We went deep-sea fishing yester­day and hung out with some Repub­li­cans! Actually, I’m only kidding. We didn’t talk to them, but we did gawk a lot and talk about them. I was initially kind of shocked to see someone wearing this hat— non-iron­i­cally (not an early Halloween costume or anything!). But it made me think about how in a certain way my circle is very narrow, much more even than when I was an under­grad (the School of Music is, predictably, much less diverse). It made me wonder that I wasn’t seeing the world wrong from some deluded, far-left point of view. When I listen to or read the news, I like to think I know how to spot bias, and that as a result I “know the facts” about all the “issues”. But truth­fully, I haven’t even given the other side a chance.

My gut reaction is to scorn conser­v­a­tives I’ve met who are really just like me— who’ve inher­ited their ideas from their parents and have never had to deeply question their own world­view. It’s a terrible double standard, and I’m sure I hold conser­v­a­tives to many more. Should I be doing more ques­tion­ing of my polit­i­cal beliefs, simply because I hold the same views as my parents (and their parents)?

I caught four good-sized bluefish (the first four fish I’ve caught in my life!). The Repub­li­cans looked like they caught about 27 each, but really, isn’t sport-fishing exper­tise prac­ti­cally a require­ment for joining the party?

Connecti­cut Ruling Over­turns Ban on Same-Sex Marriage

This may be the first day in my life I’m actually proud to be a Connecticutian.

D. works in a lab here at Yale studying aspects of taste and smell. As one of her on-the-job “perks” she came by a couple of tablets of Mira­c­ulin, made from Miracle Fruit, which causes sour and bitter foods to taste sweet (there was an article about this in the Times a few months back).

I just had my own private “flavor-tripping” party and here are the results:

1. The pill itself tastes really sour, which is not what I expected. D. and I both thought it tasted a little like plain tamarind (which is not one of my favorite things— I’d prefer to use it in Pad Thai). So letting the thing dissolve on my tounge was not pleasant. But it was over soon enough. The effects are supposed to last about 20 minutes.
2. First thing I did was boldly bite into a suprèmed lemon. It was deli­cious. Tasted like fresh lemonade with just the right amount of sugar, but in a solid fruit. 
3. The lime was similar; it was like perfect lime soda.
4. The grape­fruit was my favorite of all the citrus, though more subtle; it just tasted like a really good Texas grape­fruit (which it wasn’t. I tasted it before­hand for comparison).
5. D. advised me to try some Greek yogurt, which is very thick and unsweet­ened. The flavor was nicely balanced, a little rich for me— I could imagine it being good spread on a scone or some toast.
6. The cucum­bers tasted no differ­ent, so I used them as pallette cleansers between courses.
7. The sushi ginger was not notice­ably differ­ent either, maybe because that stuff is pretty heavily sweet­ened already.
8. These sun-gold cherry tomatoes are also quite sweet to begin with, but like any good tomato, they have a strongly acidic bite. The mira­c­ulin played up the sweet­ness while covering up the acid, which made for an initially exciting but ulti­mately lacking tomato expe­ri­ence. Adding the purple basil just tasted like adding basil.
9. This white wine had been sitting in my refrig­er­a­tor awhile, and it was getting pretty sour. I had high hopes that the mira­c­ulin would render it a deli­cious Sauternes or Gewürz­traminer, but it still tasted like bad wine. Just really sweet.
10. The tamarind (that brown chunk in the middle of the photo) tasted like one of those tamarind lollipops from Mexico. It didn’t win me over.
11. Hot soppre­satta remained just that.
12. The balsamic vinegar was still very potent; I think this might have had some­thing to do with the fumes. It was drink­able, though, certainly no less than strong alcohol.
13. The sweet­ness of Sriracha was played up to the point of being a bit cloying; I wouldn’t squirt it on my dumplings if it always tasted like that.

So, I think the grape­fruit was the clear winner, with the other the citrus coming in close second. Why not order some for yourself?

I got a new camera last week on eBay. I’d only been saving up for about eight years. Here are some test shots from the Yale farm today (click for larger):

At long last, the calendar and visuals sections are up and running. Maybe I should also start a “victuals” section. Also a new page for my orchestra/string quartet piece for New York Youth Symphony: Senior.

The first time I was intro­duced to dumpling-making was at my friend Mingzhe Wang’s house about three years ago. Since that night, I must have made dumplings dozens more times in collab­o­ra­tion with various combi­na­tions of family and friends. Every time, I end up passing along the recipe to someone; I like to think that those people even­tu­ally instruct a few of their friends on it, and that Ming has an expo­nen­tially growing army of dumpling disci­ples. In the hopes of encour­ag­ing such growth, here is my tran­scrip­tion of the recipe. It’s pretty labor inten­sive, so it’s good to split the work up among a large group of hungry people. What I espe­cially like, though, is the flex­i­bil­ity of this recipe— most things in the filling are strictly optional, and you can fool around with the propor­tions until you reach your personal dumpling nirvana.

Ming’s Dumplings

Filling:

1 lb. ground pork, not too lean, plenty fat
1 lb. raw shrimp, all chopped up
shitake mush­rooms, chopped fine
a few large leaves Chinese cabbage, shredded real good
cilantro
scal­lions or Chinese chives
bamboo shoots
water chestnuts
fresh ginger
soy sauce
salt

Dumplings (makes around 100):

3 pkg. Hong Kong-style dumpling wrappers (or make your own)
Peanut or other high-heat cooking oil
water

Dipping sauce:

Soy sauce (1/3)
Chinese black rice vinegar (2/3)
Ginger
Garlic
Chili and/or sesame oil

Fold the dumplings. Put about a table­spoon of filling in the center of each wrapper. Dip your finger in water and run it along the edge of the wrapper. Then fold it in half over the filling, and crimp the edges toward the center.

Heat up a heavy pan (prefer­ably cast iron or non-stick) until it is really hot (to burn off all the residue). Then pour in a small puddle of oil. It should be smoking hot. Put in the dumplings, fairly close together. Don’t move them until they form a crust. Once they have a nice brown crust, pour in about ¹⁄₄ cup water and cover pan, leaving a small opening for steam to escape. Once water cooks off, flip the dumplings on their sides, make another crust, serve and devour. Hot. With the sauce. And a Cold One.

A few obser­va­tions about Wednes­day’s Radio­head show:

1. It melted our faces and vibrated our bowels.

2. Thom is getting older (but he can still dance). I noticed it in his voice, though; the group inten­tion­ally avoiding playing songs with more extreme high parts, and often Thom would slightly alter the vocal lines to include fewer falsetto notes (espe­cially in Paranoid Android).

3. Could Paul Lansky ever have envi­sioned 30,000 people wildly gyrating to Mild und Leise?

4. Radio­head hired some good lighting design­ers. Most of the visuals were quite beau­ti­ful and well-suited to the music. The was a partic­u­larly neat effect used during Every­thing in its Right Place (one of my favorite songs ever) where the lyrics of the song were projected against a forest of dangly rods so that it looked as if the text were scrolling towards you. There were two problems, though: IT’S “ITS”, NOT “IT’S”. I can’t believe nobody caught the misplaced apos­tro­phe in 1,000,000-point bright green type. See Strong Bad’s unfor­get­table mnemonic. Also, about that type: it was Comic Sans. No kidding. Radio­head’s visuals have their share of quirky typog­ra­phy, but this seemed somehow… unsuitable.

5. After A Wolf at the Door, Thom mentioned the title of the song “in case you were unfa­mil­iar with it”. This seemed like an odd choice, espe­cially in the context of the show, which was extremely light on chit-chat. Why would anyone be unfa­mil­iar with that song? It’s the last track on Hail to the Thief. Strange. The song has always kind of stuck out to me, though. Musi­cally, it feels like a throw­back to much earlier, Pablo Honey-era Radio­head.

6. Jonny did a little musique-concrète intro to The Gloaming on his Kaoss Pad (I think) which sampled some obnox­ious commer­cial/ra­dio-announcer types of voices. One line that popped out at me was “Win a Macbook Air!” It reminded me of this photo I found a while ago of Thom proudly display­ing a vintage rainbow Apple sticker:

I guess liking Apple products is no longer all cool and coun­ter­cul­ture. Oh well, it’s what we wanted all along, right?

7. I was excited to see Grizzly Bear, the opening act, but appar­ently nobody else was. Hardly anyone showed up until the stage­hands were busily setting up Radio­head’s lighting appa­ra­tus. Which was sad, because they were really good. Those guys do close harmony amaz­ingly well. The ampli­fi­ca­tion was a bit over-aggres­sive, though; the guitars were strangely sharp and punchy, without the beau­ti­ful haziness of Yellow House. Also, it would have been nice if Radio­head had let them use their piano. I’d love to see them in a more intimate venue with a more enthu­si­as­tic crowd.

8. Much has been made of Radio­head’s tour-greening efforts, but I’m sure that the carbon emis­sions from the disaster of a parking lot at the Comcast Center completely canceled out all the offsets that were purchased (not that carbon offsets are such a great idea anyway). Along with thou­sands of other cars, we sat in the parking lot for two and a half hours just waiting to get out. This place makes Tangle­wood look like a marvel of traffic planning.

Check out my new binding machine:

Actually, it’s more a glori­fied hole-puncher. The binding part is done by me, with those coil-crimping pliers. I’m a binding machine.

Also, check out that typog­ra­phy for the logo. I can only assume the design­ers were going for some­thing… bindy? Yet lighthearted?

In other news. We’re off to Boston today to see Radio­head. Cut the kids in half, every­body!

Just wanted to alert you to some new content on the site: some audio from two recent concerts, Ligeti Horn Trio and Home Stretch.