Look, Eastern Bakery has a mooncake order form on the web now! But you still have to mail a check the old-fashioned way. I love it. They also have an oddly unlinked page explaining why theirs are superior to mooncakes from China.

I have this dilemma every year where I overenthusiastically buy a whole box of 4 mooncakes, & then like 2.5 of them end up going stale in the back of the fridge because the stuff is so dang rich—even if you invite friends over, everybody eats just a couple of slices. I guess a better tactic would be to go to the bakery itself & buy just 1 or 2, but that’s a bit of a slog for me, especially right now when it’s still hard for me to walk up & down hills. (Remember the pelvis? Well it’s the knee on the other side that hurts now, from all the compensating, aka weird moonwalking moves on one leg.)

Bay Area folks: One Way or Another opens at the Berkeley Art Museum Wednesday, & will stay put all the way up to the brink of Xmas. A whole raft of events comes along with the show; for my part, I will be doing a gallery walk & talk with Michael Arcega & Ala Ebtekar Sunday 14 October at 2pm.

In the mailbox this week from Calgary: 5 menus, only 1 of which appears to be aimed at Chinese Canadians with stuff like “3 Kinds of Seafood Cold Plate (Shrimp, Scallops & Squid on a bed of Jelly Fish).” The others are all fried rice & chop suey. But guess what?! No crab rangoon anywhere! What can this mean? I admit, a 5-menu sample out of all the Chinese restaurants in Canada has no statistical validity whatsoever, but I’ve always allowed my imagination to run wild on stuff like this. (Why do you think I became an artist instead of a statistician, anyway?) Could it be that Canada, so much more civilized in so many ways, upholds its integrity & dignity even in the matter of Chinese restaurant appetizers?

(A quick riffle through previously-sent menus turns up only a small handful from Toronto, all of which are authentic Chinese-food-for-Chinese-people places, so are not fertile rangoon grounds anyway.)

I’ve always said I was mainly interested in USA menus, but I welcomed others if people wanted to send them. Now? I’m really curious… can Canada possibly be rangoon-free? Canadians, send me your menus please!

Don’t worry, I won’t cry if you send me a rangooned menu that shreds my fantasy to ribbons like so much jellyfish.