Concert Review: Old 97's @ The Pageant

Soooooo... it has already been a good music year for me. Saw a few shows at Off Broadway, a new CD by The Decembrists, Bright Eyes and Hayes Carll, new CD’s on the way from Okkervil River and The Mountain Goats. An auspicious beginning to the year. The Donald turned 50 on Saturday and his fine wife elected to have quite a birthday weekend for him which started with going to see the Old 97s at the Pageant with myself, as well as his son and his girlfriend. Then a big surprise when his other two kids flew in from college.

The Pageant really has gotten their act together over the last few years. I never really understand what all of the logic is regarding closing the upstairs. In any case, the sound is good, the beer is cold and all is right with the world. We missed most of the first band, “The Whiskey Folk Ramblers” who seemed to be tearing it up. They had made it so the under 21 peeps could not go down on the floor which sucks for them but it does allow the old men to take a beer onto the floor... which was PACKED. It was nice to see, on a Friday night in the Lou, that enough people would come out to an Old 97’s show. The second band...”Those Little Darlins” seemed to be the critics Darlins... and caused me to head out of the venue to The Halo Bar. The Halo Bar is always to be much recommended as a place to escape a band. The Darlins just seemed like they had nothing to add to the mix, other than the fact that they were chicks. I know that might seem sexist but... they just did not have it. Would have rather seen the whole “Whiskey Folk Ramblers” set.

So Rhett came out and the women... and the girls swooned. Everyone loves him... even me. He and Ken Bethea and Murray Hammond have been rockin for a while and he gave the appropriate memory rave to the Hi Pointe (I was there) and of course the old Cicero’s Basement (the for them twice). Both venues are gone but the opld 97’s are not. They tore into the title cut for their new album “Grand Theatre” and then went on to play about 30 songs. The RFT blog was really rough on them for playing such a long set but seriously...most of the tumes are 2 ½ -3 minutes (ala Beatles) and you can get in a lot of songs. The set list was a great one drawing from the whole body of work but most of us could listen to Rhett sing the phone book.
The Grand Theatre
Here's to the Halcyon
The Dance Class
No Baby I: “Blame It On Gravity, Blame It On Being a Girl.”
You Smoke Too Much
Salome
Victoria “She started off on percodan and ended up with me.”
Champaign, IL (Best song on the new CD)
W. Tx. Teardrops
Please Hold on while the Train is Moving
Stoned (Will always be my all time favorite song of theirs)
Question
You Were Born to be in Battle
Indefinitely
A State of Texas
Dance with Me
Let the Whiskey Take the Reins
Smokers
Every Night is Friday Night (Without You)
Big Brown Eyes “I’ve got issues...like i miss you.”
Doreen

That is a sweet, sweet set and that was before the encores.

Singular Girl
Valentine
The Fool
Jagged
Rollerskate Skinny “Nobodies going to see eye to eye, with a girl thats only going to stand collarbone high!”
Time Bomb

They had the crowd eating out of their hand and the whole crowd stayed for the whole show. The floor was packed and i stayed down there until we got to the encores. They had the upstairs closed off but it was a see of people and more importantly that nice Beatle Bob was taking up space with his dance moves for the whole show. it wrapped around 11:30 and was a sweet, sweet way to spend a Friday night. Go buy their new CD. It will make you smile. Even if you missed the show.

Diner Review: Strattons Cafe/Clayton

Soooooo.... your intrepid diner has been busy again. Due to the frequent vicous and critical complaints of my voracious readership (thanks mom) I keep getting told, “we need more diner reviews”. Well this is not an easy thing my friend. Despite my frequent travels and my relentless stalking of the city there are very few quality breakfast establishments that I have not made a visit to, and given the cursory review. For that matter there are not that many crappy places I have not been to. I realized recently that I had not been to Strattons in Clayton having gone to their Webster location years ago and panned it for having nothing but the dreaded “fruity” tea. But, though I normally avoid chains (there are two Strattons in town) I have to admit that I was relatively pleased with my recent trip.

I drove there by the way with my folio from work and iPhone on the roof of my car which is an act of stupidity I was embarrassed about badly until I opened the paper and began reading about “assclown” Charlie Sheen. He really has never been on my radar screen and always seemed rather talentless, even in “Wall Street” but he had good breeding and seemed not to take himself too seriously as an actor. I do not think i have ever watched “2 ½ Men” but clearly it is, or was an institution. His work in "Major League" was inspired as was his apparent cameo in "Ferris Buellers Day Off". As I said, I was feeling bad about my own stupidity when I was able to read some of this guys quotes. This one made my stupidity seem...just fine.

"Guys, it's right there in the thing, duh! We work for the Pope, we murder people. We're Vatican assassins. How complicated can it be? What they're not ready for is guys like you and I and Nails and all the other gnarly gnarlingtons in my life, that we are high priests, Vatican assassin warlocks. Boom. Print that, people. See where that goes."

Tell it Charlie...tell it. But I digress.

Strattons has an little impersonal feeling. You order at counter but not a cool counter with a lot of formica and stools and a grill behind it but a fairly bright, bland little counter and you have to pass by their yogurt or gelato or whatever the hell it is to order. Seeing the bright un-natural colors of these ice creamy treats in the morning is slightly offputting. The staff was friendly enough and it was a broad menu offering everything the hungry breakfaster could want from pancakes to omelettes to biscuits and gravy. It looked to me like a place that might have the dreaded “egg white” omelette” which is painful to even see on the menu but I understand...I guess how some people might consider them...breakfast.

I ordered and was given a number and I received my large, waxy, Pepsi cup (32 oz.) which is always a bad sign and then went to get my own beverage and found that they still had fruity strawberry tea from “The Republic of Tea” but they also had “The Peoples Black tea”. SHouldnt the folks in The Republic of Tea be having some kind of revolt or uprising against these embarrassing tea names? Anyway, the black tea was passable and I started to read the Post Dispatch...oops here comes another digression...

The Post Dispatch appears to be in a death spiral. I honestly feel like every day when i read it, it is getting worse and worse. I look forward to the editorial page just to get some decent writing. It is like reading the A.P. wire and although i cannot believe it is true it feels like they have made the actual paper stock even cheaper (after downsizing the actual size) so that it is hard to read and cannot hold its shape as it is being read. Also, with all this trouble in the middle east, they oftern get to it by page 12... but the paper...it feels cheap...end of digression.

So I was reading about Charlie Sheen with a big number 28 on a little stand and they quickly brought me my food. I had the biscuits and gravy half order with some sausage and some hash browns and it looked like this:

The gravy had a nice spice and the biscuits had a home made taste. They were pretty heavy and dense and one of them could have made a nice fatty breakfast. The sausage was well cooked and had a little flavor but nothing remarkable, also nothing really offputting. The whole thing was not quite hot enough but it all had a lot of flavor and a little spice. The hash brown casserole is a suspicious menu item but these were good (excellent really) and had a lot of moisture and mixed excellently with the gravy and biscuit for a nice hash. I would recommend them highly even though not traditional shredded and also also their was no crispness. Still, they were good. they also had an offering of “Potato Pancakes” which I will need to sample on a return trip. This is what it looked like when I was finished:

I checked out other people’s plats and all the food looked pretty good. They had a number of booths and lots of people working there (it looked like too many) delivering food and cleaning tables. The food was not cooked right behind the counter but the kitchen was visible and looked crowded as well. As least there were no worries about food being trucked in from a commisary or anything like that. It sits right by the Ritz and also by that upscale condo development and the street in front was full of Lexus crossovers for the well to do soccer moms. There were a lot of kids there for 8 o clock in the morning and I will need to figure out what that is all about because I am a grumpy old man and kids+morning=grumpier and grumpier. It was a little pricey coming in at over 9 bucks which rules it out as a regular stop but check their website as their breakfast specials looked reasonable. Here is a link to their breakfast menu:

http://www.strattonscafe.com/cafe_clayton_breakfast.html

I liked it. I will come back. It is good to have the place as an option. 8 Slingers on the 10 scale. I will hit Webster next time and report.

Taking Stock

Soooooo...I decided not to got to work today. After all, it was Sunday. I had worked Saturday. I feel like I have worked Saturday and Sunday for about a month. The thing is... I do not really love working 7 days a week but this time of year, my wife works a lot. A whole lot and with the kids getting older and older they do not really need me or at least it does not feel like they do. (In all actuality there is a reasonably good chance that we are neglecting our 18 year old but that is neither here nor there). I mean it is but... what are you going to do about it? I mean sure, calling Missouri Division of Children’s Services might be a good idea but I digress.

I like to cook. I am not a good cook. My ability to follow recipe’s is... suspect t best. But I like to cook. I find it relaxing and when something comes out good and you feed it to people and you like it... well that is a little sweet, perhaps a lot sweet. I have reading Anthony Bourdain’s “Les Halles” cookbook and like every other thing that he discusses about quality food revolves around making your own stock. I thought you made stock from bullion cubes. It would appear that I... to quote my great contracts professor, the late Vincent Immel... “erred”.

So, I went to the counter at the grocery store and requested some beef or veal bones... and they looked at me like I was an idiot. They were of course correct. I had forgotten that after all of these years that most grocery stores get “boxed beef” which they trip down. there are no carcasses and very few bones. So, I politely left and headed to Bauman’s Meat Market where I buy some of their specialty stuff and knuckle bones for my dogs and they hooked me up. The I bought a couple onions and some celery and a few mushrooms and some carrots.

You spread the bones on a greased sheet and preheat the oven to 375 and then you rinse the bones then you spread some tomato paste on them and sprinke a little flour on them and put them in the oven, turning occasionally and you baked them for 45 minutes. Do not let them get black. While they are cooking, chop up your celery and onions and carrots and mushrooms into a rough chop and in the bottom of a big thick bottomed pot brown them all for a while in just a little Olive Oil till caramelized. When the bones are thoroughly browned dump them into the pot and fill to the top with cold water. Heat it up almost to a boil (but not a boil) and then reduce to a simmer. Clean the scum off the top (there will be a lot early and then not much) and simmer those suckers for 8-10 hours.

Now it is 8-10 hours later. I had enough time in between to make, and eat a 4lb pulled pork roast. The hardest part of the stock making is when you have let it simmer for that long and then you have to put it through a strainer and a cheese cloth, and then a strainer and a cheese cloth, again and again. Then you let it cool. Now I am refrigerating it and tomorrow I will skim the scum off the top of it and then store it in mason jars in the freezer for whenever I need it. the next question... what will I need it for? Only time will tell.

Cafe' Osage: A Diner Review Sort Of....

Soooo.... it is always a pleasure to find a new place to have breakfast. Even if it is (with all respect to Johnny Chico) a little gay. It was with some trepidation that my dining companion Sal requested that we go to a place called Bowood Farms http://www.bowoodfarms.com/ which is more specifically when dining, Cafe Osage. he gave me the address of the place and I had no ability to picture it. 4605 Olive in the city...where the hell was that. But on a recent Saturday morning I made the sojourn and finally pulled up in front of the place which is about two blocks east of Euclid. It is also about 5 blocks west of the Old Gaslight Square http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_Square,_St._Louis . If you do not know about Gaslight Square it was kind of the equivalent of perhaps the Loop area, but probably a lot cooler. But anyway, I digress.

It is a very interesting part of town and the Bowood Farms people have located their, nursery, landscaping business, their plant data base and all of their knowledge and urban hipness in what was an abandoned manufacturing business.

A locavore dream. It is a cool place but at 7:30 on a Saturday morning it is a little disorienting. You walk into their indoor nursery through a big wooden door and then on your left is their little gem of a restaurant, the Cafe’ Osage. It is a big, open (and in February in the Lou) cold room. High ceilings and big windows give you great light . It is a really nice room with some big booths and nice table seating and a little bar area.

The menu is a little to frou frou but what I sampled was good. In fact very good. http://www.bowoodfarms.com/_ccLib/attachments/pages/Osage+Breakfast+Menu10-21-09.pdf . Unfortunately they were out of their biscuits and gravy but I did sample some of their Nueske Bacon and a very fresh English muffin while Sal had their Osage Corned Beef Hash with poached egg that looked pretty awesome and awfully fresh. The iced tea was top notch. The absence of hash browns was obviously concerning but is made up for with black beans and rice and cheese grits.... but those are for another time. The service was attentive without being annoying and over all I would say this is a great place for breakfast with your wife, girlfriend, daughter or mom and without knowing more I would guess that they do an awesome mimosa and bloody mary. It stinks to me of a mother day location for a great brunch where everyone, including me can be very happy. This is definitely a destination location to tuck away and save for the right moment.

Lets give it 7 slingers on a 10 scale but there is nothing Diner like about it.

The Great St. Louis Blizzard Hoax of 2011

Soooo...I am not a man to hold a grudge. I am not a man to deal in conspiracy theories. I am not a man to deal in the blame game. That is not me. Not at all. I was totally disrupted in my job yesterday because everyone was a twitter about the nightmare that was soon to befall us. St. Louis was to be hit with a storm of Biblical proportions. The grocery store shelves were being raped of all perishables. MODOTR and the venerable Missouri Highway Patrol were one the air 24-7 screaming about getting home and please... for the sake of everything that is holy, stay off the roads tomorrow. I went to the store. I went home. I watched TV regarding Egypt and regarding THE STORM! First rain turning to ice... then 6 inches of snow on top. More to the north. My wife was sad that we were not in the zone marked "blizzard" on the weather map.

I woke up this morning and saw almost nothing on the ground. I turned on the news and heard 13-19 inches in the viewing area. ABANDON ALL HOPE! We are doomed. I had misplaced my phone the day before in the rain. So I packed my bags and hopped in the car to deserted streets. 8:30 in the morning, slippery streets and almost nothing going on. I drove into Clayton without incident. Clayton was shut down but the news flashes, the storm warnings and all the officials begging me to stay pff the road and go home. So, i got my stuff and went home. And it kept sleeting. No snow. No freezing rain. Sleet. I worked a little. The distracted work that a simple minded man does when waiting for the apocalypse. Looking out the window. Emailing people. Making phone calls when people were not there.

I started a chuck roast cooking at lunch. Nice big one with lots of garlic and onions and some rosemary and some mushrooms. My wife bought me a nice ceramic/iron/pot with a heavy lid. Browned the whole thing in the pot in a little olive oil seasoning liberally and then let it go. Figured it would be a nice hot meal when the power went out later and it would make nice sandwiches the next day. And I waited. I watched one guy at 3 explain that there was a lot more coming but that we were in a band that was just sleet. A sweet spot really. But more snow was coming. At least 3 to six inches.

And we got no more. I sat around waiting for it. Looking to be buried and nothing more happened. I watched the doppler as all the bad stuff went by us on the north and the south like were just a little protected pocket of bliss. I watched all the local weather channel and no one ever apologized. No one ever said we misjudged. No one ever said that we terrorized St. Louis and shut down an entire city with our professional scare tactics. Our incompetence. If you are going to insist that we rely on you. At least be right. Don't scare everyone into staying home and then act befuddled. Man up. Tell us it is complicated. Tell us you blew the call. Do not act like it never happened.

The roast was awesome.

Tomorrow...off to work. Maybe I can run over one of the weather terrorists.

Its The End Of The World

As we know it... and I feel fine...fine...fine. Sooooo.... are the weather terrorists getting better at their game? I feel like every bit of bad weather they have predicted this year has arrived... in spades. Even though i went into work this morning I was being yelled at by everyone on the radio about what a selfish choice it is to leave my home when the apacalypse is coming. So, I looked for my missing iPhone and beat it back home. The roads were icy and slick and totally driveable. But you look on the doppler and it appears that St. Louis is just about to be eaten by...something. We do not know what but we assume it is bad.

When i went to bed last night my wife was complaining that we were not even in the “blizzard” zone but over night the zone moved south and we are now part of that elite group. It is weird how much it feels like one of those weather disaster movies, “The Day After Tomorrow” or some other piece of bad cinema. It is all exacerbated by the media which hopefully will soon be blissfully eliminated when icy power lines start falling and marauding packs of wolves begin leaping through our living room window plate glass looking for fresh meat. “Blizzard”, “Disaster Area”, “National Guard”, “snowpacalypse” and Obamacare are just a few of the terms I have heard on local Fox News in the last ten minutes and clearly they are all related. It is clear that the sins of past and present Democratic leaderships are finally being visited on all of us. Locusts and rivers turning red and running backwards are on the horizon.

Seriously, it does appear that this will be a memorable blizzard. I hope it is cool. When I went tto the store last night it was truly amazing to see how little there was on the shelves. Driving around this morning on Big Bend there was not a car on the road at 8:30 and it did indeed seem like a post apacolyptic zombie film. It was kind of cool. I went back home. Cooked a big breakfast, took 3 minutes to read the Tuesday Post and it appears that now it might be time for me to “work from home”. Really? Work from home? Seriously? My wife is upstairs doing that but i have no idea whether normal people really do that. I mean... the TV is still on. I do love the fact that my phone cannot ring. And they say tomorrow might be worse. I can’t wait!

The main thing is... I lost my iPhone.