DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I called on Wednesday to reserve a rental car. “Of course we’ll have a car for you!” she said. They always say that.

She asked what size car I’d like. “Small and inexpensive,” I replied, “with a CD player.” I always say that.

Thursday morning, when I got to the rental agency, the only car available was a full-sized cargo van. With no CD player. “We have several options,” said the clerk, but all of them involved me taking this enormous van. She offered to bring a replacement vehicle to my house.

“I have to leave at 11:00 AM for a meeting,” I said pointedly. “You’ll be there by then, right?”

Of course she would.

The van stunk. The predominant aromas were BO, unwashed stocking caps, and cigarette ash. By no small coincidence, these were also the predominant aromas of the family that had just returned the van. (I was in line behind them at the rental counter.)

I would have guessed that these smells were embedded in the upholstery, except that there wasn’t any upholstery — just two plastic seats in front and a bare metal shell. The van’s interior had been stripped. I’m not entirely sure it came from the factory that way. I think the stocking-cap people might have just furnished their trailer.

I called the agency at ten minutes past eleven. At least I didn’t have to explain why I was calling. “Simone brought you a car,” she said over what sounded like a cellphone, “but she got stuck in some gravel on your street.” Gravel? Stuck? The roads are all paved. There’s a quarry 20 miles away, but… no, not even Enterprise staffmembers can get that lost. “I have no idea what happened,” said the woman on the cellphone, sounding as exasperated as I felt, “but I’m on my way.”

There didn’t seem to be any point in waiting at home, so I drove the van up the hill to see if I could find a gravel pit with a rental car stuck inside. I didn’t find that… but I did see a king-cab, stretch-bed pickup, presumably with CD player, sitting perpendicular to the road with its back axle hanging off the pavement. Its frame rails rested on the edge of the asphalt. I can’t imagine how the driver got sideways in a truck so long on a street so narrow.

As I approached, a neighbor appeared and volunteered to help. I guess I’m still not used to living in a small community, for I was surprised, shocked really, to see him take a tow chain out of his truck and hook it to the frame of the beached luxury liner within 30 seconds of arriving. The sight of his little Mazda pickup trying to pull the ~5000lb Silverado back onto the road was a bit like watching an aircraft tow tractor pull a loaded jumbo-jet, but ultimately a lot less effective… those airport tow tractors have a towing capacity of 150,000+ lbs, whereas this Mazda could only tow about 30.

We were blocking traffic at this point. And I was late. I realized that I’d be driving the cargo van to my meeting, 40 miles south. I had no other choice. I squeezed the van through the available space and began to seriously lament the five CDs in my briefcase. I hate to drive without music.

Due to an email exchange with Karel just before my departure, I’d had occasion to watch a horrifying video of Leonard Nimoy singing the “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” and I had the unnerving chorus stuck on permanent repeat in my mind. For 40 miles. Argh.

The woman at Enterprise made the best of a crappy situation, though. I can’t blame her for getting unexpectedly stuck with the van, nor for her staff driving the replacement vehicle off the road. She handled it with as much grace as could be hoped for.

I like these guys a lot:

I like these guys too:

Here’s a band I’d love to see:

For that matter, this would be cool too:

Or even just this!

President George W. Bush is famous for his malapropisms and grammatical gaffes. There’s even a book about them: the cleverly titled Bush Dyslexicon.

I’ve found exclusive evidence that Bush makes more mistakes than most people realize: He’s even switching words that sound the same! Newsday.com quotes Bush as saying “We must not waiver!” Heh.

More seriously, President Bush has a problem. Maybe some of these are transcription errors? He can’t conjugated verbs. He can’t match subject/verbs/object number. He can string lots of word together but it don’t always form sense.

• “This has been tough weeks in that country.”
• “The terrorists who take hostages or plants a roadside bomb near Baghdad is serving the same ideology…”
• “When this nation sees a threat, a gathering threat, we got to deal with it.”
• “He’s figuring out the nature of the entity we’ll be handing sovereignty over.”

Even more seriously, the author of the Dyslexicon came to a frightening conclusion.

Bush is not an imbecile. He’s not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he’s incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he’s a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss.

He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he’s speaking punitively, when he’s talking about violence, when he’s talking about revenge.

When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine.

One of my favorite bands, Camel, is relatively obscure, at least compared to Britney Shania Mariah Lavigne Aguilera, which is a big fucking crime when you stop to think about it.

Anyway, Camel’s landmark 1974 release Mirage, which I’ve mentioned before because its (arguably) best song is the last one on the album, contains a track that was inspired by the writing of Tolkien. The song title is “Nimrodel/The Procession/The White Rider.”

Led Zeppelin is another band that found inspiration in Tolkien. I got to thinking that there must be dozens of artists who have written songs in this vein. And I got to thinking that maybe I should compile a list.

This being the Web, somebody already has. Google being Google, finding the list took 0.19 seconds. Here it is: The Tolkien Music List.

The purpose of this site is to provide an exhaustive discography of musical works inspired by or referential to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth (the world of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion).

The influence of Tolkien’s mythology on art and popular culture is far-reaching, and music is no exception. Thus far, a total of 759 artists (boasting over a thousand musical works) have been documented and assembled on this list.

759 artists?! I’m glad I didn’t start the list. I couldn’t sustain my interest in the topic for 759 artists. I’m having trouble sustaining my interest even long enough to finish this article. I hope you’re doing better than I am.

I skimmed through the 759 artists. How many had I heard of? Were there unremembered, hidden pockets of Middle Earth in my CD collection?

About a dozen of the bands were familiar, at least in name. Many of the rest seem to be obscure — and I don’t mean “obscure” in the sense that Camel is obscure, but obscure in the sense that JAR is obscure, i.e., some of those bands would seem to have about as many fans as JAR did, which at last count was 10.

I found two surprises: Rush and Styx. How did I not think of Rush? I have nearly their entire discography on my shelf and I never made the connection.

Two bands surprised me by not appearing in the list: Genesis and Marillion. Marillion is an odd exception, in that they named the band after a Tolkien book, but managed not to write any songs about it.

My recipe for multigrain sourdough is a variation on a recipe from Artisan Baking. (I generally pattern my recipes after something known, so I don’t have to guess at the amount of salt. I could calculate it at 2-2.75% of the flour weight, but my kitchen scale isn’t accurate enough to weight such small amounts of salt.)

The original recipe is for Kalamata Olive Bread, contributed to Glezer’s book by Thom Leonard of the Lawrence/Kansas City area. I’ve made these basic changes:

• Doubled the recipe.
• Increased the amount of starter within the recipe by 50% (reducing other ingredients to compensate).
• Omitted the olives.

To succeed with this recipe, you’ll need several tools, many of which are listed in my pizza tools article: a mixer, parchment paper, a pizza stone, and a peel. Also, you’ll need:

• KitchenAid grain mill. Attach this to your mixer to custom-grind your own grains. This is essential for making wholegrain breads, because it allows you to vary the coarseness of the whole grain.
• A steam pan — an old pie plate or cookie sheet that you can throw boiling water into to create steam in the oven during the bake. The temperature changes will warp this pan over time, so you should not use your nice new nonstick bakeware.
• Two round brotforms, 9 to 10 inches in diameter.
• A kitchen scale, to weigh flour. (Compaction and humitidy affect flour volume, so it’s safest to measure by weight.)

The following recipe is more of a guideline for intermediate to advanced bakers. I’ve provided the general process; you’ll have to apply your own experience to judge proper hydration, timing, and handling.

Days 1 and 2

• Refresh your sourdough starter, leaving it at room temperature between feedings. This recipe calls for a firm starter in the French style. The process for creating and maintaining such a starter is well-documented in Artisan Baking.

  I refresh my starter at least 3 times, preferably 4, before beginning the breadmaking process. I wait 8-12 hours between refreshments. I blend the flours used for refreshments, mixing about one-third whole-wheat with two-thirds unbleached white.

Day 3, morning

• Refresh the starter one last time. You’ll need 75g for the bread and 10g more to keep the starter going, so you should make sure the refreshed starter weighs at least 85g.

Day 3, afternoon/evening

• Chop 75g of the starter into small pieces. Dump them into 1.5 cups lukewarm tap water. Let the dough bits soak for a few minutes to soften. Then stir in 345g of mixed wheat flours. I use half to two-thirds high-protein unbleached white bread flour, such as Giusto’s Organic Ultimate Performer, and one-third to half whole wheat flour. Stir well, making sure to smash and combine all the lumps of starter. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit on the counter overnight (12-16 hours).
• Measure 440g of spelt berries and 60g of rye berries. (Feel free to adjust this ratio, or incorporate wheat berries or whatever is on hand. You’ll need 500g total.) Pass the berries through the grain mill, grinding them to your desired coarseness. Combine with 1.75 - 2 cups water; stir to mix. All the grain must be wet. This is especially important if you used a course grind, because you don’t want under-hydrated berries in the bread.
  Pictured are the soaker (foreground) and starter (background), 12 hours after mixing. Note how the starter has risen. The soaker, of course, will not rise.

Day 4, morning

• Briefly combine the starter, the soaker, and 445g flour (primarily or entirely high-protein bread flour), plus up to 100g of other dry ingredients (rolled oats, oat bran, wheat germ, ground flax seeds, cooked brown rice, semolina, etc.). Add water only if necessary. The total grain weight should be 1290 - 1400g.
• Let the loosely-mixed ingredients stand for 10 minutes while you clean up the kitchen.
• Add 2T salt to the dough and mix with the dough hook on slow speed for 7-10 minutes total. Drizzle water into the bowl if the salt isn’t getting mixed in. Also, pull the dough out of the mixer and fold it by hand a few times to ensure that the salt gets mixed in thoroughly.
• When the dough feels right (yes, you have to judge for yourself), pull it into a tight ball and transfer to an oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for 4 hours.
• Turn out the dough carefully, split it in two, and form each into a tight ball (without deflating). Prepare the brotforms by liberally coating with brown rice flour. Set one dough ball into each form, cover loosely with plastic wrap, then a clean kitchen towel, and then a plate. Let rise for 3-6 hours (depending on temperature).
• One hour before you estimate the dough will be ready, put the stone and steam pan in the oven and heat to 500°F-550°F.
• My bread is usually under-risen at this point, but I need to bake it anyway because dinner guests are already getting dressed. You can see how small the risen dough looks in the form. Baking at this point ensures a great oven spring, but the finished bread will be smaller and denser than if the dough was given time (and/or temperature) to complete its rise.
• Boil water. You’ll need it to make steam in the oven.
• Flip one loaf out of its basket onto a piece of parchment paper. To do this, lay the parchment across the top of the brotform. Hold the form in your hands, thumbs underneath and fingers on the rim holding the parchment against the rim. Carefully flip the assembly upside-down. If you have used enough brown rice flour in the form, the dough will drop out of the form without prodding.
• Scrape some of the excess rice flour off the dough with a razor or brush (but take care not to deflate the dough). Score the raw loaf with a razor. You can use a tic-tac-toe pattern, a spiral, or an asterisk.
• Use the peel to transfer the dough onto the hot pizza stone, and immediately dump a half-cup of boiling water into the steam pan. Apply steam again in 30-60 seconds.
• After 10-15 minutes, reduce heat to 425°F, and spin the loaf front-to-back.
• Bake until the crust is deep golden brown and the bottom sounds hollow when thumped.
• When the first loaf comes out of the oven, re-heat the oven to 500-550°F. Give it 10 minutes to come up to temperature, then bake the second loaf.
• Let the loaves cool for 45-60 minutes before slicing.

If you’ve baked your bread before it was fully risen, and if you’ve scored it deeply enough with the razor, you’ll get a big oven spring. As pictured, the loaf may even spring out of round. This is a sure sign that the dough could have been given more time (or a warmer place) to rise.

The crumb on a mixed-grain bread, especially a bread with such a high percentage of home-ground whole grain, tends to be tighter than what you’d get from a bread made of refined flours. Pictured is a typical result. The irregular hole pattern is characteristic of breads leavened with wild yeasts, and occurs here even though the rough grain pieces prevent the holes from being too big.