California Delight #10: Pain Is Good Hot Sauce, Batch #37

Americans sure do love their hot sauce. It’s a rare restaurant that doesn’t have a rack of little red bottles just behind the cashier. A tourist could spend hundreds of dollars on the stuff and be hard-pressed to discern much difference between brands: most hot sauces are an unimaginative combo of Habanero peppers and vinegar, with salt and occasionally a little (choke) powdered garlic thrown in.

There are, however, some geographic characteristics to consider and enjoy. It’s been my experience (a host of exceptions allowed for, of course) that if you begin your southward journey in the eastern states, the hot sauces pretty much begin where you expect (think: Tobasco), but increase their heat as you descend further into the south. By the time you hit New Orleans or Dallas, there’s little point in crossing the border to Mexico, because American Can-Do Attitude has been applied to the science of hot sauces with great effect, producing a plethora of sauces that are entirely unfit for human consumption. I see little point in indulging such an extreme, but will admit that the endorphin rush I get from adding a little Dave’s Insanity to my chili collaborates very nicely with the buzz produced by the beer I guzzle for relief. Beyond Dave’s exists a wasteland of criminally hot sauces: if you seek such novelty, Da Bomb somehow manages to impart a modicum of flavor with its torment, and comes in a charming medicinal bottle that will attract attention in any fridge. No doubt hotter sauces exist, but hotter than that I will not go.

There are probably Californian outlets that cater to this sort of craziness as well; I just haven’t encountered any. The Californian attitude toward spice of any stripe is to explore its breadth, not its deepest impact. Thus, while dealers of “Tex-Mex” might sneer without irony at the affectations of fusion cuisine, “Mexi-Cal” practitioners proceed with unshakeable hippie bliss to experiment without end.

This is the environment in which I discovered Pain Is Good Batch #37.

Pain isn’t nearly as excruciating as it makes itself out to be, but it does have an unmistakable heat. More than that, however, it has incredible flavor. Batch #37 is a garlic sauce, but the first ingredient is carrots. The list continues: minced garlic … mustard seed … olive oil, lime juice, lemon juice, etc. The combination is a thrill – I dump the stuff on dishes like Spaghettini Aglio E Olio, add a little parmesan, and dig in.

“Very nice,” you say, “but is it Californian?” Well ... no. Pain is manufactured in Kansas City, of all places. But I was introduced to it in California, and so it remains in my experience a delight I will always associate with the State.

Canadians can get their supply here.

California Delight #9

Return From California: The Conclusion Of An Arm's-Length Love Affair?

The State of California took hold of a particularly feverish corner of my brain at a very young age. This was due chiefly to the television shows of my youth and their aesthetic, which held a Pleasantville sort of appeal that retains its power over me even now.

I first visited California when I was 16, and returned to the state once in my early 20s. Ten years later my father announced he'd accepted a pastorate in San Jose, and I couldn't help feeling a little ripped-off. This was so typical. My parents waited until I left home before they bought a color TV. A VCR was purchased when I moved to another city. Now I was married, and conspiring with my wife to begin a family of our own, and my parents were moving to California - land of my most delirious childhood dreams.

Living in California is no longer my deepest desire. I wouldn't object to a year or two of Californian exile, but the place is perverse enough to sour the dreams of all but its wealthiest citizens. Unless you exist in the vaunted .01%, it doesn't matter what rank you occupy on the food chain: you have to work like the devil to live there.

Still, every visit we've made in the last ten years has amounted to something of a perverse thrill - consider it an arm's-length love affair, which allows for all the high and none of the jones. The fantasies California inspired in me as a child were allowed to flourish, unimpeded by the banal impositions of everyday life. I could visit Santa Cruz and, channeling Walter Mitty, dream of being a blissed-out surfer. I could walk the vertical streets of San Francisco and dream of being Beat. I could even talk with friends who had moved to Silicon Valley and dream of being a free-market, code-writing geek.

Last summer my father turned 65 and used the occasion to announce his intended retirement. Preachers can preach until their last breath (or beyond - I'm starting to wonder about Billy Graham), but most pastors gratefully acknowledge the 65-mark because even the healthiest congregation pulls a large draught from the emotional reservoir. His congregation is an exceedingly warm and generous bunch, but retirement in CA is out of the question, so my parents are returning to the Canadian prairies. I now have to face the fact that I will no longer see Mistress California on quite so regular a basis.

I am already in mourning over the loss of many particularly Californian pleasures. In an effort to come to grips with my grief, I will hereby ennumerate ten of my faves - many of which can be sampled and largely enjoyed in the comfort of the non-Californian home. If you'd like to see all 10 in one page, simply click here and scroll down. If you're a sucker for the suspense of Top Ten lists, start at number 10 - here.

Whisky Prajer's Christmas Appeal

It is less than two weeks away from Christmas, and priests and pastors everywhere are intensifying their focus, putting everything they've got into the sermon of the year. This is their annual window of opportunity, a time when the congregation of regulars is suddenly dwarfed by a sea of irregulars, the women coiffed and lovely, the men wearing ill-fitting suits and looking very much like they regret forfeiting their weekly sleep-in. This is the preacher’s chance for the big pitch, the appeal. Can he say anything that will stick to the ribs? Is there hope that something he utters will get one or two (or more!) of these people to come back next week?

There are also those preachers who eschew this soft-sell approach in favor of heading straight for the jugular. "The Gospel leaves no room for compromise. Turn or burn, baby, and be grateful you heard it here first," etc.

Those two extremes represent a good portion of my inner life, as a nutshell. I come from a long line of preachers, and while I may have forsaken the profession and no small degree of the tradition, the DNA matrix will not be denied. People, I got ta speak about sumpin'! My previous attempts at appeal have managed to perplex and alienate my conservative and my gay readers, which doesn't bode well for this appeal. But here goes: call me a witlessly insensitive naïf, but this is my Christmas appeal to my Jewish friends.

There are a number of scriptures that we Christians claim to have in common with you, and I'll get to some of those in a bit. But for the moment, please be so kind as to retrieve that "New Testament" our Gideons so thoughtfully gave you in Grade 5; then flip to the back, and read The Revelation of St. John The Divine. This could well inspire a few strange dreams over the next few nights, but this is an important book to read, and here's why: that one, weird little book has done more to captivate and stimulate the imagination of North American Christendom than all the gospels (Jesus narratives) and epistles (letters of instruction to the early churches) put together.

The Revelation is itself an epistle, with one significant distinction: it makes prophetic claims. Give it the once-over, and you will find similarities in tone and metaphor to, say, Daniel. It draws from (or rips off) that particular tradition, using primal, dissonant metaphors to speak directly to moral and physical crises that threaten a particular historical-religious audience. As with Daniel, the greater your understanding of its historical-religious audience, the greater clarity you have reading the text.

You don't have to be a seminary student to achieve this, either. Cursory research reveals that scholars of the text usually date it back to the reign of Domitian (81-96), whose enforcement of Emperor worship was, shall we say, enthusiastic. Jews have their own grim stories from that period, and could probably read the prophetic religious-historical narrative of The Revelation with a comprehension that might astonish most Christians. A fairly simple historical checklist can be made, with Roman acts of desecration and brutality on one side, Revelation metaphors on the other, and a great number of parallels drawn between the two categories.

Of course, problems arise when the historical record doesn't quite tally up with the prophetic metaphors - the triumphant return of Jesus being the most glaring example of this. In Christendom the all-too-common method of dealing with this discrepancy is to say, "Actually, none of the prophesied events have taken place - yet. It's up to us to recognize the moment they do and prepare for the Lord's return." This has led to many, many colorful anecdotes in Christendom - including the birth of the Mennonites. These can occasionally be quite humorous, but most of them are despicable and tragic (decide for yourself which category applies to the Mennonites).

A cheerful willingness to discount the epistle's original audience continues to inspire diverse activity, worldwide. Closer to home we have the runaway juggernaut of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins' Left Behind series. Closer still, we have various Christian organizations assisting (chiefly Russian) Jewish immigration to Israel, in aid of fulfilling prophetic requirements for Jesus' return.

Jewish alliance with these groups had me perplexed at first: these are people with a religious point of view that I want as much distance from as possible - and I'm a Christian. Whenever I've asked my Jewish friends for their response, however, I typically get some uncomfortable silence, concluding with a shrug and a statement to the effect of, "Well, they're doing some good."

Fair enough - these are acts of kindness and compassion which I have no wish to impede. I wonder, though, if you could do me a favor. I can't reach these people, but maybe you can. They have a clear reverence for the Jewish people and the Jewish state, and even claim to admire the depth of Jewish scholarship. I expect you're in a dialogue of sorts with them, so I wonder if it might be possible to arrange the following:

Take them aside, and say something like, "You know, I read The Revelation the other week. Quite the book. It got me thinking of, well, all sorts of unexpected stuff. We should talk about it sometime, but could I ask you to do something for me? Could you maybe give St. John a wee bit of a breather, and read the Book of Amos once or twice?"

Amos is a piece of scripture I think both our religious cultures and their manifold communities could get quite excited about. Again - recognition of the specific religious-historical audience is critically important. But unlike St. John, I think Amos has a plainspoken approach to articulating divine concerns for all of humanity. The most rudimentary reading of Amos reveals not just G-d's expectations of a particular religious community at a specific time, but of governments and nation states that don't even acknowledge Him. Furthermore, Amos articulates G-d's unchanging expectations of those nation states who do acknowledge Him, and go so far as to claim kinship with Him.

North American Protestants are justifiably proud of the social changes brought about by the Great Awakening and its sequel. But I believe if everyone who ate up the Left Behind series were to read the Book of Amos and take it to heart, we just might possibly see the world's first Judeo-Christian Awakening. How about it?

Can I get an "Amen"?

Paste Interviews Tom Waits

Well, well - after giving Paste Magazine my shrug of indifference, I am now forced to reconsider. Here is a delightful interview with Tom Waits, persuasive evidence that Paste is worth a closer look.

Same-Sex Marriage

Big day, today, in Canada. I hesitate to wade in on this issue because I have friends and family members I respect who have taken a principled stand on either side of it. And with every new anniversary of my own marriage, I'm forced to confess anew that, at the time, my comprehension of my marriage vows was rudimentary at best. But that's the nature of youthful declarations: you're so full of piss and vinegar, you're convinced you're capable of anything, even lifelong commitment to something larger than the ape within. And every year you experience at least one dull moment where you stop and think, "So that's what I meant ..."

Of course, true respect requires full disclosure. And so far as I have achieved it, here's my sense of clarity on this contentious issue: state recognition of same-sex marriage is an issue of civil liberties. Period. I know there are evangelicals worried this will somehow boomerang on them -- that the Liberals, or God forbid the NDP, could assign police squads to force Baptist pastors to do the unthinkable -- but Constitutional law is unequivocal, and coercion like that simply cannot be done without scrapping the Constitution itself. It's part of the same recognition of civil liberties I raised at the beginning of this paragraph.

My niece said it more succinctly, in a moment of exasperation. After being unwittingly exposed to evangelical hectoring on the issue, she walked away and said: "But it's not about them."

Still, let's make it about them for a moment. Evangelicals, like any religious community, profess to have clear definitions of marriage and family. Definitions aside, evangelical congregations experience roughly the same divorce rate as the "unsaved" society around them. Here's a chance for the gay community to be a beacon of light, a chance to demonstrate to nay-sayers that fealty to one person, to family and to society are imperatives we would all do well to commit to. Demonstrate the vows. Turn the stats on their ear, and prove 'em wrong, baby! Prove 'em wrong.

I laughed, I cried - Well, okay, I didn't cry...

Woody Allen still has it.

The Daily Show gets Hitch'd

I watched Jon Stewart interview ... excuse me ... give the floor to Christopher Hitchens the other night. Two thoughts in response: 1) I find it ironic that Mother Theresa's religiosity gets Hitch frothing at the mouth, while Dubya's religiosity elicits little more than a shrug, or something akin to a nod of Machiavellian approval. 2) What's with the paper cup? Get the man a proper whisky glass, already!