The Cookblog by Brian Cook

Interview With Myself

Wherein I answer questions asked by me.

Q: Where are you getting your inspiration for the type of things you’re working on now?

A: In my latest stuff, I’ve been trying to achieve the kind of aesthetic found in Little Golden Books; I love the saturated colors and rough textures of those drawings. There’s a fascinating mix of simplicity and complexity in those images. Plus they have more than a whiff of nostalgia, which I can’t really resist.

Q: What parts of your work are you dissatisfied with?

A: Originality has become more important to me, particularly in terms of the materials I use. It’s the main reason I’ve begun moving away from photographic stuff (especially photos taken by others) and towards hand-drawn things. To me, the work I’ve entirely entirely from scratch is more fulfilling. I also think I’m better at it than photography or collage.

Q: What skills would you most like to gain or improve?

A: I’m actually pretty pleased with how my Photoshop skills are progressing (advice to aspiring designers: learn how to use the pen tool!), though obviously I’d like to get better. Understanding and creating color palettes are areas where I could definitely stand to improve. More generally I’d really like to be able to play music better. My friends and I meet fairly regularly to play together and it would be nice to be able to contribute a little more complexity and variety to proceedings.

Q: Speaking of music, what are you listening to right now?

A: A lot of folksy stuff (Department of Eagles, Tom Brosseau, Beach House) and also a lot of more electronic things (Phantogram, Miike Snow, Dan Deacon). Both types of music are different, but I find them equally good for a work soundtrack. Naturally, I also listen to the music my friends and I have made.

Q: What projects are you working on now?

A: I’ve actually just made a spreadsheet to track them all because the sheer number demanded organization. I’ve got 18 different projects to work on. Most are posters, but there is also a board game, some video things, some music things, some architectural things, some events and a few others that I can’t say too much about right now. I’ve been fortunate to do stuff for CT comedy troupes & Mark Twain House and there are plenty of other irons in the fire!

Maybe my favorite part about all of this is working with friends. They’re a fantastically smart, talented and interesting group of people and it’s thrilling to be able to collaborate with them on stuff.

Q: Any insufferable, curmudgeonly final words?

A: Yes, actually. Turn off the TV and do something. It’s more fun and energizing to create than to consume.

Celestial Flagellation – A Space Opera

So we’re calling it a space opera, despite the exclusion of arias and inclusion of accordions. The story is simple: a 1961 NASA test monkey named “Ham” reluctantly leaves his expecting chimpanzee wife to make his fortune in space. During a space walk to perform routine maintenance  on a heat plate, he becomes separated from his craft drifts through the vacuum, uncertain of his future. A passing meteor nudges him gently but at great speed toward an unknown corner of the universe that bustles with commerce and romance.

Ham trades his favors for rocket parts in a far-flung bazaar, sleeping on the couch of a lonely synthonium player while he builds a new craft. Hitching his contraption to a comet, he speeds back towards Earth, the bosom of his wife and the soft breathing of his infant daughter.

(mp3) Celestial Flagellation – Immortality

(zip) Celestial Flagellation – Of Uranus

Chymera Harbor – In Extremis EP

A few weeks ago, I went into the mountains of Vermont with friends for skiing and visiting. Almost as an afterthought, we brought a collection of instruments including a keyboard, xylophone, accordion and guitar. As it turned out, we had such a great time playing together that we’ve done it again several times since we’ve been back. Each time the band is slightly different, so each time we rename ourselves. There’s been Ham on Houndstooth, Lovers and Dreamers and Widescreen Thumbs. Now, there’s Chymera Harbor.

Recorded in a studio far from the maddening crowd, the In Extremis EP is an organic storytelling of the whaling ship ZOROASTER that sailed from New Bedford on July 6, 1843. Master Joseph Seabury guided the vessel south and west around Cape Horn and across the South Pacific to the fecund whaling grounds of the Indian Ocean. Meditating on themes of freedom, depravity and loneliness, In Extremis articulates the introspective nature of a life spent at sea. It is heaving waves and rough whiskers. It is stale bread and red sunsets.

(MP3) Chymera Harbor – Three Dowries of Breadfruit

(ZIP) Chymera Harbor – In Extremis

The Best Sandwich You’ve Ever Tasted

For some folks, the more expensive a meal or beverage, the better it tastes. How else to explain caviar named after diamonds or a $1,000 mint julep? I frequently thank my lucky stars that I haven’t been saddled with such a proclivity, but perhaps I should be thanking my forebears instead.

During a recent trip to Ohio to visit the maternal, Slovene-Hungarian side of my family, I had an opportunity to visit more with my grandmother than I had on any previous occasion. At a dignified 4’8″, she is usually to be found ambling around the kitchen with her irratable Sun Conure, Sunny, perched on her shoulder or huddled inside her cardigan.

She makes magical things in that kitchen.

There’s a semi-conscious competition between my brother and me where the only way to get the upper hand is to have had Grandma’s salmon chowder more recently. Each Cheez-It dropped into the bowl is instantly transformed into a biscuit both subtly compelling and radiating with flavor. Toasted pumpkin seeds in her granola-based cookies dance salty-sweet on the taste buds. Knobs of chocolate make rare appearances, and even then are model team members contributing to the harmonious collective rather than prima donnas trying to steal the show. Said cookies are just as visually palatable, always square so as to be accommodated, tightly-packed, in her straight-edged tupperware. This visit, I discovered another string to her bow.

Sitting in her kitchen, admiring the WWII-era bomb that now forms the base of a table lamp, my father and I wondered what to eat. My grandmother asked if we wanted a grilled cheese. We said yes.

Dish water occupied one front burner, heated on the stove to save fuel costs. She placed a griddle on the other front burner and made two sandwiches for my dad and two for me. My mother suspects that the griddle is some three generations old. I like to think that it can recognize the flavors it touches every day, happily toasting the butter onto a side of bread or gazing wistfully at a pancake as it’s whisked over to the table and drenched in blueberry syrup.

Setting the sandwiches on the table, I raised just one eyebrow at the unusual inclusion of bologna. Beside my plate, she set a jar of dill pickles, the marker-scrawled label more antique and inviting than any Olde Brand for sale on store shelves. Like so much in that kitchen, she had clearly made those pickles with her own hands, which are as beautifully gnarled and knotted as roots of The Giving Tree.

I took a bite of sandwich, and it was good. Still chewing, I bit into a pickle.

It was the best thing I’d ever eaten.

My grandmother’s husband, my grandfather, is remarkable in many ways. He got a football scholarship to Ohio State when he was young, served in the Navy, became a cop and was hit by a truck blowing through an intersection while on a police motorcycle. He was bedridden for two years, and the local funeral home would transport him from home to high school in a hearse, where he would watch my father’s his alma mater‘s football games out the back door. He has had well over 80 surgeries and worn through a series of knees, hips and shoulders. He is a bionic man.

He is also the most positive person I have ever met and am likely to meet. He speaks often of his enormous luck at being treated so kindly by life. When he laughs, everyone laughs.

He is also fond of declaring his latest meal, “the best I’ve ever had” or the most recent flower “the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.” My mother told me that this used to bother her, as she thought him not discerning enough. In time, she came to realize that he genuinely believed these statements each time he made them. They were always true.

It’s an amazing way to live when each bite is better than the last and each flower more perfect than any that has come before, and I like to think that I have inherited this constant feeling of joy. Thus, I present to you the recipe for the Best Sandwich You’ve Ever Tasted.

.

Start with wheat bread. I chose this sodium-free version for no particular reason. Perhaps the blue color appealed to me. Quite probably other types of bread will work just fine. Experimenting is both fun and delicious.

.

The choice of cheese is rather more strict, since the sharpness of the cheddar must conjure images of samurai swords, black keys on a piano and that really smart kid in math class who had the answer before you finished reading the problem. Sharp.

.

I don’t think turkey bologna was in the sandwich grandma made, but again, it’s more than adequate. It’s also probably healthier and rules in any no-red-meat types who would otherwise be ruled out of enjoying this lovely sandwich.

.

Dill pickles are the real magic dust here, and the presence of you or your relatives in the process of their creation is fundamental. I give you the recipe as it was given to me: written on an index card. I suggest you do the same. It’s better that way.

.

Sitting on a plate next to a rattle of dill pickle spears, the majesty of the sandwich should have you near tears. If you’re like me, anyway.

.

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa.

Favorite Albums of 2009

It was a great year for me and a great year for music. That said, I’m not a music critic, nor am I particularly interested in rap, jazz or country music. Like all lists of this sort, mine is not definitive or comprehensive, it’s just what I like. I hope you like it, too.

1. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
Experimenting with sound is a great way to get noticed in the indie space, and when the experiment works it’s star-making. Asshole/genius Dave Longstreth and angels Amber Coffman and, erm, Angel Deradoorian combine to make perhaps the most challenging and rewarding album of the year.
MP3 – Stillness Is The Move

2. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
When Grizzly Bear spent 20 minutes on stage getting their equipment just so during Bonnaroo, one meathead in the crowd mumbled that “this had better be fucking good.” Well, meathead, it was and is really fucking good.
MP3 – Ready, Able

3. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
The French band that sings in English, Phoenix’s star is on the rise.
MP3 – 1901

4. Elvis Perkins in Dearland – Elvis Perkins in Dearland
Old soul Elvis Perkins crafts some wonderful folk with guitar, squeezebox and trombone.
MP3 – 123 Goodbye

5. Discovery – LP
The collaboration between Vampire Weekend‘s Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot‘s Wes Miles thankfully fills a bit of the void left behind by the Postal Service.
MP3 – So Insane

6. Dan Deacon – Bromst
An electronic freakout with chipmunk voices and at times jarring buzz saw like effects is punctuated by some beautiful melodic moments.
MP3 – Paddling Ghost

7. Islands – Vapours
More joyous than 2008′s Arm’s Way, the Canadian group’s latest effort is great on headphones and with the windows rolled down.
MP3 – Hearbeat

8. St. Vincent – Actor
Taking over Regina Spektor’s crown as the quirky indie world crush, St. Vincent (Annie Clark) delivers a quite stirring album.
MP3 – The Strangers

9. Passion Pit – Manners
I love the direction music is heading. First, a group couldn’t get widely heard until they were signed by a record company. Then influential MP3 bloggers could bring attention to unsigned artists. Now, anyone can make an album on their laptop and become popular if the music resonates with listeners. It’s an exciting time when music fans aren’t just consuming, but creating.
MP3 – Moth’s Wings

10. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
As Quentin Tarantino said about Elvis and the Beatles, people can like both but always like one more than the other. I believe this is also specifically true of Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective, but maybe it’s just me?
MP3 – Brother Sport

Honorable Mentions:
Phantogram – Eyelid Movies
MP3 – When I’m Small

Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You
MP3 – Not Fair

Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
MP3 – Anonanimal

The XX – XX
MP3 – Crystalised

Girls – Album
MP3 – Summertime

*Special thanks to Dan Russell of Sea Tea Improv for proofreading!