Tuesday, March 25, 2008
SWEET THE SIN, BITTER THE TASTE IN MY MOUTH: Hey, why can't you get good sauerkraut in the United States? I've tried all of the Whole Foods stuff and all of the chain supermarket stuff, and it's just too sharply sour. In Austria and Germany (which are known in history circles as "The Cradle of Sauerkraut"), it's only mildly sour, with a hint of sweetness. You'd think that somebody would sell an authentic gourmet sauerkraut.
HIS EYES ARE ROLLING BACK IN HIS HEAD AND HE'S RUNNING ALL WEEBLY-WOBBLY: Lest anybody think I'm going all highbrow on you, what with the book-reading and all, let me just update everybody on the wonderful world of reality television:
- As was painfully obvious to everybody paying attention to Real World/Road Rules Challenge, including the collection of 'roid monsters and frequently-concussed comprising the veteran team, the idiotic format the producers adopted ensured that the veterans' advantage would increase weekly, but that the veterans could not win the final (and only remunerative) challenge. What was not predictable was (a) that even in winning, the rookies lost, so that I think they only won either one or two challenges fair-and-square, depending on whether you think Adam threw the balancing thing; and (b) the show would go ahead and let a 300-pound guy die from heat stroke and only Brad (Brad! Diagnosing Big Easy with "Acute Vascular All Weebly Wobbly") would be quick-thinking enough to call shenanigans. I mean, some people were not only in favor of dragging the passed-out seizure guy up the beach -- they were outright livid that the paramedics wouldn't let them. How dare you let our friend's life-threateningly high body temperature and dangerous dehydration get in the way of our splitting a small pot ten ways! Of note: I think that Casey's little rant about Coral's age was intended by the producers to be a message directly to me that I'm too old to watch this show.
- To borrow a joke from Tina Fey, I watched Paradise Hotel and it gave my TV genital warts. The show features: as many butt- and thong-shots as it can pack into an hour (doubling them up by sticking them in the "coming up after the commercial" previews); several contestants saying about people they literally just met, in all seriousness and with complete unboastful certainty, "I'm going to have sex tonight"; and the motto, adopted by the contestants in repeated toasts, "sharing is caring," meaning exactly what it sounds like. This may be the only reality show where the post-booting quarantine is for health, not secrecy, reasons. I'd have to say it's the second-skankiest show on television, right after Dancing With the Stars.
- The Bachelor is English and some girl gave him her underwear. I wonder if she knows that in England they call them pants. Also, some girl in formal shorts just sang a melody-free song that went "I want to touch you/I want you to touch me/I want to feel you/I want you to feel me." But a capella, so I predict that ALOTT5MA readers will be divided.
STORIES FROM THE CITY, STORIES FROM THE SEA: Second try with a couple of book recommendations here. I posted this before, but then a Ludovician ate it. You won't understand that unless you read the second book I'm about to recommend.
Not more than a couple of weeks after the Wire finale, I picked up something of a companion piece, Richard Price's 1992 novel, Clockers. Price was a writer for the show, and David Simon mentioned the book frequently in interviews. Clockers is a pretty good example of why I complained a few weeks ago about the ghettoization of genre books. Although I picked it up in the crime fiction section, it's a crime novel in about the same measure as is Yiddish Policemen's Union. There is a mystery -- a murder, if you must know -- at the center of the book, but this is not a whodunit or a catch-me-if-you-can. More than that, it's a measured examination of three desperate men and why they ran out of choices. It's an excellent read, even for non-Wire fans, though if you did watch the show you'll enjoy spotting the vignettes and plot points -- including one major one, though I won't spoil it -- that ended up in the show.
And while I'm doing this if-you-liked-the-show-you'll-love-this-book dance, let me give my highest recommendation to The Raw Shark Texts, particularly for Lost fans. This book is an unusual idea executed brashly and deftly. One can't do the book justice just by relating the plot -- it's a fish story about a guy who loses his memory (or has it taken from him) after a tragedy and sets out to get it back. It's easier to say that the first two thirds of the book are like The Phantom Tollbooth as translated by Kafka. The last third is virtually a scene-by-scene reenactment of a book via a famous movie, as directed by Michel Foucault (actually, I don't know anything about Foucault but I imagine that this is up his alley), except what we see is all explicitly a metaphor, and the fact that it's an extended and hyperdetailed allusion to a movie is an important plot point (the main character tells us it's coming, and another character tells us when it arrives). The book simultaneously is ostentatiously intellectual while frolicking in lowbrow culture, mixing science fiction with linguistic theory. At one point it mentions treating a text like a flip book, and later it features an actual flip-book animation made out of text. It's a serious book, but one of its two principal villains is, hilariously, Microsoft Word. It's very smart, very funny, and very sad, often all at the same time, and I hope everybody reads it (especially Neal Stephenson fans, I think).
Not more than a couple of weeks after the Wire finale, I picked up something of a companion piece, Richard Price's 1992 novel, Clockers. Price was a writer for the show, and David Simon mentioned the book frequently in interviews. Clockers is a pretty good example of why I complained a few weeks ago about the ghettoization of genre books. Although I picked it up in the crime fiction section, it's a crime novel in about the same measure as is Yiddish Policemen's Union. There is a mystery -- a murder, if you must know -- at the center of the book, but this is not a whodunit or a catch-me-if-you-can. More than that, it's a measured examination of three desperate men and why they ran out of choices. It's an excellent read, even for non-Wire fans, though if you did watch the show you'll enjoy spotting the vignettes and plot points -- including one major one, though I won't spoil it -- that ended up in the show.
And while I'm doing this if-you-liked-the-show-you'll-love-this-book dance, let me give my highest recommendation to The Raw Shark Texts, particularly for Lost fans. This book is an unusual idea executed brashly and deftly. One can't do the book justice just by relating the plot -- it's a fish story about a guy who loses his memory (or has it taken from him) after a tragedy and sets out to get it back. It's easier to say that the first two thirds of the book are like The Phantom Tollbooth as translated by Kafka. The last third is virtually a scene-by-scene reenactment of a book via a famous movie, as directed by Michel Foucault (actually, I don't know anything about Foucault but I imagine that this is up his alley), except what we see is all explicitly a metaphor, and the fact that it's an extended and hyperdetailed allusion to a movie is an important plot point (the main character tells us it's coming, and another character tells us when it arrives). The book simultaneously is ostentatiously intellectual while frolicking in lowbrow culture, mixing science fiction with linguistic theory. At one point it mentions treating a text like a flip book, and later it features an actual flip-book animation made out of text. It's a serious book, but one of its two principal villains is, hilariously, Microsoft Word. It's very smart, very funny, and very sad, often all at the same time, and I hope everybody reads it (especially Neal Stephenson fans, I think).
Monday, March 24, 2008
THE BOOK OF SELLS: I know it is just me, but I cringe every time someone on sports radio refers to the Boston Celtics. The one thing I remember from CEL 70 - World of the Celts, is that the bias in Celtic languages is heavily in favor of a hard "c." i.e., Kel-tic. I don't even much like basketball, but this bothers me. I am aware that BBC will refer to the Scottish football team of the same name with a soft "c." This is evidence of English imperialism and their Irish, Welsh, and Scot quislings, who have adopted the soft "c." Yet, somehow, the legacy of English imperialism in its effort to stamp out the native languages of Great Britain bothers me less than its effect on my short daily encounters with Razor Voice Ralph Barbieri on KNBR 680, the Sports Leader.
LIFE BEGINS IN ABOUT 9-1/2 HOURS: This crept up on me, but the major league baseball regular season begins at 6:00 am tomorrow (Tues) EDT. I believe I have missed just one Red Sox season opener since 1975 (in 1985, I was backpacking in the oh so cold back country near Yosemite). My sister will be at the game, the lucky lass.
IF MARC HAD ONLY CREATED THE LOMBARDA PIZZA WITH BAKED EGG, BITTO CHEESE, MOZZARELLA AND HOMEMADE COTECHINO SAUSAGE, AND NOT FOLLOWED IT WITH THE SQUASH TORTELLI WITH BUTTER, SAGE AND AMARETTI, DAYENU: The James Beard Foundation has unveiled its 2008 nominees for excellence in food cooking, writing and service. Among the highlights in the culinary Oscars:
- Two nominations for my friends at Philadelphia's Vetri and Osteria -- outstanding service (the former) and best new restaurant (the latter), and a regional best chef nomination for Jose Garces of Amada & Tinto.
- ALOTT5MA faves Mark Bittman, Masaharu Morimoto and Laurent Tourondel all getting book nods, plus a Barbra Kingsolver nomination for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.
- Among the journalistic efforts nominated, the Sun-Times' "Fish fraud: The menus said snapper, but it wasn't!" expose; Manny Howard's "My Empire of Dirt" (subsistence farming in Brooklyn?); GQ's Alan Richman on "The Seven Temples of the Food World" (jealous!) and "The Year of the Pig" (a David Chang profile in which he doesn't come off as quite as nuts as last week's New Yorker piece).
- Two tv nominations for Top Chef.
- Restaurateur of the Year nominees are a pretty well-known bunch: Batali/Bastianich, Wolfgang Puck, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Chicago's Rich Melman of the LEYE empire, and Seattle's Tom Douglas.
SADLY, NO APPEARANCE BY ROBIN SPARKLES: In something that seems to be one part "Let's Go The Mall" and one part "That's How You Know," the fine folks at ImprovEverywhere used a California food court to stage their brief musical "Can I Get A Napkin, Please?" before an unsuspecting audience. Videotape and more are available.
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