Thin-crust pizza and salad with doggies under the table

How do you like your pizza? We like ours with a thin crispy crust with a good salad on the side. Our dogs prefer theirs on the floor.  We got in dog time and good pizza at the dog-friendly  Rock & Brews in El Segundo, located 143 Main Street.

This restaurant is not only dog-friendly, it's dog safe. The outdoor port area is entirely enclosed except for the entryway which has a trusty host/hostess standing guard. Dogs at dog-friendly spots are not always dog-friendly themselves, but don't worry. If there's a particularly growly dog already taking up space, your trusty host will find you another table.

We think of it as giving our older dog a chance to prove he earned his CGC and our younger dog gets to practice for his upcoming test. Our doggies were able to fit nicely under the table to maximize their shade space. Water and ice was provided. 

Rock & Brews Garden on Main is a partnership between KISS frontmen Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons with concert industry veterans Dave and Dell Furano and restauranteur Michael Zislis. They envisioned a backstage party atmosphere where you could relax, drink, eat and relax. That's exactly what we did.

Of course, at a beer garden there is a lot of beer and other spirits available. You can even check out their beer menu as long as you remember not to led your favorite Fido do any sampling.  Soft pretzels are well loved at our house so we had to order the Giant Soft German Pretzel ($8.95). This appetizer could be a meal in itself or an appetizer for four.  The pretzel has a firm outside with a soft center. The spicy sweet mustard definitely makes this better than your usual pretzel experience. We look home leftovers and tried it with cheese. 

Canine caveat: A bit of pretzel without the salt is okay although in general yeast breads aren't food for dogs.

Beatles fans will want to try the Strawberry Field Salad  ($10.95) . This lovely cold salad is perfect for the hot summer weather. With a base of baby greens, the crunch of cucumbers and smooth buttery avocados, this salad was a delightful surprise. Who would have thought of strawberries with red onions and candied walnuts? The feta cheese adds an extra tanginess with a lemon pepper vinaigrette to tie all the flavors together. 

You might not associate salads with dogs. For doggie, cucumbers without any sauce are okay. 

Onions, avocados, and candied walnuts are a no.

If you're a SoCal native, how could you pass up the the Surfin’ Surfari Shrimp Pesto which is $13.95 for a 10-inch individual sized pizza or $22.95 for a 16-inch family sized pizza. For $1 extra (individual or $2 for family) you can even get it gluten free. The crust is thin, crispy and hand-tossed. This pizza is a wonderful blend of house-made pesto, shrimp, mozzarella and goat cheese, mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes.    Large pieces of shrimp decorate the top in abundance.  

Most of this pizza are a big no-no for the doggies although we admit to giving them pieces of pizza crust from time to time.

I understand there's even a doggie menu in the works.

You like your brews? There's plenty of draught brews--Lagers, Pilsners, Wheat beers, Malty, Hoppy, Belgian and inspired. Don't worry if you want wine. They have reds and whites as well as a few specialty drinks.

Just because the restaurant is dog-friendly, remember not everything on the menu is dog-friendly. Beer, liquor and wine (grapes and raisins as well) should never be on a dog's menu. Just as a warning, we want to remind readers that chocolate, avocado, garlic, onions, coffee, tea (caffeine), milk-based products, sweets, fat and bones, salt, yeast dough, and spicy foods.

You can feed them lean meat, apples, bananas and watermelon, carrots, green beans, zucchini, white rice and pasta, and chicken. Or you can always bring their favorite chews and a peanut-butter-filled Kong or something to preoccupy them when they aren't being admired or they get tired of playing with the ice cubes. 

Rock & Brews Garden on Main is located at 143 Main Street in El Segundo. Hours are Mondays-Fridays, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Saturdays, 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sundays, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.  For more information call (310) 615-9890 or for reservations, the food menu and the beer menu, visit their website.

The gauntlet of good grammar

Learn how to write English well and you'll soon be able to discern the racist bullies from the mere and generic bullies. Nothing drives a racist crazier and into raging hysteria faster than having their superiority challenged.

Throw down the gauntlet of grammar.

Consider the nastigram sent by someone named James Wasser. I wrote a few articles about the police officer who shot a dog in Hawthorne.

• Viral video incites mob mentality threats of violence
• Police kill dogs: A Tale of Two Cities
• Police shoot, kill dog in Hawthorne

Apparently James Wasser disagrees with what I wrote. Instead of writing in the comments section, he sends me a personal email with the subject line: "youre a horrible writer."

His message? "you write like a child. Ive blocked google results from examiner.com due to your garbage articles."

Just how many errors do you see and does your child compose better emails? I hope your child does compose better emails and has a better understanding of Netiquette, but I'm not sure at what age one learns to capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence. Is that first grade? I admit I sometimes channel my inner five year old. My husband will attest that happens, perhaps too often. 

One's inner child can help with such things as language learning. My Japanese language professor at UCLA told us it was a kindness to correct people's language errors. How could I resist?

Wasser quickly shows that he's really a racist underneath all that lack of sophistication by his reply: "Did you learn the English language as a child in your foreign land? "

Do you think he also uses that quaint phrase "You speak English good" or "You speak really good English" when he attempts to pick up a non-WASPY person for reasons of racist romance?

Language can be a weapon. Learn English well (not good). That will drive the racists into a hysterical rage which will probably leave you and your friends laughing. 

I don't think when people disagree with Leonard Maltin's writing they intimate that English isn't his native language. That also probably never happened to Roger Ebert (except in South Africa where he was speaking and writing American and not English).

When I was learning to debate in Japanese, we were told to say things like "this is just my opinion" or "that's interesting that you believe that, however" or "that may be so, but" and yet when I was watching an American debate camp the goal seemed to be humiliate your opponent. Isn't that in part like a bully culture? You could see the bully culture at work when people were calling for the death of three to four officers over the shooting by one officer of a dog. That makes so much sense. Ask that the police put more value on the life of an animal such as a dog and yet devaluate the human life. Four human lives for the life of one dog.

Don't threaten just the officer that shot the gun, but the two other officers who were there and didn't make or encourage the decision and then add in the public information officer (Scott Swain). There is nothing like international hysteria. One has to appreciate the thoroughness of the mob when they decided to include the Glendale Police Department and Swain's Art Supply store in Glendale. I guess they thought Los Angeles was a small town and all things Swain must be related? 

Mob violence and death threats are part of a bully culture and could be considered domestic terrorism. We might have done away with the lynch mobs in Los Angeles, but we still have a culture of violence here (e.g. the victory mob violence after a Laker championship) and obviously the culture of violence exists in the world at large and online. 

I believe the bully culture begins with a lack of respect and with attempts to intimidate much in the way James Wasser attempted to intimidate me by insulting me instead of attempting to express his disagreement with my views and respecting mine. Because he so easily indulged in a racist twist, one understands that he is the kind of person who doesn't respect the humanity of people of different color and ethnicity.

The concept of respecting another's opinion isn't just something I learned in my Japanese debate class. I learned it also in a University of California community program for gardeners. We were told that we only spoke for ourselves and we respected everyone's opinion. How would that be so bad or do people really prefer this kind of hysterical rage where one threatens art stores in one city because of an incident in another city?

My mother was right when she said choose your friends well. Wasser, I feel sorry for your friends. As for those much more fortunate than Wasser's friends, when you are troubled by the haters, throw down the gauntlet of good grammar. As people become more hysterically mad, as they begin to foam at the mouth in a racist or sexist rage, the exchange can become more amusing. Once they use the race card, the sexist pig card or the threat of violence bully card, you have won. Take your bow, leave them burning with their ridiculous hate and you can have a good laugh. 

My mother was also right about name calling which in college I learned was argumentum ad hominem or a logical fallacy. Mr. Wasser, like many readers, feels that by attacking me personally he is attacking my arguments. Yet what is there for one to defend or refute when one isn't clear on what Wasser disputes? He wins the argument, he seems to think, by making none? 

So, dear reader, don't get angry and start name-calling. Or if one must be name calling say something interesting like a Dorothy Parker or an Evelyn Waugh. With Wasser, there was nothing left to do but throw down the grammar gauntlet to give a verbal slap in the face of racism. 

Johnny Depp, Tonto and Native American culture: Who decides the real and the fake?

If Johnny Depp believes he's Native American, then is that more important than if he actually is or not? And does the exact percentage make him more or less Native American? How much does that matter for the movie "The Lone Ranger"?

• My review of "The Lone Ranger"

I ask this as someone who has been challenged as being East Asian American enough by other East Asian Americans, specifically Japanese Americans because I didn't measure up to their prejudices of how a Japanese American should act. Oddly enough, I was only faced with these accusations when I left my native San Diego and moved to Los Angeles and Orange County. 

I am 100 percent Japanese ethnicity, but for some, including my ex-husband and former in-laws, that wasn't enough. There are other East Asian Americans who had earlier attempted to delineate what was true and false (e.g. Frank Chin and the editors behind "Aiieeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers").

Depp's assertion that he was part Native American comes long before he was cast on Tonto. According to Ethnicelebs.com, Depp made this claim first in 2002. That was the same year that shooting for the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie began.

It should be noted that Depp probably has little way of proving that he is Native American. Not all Native Americans have been tested and testing that may prove membership will not necessarily distinguish specific tribe membership.

According to a 2006 Slate Magazine article about genealogical testing:

Admixture testing works best in groups like African-Americans, whose ancestors in Africa and Europe lived far from each other. Most of the ancestry of today's African-Americans can be traced to West or Central Africa, with a minority from other parts of the continent. (Gates' family is a bit exceptional in terms of origin.)

But for other groups things can get a lot more complicated. Many amateur genealogists are interested in whether they might have a Cherokee ancestor, for example. And for some people, admixture tests can give a relatively accurate answer about Native-American ancestry. But other people, including Greeks and Ashkenazi Jews, may have "Native American affinity," according to the tests, even if they and their ancestors have never been to America. As far as anthropologists know, there were no lost tribes connecting Greeks, Jews, and ancient Americans. So, maybe this "Native American affinity" reflects the scattering of alleles by prehistoric Asian nomads to the ancestors of Greeks and Jews as well as to American Indians. Maybe the SNPs that they share gave these groups a leg up in fighting diseases.

There another point that the Ethnicelebs brings up. Depp seems to have African ethnicity in his background. I had heard that during less enlightened times during American history, people hid their African heritage by claiming American Indian heritage instead. In any case, according to Ethnicelebs, Depp has both African American (3/2048) and Native American ancestry (1/2048 Powhatan Native American descent).

If Depp's claims of ancestry are true, it wouldn't be enough for him to be considered Native American, but that 3/2048 would have, in a different era, been enough to have him considered black. Yet there is another problem within the Native American population. Native American populations mixed with white and African immigrants. White and Native American intermarriages have occurred since the 1700s. Yet to be an official member, an individual must have 1/4 or more ancestry within a federally recognized tribe. Yet who is recognized and who is not?

In researching this article, I was surprised to discover that Rosa Parks was also part Native American. The Wikipedia article on Black Native Americans notes that " African Americans are using DNA testing to find out more about all their ancestry. Native American identity has historically been based on culture, not just biology." Further, Native American groups have excluded Freedmen from membership based on the early 20th-century Dawes Rolls (Cherokee freedmen controversy).

As I mentioned above, I am 100 percent Japanese by ethnicity, but most people will not guess that I am Japanese American. The natural state of my hair (wavy) doesn't help. This and other factors has led other Japanese people in Japan to consider my second and third cousins in Japan as not Japanese.  Traditionally, wavy hair was stigmatized in Japan. So I might not be able to pass as Japanese and if I were an actor, I might not be cast as Japanese. I might be cast as Chinese or Filipina. 

I'm also not Buddhist, Taoist or a follower of Shinto which might also make me seem less "real" Japanese. Still in Japan, my relatives embraced me and pointed out characteristics that made me part of the family. This was particularly true for my father's side of the family. I remember this when someone tries to tell me otherwise and pejoratively label me a banana. What gives that person the right to tell me s/he knows how a true East Asian ethnic or Japanese ethnic should act?

My friend once told me that he believed he was full Chinese from Vietnam, but was traumatized to learn that he was part Vietnamese, particularly since his father looked down on the Vietnamese. So just who are we: What we are or what we believe we are? And just how much is enough?

If Depp isn't Native American enough either culturally or by blood is one issue, then the other issue should be can he pass? What about Iron Eyes Cody who passed despite being of Italian (Sicily) ancestry? Cody lived his life as a Native American and married a Native American woman. He was also honored by the Native American community in 1995 despite his lack of ancestral ties to the Native American community.

The Irish, Comanche and Cherokee Micki Free, a Native American musician.

So much has been made of the bird in Tonto's hat. The painting that inspired the make-up has a crow, but not in the Native American's hat because he isn't wearing one. Fashionista know that bird in hat are old hat--something that Marie Antoinette popularized. According to the blog by jmongeon, women in the 1900s adopted this fashion long after Marie Antoinette had lost her head in 1793.

So much has been made of the bird in Tonto's hat. The painting that inspired the make-up has a crow, but not in the Native American's hat because he isn't wearing one. Fashionista know that bird in hat are old hat--
Actually, I've also seen a few Hollywood hats off to Tippi Hedren and Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" in West Hollywood during the 1990s. Bjork may have had a swan dress in 2001, but other women in the 2000s have re-visited the bird or bird nest hat. What could be more steampunkish than re-adopting the stuffed animal hat of yester-year for a bit of high fashion today? That model with the bird nest and wings was from a 2006 fashion show.

Now, I'm not saying that the Native Americans copied the fashion of White American women. Yet we need to ask: Did Native Americans wear bird in their hair? Apparently some did as seen in these photos of Crow (Apsaroke) Native Americans from the past.
See these old photographs of Crow (Apsaroke) Native Americans.

One of the commentators, Sonny Skyhawk, has passed for Native Hawaiian and Mexican so that was reasonable enough for him. He was, by his own logic, taking away a job from a Native Hawaiian. Those Mexican roles are easy to rationalize because many Mexicans are mestizo or part Native American, even if the mixing was a long time ago, just as seems to have been the case with Johnny Depp ancestry. In a different era, Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban played Native American roles as well as East Asian (a real stretch). 

The movie "The Lone Ranger" had a supervisor and Depp was adopted into an Comanche family. At least from the perspective of one recognized Native American (William "Two-Raven" Voelker) and then one person who perceives himself as Native American (Depp), the movie portrayed Native Americans in an acceptable fashion. But like everything else, that's just an opinion of two different people.

• My review of "The Lone Ranger"