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It’s possibly strange that, even though I haven’t (yet) read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, or Food Rules, I have taken a deep interest in what I know of the overarching concepts within them. I have heard Michael Pollan on the radio and have also recently read a couple of posts on the New York Times website by Mark Bittman. There is something in their messages that really strikes a chord with me, and that’s summed up in what Bittman would like to be our food acronym, ERF: Eat Real Food. This is also nicely put by Pollan when he suggests that we eat only what our great-grandparents would recognize as food. These foods can be found along the outer edges of a typical grocery store: fruits, vegetables, meats. Real food or whole foods. Another guide for eating is a simple three sentence suggestion by Pollan that is the other acronym in the title of this post: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

The key there, and implicit in the first part of that suggestion, is that a lot of what we find on the shelves of our grocery store is not really food. I mean, yeah, we eat it, but it’s not real food. Another thing that I am thinking about whenever I am deciding what to eat is to avoid “processed” food. But what that means, I don’t fully have a handle on yet. One thing I try to go by is something I can remember comedians joking about even 20 years ago. Don’t eat something that has ingredients that you can’t pronounce. But are noodles “processed?” Or is butter “processed?” I guess they are somewhat processed since you don’t harvest noodles from the field and butter doesn’t come out of a cow’s udder but there is a limit. How much processing is too much processing? That’s where I’m trying to get to eventually.

We will be glad that the food scientists of the 50′s and 60′s developed the preservatives we use these days and we will be glad to have non-perishables and canned food when there are emergencies like a nuclear attack or a blizzard that closes the grocery stores for a week, but until then, I’m going to try to stick to real food.

Sunrise on the L.I.E., originally uploaded by Dan Hewins.

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Today, I read a blog post on a digital 2D cutter written by my wife Hillary on her awesome new blog, Power Animals, that she is doing with some other Brooklyn-based ladies. She linked to some cool paper art, which included this piece called T.I. by Ian Wright.

T.I. by Ian Wright

It’s very cool and it immediately brought to mind the album cover for Coltrane’s Sound on Atlantic Records:

Coltrane's Sound

Not that I think this is an example of a rip-off, but it also reminded me of this interesting blog called You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice.

where Robert Fripp was before, originally uploaded by Dan Hewins.

A couple of weeks ago (Dec. 4) I met my friend Ben at Winter Garden at the World Financial Center to watch and listen to Robert Fripp do his thing. First of all, I was excited to see Robert Fripp at all, because he’s an amazing musician and guitarist. He is the backbone of the prog rock band that’s been around since 1969, King Crimson. He has also made some amazing music with Brian Eno as “Fripp & Eno.” The latter is closer to the kind of music he makes by himself: Frippertronics. This is the name for a method involving tape loops that he and Eno developed in the seventies to create atmospheric, ambient, beautiful music. At Winter Garden, he created more beautiful music with just his guitar and that hugely tall rack of electronics. I think these days he is calling it simply: Soundscapes. It was wonderful.

Here is a photo of the man himself.

Ok, so, some of you have seem this before. It’s the album cover of “Merriweather Post Pavilion” by Animal Collective. But I saw this on Gorrila Vs. Bear today and I thought it was an animated gif. But it’s not, it’s a jpg. Is it just me or is this image “moving” when you look at it. Believe me, I’m totally sober right now. I’m at work.

If this is not news to you, fine. But it’s news to me. I even have the LP at home.

They Speak English in Belize, originally uploaded by Dan Hewins.

This is my most-viewed photo in Flickr as of today, with over 800 views. For some reason people are finding this photo and I can’t really figure out why.

The Bayon, originally uploaded by Dan Hewins.

This was one of the most impressive and beguiling parts of Angkor as a whole. The Bayon is the central temple in Angkor Thom. There are 216 giant faces adorning all parts of the temple. Traversing the labyrinthine different levels of the temple itself is disorienting even if there aren’t faces at every turn. This was most definitely a highlight of our trip to Angkor.

This is also to say that I have finally finished uploading all of our photos from our honeymoon. (There are a lot of them!) I still have to title a bunch of them and add descriptions, but they are there for your viewing pleasure.

best meal ever, originally uploaded by Dan Hewins.

On our honeymoon we read about this restaurant online and it had great reviews. It took a little while to find, riding out bikes around Hoi An, but it was worth the search.

This was at a restaurant called “Bale Well” (pronounced ba-lay well). It’s a family-run affair and the grandmother takes great pleasure in teaching guests how to eat this meal. And, the first time there, you need instructions. You don’t order, they just start bringing this food out to you in great quantities. What you do is take a rice paper, put in some greens, and a couple skewers-worth of meat and some slaw. If you want, instead of (or in addition to) the meat, you can put in a spring roll (next photo). Also, not pictures, are some pancakes called “banh xeo” that you can also pile into the mix. Put in a chili or garlic if you want to. Roll it all up and dip it in the sauce. Repeat. Delicious.

Last night, Liz and Toby and I went to Santos Party House and took in a few bands. Here are mini-reviews:

Tamaryn: Boring but the guitar player had a good sound (put a space echo on it and that’s what you get). They were sorta 80′s goth-ish. Drenched in reverb. More style than substance. Nothing to write home about unless you wrote, “Dear mom, Tamaryn was boring.”

Minks: The first song was rocking and promising. They might be from LA, judging by their looks. The second song was suckier and the singer lost his balls. He basically started mumbling. We left after that song. Again, more style than substance.

Dom: Interesting band that looked promising. Three guitars and a drummer playing with a track. The singer had a cool high squeaky sort of voice but could have sung better. Sometimes one guitar player played bass. They played a part of the Super Mario Brothers music between songs. They looked like they were going to get rocking and kinda guitar-wanky-in-a-good-way but didn’t really. I felt they were sorta 80s rock-ish. Ultimately a let-down.

Diamond Rings: Standing around the corner we heard electronic beats and a synth and a guy singing. I thought it sounded kinda crappy and lame but we were just hanging out. I stepped into the room to see a guy with a blond swoop coming out of a blue jays cap and some sweet eye makeup. He was playing the keyboard next to a laptop which was producing the beats. He was actually really good and I think it took me seeing him to figure that out. I thought he was sort-of a cross between Rufus Wainwright, Eddie Izzard, and [someone else I can't remember]. The guy can actually write songs and is a good performer. He also played some songs on guitar with the laptop backing him up. Usually I see duo or solo bands and wish they just had a band but I didn’t with this guy. He held his own.

Diamond Rings

Marnie Stern: I am not too fond of her record(s) but, live, she is great! I really enjoyed her set a lot. I didn’t know much about her or the way she looked; I just knew she was a female guitar goddess who loves finger-tapping. First off, she doesn’t finger-tap all the time, which is good. Second, her appearance made it better, for me. She’s unassuming, short, has long blond hair in a decidedly non-hipster style, and wore a cute dress/skirt thing. Basically, she looked like a regular girl. And she looked like she was having a lot of fun up there too. Cracking vagine jokes with the bass player and stuff. I may not run out to buy her record but I’d see her perform again for sure.

Marnie Stern

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.: Dressed in NASCAR outfits. Great vocal harmonies and pretty good poppy stuff. It just wore thin after a couple songs for me. Sorta too saccharin for me. They did a cover of “God Only Knows,” introducing it by saying they wish they wrote that song. Me too. Or, I wish they could write songs that good too.

Wild Nothing: Boring songs, bad lead singer. Lame, lame, lame. I booed them. I may have had too many by that point. That’s when we went home.