Belgian Danish Tsotsi

At the Grand Lake Farmer's Market, we (Elena and I) bought a Belgian Danish for Elena because Panorama Bakery wasn't present, so we had to find an alternative source of sweet baked goods -- we'd have bought a Panorama chocolate chip cookie otherwise. The Belgian Danish wasn't a complete success, although Elena enjoyed picking out the raisins. No repeated requests for "more." We also bought a couple of fresh ears of white corn, which Elena eats raw, a cantaloupe which Jenny says was good, and a saucisson sec from the French charcuterie booth. Then we went to the DeYoung Museum and gave an informal tour to Maria and her relatives of the contemporary collections, the Art of the Americas, and the current Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibition. The general favorites were Deborah Oropallo's temporary exhibition of gender superimpositions on paper and in tapestry, and the Sugimoto. Vanessa, a friend of Maria's niece Melanie and newly graduated like her from high school, asked me how Jess got the oil paint so thick in his paintings and then scratched the titles of books out in the paint -- I didn't know.

After putting Elena to bed last night, Jenny and I finally watched Tsotsi, on DVD -- we've had it out from Netflix for weeks. The story element of the very small baby being cared for ignorantly by the young thug protagonist was really hard for Jenny to take, but I thought the movie presented the desperation and emotional stuntedness of a world built by orphans of AIDS better than any fictional depiction of children gone savage (e.g., Lord of the Flies which we all read in high school), and thought the central performance was terrific even if most of the accompanying roles weren't so perfect and tended toward melodrama.