Diner Review: Cafe USA (Sauget)

LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!

Soooooo.... sometimes it is the unhappy duty of your diner reviewer to mercilessly eviscerate an establishment. Recently i was taken to task for my heavy handed (sort of) review of the Plaza Cafe. I will have to go back and try again but it was uninspiring. Generally however I am well know as a joyous fan of breakfast. I am a shameless promoter of even the most humble and average establishment as long as it has something to offer, and they almost all have SOMETHING to offer. Good food, ambience, good service, location....my frame of mind... almost anything can lead to a good review.

Upon my return from over seas (you cannot get bacon or any quality pork products in Istanbul) I had a hankering for some good old American breakfast cuisine. I had been told by two of my partners that the much awaited Cafe USA had finally opened in Sauget. I must digress to clarify that when I say "partners" I refer to two men who I practice law with, not any "life partners" or anything like that. I do not think I could handle more then one, regardless of gender. I say "much awaited" because there is something fun about the idea of a good diner in Sauget. Sauget is a shitty, dirty awful little town, run by a backwards ass sometimes criminal and very possibly inbred family and a small police force legendary for corruption and abuse and dominated by the dollars of the strip clubs it services. In short Sauget is know for it's strip clubs, Pops (where you can drink all night) and Big River Zinc.

The thought of a diner in such a pristine location causes classic diner imaginations to go wild. You think of strippers, coming off shift, being picked up by their boyfriends (who they support) going out for breakfast and fighting as he takes her money and berates her for how she makes it. You picture men coming off all night benders, hopefully sobering up instead of driving the wrong way down the highway, and you picture a place redolent with loud, stupid drunks. So we went.

Let me summarize. The place sucks. On the way in from the parking lot (right across from "Liquor and Lottery" there were two very unattractive employees chain smoking by the back door of the kitchen. Upon coming in, it has an antiseptic atmosphere. Everything looks like it is put together cheaply and i do not think anything holds up past the first major fight. It does look like it was designed to be hosed out every morning but I saw no drains. I liked our waitress and she was very attentive and friendly and even helpful. She did not appear to be a stripper or an ex stripper. The place was over staffed as they were "training". Everyone had on ugly CAfe USA t-shirts once again indicating an over all cheapness and unendearing tackiness.

But maybe the food is good. The first thing is that their iced tea was not brewed. I asked and it appeared they had one of the hated iced tea systems (tea from a large plastic bag mixed with water in iced tea "system". It is an abomination and an anathema to this diner. I was also told that their coffee sucked which is another unforgivable sin. We sampled the menu including their version of the slinger. I had sausage, toast and potatoes. I was originally heartened in that they had tater-tots until i saw that it was the only potato choice. These were also used as the base of the slinger which seems wrong on a number of levels. The sausage had a good flavor and a little spice (this constitutes the only positive part of the review). The gravy for the biscuits and gravy appeared to be out of a bag and the cheese on the slinger was some grotesque and unnaturally colored cheese sauce. Who would allow that?!

The main vibe of the place was cheap, tacky, poorly managed (even with management sitting in a booth) and a poor dining experience. Although the ambience of Sauget at 6:45 A.M. is undeniably alluring I believe I will be staying on this side of the river and if i cross will head down Route 3 to the Korner Kafe or head out to the Collinsville Waffle House. But that is just me.

Stranger in A Strange Land

Soooo the diner review has suffered (been neglected) in my absence. I was forced to leave the country due to a misunderstanding. It has all been cleared up now but related to embezzled client trust accounts, a dead body in my trunk and a butler named Mandrake. In the light of the allegations everyone (me) thought it best if I immediately absent myself from the continent and having little stomach for Hawaii, Paris in Spring or Tahiti, I thought, "I should go to Istanbul!" Even better I thought, "I can go alone!" Brilliant. So as sited earlier I got on a plane and flew through JFK and found myself in Istanbul.

The first two days were spent working, either remotely from the hotel or with rafts of Turkish lawyers (this will require a separate post)...(a long separate post). It was an exhausting few days between traveling there and trying to get a job done with people and having NO idea what the other guys were saying without my local counsel and I should of been exhausted and I assume I will be upon my return. Right now I am 30 thousand feet up, just south of Ireland. I am relaxed even as i sit on a cramped plane. But I am OK and the question of the day is....why?

Well for one travel is good. It is broadening and it takes you outside yourself. the stranger the place the more transcendant the experience. This is why we send kids away for servant events and the like rather then just keeping them in their own towns where there are plenty people to serve. So it is a blood chemistry thing. Sure it is stressful to travel. It is very hard to get on a plane and put yourself in a little seat for 9 hours or so. It is stressful to go somewhere that does not contain a lot of people motivated to speak your native tongue. It is stressful getting your life in some semblance of order so that you can leave town... but all of those disappear with plain old excitement and adrenaline.

Figuring out how the money works (and messing it up and being taken advantage of once or twice) ends up feeling empowering. Figuring out a mass transit system (or at least the relevant portions of it makes you feel like you still have the capacity to learn. Figuring where to eat and what to eat when a lot of the food looks and tastes like what you would imagine prison food would look and taste like (in a Star Warts Movies) is challenging and sometimes surprising in good ways. But what is the best thing of all? The best thing of all is that from the time I arrived at Istanbul's airport, really from the time the plane lifted off at JFK (because i had been furiously emailing and tweeting even after the cabin doors were closed) I did not have use of my Blackberry. No blinking message lights for voice, email of instant messaging. No ability to Tweet. No ability to immediately respond... this was great.

I mean it seemed very inconvenient. I had no way to easily get in touch with my local contacts. I had to relearn how to make international calls. Anytime I wanted to check email I needed to go back to my computer or be carrying my computer along and borrow someone elses wireless hook up (and do it in a foreign language. So I would email in the morning when I got up. In two cases I scarily found my clients awake and monitoring emails at midnight but other then that (all was quiet). When you are not reciving a bunch of emails, like during the business day, your ability to cogently respond (or at least min) increases pretty dramatically. I would then work all day and re-engage when it was about lunch time back home. I also found out that a majority of my emails come in the afternoon which I did not know.

It was odd to be on a train or in the back of a cab. I immediately reached for the blackberry to check emails and instant messages.. I could not. It allowed me to do something really weird. Look at the window. Which you would like to think is something you would naturally do in a town of 12 million people that is like 6000 years old. But I would not have. i would have emailed, IM'd or Tweeted. How STUPID is that? But I have no question i would have been doing that. Other people were. because they could. I went to dinner with our local counsel and his lady friend and they both had their phones out (just like I would have) while we were having dinner. So did everyone else at the restaurant (which was a really nice place with a beautiful view of the Bosphorous AND one of the bridges that spans it. Breathtaking. But not breath taking enough to get us to lookl away from our phone... for more then a minute or two.

When did we all get to be so important? This is what kept occuring to me. I mean I was overseas trying to chase down several million dollars for a client but nothing required minute by minute consulation. Indeed in the meeting with the Turkish Lawyers I didn't have to pause and second guess by calling the client on the cell phone every time I had an insecurity. But apart from that when did every client become an important enough cclient to have access to me whenever I was fucking awake? When did my counsel or advice, whether to client or to a partner, an associate, a friend or a family matter become something that everyone had to deal with in real time....NOW! There is both an arrogance and a stupidity to it which is overwhelming but I think it plays on just those two human qualities, arrogance and stupidity. Check, check. thats me, that's me. Very sad. But I escaped for a few days.

It was great. I did not even mond watching them and other people deal with their information flow. I couldn't. it allowed me to sit, often quietly and just look out the window or watch people. I think it rested my brain a little. it might be wishful thinking because I know that when we touch down at JFK I am going to want to light that little son of a bitch up like it is no one's business. But I hope I will noit. There is a lot to see and a lot to hear that have nothing to do with my Blackberry. I want to go back in time to before these handcuffs were sought out. I want to go back inb toime and if I can not go back in time I would settle for going back to Istanbul.

Concert Review: Robbie Fulks @ Off Broadway

Soooo the house concerts have been great but there is still something righteous about going to a club, standing at the bar, paying for a beer and then seeing a band. Seriously righteous. But daddy is old. Daddy is tired and some venues have become off limits. Particularly Off Broadway.

I have vivid memories of going down there time and time again. I would show around 8 because things were winding down at home, kids are in bed are going to bed, the wife is working on a project so rather then watch some more crap TV I go to the club. I pay. “When does the band go on?” I ask and am told the opener is at 9. You look and you see two drum kits stacked on the stage and and you know that you are not going to luck out and have “an evening with” where one artist plays the whole show. So you wait, have a beer, have two beers, then the opener. Often they do not suck. They always go one late, say around 9:15 and get done slightly after ten. Then you see a second band setting up and they are not the band you came to see. GREAT NEWS! Three bands for the price of one! Shit. That mean that if you wanted to stay till the bloody you were there till 12:30 or 1:00. I am too old. I have to work tomorrow! But I stayed. And I loved it. And I hated it. I was ecstatic and I was miserable. I love dichotomies.

The place has changed hands at least three times since I started going to shows but no matter who it was it was always a late place. Even the much missed and lamented Mississippi Nights ran a tighter ship.

http://www.offbroadwaystl.com/

Anyway.... I digress. I read in the RFT or the Post or something that Robbie Fulks was coming to town and playing an EARLY SHOW at Off Broadway. 7:30! How great is that. Even better a good alt-country true believer called and reminded me of the show and even better I was free of other obligations that night so... down we went. Off Broadway is just off of Broadway down south of the brewery and as I said it has been there for years. It was interesting upon going in that there was again new management which is I guess the reason for trying some new stuff. I complimented them on the concept and away we went. The place was all cleaned up with all the trash and memorabilia which had been gathered (read plastered and strewn) all over the place for 20 years or more. The only thing I was sad to see gone was the huge wagon wheel chandelier which used to hang in the middle of the room, awkwardly hanging over nothing but part of the floor. It had always somewhat obscured the view from the awkward little balcony.

They have always had a large beer selection there and I was grateful to see that they had not felt the need to get rid of the Busch and Stag long necks. In fact they had a special on the Busch 20 ouncers but... I prefer glass bottles for my Busch beer. I am classy that way. We had a beer, and had a seat. It appears they had also lost the crappy little tables they formerly had and instead set up seating in about 10 rows of chairs. We got a seat in back and had another beer and I was pleased to see local luminaries like Brian Henneman and Beatle Bob at the show.

Fulks came on at 7:30 promptly with his acoustic and more of slightly more interest or annoyance he was appearing with another guy with an acoustic, Robbie Gjersoe. If anybody cares he plays for a band called Screen Door Music which you can find on My Space... or not. Fulks has a new CD coming out and so he was shilling for that and the new tunes were tuneful and nice and his voice rang clear and true with that sharp, well pronounced twang. It was awesome just to hear him live again. The first time I had scene Fulks was at the old High Pointe. He knocked me out fronting a band and paying loud, funny twang with Nashville and Big Hat hating country songs like "Fuck This Town".

If you want to get a taste of Fulks I would sample the first two CD's "Country Love Songs" and "Southmouth". These Buckcentric CD's are awesome and funny and his voice is so young and pure that when i listen to them now they often seem even more heartbreaking. After that he has a good songwriter catalogue but as i said, I recommend "Georgia Hard" as his best. Fulks cut his teeth doing Bakersfield country and channeling Buck Owens like no one's business but since that time and most specifically with his album Georgia Hard he really came into his own with some beautiful, catchy and dark songs. So the new ones sound good. I will have to get the new Cd and he played a nice sampling of his past 9 albums. One of the great things about Fulks is that most of the songs are 2-3 minute blasts of beauty and angst and it was awesome. Gjersoe played a nice accompaniment and sang high harmony when needed and occasionally pulled out the craftsment 9/16 long neck socket for a little slide guitar as well.

After he put in an hour he started to take requests but other then a couple of suggestions he pretty much ignored them and played what he wanted. Although disappointed not to hear "The Buck Starts Here", there are no bad songs in his catalogue and he was playing before about 50 hard core fans. The show was done by nine and I was able to have another beer on the way home and be in bed shortly after 10. That night, life was good indeed. Here is to the early show.

Book Review: Movie Review: "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

Sooooo....I keep coming back to Bob Lefsetz and his blog and email streams. He is linked on the Diner review home page now and I do not follow anyone, simply because no one is as interesting as me... other then maybe this guy. I will devote another blog to him but he kept touting this guy Stieg Larsen and the series of books that start with "The Girl With the Dragon tattoo". I had picked it up in the book store in hard back and set it down. Murder mystery, Sweden....yawn. I do not know any Sweedish authors. I don't want to know them. What could they have to say to me? Murder mystery? Seriously?

But when Lefsetz touts it...over and over again....referring to it as a club that only the readers understand.... well then that appeals to my inner and outer snob. I indulge that snob, a lot. Sometimes it leads me to crap but this was a really interesting read. Part financial thriller and part murder mystery and part portrait of a rich, hugely dis functional family it becomes really hard to put down. Our male lead is guy named Mikael Bloomkvist. This is the first problem with Swedish authors, they use Swedish names. The nerve! Bloomkvist is an investigative journalist, hip magazine publisher and his life has fallen in on him through a messy story and a libel verdict against he and the magazine. he is ruined.

he is approached by the scion of a wealthy industrial family to investigate the disappearance of an heir 30 years before that hangs over the family. His female protege, the girl for whom the book is named is a private investigator, computer genius with extremely bad brain chemistry, more then a little sociopathy and a troubled, deeply troubled family back ground and back story. I had read about 170 pages of the book (590 pages) when the movie came out.I saw it advertised and knew this was supposed to be a hip and cool story and book (Why? Because Lefsetz said so) and so it was a Friday date night and I took my wife to see it at Frontenac. I like going to see movies at Frontenac. I like a cocktail with a movie. I like the older crowd. I like the whole thing. We got there and settled in and watched and it was good. I must warn you it did have the hated sub titles. I really hate sub titles but you could follow it. It is also fun to see movies without stars. Without people that you know and no star power and the actors were really compelling. The dragon tattoo girl appeared to be about an 87 pound psycho and she was perfect. Bloomkvist was too good looking by half, the way that William Hurt used to be.

We watched until we got to the part where I had stopped reading and then things began to deteriorate as the girl is put into some extremely troubling and sexual abusive scenes. I had not gotten to these in the book yet. My wife is a nice person and literally cannot watch this stuff so she left and I came and got her when the scene was over and offered to leave but she was enjoying the movie so we stayed.... till the next scene...and then I got her again and she still wanted to stay.... until the next scene.... and then we had to leave. We were almost at the end, but it was just too much. Even for me.

Still the story was great and when I got back to the book I still found the story totally compelling. I have read some very graphic, troubling stuff but this was dark and cold in a way that could only be, well....Swedish. It is a great story and I highly recommend it as a read. I will be reading the next in the series which is "The Girl Who Played With Fire". But I will wait a little. Miss the movie. It should be out of the theatres already.

College Visitation

OK....sooooooo....if life is good to you and you are blessed with a child or two... and they live to be a certain age... and they have not (yet) flunked completely out of school, been incarcerated (in too serious of a manner) and are still living in your home as they approach college graduation, you will be blessed with the opportunity to "help" them choose an institution of higher learning for them to matriculate (mature with alcohol). If you are blessed with intelligence, in addition to all these other blessing you will say NO and just stay out of it.

I mean, of course for your C+ student it might not make sense to build up their hopes regarding Harvard or to let them do the same. In the same manner you probably need to give them a heads up about scholarships and you and your child probably need to let go of that sure thing, the full ride athletic scholarship for your baseball playing son (news flash, hitting high school pitching for a 300 average is not going to do it). But past that you need to be very careful. This is really hard.

You want them to learn from your (30 year old and totally irrelevant) mistakes. You want what is best for them but you also have some selfish wants. Maybe you want them to go somewhere you will enjoy visiting. Maybe you want them not too far from home. Maybe you want to show up once a month and totally embarrass them by living out the college fun which you might (or might not have) actually enjoyed in college.So if your not going to stay out of it altogether, pick your spots. For us there were only two rules. You have to leave town coupled with you cannot be too far away. 500 miles or so seemed the arbitrary definition of too far.

I recall going through the college search process with some gusto with my eldest who is soon to be graduating (another story entirely). I looked at catalogues, went on line and watched as my wife thoroughly reviewed and evaluated exhaustively about 376 institutions. We went to college fairs and read literature mailed to us and bought books and went on college visits. Jon ended up going to Valparaiso which has been an amazing place for him, having a great time and evolving into a fine young man. All of that had NOTHING to do with anything my wife and I said or did. He went there because it made sense to him. He chose well for him and all of the other stuff was just window dressing. I think we visited 5 colleges for him to sniff out but there was rarely any doubt where he was going. He knew people there and knew of a lot of graduates from there and it played out along with his goals of being on staff at a camp we frequented and... it was done.

My second one chose Truman strictly on the basis of the fact that "he had friends there" and despite (or perhaps because) of my promise that "I will never visit you there"... away he went to Kirksville Missouri, armpit of the world to a very competitive academic environment in which he seems to be thriving. Who knew? I guess the point is that we had already given up by the second one. Now i am on the third one and it seems pretty clear to me and the wife that we are mailing it in and out daughter will go wherever she damn well pleases. The whole idea that you can have any real, meaningful insight into what College you child should be attending is an illusion propagated by the University INDUSTRY to feed the illusion that you as a buyer of a very expensive commodity can make an informed choice.

It is a lie. it all has to do with luck, who your kid falls in with when they get to school and how mature the child in question is. The rest...luck and conjecture. At best.

Miscellany

Soooo... that has been the earliest and nicest Spring I can remember....EVER! Of course my memory is not really that it good, it has never been good, it seems in fact to be getting worse but I digress. What a Spring. Everything is just busting out and it is April. I love it. We sat on the back porch last night and worked in the yard yesterday and there is a fine sheen of green pollen on everything each morning like a light dusting of snow. Lets enjoy this run as much as we can because if it were like this all year long here all our houses would be worth a million bucks. In celebration of it a favorite of mine.

Spring and All by Greg Brown:

Spring and what's left of the hippies return from old rooming houses and
Mexico.
More letters, more journals, more poems to burn; Real heat at last.
At last my words glow.

My friend Jim just broke up his band, the guys all have jobs and the nights
got too long.
He's selling the amps, one guitar, and the van.
I'm sure you could have it all for a song.

Snow on the north side, trash in the yard, love like a newspaper tattered
and stained.
A two bourbon twilight, fog from God's cigar.
the neighbor's retarded dog chasing the train.

Don't see any good in just hanging around, take a tip from the birds and
change the scene.
Find some long river and follow it down to where our old sins have washed
up in New Orleans.

Spring and what's left of the songbirds return, to fight about loving and
nesting and such.
Thanks for the letters you sent back to burn.
Their smoke is as light, and as dark, as your touch.

***

END OF THE WORLD UPDATE! It has been about 19 days since health care (OBAMA CARE!) passed and was signed. The sun still cam up this morning. Additionally all those companies that took those HUGE write downs for their increased costs. Still in business. I am not saying that this will not further bankrupt our country but keep in mind we have been funding a several hundred billion dollar war off the books for 10 years now, eight of it under the fiscal conservatism of the republican Party. I think they are going to win the mid term elections pretty big and you what? The sun is going to come up the day after that too.

***

Tiger is back. I had no idea that they had been playing golf for the last several months. Imagine my surprise. I watched all this without comment. What is there really to say and other for the prurient interests all of the life lessons that this story entails are trite cliche's and they are also true which is what makes them so hard to pay attention to. here are couple:
1. People are sinners
2. Absolute power corrupts pretty absolutely
3. Once you set yourself on a pedestal in the information age you are well and truly screwed.
4. Even when you have it all it is never enough.
So lets forget about Tiger. Feet of clay and all that. he is an extraordinary athlete and person and is proving in the Masters that he is going to be back providing excitement and inspiration for the golfing public, but lets remember and have a serious pause before we hold these athletes out as role models for ourselves...or our kids. And that includes the already sainted child Tim Tebow and maybe even...gasp...Kurt Warner (though in both cases I hope they hold up). I am not cheering against these guys, I just do not understand why we as a society never recognize that although extremely talented in their niche, these guys are just people. That should make them even more interesting for us, but with the media, we want icons and Gods. Silliness. I hope he makes a run today. Golf is more interesting when everyone is there not just to win the contest but to beat him. And i like watching him win, even now.

***

Michael Steele. Seriously?

***

Mine disasters. They happen. We need the coal. it is really dangerous. People do dangerous things to make money and we cannot protect everyone all the time. Are we done wringing our hands over this? I sympathize with the families but deaths in coal mines are an example about how our news sources warp our common sense. Are we going to stop coal mining? No. Should we? No. Is it tragic that there are whole regions of people where this is their only employment option? Yes. Is THAT something we should be wringing our national hands about? Absolutely.

***

While I am being an insensitive lout I am sick and tired of New Orleans angst. HBO has a new series that finally does the disaster justice. Seriously, why do we as a country feel this tremendous need to allow our entertainers to feed us these tragic human interest stories over and over again to fuel our national shame and angst and even worse our national need to blame. Was it a tragedy? Absolutely. Did the Bush administration woefully under respond? Without a question. The "great Job Brownie" quote from W. was one of the great examples of Presidential detatchment and tone deafness but really it was a natural disaster.

Also, I guess no one there knew that the town resided below sea level. Fortunately a lot of it is now being built below sea level. Brilliant. It reminds me of all that development in Chesterfield Valley in reliance on the the new levees put out there. I remember what it all looked like under water. It reminds me also of the late (great) Sam Kinnison when talking about one of the frequent famines in the deserts of Africa suggesting we should not send them food, we should send them luggage.

"You live in a desert!
You know what it's going to a be
a hundred years from now?
It's going to be a ------- desert!
We have deserts in America
we just don't live in them!"

The same can be said for living on the gulf coast below sea level.

***

Upcoming events...."The Daddy's" House Concert Review, "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" book and movie review and wait for it...Becker goes to Istanbul, will he be able to come back?

What Is The Big Deal? Huh?

Soooo... Avatar... still have not seen it. Looks like a bunch of really tall, blue versions of Jar Jar Binks. People tell me I am wrong but listening to people is what gets you to pay money to see a movie like "Hot Tub Time Machine". At least three people have told me how "hilarious" the movie is. All I can think every time I see the trailer is:

1. How did THIS happen to John Cusack?
2. I have seen every funny part of the movie when I watch the trailer.

Of these things I am certain.

But I digress.

Avatar and then the "How to Train Your Dragon" movie, then "Alice In Wonderland" and now "Clash of the Titans" (RELEASE THE KRAKEN!) They charge more for these movies. You have to wear queer glasses when you watch them. They charge more for these movies. There is not talk of 3-D TV. 3-D sports broadcasting. It goes on and on and while in the beginning or "at the cusp" as I like to say of this massive trend all I can say is...."milka what!?"

Seriously. Of the above films I only saw one and that was "Alice In Wonderland" which I thought was reasonably great (see earlier review) but it did not seem that great to me. The 3-D part was interesting but only that. I don't know, I just cannot help but think that....MY WHOLE LIFE IS IN 3-D! Why do I need to pay a higher ticket price, put on funny glasses and sit in the dark with 200 people and feel like more of a dork when.... I can just look around, sitting in my chair and literally my whole life is in 3-D. it seems stupud to me.

I mean, my life is kind of boring too. Soon, will I get to pay more and put on some different funny glasses so that I can sit and watch some other over weight, balding middle aged man sitting watching the show "Community" while he pecks away at his computer, maybe with his ugly dog in front of him...IN 3-D! Sounds great. I cannot wait. Wake me when it is over.