"Walnuts 'improve sperm health.'"

Some study reported by BBC.

Oh, come on. Why did they look specifically at walnuts? Here's a clue: an old Woman's Day article titled "Foods That Look Like Body Parts They're Good For."

Hey, wait. That says walnuts are good for the brain and clams are good for the testicles! I thought clams were good for the vulva....

"Supporters of the [Obama family's] getaway include Hugh Taylor, owner of the Vineyard's The Outermost Inn."

"Says Taylor, brother of singer James Taylor: 'They should just take a walk on the beach, get squirted in the face by a clam, watch an osprey. What I would like to see (Obama) do is just enjoy this place with his children.'"

***

You just call on a clam,
And you know wherever I am
I will squirt you, oh yeah baby
Right in the face.
Just take a walk on the beach,
I will you a lesson teach.
I will squirt you, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You've got a clam.

Hey, ain't it good to know that you've got a clam?
People can be so cold.
They'll hurt you and desert you.
They'll take your soul if you let them.
Oh, but don't you let them...

The Purpler Tree and the things you talked about last night.

Last night's purple tree opened a flood of conversation. Curtiss said:

Purple is the color of death.

But you know that, don't you?

I said:

I think men don't like the color purple. Women love it to excess, and men don't really understand. Death, indeed!

Palladian said:

I don't like anything Alice Walker ever wrote.

Instead of transcribing my laughter, let me give you a newer and purpler version of the tree that opened the canyons of your minds:



When I stopped my starry-eyed laughing, I said:

But quite apart from [Alice Walker], I think visual perception is partly deeply biological and there's serious sexual discrepancy about purple.

Then Meade said:

"I think men don't like the color purple. "

The professor speaks truth. And she does so in a most colorful way.

I, however, as a man am an exception to the rule: I love purple. In fact, I wear a purple hat and a purple scarf. Men leave me alone while women can't seem to keep their hands off me. That is, as long as I wear the hat and scarf.

Meade inspired me to make the new tree the color of his scarf. And to give him this advice — in case we should ever meet IRL.

Subsequently, Meade asks the guys a great question, and Curtiss gives a great answer. You'll have to go in there and find those things, but don't trip over the things Titus says he's having trouble finding.

Professor Palladian had to step back in and cool us off with this historical lecture:

The word "purple" comes to us from the Greek (via the usual circuitous route through Latin and Old English) πορφύραν, porphura, of the mollusk that produced the only bright, deep, color-fast purple dye available in the world until the mid-nineteenth century. Walk through any art museum and you'll see no bright purple color in any painting produced before then. The color to which the name "purple" referred has changed many times depending on the time period and the culture being discussed. The "Prince" sort of purple that most people think of is not the color of the purple of antiquity. The ancient purple, Tyrian purple, is more akin to the color of a fresh Welch's grape juice stain on a white cotton shirt, only much more intense. Tyrian purple is made from the fresh mucous secretion of a big sea snail that is variously known as Murex brandaris and Haustellum brandaris. It requires harvesting and killing 10,000 of these gastropods to produce one gram of the dye, hence the astronomical price and rarity of the color.

I have a sample of the dye, about 50 milligrams, which cost me nearly two hundred dollars. To put that in perspective, an extra strength Tylenol pill contains 500 milligrams of Acetaminophen alone, not counting the weight of the other ingredients.

As I said, there was no other bright, color-fast purple dye or pigment available to artists until the 19th century. The use of Tyrian purple pretty much died out by the 11th century in the West. Artists could mix purple hues by glazing blue pigments with red pigments, but as there were only three bright red pigments available to artists until the 19th century, two [1; 2] of which faded rapidly and one of which is both too opaque and too orange to actually produce a mixed purple, not many artists bothered.

What changed everything (and by extension, the world as we know it) was W.H. Perkin's discovery and production of the world's first synthetic organic dye: 3-amino-2,±9-dimethyl-5-phenyl-7-(p-tolylamino)phenazinium acetate, or Mauveine, later known as the color mauve. Perkin was, on a challenge from one of his professors, trying to synthesize quinine and failed, producing a black lump. While he was trying to clean the lump out of his flask, he discovered that a portion of the lump dissolved in alcohol and produced a bright purple. Voilà! The first aniline dye, which changed not only the world of fashion and art, but as I said before, changed the entire world. It was through Perkin's discovery and subsequent manufacture of Mauveine and the resulting proliferation of aniline dye research and industry that the first antimicrobial drugs, the sulfonamides (the early examples of which were dye-based) were invented. Not to mention Tylenol, Polyurethane and the whole synthetic chemical industry.

Not bad for a chemical that started as an accident involving a substance (aniline, phenylamine) that stinks of rotting fish. An apt smell for the chemical that was responsible for the rebirth of purple in the modern world, the olfactory memory across the millennia of those vast piles of dead, rotting mollusks that yielded the color of Emperors.

Sex, science, and art — all night long, all because of purple. And trees. You know I'm an Ann Arborist. Here in Madison.

"They're dirty little guys, and they don't smell good, but you always feel really good after you plant them."

Would you like to plant an oyster garden at home?

Pick a movie to design a meal around.

That was the challenge last night on "Top Chef," which this post won't spoil, but there are spoilers at here, where I read about it. (I haven't watched this season of "Top Chef." Maybe I'll catch up with it later. Is it good this time around?) Anyway, Jim Hu, at the link, thinks the contestants made pretty lame movie choices. They should have been less literal, more creative, and more cleverly knowing about the content of a good movie. His choices:

Wizard of Oz: Rainbow trout with artichoke hearts and a poppy seed crackers.
Spartacus. Escargot... and oysters.
Duck Soup. Perhaps an exception to the obviousness rule, but how can you not do this?
The Godfather: Fish baked in parchment.
The main entree could be Dances with Wolves Buffalo steaks. Or you could do Silence of the Lambs, but only if you serve the lamb with fava beans
Citizen Kane Rose sorbet

Commenters, surely you have some ideas! Me? Well, my favorite movie already is about dinner: "My Dinner With Andre." To be creative and knowing, we'd have to get past the potato soup and squab and come up with something from inside the stories Andre tells. Maybe something covered in coarse salt to represent sand — Andre eats sand in the Sahara Desert (and laughs). [ADDED: Actually, he doesn't laugh: "We weren't trying to be funny. I started, and then he started, and we just ate sand, and threw up. That was — that was how desperate we were."

Let me go on to the rest of the favorite movies I list in my Blogger profile:

"Aguirre the Wrath of God." This should not be an opportunity to serve Spanish or Brazilian food. I'd be all about the seaweed. (When they're really hungry they pull algae out from between the logs of the raft.)

"Crumb." The first thing I think of here is a drawing of a can labeled "[unwritable word] Hearts." Next, I think of Maxon Crumb ingesting a long strip of cloth dipped in water (to clean out his innards). Let's skip this movie.

"Grey Gardens." Paté on crackers!

"32 Short Films About Glenn Gould." Pills!

"Limelight." Hmmm. Limes? No, the lime in limelight is not the fruit.

"It's a Gift." Kumquats!



"Dr. Strangelove." To drink: nothing but distilled water. [AND: Pure grain alcohol!] Food: a big buffet table. And every night: a food fight. That's our restaurant gimmick: We encourage the patrons to throw food.

"The Grave of the Fireflies." In this movie, a Japanese animation, children starve. Must skip.

"The Nights of Cabiria." Too easy of an excuse to make Italian food. Nothing specific comes to mind.

"Fast, Cheap & Out of Control." Well, we can't serve lions or mole rats. Robots are not edible. We'd have to come up with some way to make topiary shapes out of things.

"Slacker." Sorting through my memories of this movie, I'm just seeing a lot of coffee.

IN THE COMMENTS: The name Ted Turner comes up, and there's a suggestion that his movie would be "Soylent Green."

Madison and New York/young and old.

Last semester, as I drove my car to and from work every day, nearly every time, I listened to the album "Poses," by Rufus Wainwright. The ride is short, usually the length of one song. Sometimes I played the satellite radio, but when I did, I had to switch to the CD player a few seconds after I entered the underground garage and the car lost contact with the satellite. My Rufus Wainwright addiction began when I happened to hear the song "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk":

Cigarettes and chocolate milk
These are just a couple of my cravings
Everything it seems I likes a little bit stronger
A little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me

It's a song about addiction, and I got addicted to the song. Over the course of the semester, I became strangely bonded to the entire album. Strangely, because I hadn't gotten attached to a new artist or a sequence of songs in many years. Funnily, one song on the album is "Grey Gardens," based on the movie, "Grey Gardens," which has always been on the short list of favorite movies in my profile and which I often rewatch for inspiration.

I felt very close to Rufus Wainwright from January to August in Madison, Wisconsin.

Yesterday, my sister and I were traipsing through the Village and Soho. She wanted earrings and mementos. I balked at going into one store that had big sales signs in the window and -- I took one step up toward the doorway -- looked completely chaotic inside. I'd linger in the place next door until she was done with the chaos. The place that suited me was called Theory. I prefer Theory to chaos. She rummaged through the chaotic sale store and bought nothing. Not meaning to buy anything, I found two ideal black sweaters at Theory. I resist chaos but am a pushover for a rational pullover and a Cartesian cardigan.

It's a warm day in SoHo, and I'm weighed down by a bag with two heavy sweaters that will make so much sense back in Madison in January. A few stores later, I'm hitting the wall, and I need respite, so let's find our way back to that restaurant, Provence, that looked so pretty with the tables sticking halfway out the wall of doorways. A perfect choice for someone who almost loves the idea of a sidewalk café.

But now, the restaurant has crowded up, so we can't sit in one of the doorways. But I'm happy to get a seat by a pillar, even with another table -- a big table -- crammed right up to the other side of the pillar, and, of course, I let my sister, my guest, have the seat that looks out toward the doors. I'm recomposing myself with the beautiful French press coffee, and they seat six men and one woman at the big table at my elbow.

Diagonally across from me is a man who looks like Rufus Wainwright or is Rufus Wainwright. I glance at him now and then and try to eavesdrop over the restaurant din. I hear him refer to his mother and to Lorna Luft. I could imagine Rufus Wainwright talking about his mother -- is the woman at the table his mother? -- and Lorna Luft. He talks about a party where people talk about rehab, and then seems Rufus-y. Then someone calls him Rufus. So, it's Rufus, then.

I keep trying to eavesdrop -- it's nearly impossible -- there's some talk of religion -- and to converse with my sister. Dell is looking over to the big table more than I am. It's not that she's interested in Rufus Wainwright. As I suspect, and I learn for sure later, she's never heard of him. She's interested in what they are eating. What are those powdered sugar things with the little turd-like berries? Beignets. What's that metal stand? They're getting oysters.

I think about whether I'm excited to sit for so long so near a person whose music I have so much feeling for. But no, I feel normal, as usual. I remember the time, more than 30 years ago, when I sat in a restaurant at a table next to John Lennon. The feeling was overwhelming. I am so much older now, but is it that I fell in love with Rufus's music as an older person or that I'm sitting near him as an older person. I could find out if some day I'm sitting in a restaurant and, at the next table, it's Ray Davies. Maybe Bob Dylan. But no. I think it's a theory that can only be tested on Ray Davies.

Food law.

Restaurants are suing to protect their intellectual property rights:

[Rebecca Charles] acknowledged that Pearl [Oyster Bar] was itself inspired by another narrow, unassuming place, Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. But she said she had spent many months making hundreds of small decisions about her restaurant’s look, feel and menu.

Those decisions made the place her own, she said, and were colored by her history. The paint scheme, for instance, was meant to evoke the seascape along the Maine coast where she spent summers as a girl.

“My restaurant is a personal reflection of me, my experience, my family,” she said. “That restaurant is me.”

So she copied, and then she was copied. She sues. The defendant, Ed McFarland, says Ed’s Lobster Bar is similar, but not a copy. Which is pretty much what Charles says about Swan.

Chefs are also seeking patents for things like a way to print pictures of food on paper that you can eat and that tastes like food.

Does the paper taste like the food in the picture or something else -- to mess with your mind or challenge your prejudices... like diversity jelly beans?

Oh, I just had a flashback. No, not to blotter acid! To the days of my federal court clerkship, a quarter century ago, when there was litigation about ice cream sandwiches made with ice cream between two big chocolate chip cookies. The original, called Chipwich, was easy enough to copy, and the federal court lawsuit ended with the judge telling Good Humor that if anyone looked at the Chipwichish item pictured on their ice cream wagon and asked for a Chipwich, they'd have to say, "We don't have Chipwiches; we have Good Humor products."

Oyster Awards.

For hardest to open packages. The one that took the longest -- more than 15 minutes -- is American Idol Barbie.

Watch out for snails.

Really.

UPDATE, February 12, 2009. I'm coming back to this post while adding the "mollusks" tag to things, and I see that the 2 links it contained are dead. Reading one URL, I can see that there were some "giant snails." I guess they were pretty damned big or at least quite numerous. Something amazed me 5 years ago. At least I still have this record of having once been amazed... by a mollusk.

How is Jayson Blair's girlfriend like Presidential candidate John Kerry? They both spontaneously launch into quoting "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

The info on the girlfriend comes from the great public service feature, "Slate reads the prevaricator's book so you don't have to." The info on John Kerry comes from last Sunday's Maureen Dowd swoon, my aversion to which appears here. Here's the Prufrock part:

But there was Mr. Kerry flying from Boston to New Orleans on Friday, sipping tea for his hoarse throat and reeling off T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

"There are so many great lines in it," he said. " `Do I dare to eat a peach?' `Should I wear my trousers rolled?' `Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets/The muttering retreats/Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels/And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells."

Well, why not have a big Prufrock revival?

Here's a nice website with the text of the poem tricked up with links (quite a few of them dead though), to miscellaneous things, like the Seurat painting below, for "Arms that are braceleted and white and bare."

Feel free to pick through the Prufrock quotes and find phrases from which to construct wisecracks about Jayson Blair and John Kerry. There are plenty of juicy ones, though you won't find "Should I wear my trousers rolled?"--one of the "great lines" Kerry "reeled off." It's:

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.