Alberty's Blah Blah Blog

Sixty-six years ago my grandfather, Allen Lee Alberty, was a staff sergeant leading a platoon of combat infantrymen in southern France. He was one of 45 men in his division of 10,000 to earn the Bronze Star.

This won’t be a long posting. But it is heartfelt. As most of you know, I’m no big flag-waver. Our country, like every country is not perfect and could certainly be a better place to live.

Having said that, one of my few but greatest regrets is that I did not spend my time in our military. I think it probably would have helped to become a stronger person. Both my father and grandfather spent time in, and I know my father is generally proud of the time he spent in the military.

I just wanted to take today to thank those who put their lives in harm’s way, s well as those who accept their loved ones’ lives to be in harm’s way in the service of our country.

It may sound trite, but I have always believed in the phrase: “Hate the war. Love the warrior.”

Thanks.

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How is it that a man can have three naturally occurring different colors of hair on his head? Is this normal?

And I’m not talking about one of those colors being gray, or those colors occurring simply as his “hair” which some of you have covering the pate of your skull.

No, no. Between the tip of my head and my chin I have sandy blonde (ringed crown of my otherwise balding head), red (beard), and nearly invisible platinum (eyebrows). What the hell is up with that?

I looked online, and the only thing I found besides “How do you dye your hair three colors” was an unfortunate article about “Broken color cavies,” some sort of tri-colored guinea pig. Seriously?

And if you take into account my prodigious dark brown torso hair I appear to be a hirsute quad-colored freak.

Then I do have some interspersed gray, and one crazy white hair that springs from my beard, but I’m not so much concerned about those, as everyone eventually gets those mixed up within their hair.

My problem is the compartmentalized nature of it. Not only do the drapes not match the rug, but they also don’t match curtains, the sofa, the afghan or the two throw pillows in the basement. My body essentially looks like my college junior apartment. Although that apartment also had a groundhog living underneath the sidewalk, and my sidewalk these days is pretty barren. I don’t know what that means.

None-the-less, in the brief quiet hours of my days and in that twilight space between dozing and sleep, this is the kind of shit that I think about.

I remember once, after I was discussing my love for Chaucer to my paternal grandfather, he turned to my father and said, “That boy ain’t right in the head.” I think what he meant to say was, “That boy ain’t right on the head.”

He had a beautiful thick shock of white hair and I was balding by twenty. So…

Anyway, there it is.

I don’t know what that means either.

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Okay, so when I didn’t have a kid I kind of got why people who had kids talked about them all the time, and I also kind of didn’t. This, of course, is coming from a guy who, when he is working on a play, can’t really talk of much else, so, yeah, I understand the hypocrisy.

Anyway, because of that relatively recent memory, I really do try not to talk about my kid all the time. I will say things when people ask. But I really try not to inject information about my kid when someone starts talking to me about theirs, because I hate that. There is an odd smacking of one-upmanship to it, though I know many people just think of it as a sort of strange and understood parental dialogue.

Having said that…

My kid is at that stage where he is beginning to blow my mind.

He and I were in the kitchen yesterday, and I stepped out to grab something from the dining room. When I came back into the kitchen, he was sitting at the kitchen table, on one of the kitchen chairs, with a pen in his hand, scratching onto one my omnipresent memo pads.

I stopped in the doorway, staring at him. He looked just like a little man writing a note.

He looked up at me like, “What? I’m just a little man writing a note. Nothing new to see here.”

It was such a small moment in a long day imbedded within a larger week. But he’s only 16 months-old. It just didn’t seem normal. After all, it wasn’t something he was doing two days ago.

But that moment highlighted something for me, and it’s something that really separates my wife and me. For her, the past is of utmost importance. It is the thing that laid the groundwork of who she is, of her important relationships, of the things she finds essential to her understanding of the world.

I’m not so into the past. I’m kind of a present guy. And that has caused some problems. I don’t have the greatest memory. My high school friendships have slipped away — though Facebook has rekindled some, to my great joy.

I don’t think either outlook really has an advantage, but I also think that together we really complement each other.

But here is the grist of the thing (yes, I meant “grist” because I have ground this thought down like grains of wheat): I have always felt that I have a distinct and finite end in this world. Tomorrow has always been a Christmas gift sitting under today’s evergreen. And the older I get, the more out of shape I get, the closer that finality seems.

And our outlooks can be seen in one simple situation. I would like to get my kid’s hair cut. My wife doesn’t want his hair cut. Now, I know this is almost an archetypal parental thing. But I think there may be a bit of a difference.

Sure there are times that my boy looks like a girl. But for those who know me, you know that really doesn’t bother me. I pretend that it does, because it helps out with some humor. But I have never really been concerned about gender identification.

My wife’s desire comes from her wish for our kid to stay young as long as possible. And I totally get that. But I would like to see him grown, because I just don’t think that’s a given for me.

So when I walked into the kitchen and saw my 16 month-old boy sitting at the table with pen in hand, I saw him, if only for a moment, working on a kindergarten Thanksgiving hand-turkey, a what-I-did-last-summer middle school essay, his high school algebra homework, and even his college application — yes, honey, I’m pretty sure it was for Grinnell. And that was one of the best tomorrow-gifts I ever opened.

So, I guess you’re right, honey, those blonde curls are pretty cute. Maybe we’ll get his hair cut next month.

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Okay, I generally hate television commercials. For sundry weighty reasons. Mostly, because they no longer actually give any information about the products.

I remember one of my last meetings with an adman friend of mine who, alas, is no longer with us. We were talking about the sad state of American advertising. He told me that it was no longer even remotely about product information. It was almost wholly about branding.

But I digress.

I think I have discovered a commercial that I truly dislike. It has nothing to do with the product (Southwest Airlines). It has nothing to do with the branding (Southwest cares about you and, I don’t know, has a hippie street band that likes to sing in public for free). It has to do with the directing.

Have you seen this commercial? A band of ebullient Southwest airline employees led by a pilot with a guitar, are singing the praises of their benevolent company and ethical pricing, while walking through the streets of a major city. It is corporate HAIR without the feeling, the joy, or the talent.

Okay, now to the object of my loathing: the actor playing the role of the pilot does not play the guitar. And what I truly mean by that is that this commercial shoot is probably the first time he has ever held a guitar. I mean look at that guy. You do not strum a guitar like that, at least if you don’t want other guitarists to pelt you with sweaty bandanas.

And this is where I really get pissed off. That director was a lot of money to make that commercial … and he doesn’t have the skills or the eye to see a detail like that? And not only does he not fix that, but he puts that kind of thing front and center in his shots. I mean, come on! That really dumbfounds me.

To get paid that much money and let something like that fly … shame on someone.

I saw a bunch of one-hour shows at Theatre Cedar Rapids’ Underground Festival. Honestly, things were all over the place, but there were a few good shows and some really quite nice performances. And I realized that one of the things that set some plays and some performances apart was the simple attention to detail.

An example: Matthew James, who is one the finest young actors in Eastern Iowa, was in a production of No Exit. There were a couple of good things going on in this show, but there was one thing that really impressed me.

There is a simple line in the show: at one point Inès says something to Garcin about his twisting mouth. Now many actors would simply affect some lip twisting at that moment and then that moment would be forgotten. But a smart actor (or director if that is necessary) would use that moment to inform a specific detail about the character and use it throughout his performance.

And that is exactly what Matthew James did. Throughout the entire the play, before and after that moment, it was a part of his character’s habits. It was really a nice performance.

I guess that the thing that the heinous commercial has given me is a renewed understanding of the beauty of details in performance. It is really the thing that can separate one show from another.

Okay, this is an add-on from November 9. I just saw a commercial for American Express with Conan O’Brien that takes my meaning about details in entertainment and really runs with it. As a director who has ade specific props for a show before because it is one that I want made in a specific way, this ad speaks to me, and also probably to my therapist.

Here it is: Conan O’Brien American Express commercial.

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Friday Pie-Day: Blueberry Planning-Ahead Pie

Whoa Nelly! I can’t tell whether this pie decision is a positive test or some kind of culinary curse.

I truly had fun several years ago with the cookie thing (though time may have tempered that memory). I could find a cookie recipe, tweak it, and turn it around in about three hours.

This pie thing is complicated. Naïve? Sure! Why else would I have started this thing?

Okay, for today I chose another American classic: the blueberry pie. There are aspects of this recipe that take time. But those same aspects, I think that make this pie a kind of throw it in and bake it later kind of thing. Stay with me on this.

I am, of course, using an Alton Brown recipe as a base, and his is a whacky one.

For the Filling

This may seem like it’s crazy, but it is crazy genius. In fact, if you like it, you can make a double batch, and there you are: one for now, one for later.

Now Alton Brown uses a new (new to me at least) crust recipe. But I thought that it would work well with the apple crust we did earlier. I’ll print it below. Also, I put in the Applejack, but I think, next time I would use Lemoncello (I’ll add that to the below recipe).

I quite liked this pie. I generally enjoy blueberries, though. The filling was wonderfully flavorful and held up well when removing a piece from the whole pie. The crust was flaky and had just a hint of the apple.

Let’s see what the wife says:

Look, it’s blueberry pie. If there were an apple pie, a chocolate pie, pecan, peach and a blueberry pie, I will always take the blueberry last. ‘Cause it’s just blueberry, okay. Why are you looking at me like that? Yes, the crust is pretty awesome, but the pie is blueberry. Look, you asked, okay.

I think next week I will make a Bourbon Maple Pecan Pie. If you want any blueberry pie, email me or stop by. I’m sure there will be a couple extra pieces this week.

*I have really been turned onto this Orange Blossom Water since hearing about it on a Splendid Table Podcast. It really does add something interestingly unknowable to a consumer of the finished product.

Previous Applejack Crust Recipe

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I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised that I am not the only Jason Alberty in America. But the fact that there are at least three of us living in the Midwest … well, that’s a tad strange.

I mean come on, Alberty is not, at least I thought, an average name. And when I was born there were only two Jasons: Jason Robards and the Greek guy with the gold-colored sheep skin. I was born in 1969. However, according to namestatistics.com, 808,500 American boys are named Jason. So there are a few of us out there.

While researching this topic today, amazingly, I happened across an excerpt from a book entitled, One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race, by Scott L. Malcomson. Up until today, although I had asked several people and have researched a little myself, I had never come up with a satisfactory history of the name Alberty. I did know a couple of things. First, I knew it was Cherokee, not Italian, as most of my friends assumed. I’m guessing they assume that because I am not in the least swarthy and I have a preternatural love of spaghetti alla puttanesca (which I have recently and disturbingly discovered means “whore’s spaghetti” but that’s another posting).

Second, I know that my great-great father said “Screw the white man,” by not joining the Cherokee National Tribal Rolls, which, as I understand it, ended up screwing the red man, specifically him, as it made all his progeny unable to garner any government help and retribution funds. But whatever.

Third, for those of you who know me, no, I am not Cherokee. My grandfather Alberty adopted my dad when he married my grandmother. Although, oddly enough, I am part Choctaw on my mother’s side. Go figure.

Anyway, this book links the Cherokee Alberty family to, you may have guessed it, a horny and relatively procreative Italian named Frederico Alberti who worked for the Medicis, but killed someone and had to flee, ending up in America in the late 1700s. He had a taste for Cherokee women, eight in fact, and spawned himself quite a brood who were then chased out of Florida, ending up in the Oklahoma Territories and finding a spot in one Allen Lee Alberty, my grandfather.

Apparently the Alberty tribe was a multicultural, all-inclusive group as it spawned an abundance of white-white Alberties, red-red Alberties and brown-black Alberties. And, had I known this, I wouldn’t have been shocked to get friended on Facebook by an Omaha dude named Jason Alberty of Asian-American descent. I now get comments and updates from Jason Alberty whose profile photo is decidedly not, even remotely, my face.

He, my Asian Omaha Jason Alberty, just sent me some incredible video of a fireworks display that he videotaped while in Busan, South Korea. Surreal, it is.

I was first shocked into this sense of, I don’t know, non-uniqueness, when my wife and I first went to Las Vegas. I can’t remember what casino we were in, but I signed up for one of their special cards and they said, “Oh, Mr. Alberty, welcome back.”

I, of course, said, “Umm… I’ve never been here before.”

They responded with, “Aren’t you Jason Alberty from blah blah blah, Detroit, Michigan?”

I felt like I was suddenly thrust into some M. Night. Shyamalan movie.

So, there is a Jason Alberty in Omaha, Detroit and Cedar Rapids. But wait! I just found another in LaCrosse, Wisconsin who states that he is a Tea Party Member.  Ah, what else? He also likes weight lifting and financial markets. A true Doppelganger.

What’s in a name, I must now ask myself. Would I be the same guy if I were named Jason Drees — my father’s biological father’s name (there are Jason Dreeses in San Francisco, Tucson and Ontario).  Or Jason Lampley, my grandmother’s maiden name (San Diego, Sacramento, Mississippi, Texas, and of all places Guyana). What if I were named Mort Zuckerman?

I’m sure there would be some impact. After all, every little seemingly inconsequential moment impacts who we are.

But, here we are. I am me, and I guess no new name will make me too different.

Henceforth, I would like to be referred to as Mugwump Albert Tea. I don’t believe there another of that name.

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Do I dare? Probably shouldn’t. But here it goes.

Look, I don’t care who you voted for last night. I am an independent. Granted, I lean socially to the left but fiscally to the right, which means there was no canditate out there for me, really. But let me be clear about something else. I hate politics. Nothing so highlights our rampant dislike for each other and our inability to work together than politics. And I’m not talking American politics either. Well, I am, but I’m also talking about world politics.

I guess perhaps there never really was a time when we, as a large group of people, thought about each other and cared for each other.

Well, there were the World Wars, but we had natural resources at stake, too. No that’s too snarky, I guess.

People are people and we will always be people, the good and the bad.

One good thing about today, I hope, is that the vicious, barely truthful political ads will stop. At least for a couple of weeks.

The bad thing about today, like every day after an election, is that nothing will change.

Those without will still be without. Special interests and pork will still grease the wheels of power. Politicians will still hold the citizenry in utter contempt. And we, the people, will change our minds in two years.

And that will be the only change.

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I am so angry. Livid even. Bubbling with wrath. Dripping with rage. And snot.

I’m not sure why it happens. I think I get it from my father. But almost every time I get sick I also get angry. Illness is such a waste of my time.

Sometimes I wonder if it is anger at the finger of mortality sticking up my nose or scratching at my throat or tickling in my lungs. But I’ve never really been afraid of death. I don’t know why I would be afraid of the inevitable. I’m not afraid of taxes.

I guess that it’s the method of death that concerns me. Perhaps that’s where the anger comes from; the clear and absolute show of physical frailty. And I’m simply talking about a cold here. I mean I’m tired and have trouble breathing and my nose hurts, but what of that? I don’t have cancer or some eponymous affliction.

Right now I have four friends who are dealing with cancer. And that makes me angry. But not angry at them. I am angry at the seemingly random willfulness of it, if that phrase makes any sense.

I’ve been in a fight with myself to get over my knee-jerk and often impotent reaction to injustice in the world. After all, there is not much I can do about it, and a good portion of the injustice suffered has no definable inciting agent. It simply happened by chance or circumstance. So who is there to effectively lash out at? Fate? She is cruel and indifferent figment of cause.

When I get sick, though, I get angry at myself. Perhaps if I had washed my hands that one more time. If I hadn’t stayed out too late or had put on some warmer clothes. Maybe I shouldn’t have jokingly licked the rim of that person’s beer glass when he wasn’t looking (sorry Richie). Any number of things that I controlled may have been a factor in my illness.

Well — and I think here is the crux of the matter — that presupposes that I actually have that kind of control in my life. I, of course, don’t. And that also makes me angry.

I think the fact that I can’t just think I’ll get better by 4:00 and miraculously be better by 4:00 makes me feel less than I am somehow.

Okay, part number two: some of my friends reading this might be surprised to discover that I had rage issues as a youngun. I remember that I came to grips with it when I found myself holding a coat rack with the full intent of smashing it though my bedroom window. I was a senior in high school. I realized that was pretty whacked out and started trying to work on it. As therapy was anathema in my family — my dad’s kind of a by-the-bootstrap guy — that meant I got to work it out by myself for a while.

A seminal day in my life occurred as an undergrad at Iowa. I had started having panic attacks — I thought I was either having little mini heart attacks, aneurisms or some kind of horrific flashbacks. Anyway, my girlfriend at the time had been in therapy for years and convinced me to go. I did.

I remember talking to my therapist after several weeks of emoting, and she was asking me about when I’m angry. I told her that I really didn’t get angry and she told me that probably wasn’t the case or that I was suppressing something.

I told her about my past “anger” issues, and she said, “That’s not anger. That’s rage. Anger is healthy, rage isn’t.”

It took a couple of weeks, but I finally got it. It made a hell of difference in how I handle things these days. Not a lot of bottling up anymore. Now I get angry, mostly at myself, but sometimes at others.

And always at illness.

I got to get a tissue.

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