Food

Painting in Color

June 7, 2020

Joe started drawing when he was very young. He drew horses, cartoons, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, airplanes, things he related to. He also liked drawing on walls and in coloring books. He wasn’t thinking of art as a career and never took classes or followed guidelines that someone has to declare him an artist…

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Deli Delight

November 10, 2015

I was hungry and the manager of the gallery showing wild faces said the deli across the street’s world famous go on over and get something. Okay I said and pressed the steel arrow to red-light busy Melrose Ave. and allow me to cross. Inside the deli large glass cases featured food I began studying…

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Overeaters Anonymous

June 1, 2015

Friends, we are powerless over food and really shouldn’t be eating it but the alternative is even more perilous than gluttony so we must learn some skills of restraint. Ours is not a relatively easy addiction to overcome, like alcoholism, since people certifiably can survive without drinking, and I speak empirically as a former drunkard…

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Taco Delight

January 12, 2013

At party after son’s baptism host offers me taco I bite and chew thinking this is worst ever had but maybe I’m mistaken. Since tacos are always good I try another bite and gag and almost vomit before parting tortilla to see not ground beef but something like guts oozing nightmarish white. What’s this stuff,…

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Bakersfield at the Movies

June 8, 2012

Legions of teenagers and adults march into theater carrying troughs of buttered popcorn and sodas large enough for elephants, and guffaw during previews of teddy bear wrestling man, creamed pants jokes, president slicing face open to reveal he’s bullet-dodging, axe-wielding “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.” Amid chomping and slurping, I wonder how many here have watched…

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Maris Prime Rib

May 7, 2012

In mid-sixties Sacramento a restaurateur, exhibiting either grand generosity or manifest ignorance of human hunger, offered eat all you want prime rib lunch on Sundays. Two fast-growing adolescents and I, salivating after a hot afternoon of schoolyard baseball, scurried into an establishment that, a few years earlier, had presented Roger Maris the baseball he hit…

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Garden Party for William H. Johnson

April 23, 2012

(A major feature about painter William H. Johnson, 1901-1970, will be posted later this spring.) I wish William H. Johnson, gifted painter of a unique world, were at this party honoring young African American artists, staged by the foundation bearing his name, at an elegant old two-story home near the Wilshire district in Los Angeles.…

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Ambitious Diet

March 25, 2012

much younger wife serves spicy meals and strong drinks

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Concerned Citizen

January 9, 2012

eli constantly rails online denouncing greedy bemoaning hungry as shoves more food into belly

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Christmas Food

December 25, 2011

thirty years merry company christmas parties no one damaged evident act of god no longer assured worries new boss banning festivities since every year food sickens millions hospitalizes thousands kills hundreds

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Wealth

December 8, 2011

This story appears in the collection “In Other Hands”

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Taco Delight – Part 2

November 12, 2011

at party after son’s baptism host offered me taco i bit and chewed thinking this is worst i’ve ever had but maybe mistaken since tacos always good tried another bite and gagged before parting tortilla to see not ground beef but something like guts oozing white what’s this stuff cow brains host said you shoulda…

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Dining at the Hotel Ritz in Madrid

August 10, 2011

The double-deck tour bus with top open had just completed its modern Madrid route north of downtown on shady Paseo del Prado into the chic Salamanca neighborhood where renowned Real Madrid plays soccer in a massive stadium and the most exclusive shops are found, and then back down Calle Serrano past several elegant foreign embassies…

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Rescued by George Gershwin

May 10, 2011

In a Bakersfield month I lose twenty pounds eliminating milk and cottage cheese and meat and an avalanche of pies, cakes, cookies and other heart-clogging, prostate-bashing carcinogens, and switching to soy milk and fresh vegetables and fruits, and marvel that I don’t feel starved but worry I still haven’t abandoned the comfort and control of…

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The Eternal Jack Lalanne

January 25, 2011

On a fall late afternoon in 1975 I was watching the news when legendary master of fitness Jack Lalanne celebrated his sixty-first birthday by performing a physical feat unimaginable to most. For the ensuing thirty-five years I recalled that he’d swum handcuffed from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf while towing a thousand-pound boat. But, reviewing…

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Food, Inc.

March 1, 2010

Welcome to Food, Inc. Your hunger will here be suppressed with high-tech nutrition that’s accelerated more the last fifty years than since the Stone Age.  Don’t be overwhelmed.  We know you weekly stroll through a typical supermarket’s forty-seven thousand products and enjoy the orderly world designed by a handful of giant companies that produce and…

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Food Overdose

December 1, 2009

Friday morning after Thanksgiving Abernathy called from San Diego where he was unable to extricate himself from bed. “God,” I said, “you’ve haven’t fallen off the wagon again.” “I’m afraid I have.” “You must accept you’re an alcoholic and powerless under the influence of tequila.” “I’m not talking about alcohol; I’m talking food.” “Stay off…

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