (they can’t believe they typed that either).

The Scatters discussed the merits of each pickle varietal. Here are their tasting notes.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

O Christmas tin, O Christmas tin

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Some people drink Santa cocoa while they listen to "Santa Baby." It's been known to happen.By Laura Grimes

While the rest of America cooed about golden-roasted turkeys and football scores yesterday, the Scatter family was concerned about deeply more important matters. Hot chocolate.

Ah! Scatter regulars just knew that line was going to be about pickles. They know the fourth Thursday in November is not known as Thanksgiving in the Scatter household but as the Grand Unsealing of the Pickles.

But the Scatters are a multi-complex family. They go way beyond cranberries. Like the United Nations or a mixed-faith family, they are very liberal about accommodating many cultural needs. The Grand Unsealing of the Pickles day is a multiple bonanza.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Thankless holiday cooks up a flood

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Gobble gobble

By Laura Grimes

Today is a REALLY big day in the Scatter Household. The special holiday hot chocolate comes out, the Christmas CDs make their debut and … drumroll … it’s the Grand Unsealing of the Pickles.

We’ve been sharing our disaster tales of Thanksgivings past all week.

Some years back, Mr. Scatter’s family (notice how the disaster stories are always Mr. Scatter’s family?) wanted to get together for a large gathering. The trick was finding a place big enough.

No one had a house the right size. (Except us, and we lived too far away.) A restaurant didn’t suit our need to sprawl over several hours. Finally, I booked a condo and reserved its community room, which had a kitchen.

Somehow, we had the largest family with the smallest kids, and we traveled the farthest, made all the arrangements and hosted the event. No, wait. Come to think of it, I made all the arrangements and it wasn’t even my family.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Thankless holiday sets off an alarm

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We might have to fall back on this because we're resorting to Plan B and planning our Thanksgiving meal at the last minute./Wikimedia CommonsBy Laura Grimes

Here at Art Scatter World Headquarters we are counting down to the day of the Grand Unsealing of the Pickles* by telling all our embarrassing and disastrous tales of Thanksgivings past.

For some reason, giant black clouds hover over us this time every year, though we always manage to have a wonderful holiday.

This year, we had planned to drive to the Olympic Peninsula to spend several days with relatives, but our trip was canceled when 6 to 12 inches of snow dumped there and roads turned treacherous,** Felix/Martha came down with a nasty cold (which isn’t like him), and the half-wild She Cat, who usually disappears for days and eats god knows what, badly injured her front paw and is camped out on a fluffy blanket on the couch.

This morning, the He Cat made barfing sounds on the dining room rug. I grabbed him around the middle (not so good) and was juggling him (also not good) while unlocking the front door, when his whole body convulsed and a wet hairball flew out of his mouth and landed on the rug near my feet.

Thank you, Thanksgiving.

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Food, General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Thankless holiday goes up in flames

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This oven looks freakishly like Mr. and Mrs. Scatter's old one that caught fire. Many thanks to the Small Large Smelly Boy (Felix/Martha) for the splendid design that cleverly covered up the baked-on grime on the bottom. Wikimedia Commons and Felix/Martha

By Laura Grimes

Two days to T-day!

Mr. and Mrs. Scatter love planning Thanksgiving dinner, even if it’s just them and The Large Smelly Boys. They love writing up the menu, ferreting out the special recipe file, taking stock of ingredients, making lists, shopping, splaying out the bounty.

Then on Thanksgiving day, they put on music and start chopping. They put out a nice spread of appetizers and pour some wine. They both happily bustle around the kitchen, nibbling and testing. The big feast is a time of thanks, good food and good friends, but, really, it’s the long, slow process of getting there that they savor. Basically, it’s Norman Rockwell meets Currier and Ives, if only their paintings could also convey the cozy warmth of a fuzzy blanket and scratch ‘n’ sniff cooking smells. Yes, that’s exactly the Scatter household on Thanksgiving day.

WAIT A SEC! WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! Back up to the “splaying out the bounty” part.

A handful of years back, Mr. and Mrs. Scatter were at this point in the process, a few days before T-Day. They had just finished the exhausting list-making and marathon shopping. They had just unloaded all the bags and set out all the food.

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General, Humor, Laura Grimes

Thankless holiday takes a shower*

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It's possible this is Mr. Scatter's Sister No. 3 serving the defrosted turkey to the whole team, but it's really "The First Thanksgiving" by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, circa 1912-15. Wikimedia Commons

By Laura Grimes

Thanksgiving always fills the Scatter homestead with both anticipation and trepidation. We love our sweet potatoes, but we cannot explain why so many of our turkey feasts are disasters.

These aren’t garden-variety disasters like the cranberry jelly didn’t set or the buns got burned. No, we do it up whole hog. Like the oven catches fire, the furnace breaks, the toilet overflows, the smoke alarms go off.

We once moved the entire household. Like, that day. Which isn’t exactly a disaster, but it’s not sleeping off the pumpkin pie with a cozy fire and a football game, either. And this wasn’t three decades ago, when we were young and limber and owned but a few chairs that we could transport in a sedan across town. This was three years ago, which meant we moved because of mobility issues and required a lot more than a van, a pickup and a semi-truck to haul a few tons only a few blocks.

We’re pretty safe with sharp implements and know proper food handling procedures, so we’re not really sure why this particular holiday is often marred by a giant black cloud. Sometimes literally.

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Bob Hicks, General, Visual Art

The canvas goes blank: Farewell to Nathan Oliveira and Beth Van Hoesen

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Nathan Oliveira, "Nineteen Twenty-Nine," oil on canvas, 1961. Smithsonian American Art Museum/Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 1969.

By Bob Hicks

We’ve arrived at a time when many of the bright figures of 20th century art are slipping away into that final blankness that artists seem to anticipate better than the rest of us. Maybe it’s because artists begin each day with a blank canvas or paper and understand that the void is both an opportunity and an inevitability.

In the past week two fine West Coast artists, both based in San Francisco but well-known in Portland art circles, have died. Nathan Oliveira, who died last Saturday, was 81. Beth Van Hoesen, who died on Tuesday, was 84.

Beth Van Hoesen, "Boris," aquatint, etching, and dryprint, 1981.Both were figurative artists, although in very different ways and with very different outlooks and techniques. Oliveira, who is represented in Portland by Elizabeth Leach Gallery, was primarily a painter and sculptor (he also produced a lot of very good prints) and he was very much a modernist, an artist who explored the psychological dark corners. Van Hoesen was primarily a printmaker and an observer of the small wonders of life, a meticulous craftswoman and traditionalist whose skills and approach harked back to the likes of Durer. You can read Van Hoesen’s obituary here.

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General, Laura Grimes, Visual Art

The calculus of photography and life

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By Laura Grimes

Sometimes life plays tricks and secrets sneak up when you least expect them. Hidden talents. Buried stories.

Three months ago I went to a high school reunion. (I won’t tell which one.) Before this year I had been a pill about attending them. I had really terrific friends in school. I had lots of great memories. But that was then and my life now seemed so far removed.

Invariably every five years some of my closest friends from school would make all the reunion arrangements, I would ignore them, and as the date drew close my phone would ring. “Grimes, get your butt up here!” And I would oblige.

Of course, I would have a great time. Laugh my guts out. What was I thinking? I was such a twit.

So this year, I just gave myself over to it from the beginning. (The phone call was looming anyway. I really didn’t have a choice.) I paid early and booked a room with friends. I looked forward to it.

But something very curious happened this time.

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Bob Hicks, Film, General

‘Farewell Wake’: small world, big bang

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By Bob Hicks

Mr. Scatter had so much fun doing his cameo for Charles Deemer’s new micro-movie The Farewell Wake that by the time he actually saw the movie he was surprised by how complex the whole thing was.

Rick Zimmer stars as a performance artist/provocateur in Charles Deemer's micro-movie "The Last Wake."He shouldn’t have been, of course. After all, Deemer knows this stuff. He teaches screenwriting at Portland State University, and is a terrific playwright, and a pioneer in the expanded-universe form of hyperdrama, and he’d already done another ultra-low-budget film, Deconstructing Sally, which we wrote about a little over a year ago here.

Still, when you’re having fun you forget about such things. And not a lot could have been easier than Mr. Scatter’s day on location, which consisted of meeting Deemer at a downtown coffee shop, sitting outside, doing two quick improvised takes for what turned out to be about a minute’s screen time in a 96-minute film, and then shooting the breeze for a few minutes until we both trundled off in our  separate directions. Plus, Deemer himself was the cameraman, and his camera, such as it was, wasn’t much bigger than a pack of cigarettes. Not much danger of stage fright under those circumstances.

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