Butterfly Eucalyptus cookies with Addams Family commercials
Best wishes from California for a joyous, healthy and prosperous New Year. We are, in fact, absolutely certain that this year will be the very best 2013 ever! (Note: 2013 is also the beginning of a new b’ak’tun in the Mayan calendar. The “Long Count” on the Mayan calendar is remarkably similar to ‘Star-dates’ used in the Star Trek movie franchise.) While we’re on the calendar topic:
“California Christmas, Nazy. Isn’t that an oxymoron?” I grumpily asked. “Are we going to decorate a palm tree?”
“The well-lit trees on State Street look very nice..”
“Not the one on Chapala Street. It looks like someone dropped strings of lights onto a green cone. And what about snow? The only way we’ll see a white Christmas is if someone puts laundry detergent in the dishwasher.”
“You speak from experience.”
“It’s sunny. It’s warm. It’s ..”
“Santa Barbara, Dad.” Darius interjected. “We should see the monarch..”
“Elizabeth?”
“ .... monarch butterfly preserve in Goleta.”
“Butterfly preserve? That sounds like something I’d spread on my breakfast toast.”
“50,000 monarch butterflies spend the winter on only three Eucalyptus trees in Goleta, California, Dad.”
Mitra, enamored by the butterfly idea, chaired a family meeting to plan our visit. Melika couldn’t come: she was working on an IPO. (She also claimed, remotely and incorrectly, that the butterflies had already left for Mexico.) Nazy had urgent (surprise!) shopping. Stefan was meditating in the Joshua Tree National Forest and Tom was working with his business partners. Darius, Mitra and I drove to Goleta.
We hiked to “the” Eucalyptus trees where lots of Monarch butterflies were, eh...
“Roosting.” I said.
“Birds roost, Dad.” Darius replied. “Bats roost. Butterflies winter.”
“Then they’re in the wrong place,” I retorted. “There is no winter in Santa Barbara.”
“That’s why the butterflies winter here, Dad.”
“They ‘stay’ here, Dar. They don’t ‘winter’.”
Back at Melika’s place on The Mesa of Santa Barbara, work had begun on the traditional Christmas cookies. Mitra and I mixed food coloring into the sugary icing. I complained that the blue and purple looked distressingly similar and noted that I couldn’t tell the difference between the green and red. I worked additional drops of coloring into the mixtures. The result is depicted at left.
Before Christmas, Melika and Tom treated the family to a Broadway Musical (The Addams Family) in the Los Angeles Area
Nazy, who had not seen the US TV program while growing up, asked Tom (Adams) the obvious question:
“Is this musical about families coming together, Tom?”
“Pardon me?”
“It’s about the marriage of a normal person guy with the strange girl of an unusual family,” I interjected. “Melika is unusual and your last name is...”
On the way home, Tom and Melika treated the group to dinner at a trendy Tunisian restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. I wanted to take advantage of Miss Madeline, the navigation computer on the new family car. Darius was less thrilled.
“I don’t like the way she tells us what to do,” he said as he muted Madeline.
“We can ignore..”
“She is irritating. She babbles. She insists on telling me to stay on the 405. I know we have to stay on the 405. I don’t need some brainless..”
“Simply ignore her comments.”
“They bother me. I don’t want anybody telling me what to do.”
“Madeline is not sentient, Darius. You don’t have to listen.”
“And she doesn’t have to talk. Nobody can tell me what to do.”
“I’m glad I’m not your boss,” I thought. “By the way, Dar, we just missed our turn. Madeline had attempted to reroute us around a traffic jam, but she was muted,” I said.
Over dinner, Mitra was recruited to direct and help write a short...
“.... save the date video for the wedding.” Tom explained.
“And what is the date?” I asked.
“We will worry about that later,” Tom replied. “Right now we need something catchy. We want people’s interest. We want a destination wedding. We need plenty of notice..”
“Plenty?”
“At least a year and probably much more.”
“That’s a long time away,” I replied. “Don’t choose anything close to an ocean, sea-levels may rise before you...”
“Dan!” Nazy stopped the complaints.
Many faithful readers have asked about first impressions of our time in the USA. It is clear that everything (everything!) is much cheaper than it was in Switzerland. On average, US prices are less than half those of Zürich. TV programs are invariably in English...
“... except for when they’re in Spanish,” Nazy notes.
“It’s the commercials that wind me up,” I continued. “I hadn’t seen television commercials for pharmaceuticals in a long time. And, frankly, some of them are distasteful.”
“What?”
“Like the anti-flatulence medication that promises reduced frequency and pungency.”
“Dan..”
“And all the ads have caveats: “ask your doctor: IF YOU HAVE SWELLING, HEART DISEASE, DIABETES, KIDNEY PROBLEMS, FEVERS, COLDS, ALLERGIES, BLUE EYES, FINGERNAILS, LUNGS OR OTHER CONDITIONS, OUR PRODUCT MAY NOT BE FOR YOU. IT COULD CAUSE PROJECTILE VOMITING, ACCELERATED PULSE, SWEATING, UNCONTROLLABLE SEXUAL FANTASY, BLACK TONGUE, PARALYSIS, OBESITY, LIVER DISINTEGRATION, NEURON DECAY, LIMB LOSS, HANGNAILS, BLINDNESS OR DEATH.”
We decided to ‘wig out’ for this year’s holiday photo:
See more photos from the last few weeks by clicking here.