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Cake and Empire: May 2007
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Monday, May 07, 2007. Recently I was asked by a friend and co-worker, D, to do a cake for the opening of the exhibit, Alien Images: UFOs, Photography and Belief. At the ASU Museum of Anthropology. My original idea was to do something subtle, something artistic, perhaps even sublime! Okay it was just an alien autopsy. I wanted to do a cake ( red velvet. Naturally) that was in the form of a big-headed grey/cream colored alien body that could be cut humorously with a big meat cleaver. One of the planners to...
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Cake and Empire: August 2007
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Monday, August 20, 2007. The opportunity finally presented itself when a friend and colleague moved away. CG recently finished his PhD on Aztec period economics and politics so he’s interested in Aztec materials as well. I’d talked to him about my idea of doing an Aztec monument cake, and he asked me to do one of the Coyolxauhqui stone. That served as the sacrificial stone of Motecuhzoma II. According to the experts, the relief sculptures on the stones themselves are packed with allusions and deploy ...
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Cake and Empire: November 2006
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Sunday, November 12, 2006. Recently, I attempted to make a birthday cake for Mr. Roth, my brother-in-law. He’d been reading a bit about Salvador Dali, so I decided to attempt a cake with a general Dali theme. Due to vagaries of fillings and such, it turned out to be a bit more Dali-esque than I had initially envisioned. First, I sculpted a red rose using gum paste. Gum paste, for the uneducated, is basically sugar cement that has gum in it making it intially flexible much like clay before drying. Frankly...
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Cake and Empire: September 2006
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Saturday, September 30, 2006. There's no such thing as a free cake, part II? So now we've established that gifts, even innocent looking birthday cakes, may represent antagonistic obligation. Is this true in every circumstance? Are all birthday cakes, as a friend of mine once put it, potential power struggles? So I thought long and hard about all of the birthday cakes I’ve made over the past two years (or so) and came to an immediate conclusion. The first observation is that I make a huge amount of ca...
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Cake and Empire: January 2007
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Friday, January 05, 2007. Is there a Ndembu Witch Doctor in the House? Every winter I spend here in sunny AZ, I wonder how I survived Chicago's annual fimbulwinter. And the attendant depressive hyperactive internal ruminations that the lack of sunlight and endless grey days appeared to produce. H and I got to know one another well on an archaeological field school in the Cantabrian region of Spain digging a Lower Paleolithic cave site (if there’s something more boring than the Lower Paleolithic, it’s the...
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Cake and Empire: February 2007
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Tuesday, February 20, 2007. In Memory of New Orleans, part II, Mardi Gras. Coach Butler had us memorize facts which he then helpfully synthesized for us in class. He had a pungent way of speaking. Founded by crooks, run by crooks, financed by crooks, and finally run by crooks again! Louisiana’s purpose evolved into simply being a strategic marker in the geopolitical gamesmanship of France and Britain. Now it’s successful only as a tourist trap. So it goes. Here he is in this picture:. I wasn’t all that a...
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Cake and Empire: July 2007
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Sunday, July 08, 2007. Art Deco and Paisley Wedding Cake. All wedding cakes, particularly the bride’s cake, are collaborative design efforts. I’ve only done them as gifts and most folks have at least some ideas about how they want this particular piece of their wedding ceremony to look and taste. At least, my friends and relations who wanted wedding cakes did! This is the story of the latest effort, an Art Deco and Paisley wedding cake undertaken for friend G. I’m a fan because I hate the mouth-feel of a...
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Cake and Empire: June 2007
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Friday, June 22, 2007. All the weddings I attended as a child had two cakes. One, the bride’s cake, was white and covered in all manner of scrolls and scallops. The other, the groom’s cake, was a more whimsical and less serious number. It often featured a hobby or special interest of the groom, such as fishing or golfing. The groom’s cake was also invariably chocolate, another tradition. However, the bride’s cake is still the one that gets all the fuss made over it with the official cutting and feeding o...
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Cake and Empire: October 2006
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Friday, October 13, 2006. Tobacco versus the Ants. Translated and edited by J. Richard Andrews and Ross Hassig. While there is some dark fascination with reading Alarcon's dramatic text filled as it is with contempt for the unfortunate locals he is catching at idolatry, I will focus on the parts about the ants. Specifically, about ways to kill ants. It turns out that despite Alarcon's general skepticism of the "heathen superstitions", this is one case in which the methods are actually proven. He invokes ...
