Consider this:

How The Heck Do You Impress A Teenager?

Our family recently saw the Tony-award-winning show, Hedwig and The Angry Inch. Do you know the story of Hedwig? It’s about a beautiful, troubled young man who escapes grim East Berlin courtesy of a sex change operation that gets botched (what’s left is the “angry inch”) and leaves “him” navigating life as “her” in America’s Midwest. Technically, the show is a musical, but that’s like describing a nine-course meal at Napa’s French Laundry as a snack.

Hedwig is a rock concert, drag show and monologue that’s loud, angry, funny, poignant, heartbreaking, crude, desperate and sweet. It’s a spectacular visual spectacle, with Hedwig strutting, thrusting and dancing in short, tight, shiny, blinged-out drag, plus sky-high gold platform shoes and an array of wigs so outrageous they make Dolly Parton look like a dowdy schoolmarm. (Sorry, Dolly. I love you.)

Given all this, it’s no wonder our teenager found the whole experience extremely ho-hum. Mediocre. Average. It was “fine,” he said, when pressed. A solid five-out-of-ten. Kind of dull, if we want to know the truth. Too bad he couldn’t have stretched out and taken a little nap.

Folks, it’s official. I’ve got A Jaded Teen on my hands.

Oh, I’m sure it’s just a quirky stage. An adorable phase. A right-on-time developmental milestone. I know teenage boredom is a syndrome that dates back as far as, well, teenagers. I’ll bet that one day, explorers will find a cave drawing depicting a stick figure stifling a yawn as a mighty T-Rex roars in his face. Eureka! Archeological proof of a Paleolithic Teen.

Still, as a parent, it kind of sucks.

I know my lovely lad well enough to realize that had this been an outing with a friend (and a friend’s parents), he’d have quite happily released a little more excitement, like helium escaping slowly but surely though a pinhole in a balloon. I know there’s something about The Teen being with The Family that gets in the way of an otherwise spontaneous expression of interest, let alone delight. I’m guessing if someone – anyone – other than The Parents had suggested seeing an earplugs-worthy rock show about a pissed off transsexual, The Teen may have been a tiny bit intrigued.

But since the show was our idea, it was kind of a drag (pun intended). I suspect this will be our reality for the next few years. I know it’s all part of the natural process of separating, individuating, maturing and taking all sorts of other critically important steps in the journey from child to adult. I’m sure my son’s moment of “meh” is just one more indication, like his deepening voice and fast-growing feet, that he’s developing right on track.

Knowing it doesn’t mean liking it.

My son’s age-appropriate apathy doesn’t bode well for my dreams of one day taking an extended family vacation to Europe. It does little to ease my middle-of-the-night worries about raising a digital native who prefers the adrenaline rush of a video game to an excursion to a museum, a gallery or a show. Truth is, kids these days (yes, I said it) have access to every over-the-top antic anyone has ever thought of. How can Real. Live. Theater – or pretty much anything else – compare to the infinitely fascinating wonder and derangement of YouTube?

Right now, all I can do is give myself a smidgen of credit for resisting the urge to respond to my son’s beleaguered tolerance of Saturday’s performance with my own version of “When I was your age I walked a mile uphill in the snow.” Not once did I compare his afternoon in the company of Hedwig and her angry inch to my own childhood “adventures” visiting abandoned Chinese mining camps.

I just booked four tickets to Cirque de Soleil, so I’ll save that story for next time.

This article appeared in the Marin Independent Journal.

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Cook this:

Black Russian Cake

 The first time my friend Maria served me a slice of this Black Russian cake, she dished up a warning: this cake can be addictive. Maria wasn’t kidding. I know that no illegal substances are involved in the making of this fiendishly indulgent dessert. But once you’ve tried it, be prepared to wake up in the middle of the night desperate for just one more bite.

(By the way, Maria is an incredible cook and a gifted painter. Check out her gorgeous works of art here.)

Black Russian Cake

18 oz. package yellow cake mix (without pudding in the mix)
6 oz. package of instant chocolate pudding mix
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
1/4 cup Kahlua
1/4 cup vodka

Glaze:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup Kahlua

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease and flour a bundt pan. Combine all ingredients (except those for glaze) in a bowl. Using a stand mixer or a hand mixer, mix on low speed for 60 seconds. Increase speed to medium for 4 minutes (these times should be precise).

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for ten minutes and turn out onto rack. Poke holes all over the cake with a fork. Drizzle glaze over top and sides, brushing with a pastry brush to cover cake completely. When cool, sift powdered sugar on the top to garnish.

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Read this:

God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, And A Pilgrimage To The Heart Of Medicine by Victoria Sweet

 This week’s review comes from Lesley Christensen-Yule in Auckland, New Zealand. Our dear friend Les is a former chef and has coauthored numerous cookbooks including The New Zealand Chef and The New Zealand Cook’s Bible.

Do I care about the history of a San Francisco hospital? No, I don’t. I live in Auckland, where I’m not even interested in what’s happening at my own local hospital. Do I care about a doctor’s take on budgetary cuts to the San Francisco health system? I’m glazing over already. Am I even remotely interested in the Latin writings of a medieval German nun? I think we all know the answer to that one. To be honest, I’m a gal who likes the latest fiction on offer at my book club. But someone gave me God’s Hotel, and I felt obliged to read it.

What a gift! Doctor Sweet tells the story of San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital, and I have to say, it’s a really sweet read. Sweet learned Latin and German in order to delve deep into the medieval medical writings of Hildegard of Bingen. It’s Hildegard who informs Sweet’s approach to medicine, diagnosis and caregiving as she navigates her way through the mysteries of the chronically ill community at Laguna Honda.

Along the way we meet the sick and the crazy and the dying. We meet dedicated doctors and nurses. And we become embroiled in the clash between the business of healthcare and the call to care. Sweet encourages us to ask, is the human body a set of systems to be rebooted or is it a garden to be nurtured and carefully tended?

This hugely subversive book should be compulsory reading for medical administrators. When Sweet questions what it means to be efficient, she illuminates alternative paths to achieving this goal. In the vein of “slow cooking,” she proposes a sort of “slow medicine” approach to healthcare, and it makes perfect sense. God’s Hotel filled me with despair, but it also gave me hope for the future of hospitals, medicine and care.