020 tuesday june 8th
another mountain / the ballad of mean jim mcbride / chick'n sandwich / sore muscles
a short week last week, and a long week this week, and here we find ourselves again. meeting on a tuesday.
over these past couple weeks i have felt things leveling out. the various fish flashing around my mental aquarium have settled into statelier loops around the noggin. still colorful and vivid and varied but less frenzied.
i don’t want to pin all of that on drastically reducing my usage of twitter, but let’s be real here. it has been a huge net positive. i am a little sad to be spending way less time with all my friends and acquaintances and colleagues and comrades and crushes who live in my computer and who have been a major component of my social life over the past year of isolation. but ultimately the mental math has been done and the pros and cons have been weighed and a better balance has been struck. the distance has been great. i’m sitting on the beach in my folding chair and my feet are dipping into the water just a little bit. everyone’s still out there splashing around having fun making the same seven jokes over and over again and i’m close enough nearby that i can splash some water occasionally or toss a beach ball back to the group. or overhear a joke that makes me smile under my beach umbrella and 50 SPF sunscreen.
but i’ve got my beach novel and my set of paints and a nice bottle of water the kind that stays cold for an unnatural amount of time and i’m close by the little trail that leads off somewhere off into the cool mysterious woods.
and for the first time in probably a year at least, work and friends and activism and hobbies and self improvement and sleep and eating are all feeling more in sync and i have the mental capacity to think more about the future and what kind of work i want to be doing and how i want to spend my time fighting for a better future.
how many more fish i can throw into the tank.
and women, of course. it’s still the summer after a pandemic, after all.
but enough about that for now. here are the four things this week.
1. painting
this one ended in a funny place where i am reasonably pleased with 80% of it and i don’t feel too bad about the other 20% either. balance!
it’s based on another picture from my solo trip out to the Alvord of a few weeks ago (more than that at this point, unfortunately, probably, although i will not be checking). it’s from a spot along the southeast edge of the Steens, after you’ve cut through the pass and right before they really rear up into those sharp cliffs and tumbling peaks that form the backdrop of the Alvord.
initial sketch. pretty straightforward. areas of focus on this one were the shapes and shades of that mountain, and capturing some kind of drama in the sky. did OK on the mountain, less thrilled about the sky, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
laying in some colors. when i paint from photo reference, i will usually try to lay in the bigger blocks of color and then turn the photo reference off and just paint from experience and understanding, using that palette. limiting your palette is actually, i think, a very easy way to get better at understanding shapes and light and etc. because if you don’t have a million billion different options of colors to choose from, it’s that much more critical to understand the colors you do have in relation to each other.
lines off and almost done. those tufts of grass sure are a pain in the ass to paint, but they’re a critical part of the texture out there. and you can see i kind of gave up on them in the middle distance and in retrospect i should have kept at it a little more.
last step as usual is to overlay some colors on top to tweak the contrast and overall colors into something a little more dramatic. scroll up to see that.
2. poem
“the ballad of mean jim mcbride” - summer 2021
There are men at their best in the wide lonesome west
the wind makes their morals refined
But the dust is a curse that brings out the worse
in a man of a different kind.
It was near half past ten when the boys made it in
dog-dirty and cold from the ride,
They piled in for a brew and the last to come through
those swing doors was Mean Jim McBride
With a beard black as night, and an itch for a fight
Mean Jim had his run of the place
And a hush quickly fell as folks craned necks to tell
what mood was etched into Jim’s face.
He swaggered on through, clapped hands on his crew
and with a laugh that was dark as the sea
turned round to the rest and puffed out his chest and roared
“drink up boys, the first round’s on me”
Well they raised half a cheer and relaxed as the beer
came flowing - Jim’s day had been good
And rare as that was there was no cause for pause -
time to enjoy that brew while they could
As the crew filtered out ‘cross the room full of louts
Mean Jim’s steely eyes roved around
And ah, there, in the back, shuffling up a fresh pack
Jim leered as he liked what he found
Round the small table game, lit by lamp’s flick’rin’ flame
they looked a more elegant three
Silver Sam, with a smirk - Ol Doc Bill, looking irked
and dealing was Anne St. Marie
Mean Jim strode on across and to Doc Bill he said “Boss,
I’m kindly requesting your seat -
Had a good day on the range and poker’s my game
Silver Sam Smith looks the one here to beat”
The doc left rightful quick, and the mood was now thick
As Jim took his chair with a wink
Laid his cash on the table and said “Sam, if you’re able
to match me, let’s start with a drink.”
The two men locked eyes and a look of surprise
Came then vanished across Anne’s fair face
The glug of a jug and the clink of three mugs
then the trio was off to the race.
Pretty Anne dealt ‘em well and after a spell
Mean Jim’s crew and some of the rest
To the band’s faster tune trickled through the saloon
to watch Jim and Sam Smith in contest.
Mean Jim played with skill, tho with each sip of swill
His brow furrowed, his jaw tightened grit
As the jug emptied out, the cards ended the doubt -
The better player was Silver Sam Smith
Though he hated to lose, Jim did have a fuse
That was longer than most folks would think
But what drove up his ire as Sam’s stack grew the higher
Were Anne’s glances at Sam, her blush pink
Silver Sam, with sly grin said to Jim “I’m all in -
And I think that’ll near clear your pile”
‘He’ll be leaving with me’ thought pretty Anne St. Marie
And the devil crept into her smile
Well they turned ‘em and dealt and it couldn’t be helped
Silver Sam had the much better pair
Mean Jim shoved over his stack and his mood now turned black
As the lady slid nearer Sam’s chair
With a howl and a crash Jim stood quick as a flash,
clear’d leather in the blink of an eye;
Shots fired all about and the lights all went out
Swearing, chaos - a sharp cry!
When the noise settled down the new lanterns found
A terrible sight midst debris
Laying there - shot twice through - nothing Doc Bill could do
Lay the body of Anne St. Marie
Mean Jim had run quick, Sam Smith just as slick
the crowd spun as their voices rang out
From the front of the place - wild look on Jim’s face -
and Mean Jim declared with a shout:
“Well I feel awful bad - but in some ways I’m glad”
And he grabbed up a bottle of hooch
“So you all understand - no-one touches my man.”
And he turned and gave Sam Smith a smooch.
They say they still ride, Silver Sam, Jim McBride
‘cross those rocky and lonesome wide plains
And I doubt most recall that night, the bar hall -
but I’m certain you’ve heard of their names.
3. chick’n sandwich & tots
as a friend pointed out, these are not quite tots. more like croquettes. and i’m pretty sure i’ve written about a fried “chicken” sandwich for this newsletter before but this time i decided to also make the buns myself.
dry bun ingredients: flour, yeast, sugar, salt. wet ingredients: plant butter, water, oat milk - i’m using country crock’s plant butter sticks and they’ve been great for various baking projects. and for putting on toast.
mix the wet and dry, add more flour as you knead out the dough until it’s smooth. then let it rest covered for a bit while you work on other stuff.
after it’s risen, divide it into roughly bun size pieces. i was constrained a little bit here between wanting a good bun size and the vessel i had to bake these with - if i did this again, i would probably try a different configuration and we will see why. cover the divided buns and let rise for another 45 minutes.
here they are, risen. and they’re triangles. hope that won’t be a problem! brush with plant butter and into the oven. or hold off on putting them in until your other stuff is a little closer to done.
meanwhile, tots! parboil some russet potatoes then grate them up with a box grater. i switched off between the large holes and the smaller holes because i thought the smaller holes were making too fine of shreds. but i think the large holes work just fine. i was worried these wouldn’t hold together but even on their own these potatoes were extremely gluey.
mixed up with some seasonings and flour and formed into (enormous) tots. ready to fry!
once again using Gardein imitation chicken. it really works the best! but you can also use frozen-then-thawed tofu as i have mentioned here before. mash up five or six or seven strips into a big chicken patty. shape it however you want. i should have shaped it to be more triangle shaped - i already knew at this point what shape the buns were going to be. oh well.
wet and dry dredging station. plant milk and hot sauce and a little apple cider vinegar and pickle juice for the wet, then flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and spices for the dry. i double-battered the chicken piece. also you should flick some wet into the dry and stir it up a bit to make some nice crumbles.
tots fried
assemble the sandwich, drizzle some spicy honey mustard sauce over it (didn’t actually use honey i used maple syrup which maybe was actually better - plus it’s vegan), add toppings, and voila.
hell yeah baby. look at that crunch. and those crumbles!
4. sore muscles
i’ve worked out at least three times a week for the past three weeks, in a gym, with actual weights and surrounded by other people. once a week i meet with an extremely energetic and fit dude who runs me through a workout composed of exercises i have only ever seen people do out of the corner of my eye, or on the other side of the gym - or i knew they existed, but didn’t bother. they look easy but they have been incredibly challenging. stepping up onto a platform with a weight. jumping a very small distance. stepping sideways with a weight, or swinging a ball.
all the little muscles in my legs that i never remember to thank have been burning. and sore - in the way things are sore when you’ve used them, really used them. taken them off the shelf and blown the dust off, rather than glanced at while walking from your bedroom to the shower. in a good way. active remembering.
the lakers lost the quarterfinals to the suns, in part because generational talent anthony davis injured himself in a game he should not have even started playing (should we say: re-injured? should we say: worsened his injury?). a previous leg injury had transmuted itself into another leg injury and finally a groin injury and because (perhaps) the team doctors had considered these injuries in isolation, well. we could all see it coming.
i am on twitter less. i am spending more time reading and painting and doodling and yes writing. and a friend came to visit this weekend. the sun is out but it’s not too hot. and i am working out again regularly and drinking more water. and all these little things when you take a step back, well. you see where i’m going with this and it’s not a big mystery. not only do they form a nice painting, these little dabs of light, but they are connected in causal chains and webs that the painting metaphor will not stretch to contain. this is how i think about poems usually, incidentally, this week notwithstanding. little moments of light that you can catch if you look at them sideways, and you can capture sometimes with a couple quick sentences. or you can capture the way their edges gleam, at least.
they say when you’re working out that stretching is just as important as lifting weights. so fit that in to the premise here in a way that makes sense to you.
that’s all for this tuesday. have a nice week everyone. see ya next tuesday. bye.