A Delicate Balance
What would you do if you best friends suddenly appeared at your front door, too filled with a nameless fear to stay in their own home, and announced that they were moving in with you?
Already your home is a constant battlefield between your excessively controlling wife and her alcoholic sister, who lives with you.
Now add your 36 year old daughter moving home at the demise of her fourth marriage. A daughter who is whiny, immature and hysterical when she finds out her old room is currently being occupied by your friends.
That’s the premise of Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, A Delicate Balance, playing at the Aurora Theater in Berkeley. The five actors involved take this difficult, absurdist situation and spin it in directions disturbing, hilarious, confusing and meaningful over the course of three acts and 2 1/2 hours.
Albee is my favorite playwright, now in his 80’s and still working. He wrote A Delicate Balance in 1966, yet the play holds up perfectly today.
Tobias and Agnes lead a life of upper class luxury, where the big problems are where have the servants hidden the coffee beans and what’s for dinner at the club. Although their every movement and action needs to be accompanied by the perfect drink, (anisette is too “sticky”, switch to cognac), the alcoholism of Agnes’ younger sister Claire is a constant irritant and the source of endless fighting.
Albee’s dialog is invariable quick and cutting, exposing the heart of both the subject and the speaker. Agnes, played by Kimberly King, has a number of long and difficult speeches which provide exposition and demonstrate her exceptionally controlling and bitchy nature. Tobias, (Ken Grantham) is often held to mere response–half his dialog in act 3 is simply “yes”.
Okay, I give up. I’ve been trying to write a decent review for 3 days, and can’t seem to find the words. I think the problem is that Albee is so good that I’m not good enough to come up with a decent recap.
This is a great play, well acted except for a a couple of time Agnes (Kimberly King) lost her place in the hundreds and hundreds of lines of dialogue she has. The Aurora theater is an excellent location, very small with seats on three sides of the “stage”, which is just the floor in the center of the room. We were in the very back row, but that also only the fourth row, so any seat you can get will be great. Aurora has extended the run of this play until October 23–get seats if you can.
Paella for dinner at the club
Special Swiss teams tonight at DVBC, and I’m cooking paella. Here it is, just starting to sweat in the pan. Don’t miss it.
Love = good, hate = bad
Yesterday was the official end of Don’t ask, don’t tell. Although there have been gay people in the army since the days of Alexander the Great, it is only now that the US Department of Defense is willing to admit and allow it.
The attached clip is of a young soldier in Germany calling his father to come out of the closet. It’s gotten close to 2 million views in a day because of its powerful message and simple honesty.
Remember this the next time you hear some homophobic idiot ranting about the “gay lifestyle” or the “homosexual agenda”. Remember that gay people are our sons and daughters and sisters and my brother.
Do they teach English anymore?
Looking up a product, I found this website:
Just another garden variety solecism
Maybe they should have printed it like this:
How much faith am I supposed to have in a company with this kind of ignorance on their page?
Bocce in the sun with Dab and Bev
Home from Maui Friday night, and glad of it. Hawaii is beautiful, but our chickens were missing us. And it’s cooler and dryer here. 4 days is just long enough for me in the Sandwich Islands.
Got home about 9:30, and wanted dinner. We had a desultory lunch on the plane, it was time for some real food. But, this is the ‘burbs–where can you eat late? Fortunately, Metro in Lafayette serves until 11:00, so off we went.
Metro is always loud, but usually we can eat outside. Not late at night, though. We took the quietest possible table and had a good time. The food is great, the service is smooth, they serve late, I’m a happy camper.
Saturday, we did almost nothing to recuperate from a week of doing nothing. Makes sense if you say it fast and don’t think about it.
Today, we went to a party. Bud and Bev Miller had family in from Houston, and threw a small party in the yard. (It says “Dab” above because Bud’s real name is Dabney, and that’s what Gail calls him. So there.)
Dabney Miller isn’t exactly the most Italian of names, but they have a full size, regulation, honest-to-God Bocce court in their back yard, 6 inches of packed oyster shells and all. Gail had to bring the set of bocce balls she keeps in her closet, although they have never been out of their case.
Of course, Gail's bocce balls are stainless steel.
Is he named after the beer, or the beer after him?
We chose teams by drawing cards–4 teams of 4, planning to play an elimination. The “Queens” got stuck with both Gail and me, so our chances were pretty dim.
Bocce is played on a long court. You throw one small white ball, the pallino, towards the other end, then each side tries to roll its balls closest to it.
The big green and red balls are the ones you roll, the little white one is what you aim for. Green is winning here.
Apparently, it is important to have a wine glass in one hand while you roll with the other. Maybe that’s why I’m so bad at the game.
The spectators in the good seats.
A bocce court is 27.5 meters long--about 90 ft.
Grandson Jonathan hand painted the scoreboard.
Bocce is a natural extension of life for Bev, who was a championship bowler and bowling teacher in years past. These days her hip doesn’t let her play, so daughter Tracy pinch-bowled for her. Then Tracy had to leave to go to bed, because she has to be at work at 3:30 Monday morning for a conference call–such is the life of a bond/currency trader.
After some bocce, there was dinner. Barbecued tri-tips, chicken, a variety of salads and a cupcake cake. We were celebrating the engagement of their son Scott to his sweetie, Sharon. They came from Houston because Bev isn’t able to travel there for a party.
That's a serious Barbecue, attached to the gas pipe, not a tank.
The Millers are a very musical family, and there was singing going on as we arrived. So with singing, bocce and tri-tips, it was a perfect afternoon.
Living in the modern age
It’s our last night here, and we’re pretty well exhausted. All this doing nothing and then going out to eat is tiring, I guess. So instead of piling into the car and finding some great restaurant in Lahaina, we just walked back to the Hula Grill, at the Mariott Resort nearby.
It wasn’t early, almost 8 pm. Even though this is the low season here and there are relatively few people, the restaurants at the big hotels like the Marriott are jammed, and the hostess told us it would be a 45 minute wait. We’re not much for waiting.
So I pulled out the phone, opened the Opentable.com app, and searched for a nearby place to eat where we could get a reservation. Astonishingly, the Hula Grill popped us, with an 8:15 table available. So I took it, and in 8 or 9 minutes we sauntered right back up to the desk and announced we were there for our reservation.
We were seated in a matter of seconds. As we ate, I could see people making their way to the desk clutching the brightly lit pagers they assign to people on the waiting list.
Why they tell walk-up there is a 45 minute wait when they are still offering online reservations is a mystery. But the moral of the story is clear–in this day and age it’s silly to go out without reserving a table first, even if you do it 4 minutes in advance as you are walking in the door. I don’t create it, I just report it.
Mama’s Fish House, home of the $30 sandwich
Okay, it’s a really great sandwich. But it’s still 30 bucks.
I’m talking about Mama’s Fish House, a Maui classic since 1973. In Paia, the center of the north coast of the island, the restaurant sits on a coconut lined piece of beachfront property. Mama’s isn’t exactly a mom and pop operation–it’s huge. Restaurant and hotel, a big spot for weddings and parties. The walls in front are lined with signed photos of long-gone Hollywood stars like Sinatra, Heston and Sammy Davis, but the management is completely modern. I made our reservation on Opentable perhaps 10 minutes before we arrived, just to get the $1 premium, and noticed we were seated before the people who were waiting when we got there–always make a reservation.
Mama’s is classically Hawaiian–open walls, lots of bamboo and rattan, very dark and cool inside. As you would expect, the beauty of nature is brought inside as much as possible.
The front yard of Mama's Fish House. It looks like a 1950's postcard, but it's all real.
The interior, with a lot of light added from the camera. Mama's is verrrrrrry dark, and cool, in the daytime. The flowers on the table are fresh, of course.
Bird of Paradise in the entryway.
A floral display on the hostess stand.
The menu is relentlessly modern. I had an ahi sashimi salad–a tower of salad laced with perfectly fresh and tasty slices of raw tuna, topped with a sesame dressing.
A very modern salad in a traditional setting
The menu is relentlessly modern. I had an ahi sashimi salad–a tower of salad laced with perfectly fresh and tasty slices of raw tuna.
The house offers complimentary poi, so we had some. If you haven’t had it, save yourself the trouble. It tastes like wallpaper paste, with less flavor.
This tiny portion of poi, with 4 itty-bitty spoons is more than enough. Photo by Kate Masiello
The service at Mama’s is extraordinary; I can’t recall ever having better. Flawlessly correct without being the tiniest bit obsequious in one direction or familiar in the other. We asked the busser to tell the waiter we wanted to start with the lobster guacamole, and in less than 2 minutes it was on the table–no big process, no waiter needing to come over and confirm, no wait, no problem (and the guacamole was fabulous, too). As often as we eat out, I can’t remember being more impressed with the staff, from the valet parking to the hostess to the waiter and dining room crew, they were all professional and expert.
Wild boar sandwich.
About that $30 sandwich: Wild Boar on Ciabatta. Slow cooked wild boar, Maui onion, spinach, fresh ciabatta roll, sweet potato fries, taro chips and a house made pickle. Fantastic. Phenomenal. Worth a trip to Maui all by itself. Okay, that’ going too far. But it’s really great, as a $30 sandwich ought to be. The only time I’ve seen a price like that before was for a lobster sandwich at Sotheby’s in London; the wild boar was better.
It’s a bit far to go for Friday night dinner, but if you’re ever in Maui, don’t miss Mama’s.
Songs of the islands
Kate has a colleague who loves to play the ukulele. One day, he asked a group of guys on the beach if he could sit in with them, and they said yes. Little did he know that he was sitting in with the Michael Jordan of ukulele and slack key guitar, Led Kaapana. A friendship was born, and continues years later.
Because of this connection, last night we went to a concert. Not something fancy in a concert hall, a simple show in an open air tent, put on regularly around here by a local man, this week fortunately featuring Led himself.
Led, by the way, is short for Ledward. His twin brother is named Nedward, No, I’m not clever enough to make that up.
I have a new camera that takes videos, so I tried it out. Here’s my video from last night–it might make you appreciate Hawaiian music more:
The livin’ is easy. Really, really easy
Woke up at 6:30 this morning, which sure makes for a long day of doing nothing, and doing it very well.
Lunch at the Hula Grill again–today I had the Flatbread BLT, which is a minor misnomer since they use spinach instead of lettuce–but who ever heard of a BST sandwich? We dawdled as long as possible so we could enjoy the music–just one guy and his guitar, crooning the hits of the 70’s and 80’s.
Notice the big gap from getting up until lunch–we brilliantly filled over five hours with nothingness. I read my email and blogs and newsgroups, then just sat here and edited the photos from the wedding on Saturday. I’ve started with over 600 pictures, and I’m down to about 275, headed for 250 or so. Then each one has to be checked, cropped, adjusted and photoshopped. There is an inverse relation between how good a photographer you are and how much photoshop you need; I need lots. But I’m learning and getting better and it’s fun.
After the luncheon dawdle, a nap broke out. Must be the result of so much hard lollygagging. Then Gail and I went into “downtown” Lahaina and walked around. They have a considerable number of exceptionally large art galleries, with art ranging from Picasso, Chagall and Miró through Red Skelton clowns, Anthony Quinn sculptures and Antony Hopkins scary garish oils, with plenty of loud/strange/cheap/derivative work in between. The sales people are the most aggressive and hard sell I’ve ever met in a gallery, especially the guy who wanted to make sure I was aware that Joan Miró was a great artist, not a kid scrawling on the page. Fortunately, I passed the test.
Driving back to the condo, I wandered up the hill away from the beach. In much of the world, the further up the hill you go the bigger and richer the houses are. Not here. At the top of the road was the high school. Below that, there were houses and apartments which seemed to be just crammed with people–I have never seen so many cars parked on one street in my life. Dozens of kidlings were playing in the street, fecundity being a hallmark of those lower on the socio-economic scale. We haven’t figured out where the rich folks live, but it sure isn’t at the top of the hill.
The Westin hotel next door was having some kind of large outdoor show/luau this evening, and we could hear it clearly and see it, poorly, from our balcony so we enjoyed that for 45 minutes before we went out to eat. When I was a kid I didn’t much care for Hawaiian music, but it seems to have grown on me and the concert was delightful. (No thanks for this change in my appreciation goes to Don Ho, whose show we saw in Honolulu 8 or 9 years ago. He was drunk, obnoxious and unpleasant, and we left at intermission. I’m much more a fan of the late Israel Kamakawiwo’ole {no, I can’t pronounce it} and his beautiful, clear tenor)
Dinner was at Gerards, a tres chic establishment in Lahaina. I started with cold cucumber soup, garnished with tomato/mint sorbet. It takes some kind of twisted mind to put these things together, but they sure tasted great. My entree was the lamb daube, which is a lamb stew served over pasta. Mother never made stew like this.
We all enjoyed our meal greatly–Gerards is serious fine dining, with service, and prices, to match. That bottle of Rombauer Chardonnay which will set you back $36 in California was $82 on the menu tonight. Gail and Brad said it was wonderful, as it jolly well should be.
Tomorrow I think we’re going to drive around the southern part of the island. I better get to bed–that sounds much more energetic than today was, and I’ll need my rest.
On the Maui beach
An easy flight over here. The food on Alaska is adequate, but not up to American Airlines standards.
It’s another beautiful day in paradise–85 degrees, gentle breezes, just what you think Hawaii should be. We’re staying in one of those high rises where each apartment is individually owned but there is a management company to rent them out. We have a two bedroom suite, with a bit of a view of the ocean, slow and spotty internet service (not wireless, either), air conditioners that struggle manfully but fail to keep up with the heat but great service from the bellman and good parking, I would only suggest them to use the HVAC services from https://omniheatair.com/ instead. Win some, lose some.
The next complex to the south is the Hyatt Regency, to the north is the Westin and the Marriott. We definitely in the tall cotton around here. So we strolled up to the Marriott to have lunch at the Hula Grill–sand floor, live music, decent fish tacos and a Chinese chopped chicken salad. Here’s a little video of what I have to put up with:
Now it’s nap time, to get ready for a fancy dinner tonight. Gail has scoured the internet to find all the best places to eat on this island, and we have only 4 days to cram it all in. My work is never done.
Totally Unauthorized 