No Map...No Legend

Book Review
Michael Chabon
Maps And Legends
200 Pages
Published by Mc Sweeney’s











I have sung the praises of Mc Sweeney’s already in these pages but seriously, check it out. It is a real readers site of eclectic fiction and great new authors.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/

It has been a source of a reasonable amount of pleasure and several authors who have bowled me over. Among them is this Michael Chabon character. He has four or five books out including some award winners but you can read more about him at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chabon

He appears to be multifaceted and while I am currently getting into his fiction I got turned on to this book of his essays through Mc Sweeney’s. He writes about everything but has a special feeling for pop culture, music, comic books etc... All of the important stuff. Mc Sweeney’s takes pride in how it packages it’s books as art objects (things like books that come in boxes and the like) and this book is no exception. Beautifully bound with a multi layered heavy stock dust jacket. Buy it from them if you can still get it.

But do not buy the book because it looks pretty (even though it does). Buy it because it is a good read. he writes among other things about maps and how they effect us and what they have to say about us. he reviews serious literature like Cormac Mc Carthy, Arthur Conan Doyle and Howard Chaykin.
He writes most convincingly about his child hood stories, and most specifically about Golems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golems

He writes a lot about being Jewish and what that means, or meant or is going to mean to him. Aside from the Golem’s he writes convincingly and with passion about comic books and Will Eisner. I would love to read his review of “The Dark Knight.”
This is a really good book of essays. I do not normally like non-fiction but he has a great writing style which allows him to convey empathy and criticism in almost the same breath. I will be reviewing a couple of his works of fiction down the line but I heartily recommend this book as an excellent companion for middle aged men in the bathroom. be forewarned however that there is not porn involved.
The bottom line is that there is a lot going on in this guys head and more to come. get to know him now. His best stuff is still ahead.
8 Slingers on the 10 scale.

DINER REVIEW: Pam's Chicago Style Hot Dogs And More

More Or Less

Pam's Chicago Style Hot Dogs and more. I guess the "more" includes and average breakfast.

I always get excited about the stuff in the Loop and stuff they have developed with the Pageant on the east side of Skinker. It is good for the city to have the Loop and the Pageant and Joe Edwards (no longer a rebel but an establishment millionaire) has done an impressive job. I was even more excited to find out that a new hot dog place had opened which also served breakfast. The mind boggles. You can hit Blueberry Hill for breakfast food but not necessarily during breakfast hours so a breakfast place on the Loop... we need it.

So it was with excitement, AND charity in my heart that I made my sojourn to the “east loop”. This place resides in an unremarkable little building right across from the Wabash Metrolink Station (where there may or may not have been gang violence recently). There is no street parking currently so you park in a gated lot to the east (where they soon will be charging you for event parking). So parking is not ideal but it does work.

Upon entering I feel confused and disoriented much in the same way as I feel entering into any State Office Building with out current administration. There is a counter (which is promising) but no stools (not promising). I do not know whether they will take my order or not when I sit down or whether I will have to go to the counter, place an order and then sit. I do not need to deal with things that are not clear. It is morning. i have a newspaper, I need to read and wake up.

I sit. i read about Albert Pujols having a lower batting average with runners in scoring position. I think lower then what. I realize no one will take my order. I go to the counter. lady is friendly and helpful and I order off of paper menu at counter. I order biscuits and gravy with some sausage patties and hash-browns and an iced tea. I pay. it is almost 8 bucks. When I pay 8 bucks I want a waitress.

They hand me a cup. That can be good. I go to where the drinks are hoping for a vat of iced tea but instead am confronted with “The North Peak Tea System”. This is where they have something shaped like a vat of brewed tea but instead it is a clever way to give you a choice between two “flavored” not brewed iced teas. it is at best an abomination and I begin to lose heart. There is soft adult contemporary rock playing softly. The decor is nice with slate floors, new rock walls and heavy chairs at the tables.

I read some more and inspect the Vienna Hot Dog sign. I have always been suspicious of Vienna Hot Dogs. They are not from Vienna. I think i have been to their factory in Chicago. The casing is too heavy.... but I digress.
My food comes. It is on a plastic plate (my drink by the way came in a styrofoam cum). The hash-browns are shredded and mushy. The gravy seems store bought and is grayish and thinnish and that is two too many ishes for this diner. the sausage is unremarkable and along with the fake tea and the soft rock... I am done with this place. it will be closed (at least for breakfast) before the year is out. Try them while they are open.... for lunch.

5 Slingers on the 10 scale.

Retirement Before Dishonor

Book Review
Matters Of Honor
Lewis Begley
320 Pages
Published by Knopf








Begley is an aging American treasure. His book “About Schmidt” was an awesome, award winning read which Hollywood went on to turn into a drab story about a sad little man in Omaha (not Warren Buffet). I try and read everything that he writes but I was very pleased to discover that he had slipped in a book last year which had flown under my radar screen. That book is “Matters of Honor”. I still have the benefit of reading a lot but as I have done so I have found that means I read about 15-20 books a year if I am lucky and follow a handful of authors who amuse, disturb or fascinate me. Begley does both but in an incredibly erudite way.

He is a totally fascinating story on his own, now as a retired Partner from the white shoe New York firm of Debevoise & Plimpton but you can read more about him at his website:

http://www.louisbegley.com/matterhonor.htm

and at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Begley

This book is a lot of his personal story I think, but I do not know.

I enjoy his books so much because they never appear to try and shock and are cloaked in what we all generally see as gentler times and more generous language. The operative word in the last sentence is “try”. That having been said his books do a fantastic job showing the nobility, ugliness, kindness, pettiness and ultimately the unique combination of frailty and strength that make being a human being such a beautiful gift. The dark side of his characters always evoke Sommerset Maugham’s best drawn characters and they have a depth a texture which few authors can (or perhaps refuse to take the time to) accommodate.
As a lawyer of some 21 years in St. Louis and reaching a solid middle age his books (all of them) speak to me in a very personal way. His use of language and nuanced relationships is lost on the generation of authors who I have grown up with and it is always a nice break to read of his books.

All that having been said “Matters Of Honor” felt like a gift. Throughout the book we are left to assume things which might or might not be important and underneath it all is a tapestry of racism, class consciousness and sexuality which is enthralling and hard to put down. I assume Begley writes what he knows but for a bumpkin from the midwest and a nice upper middle class family he might as well be writing about ancient Chinese dynasties.

The books story is a simple one. Several white males show up for Harvard shortly after WWII and get thrown in together. Our narrator is sam who might or might not have been adopted and raised by well to do (profoundly shallow and unhappy) alcoholics. We have Archie, the son of a career soldier and most importantly Henry, a Polish Holocaust survivor. The travails of the three of them, through college and on into their careers is fascinating and a testimony to a lot of the things that are good, and all of the things that are frail about being a human being.

This is just plain and simple a very good read.

9 1/2 Slingers on the 10 Scale.

VEEPSTAKES! One Bad Choice Down...One To Go!

SooooooooBama....






Joe Biden? All of these calls for change and he delivers Joe Biden? Joe Biden could not transcend a church bake sale much less transcend politics. He is a well vetted, old school politician. I guess he was chosen because:

1. He is old (65).
2. He supposedly has meaningful foreign policy experience (based on his tenure on foreign relations committee).

Who cares? I thought we were voting for change and for hope. Instead we got a guy who has been around the block so many times he has to be dizzy. Nothing against Biden. He is a proven public servant, he has a consistently liberal voting record, he is supposedly a Roman Catholic (and now we will need to suffer through whether his Priest is going to have to stop administering the sacraments to him because his abortion track record). He seems like a nice guy. He has suffered tragedy in the death of wife and some children in a car accident. he has suffered scandal through his alleged plagiarism in law school which caused him to drop out of a Presidential race 20 years ago. He seems like a nice guy.

Soooo what? He is part of a system that we ALL (Republicans, Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives) are sick of. he is too imbedded in that system to be saved. He has a voting record which will be pounded and pounded and pounded. He is a long winded, grandiloquent speaker who many of his colleagues deem a blow hard. Because he goes on and on he has said MANY questionable things which Mc Cain’s people will have a field day with. He has hair plugs i think as he has stopped balding rather abruptly and of course in the debates he said Obama was not ready to be President.

My main problem though is not the choice of Biden but the choice of Biden along with Obama’s campaign and their business as usual approach to politics. When he went to Hawaii and Mc Cain ran a few negative adds and his poll numbers dropped he had an opportunity to say:

“My opponent has gone negative but I will not do it. This campaign is not about what a bad leader John Mc Cain would be. He would be an excellent leader. He loves our country but he is not the right man for this time. I AM.”
And he is a good enough speaker and has a strong enough personality that he could of gotten away with it. Instead we have this thing about Mc Cain’s houses. Seriously, if someone would have asked me that, and i had several houses, I would have stumbled too. It is an asinine question. A gotcha question and EVERYONE should ignore the question, castigate (or castrate) the questioner and ignore any answer. It was just wrong for Obama to hit this and once again it is business as usual. Mc Cain never promised us change so I don’t begrudge him this pettiness, but Obama could have really made a difference and he is proving that he is going to deliver a very predictable product that varies little from what we have been suffering through since LBJ. Who would of ever thought I would hold up that Texas Nazi as our last great social change President but.... there it is. His “Great Society” really changed some things... for a while.

I will still vote for Barrack. At least he can speak and I have already tired of Mc Cain’s “well my friend” attacks and i have to think as President he would be a nightmare. But I will mourn Obama, this election and this lost opportunity to alter our national destiny and reclaim the greatness of the vision that is America. Obama/Biden. Yawn.
If I am Mc Cain I pick Genral Petraus and run totally on the national defense issue. If he picks Lieberman it will look like a bad re remake of Grumpy Old Men.
God save us because these guys clearly will not.

Errata

Soooooooo.... where art thou diner review? This has been a long layoff and though i have several reviews cooking life has been too busy with work, getting kids off to college and high school and staying married. It has been a little too much for daddy to stay on top of the Diner Review. this is really just meant as a placeholder so that you know i still care. We are going to have upcoming reviews of:
Michael Chabon: the “Yiddish Policeman’s Union”
Louis Begley: “Matters Of Honor”
Pams Chicago Hot Dog Diner near the Pageant
Conor Oberst’s New CD
It should all be a hoot. But on to errata.
****
The Olympics! I find it difficult to care. I remember in 1972 caring deeply but i do not remember what about. I have a vague memory of the mexico Olympics and the black power salute. My parents thought it inappropriate. But these Olympics? I guess this swimmer guy is pretty good but 8 Gold medals? A little showy. that is what I think. Lots of stupid sports. Beach Volleyball? Are they serious? It was very cool seeing that Jamaican guy blow out the 100 meters. Gymnastics? Not for me. I don’t know. Like I said, difficult to care. bring on fantasy football.
*****
The Russians! How about these guys? I thought we had a tough administration and now I find out the Russians are in Georgia? Shouldn’t Bush be more upset about that. I mean Jimmy carter was not much of a President but do we really want foreign countries taking over their states. I mean Atlanta is probably no great loss at this point, though we will miss Coca Cola. On the other hand if the Russians have to fly in and out of heartsfield they will give the State back to us and probably pay us to take it off their hands. The Athens music scene has not been much for years. Macon is a truly horrible place. I guess we really do not care about them taking over Georgia. I guess they could use it as a base of operations to launch operations in Birmingham. That would be a tragedy as the Russians might then go to Talladega and become NASCAR fans. It would serve them right.
*****
The Veep-stakes. Once again.... I would like to care but the media has sucked the wind out of the whole thing for me. relentless speculation based on almost no information. And who really cares? Unless you are going to chose a nice old man who worked for your dad and represented experience and America like that nice Dick Cheney (jeeeeez) then who cares? I want Obama to pick Webb. he is only guy who is young, crazy and has military experience. Mc Cain? Who cares? He needs a youngster from the midwest. If matt Blunt didn’t have some evil email baggage he would be a front runner. he would be perfect. Unknown, pretty, short, Bush lover with a wife that dresses like a human mushroom. Still the Democratic convention should be interesting.
*****
Hillary and Bill speaking at the convention. HUGE mistake. I love Bill. great President. made a lot of people a lot of money but.... damn they are like zombies that will not die. Their militant constituency will just use this as an excuse to wallow and be bitter and you know they are combing the rules and likely twisting arms to see if there is ANY way they can get rid of this upstart.
*****
Gas prices are heading south but only for a while. The economy remains in the shitter and I do not understand what pulls us out. We would have been here a few years ago but for the housing bubble and the war industry.
*****
The Surge: Mc cain says it worked. Perhaps he is right but only if you take the baseline being that we had a reason to be there to start with. While the surge is buying time for our Iraqi friends to “stand up” I wonder what the time is really buying. In the meantime we continue to serve the jihad’s interest by stretching our military to the breaking point and our budgets past the breaking point. Though I am reasonably certain that our Chinese bankers have our best interests at heart.
****
OK. back soon. Keep the faith.

"I Want My Phone Call"

RETURN OF THE DARK KNIGHT!








I am not a movie guy. Do not get me wrong. I love movies. There are movies I like to see over and over again. I like to tell people that all of life’s important lessons can be learned by watching The Godfather I and II very closely... and taking notes. So I see a lot of movies, especially on cable channels, sometimes years after they come out but i like movies, I just do not know shit about them. I understand enough to be pretentious about books and popular music (how limited is that in my quest to be a renaissance man?) but movies I cannot really hold up my end of a snotty conversation.


Soooo.... I snuck out of work the other day (DO NOT TELL MY PARTNERS) and saw “Batman, Return of The Dark Knight”. Now to be clear I have NEVER been a Batman fan. The TV series was an intentional bad joke and as gay as a picnic basket. The movies (and I have never even seen “Batman Begins” have been from my perspective awful. All of them. No matter who was playing Batman. Even the much revered comic book left me cold during my comics obsession phase (roughly 1974-1982 ending directly before my marriage) batman and indeed all of DC Comics left me cold. I was a Marvel Comics fan liking the brooding Thor, Silver Surfer and Conan The Barbarian. These were heroes with SERIOUS personality problems confused not only by the world as they new it but also by their own weaknesses. DC’s characters, at least their main ones, Superman and Batman were vacuous and gave me nothing.

Only later did I discover Will Eisners earlier Detective Comics versions of Batman. What a twisted guy he was, full of angst and rage and human weakness. Frank Miller took over the comic series at one point and there is a great discussion of the importance of “The Dark Knight” at:

http://www.sequart.com/articles/index.php?article=780

The Dark Knight franchise seems to bring that all home, at least in the newest movie. And lets get down to it. WHAT A MOVIE! This is the bets movie of the year and Heath Ledger will either win for Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor (how about both), whichever he gets nominated for. He is awesome. It is a tour de force of talent. I always like heath Ledger. My homophobia kept me out of Brokeback Mountain but that was supposed to be awesome but to be honest, he had me at “10 things I Hate About You”. He was just an incredibly gifted guy but this...

This “Joker” puts to shame every other incantation. I mean Caesar Romero was joke in the series but the whole series was a joke. You would have expected a more nuanced performance by Jack Nicholson but... nothing. But Ledger... ledger is a truly frightening, amoral, soul-less, frightening beast. He IS the Joker. Watching him you think the same thing in every scene which is OH SHIT he is here again! His performance, right from the start of the movie would be enough but the rest of the film is pretty excellent as well. Christian Baal (who allegedly beat up his wife and sister last night in London) is a little heavy with his scowling, tight lipped lines. Some of them are very hard to take but in almost every other way the movie is awesome. If I am going to be a jerk I also have to say that Maggie Gyllenhaal is not nearly hot enough to play the leading woman but Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent (and later an unneeded “Two Face”), Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucien Fox make an impressively talented cast for a movie you would expect to be a special effect throw away. Even Gary Oldman, a great actor and a survivor from an earlier Batman movie gives us a great Comissioner Gordon. For an interesting discussion on who is a bigger problem, The Joker or Voldemort see:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hoSCGb5fJRs

Lets be clear. the special effects are awesome. The chase scenes, the explosions (so many explosions) and every other effect are awesome. The movie is lovingly filmed and there is always something happening in the background. The plot is solid though it extends too long and adds some unneeded twists BUT, I come here not to bury the Dark Knight but to praise it.
best Movie of the year and Ledger is best actor of the year. Scary and believable but even more the movie, and his Joker, along with batman, Harvey Dent, Commissioner Gordon and all the rest (including Alfred) are always asking some very dark questions about what we are willing to sacrifice.... what trade offs are we willing to rationalize so we can wake up in the morning? And these questions are not just for us and the characters but for all of society. Really troubling questions about what we are willing to risk. What are we willing to lose... and how fickle all of us are in our thought process and yet how predictable we all act when the violence and/or the spotlight is turned on...US. And they return to that theme, over and over again and they do it really well.

Highlights:

1. The Joker in prison... “I want my phone call” should be the new catch phrase.
2. The Ferry Thing
3. The opening bank robbery all the dead Jokers.
4.Harvey Dent's Fundraiser... "You remind me of my father..."
5. Every crackling moment Ledger is on camera.

I mean seriously... who cares about the Joker. I went to see this because i thought it would be a smile. I do not like Batman. I do not like the Joker but this movie and this performance make it an easy call for best Movie and best Actor. You heard it here first. “Word” says the Diner Review.

9.9 Slingers on a 10 scale.

Talented Crap

Gary Louris
Vagabonds






I listen to a lot of new music. perhaps by long established artist but new none the less in that most of it is previously unreleased. If you look at the Diner Review for these reviews you would see for the most part that the reviews are favorable.
This is for two reasons:

1. I tend to buy things from artists I already know and like; and
2. It is hard to review crap because i listen to it once and never again, filijng it in the rack of shame in my basement, never to see the light of day again. I do not even attempt to re-sell these CD’s used because it seems wrong to put them back into circulation. Someone else might buy them.

Gary Louris is an extremely talented guy. With Mark Olsen in the 90s they fronted one of my favorite all time bands “The Jayhawks” whose CD “Hollywood Town Hall” is likely on my desert island list of the the CD’s I would have with me under that ever increasingly likely circumstance brought about by global warming. Even after Olsen left the band to record awful, truly awful music by himself and to marry and divorce the open wound known as singer/songwriter Victoria Williams, Louris kept the Jayhawks going and put out some great pop and alt-country CD’s.

The Jayhawks were his band and it puzzled my why he would want to release solo. Was the band limiting him? Did he want the fame? The answers were all too obvious when I played the solo CD. It is pretentious, wan, smug, pretty, pretentious, effeminate, preachy, trite and pretentious. This si the worst CD of 2008. He put together a very competent little band highlighted by bassist/multi instrumentalist Jonathan Wilson and steel guitar guru Josh Grange and a band of his L.A. pals “The Laurel Canyon Family Choir” (me making gagging sound). A lot of people and recording artists have been ruined by California. Add him to the list.

I went to his website after listening to this piece of shit 10 times because I was so dumbfounded by how bad it is. And it is consistently bad. There is not one song on here that you would remember for anything other then utter insipdness. The website fortunately explains it all and I urge you to check it out.

www.garylourismusic.com. I did not have the heart or the stomach to look at his My Space page.
Seriously? This is a guy who has written a lot of fun music and been in a lot of fun situations with the Jayhawks and tghe alt country super band Golden Smog. And he gives us this Connor Oberst (without the talent) mope? My life is too short.

“Strip it down to what you can rescue.
Pass it on, what is right and true blue”.

Seriously? That line is from the cleverly named “True Blue” and is emblematic of the simple truths he so annoyingly conveys. We get it Gary. You reached middle life. You find life confusing but beautiful. You have absolutely nothing interesting to say about it but want to anyway.

Sample of annoying song titles:

“Meandering”
“We’ll Get By”
“To Die A Happhy Man”
From the epochal “Meandering”:
Laying Down Among The Dogwood
In The Corners of my mind
Seems the faster I’m running
The further I get behind”

I honestly started to make me angry to listen to this bad, recycled Dan Fogelberg album. If i were a moody, misguided, introspective, unhappy 13 year old boy I might be deluded enough to think that sensitive songs like this would make girls find me attractive and get me laid. I would be missing the point that they would also be vomiting and/or laughing at me and the music. It is at best a cyst upon the music scene and if he makes another solo album it could blossom into a cancer. Avoid it like you would a leper. You have been warned. lets hope he either records no more or goes back with the Jayhawks and views this as a learning experience. And for God’s sake, move back to Minneapolis Gary...SAVE YOURSELF!
0 Sliders (for the first time ever) on a ten scale.

Other Views:

Paste Magazine:

Former Jayhawks frontman releases first-ever solo album
Gary Louris is one of the unsung heroes of contemporary roots music. His band The Jayhawks made one of alt.country’s landmark albums, 1992’s stately Hollywood Town Hall, and since then he has collaborated with a range of artists including Jeff Tweedy, Rhett Miller, The Sadies and the Dixie Chicks. Strangely, Vagabonds is his first solo album, shuffling onto shelves some 20 years into his career and three years since the (permanent?) dissolution of The Jayhawks. All of the Louris hallmarks are present: the low-key choruses on “Omaha Nights” and “D.C. Blues”; the dusty harmonies of “True Blue” and “Meandering”; the country-rock hooks of “She Only Calls Me On Sundays” and the title track. Certainly, Vagabonds sounds warmly familiar, but over 10 tracks, the album settles into a genial lull that even the punchy “I Wanna Get High” can’t rouse. Too low-key to rival his best work, the album nevertheless serves as a reminder of Louris’ continued relevance.
See the Slant Review at:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/music_review.asp?ID=1295