09 August, 2026
03 August, 2026
Who cares
Why is the genesis of the bar's name relevant? The movement, however small, to save the place is about its history and the people who frequented it, not about how the place got its name. Why write an article to shit on the name "Wonder Bar"? Grasping at straws.
27 July, 2026
Blue Eyed Blonde gone grey
While shuffling the various containers of leftovers, multiple bottles of kefir, and large Ball jars of iced tea & limeade around in my refrigerator, I stumbled upon this brew hiding in the back, largely obscured by a brace of bottles of kvass. I had bought a 6-pack of this brew from Knuth Brewing Company back in April when I was up in Appleton.
Sadly, my last bottle of Blue Eyed Blonde had just turned to the Dark Side. Oops. But I will say that the other 5 bottles were very tasty. This is good stuff.
A surfeit of serranos
My serrano plant is proving to be very fecund. I have picked three batches of chilies so far, if you count a mini cull of just 2.
With my latest haul, I've been trying to put them in everything but I think I shall freeze some for the fall chili season instead of these frenzied attempts to use them up quickly lest they go bad.
This weekend I put one in a corn & black bean salad which gave it just a touch of heat. The dressing has perhaps more coriander than is safe in it. Mmm...
Next time I will use 2! Still, it was tasty, especially since I grilled it to near perfection - medium well instead of medium.
I am pondering what to use them for next and some kind of schmear for corn on the cob comes to mind.
Dapper cat
Oddly enough, she didn't seem to mind the collar and bow tie too much. I didn't keep it on her for a long stretch, though, either.
24 July, 2026
Back 40. Ish. Back .25, maybe.
The yard was all aglow one recent evening, even if it was a bit smoky.
Snake sighting
On a recent trek downtown, I came across a snake named Steve who was next to the City-County Building where Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway plotted her reelection inside.
Cat!
Chops a must
Lately I've had a taste for pork chops cooked on the grill. That charred porcine goodness has just been appealing to me as of late. Plus I've got my grill dialed in for chops. Practice makes perfect.
For the most recent ones, my ladyfriend sauteed some cabbage mix. I added applesauce, homemade pickles courtesy of my boss, and horseradish for that extra root vegetable touch. I generously applied that Cherry Bomb BBQ rub that I got in the spring. Really tasty stuff.
With dinner I had a Czech lager from Eau Claire's Lazy Monk Brewing. Leos Frank brews fine Czech-style beers.
It's not a number, it's a wheat flour!
My most recent trek to a Polish grocery store yielded not only an IPA but also flour.
I was in the baking aisle looking at the various types of flours and noticed that most, if not all, of them had a number on the label. I'd heard of 00 flour for pasta but non-zero numbers were new to me. While I figured it had to do with the milling and was quite curious about this, I grabbed the above bag because my intention was to make makowiec and there is one right there in living color.
If I recall correctly, bags with a lower number had photos of delicate pastries on them and those with higher numbers had picture of dark, hearty, rib-sticking loaves of bread so I figured the smaller the number, the finer the flour.
The next day I did a little investigation and found that Western and Central Europe uses these flour codes - see here - and that the numbers refer to ash content. What is God's name is ash content?
Well, it's a measurement of the mineral salt laden ashes left when you incinerate a set amount of flour at 550 degrees Centigrade. As the above-linked site says:
...bran layers contain roughly ten times more ash than the starchy endosperm. As the miller extracts more bran into the flour, ash rises. As a result, ash content is a reliable proxy for extraction rate and, by extension, for flour colour, fibre content, flavour intensity, and mineral content.
And so the Polish T numbers on the flour bags indicates how much ash you get when you burn up 100g of flour. In my case type 550 means 550 mg ash/100g flour.
One reason I was looking into flour at the Polish store was that my ladyfriend experiences little to no gluten sensitivity when eating wheat in Europe but encounters some when eating American wheat and I thought it'd be nice to be able to bake something for her and not engender sore joints.
I've looked online for explanations for this phenomenon but have found no definitive answers. Is it the hard red wheat commonly used in our flours? Is it how it's processed?
Looking into this, the obvious became apparent to me: American flours, at least those from megacorps, only tell you the purpose of the flour but don't tell you what kind or kinds of wheats are in the sack. We don't have the gradations that they have in Europe. Here it's all-purpose, whole wheat, or a specialty blend such as self-rising or cake flour. I'm a King Arthur man and their labels indicate the flour is of hard red wheat. My rye flour is usually Bob's Red Mill but that gives no indication of what kind of rye variety may be in the bag nor of any indication of how finely it was milled.
As for as my ladyfriend's gluten sensitivity goes, I think once the weather gets down to more appropriate baking temperatures, I may give spelt and einkorn a shot and see if that affects her like hard red wheat. Lest anyone think I am violating a Kantian imperative, know that she will willingly sample tasty treats even in the face of potential discomfort.
Take me down to the Lake City, where the walls are blue and the girls are pretty
Last weekend I went to the Lake City Books grand opening at their new digs with my ladyfriend who is a big fan of the store. The move wasn't far - just across the Square - but the new space is much larger and, in the grand Wisconsin tradition, has a bar.
The place was hoppin' when we got there. The staff were busier than a one-eyed man at a burlesque show as folks perused the shelves in a search for their next read. There were quite a few families there with parents ushering their young ones towards the children's section as well as lots of people standing around chatting.
I liked the blue color scheme and the limnological decorations.
I was hoping for more space dedicated to books (I adored Shakespeare's Books back in the day with its towering shelves and enough barely lit aisles to get lost in a la the scriptorium in The Name of the Rose) but the rather tiny non-fiction section yields more space for sitting & reading on couches and socializing and, I guess you could say, for people to make it their third space. And I am told the expanded space with make author events easier on a number of fronts. Speaking of socializing, the bar looked like a typical Friday night at any local tavern.
The crowd was on the younger side - 30s mostly it seemed, so the rumors of reading's death are perhaps greatly exaggerated.
Godspeed to Lake City. They also have a nice sticker selection. Almost forgot to note that.
"The Sarge"??
One of my great uncles worked for Marvin Glass and Associates in Chicago where he started as a model maker for the toy design company before working his way up. The toys I recall the best that the company was responsible for are Simon, Operation, Lite Brite, and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, though they came up with countless more.
Several years ago a family member alerted me to a book about Marvin Glass in which my great uncle was mentioned. I'd never seen a copy until now.
I've been skimming the book, reading about my great uncle, mostly, but I have learned about many toys I was unfamiliar with as well as that the company was responsible for the arcade game Journey featuring the band whose "Don’t Stop Believin'" was featured in the final scene of The Sopranos. Sadly, I also learned about a mass shooting at their offices in 1976 when a disgruntled designer killed 3 and wounded 2.
The sidebar about my great uncle notes he was known as "The Sarge" for his no nonsense approach to managing the designers.
I had never heard that nickname before but do recall him as being mild-mannered but also not afraid to speak his mind. Plus he always gave me $100 bills at Christmas and, when I was very young, I was allowed into the basement at his house where there were piles of toys that his company had designed and I was allowed to take whatever I wanted.
Since his death I've heard several stories about him and have come to understand him as a very generous person who prioritized family. When I was a young man he told me that it was fine to sow your oats in your 20s but, by 30, I should start moving into a career and, essentially, start being a responsible adult - advice that I followed. Largely, anyway.
GENER-AY-SHUN!
Earlier this week I went down to Chicago to see Pavement. Finally!
I think I got into them a bit after Wowee Zowee was released but it took me 30 years to go see them. Better late than never. They played here in Madison at the Barrymore in 1994 but I don't think they returned after that and instead stuck to Milwaukee and Chicago. So, back in the spring when I saw the announcement that they'd be at The Salt Shed come summer, I figured I'd better go as none of us are getting any younger.
I reserved a parking spot via ParkChirp but the ramp's scanner rejected my code. Oh well. I will never use them again. I parked and then went and grabbed some dinner at a little Mexican place by Halsted and Scott. The chicken quesadillas were tasty.
It was a perfect evening for an outside show with a temp in the mid-70s when I arrived at The Salt Shed. The outdoor area - the Fairgrounds - was a nice spot. There were a few vendors selling food and schwag towards the back while a handful of small sections of bleacher seats lined part of the wall of the Shed for those who preferred a seat without paying a premium to hang with the sophistos on the deck above.
There was a fair amount of space up near the front so I made my way to the bar nearest the stage for a brew. A comely young woman greeted me, "Hello, friend." I felt like I'd been transported back to the 1930s and that she'd tell me Pavement was the bee's knees. Not surprisingly, a sawbuck won't get you a beer at The Salt Shed. I ordered a Della, a Kölsch(-Style Ale) from Old Irving Brewing which was $11. Uff da!
Refreshing libation in hand, I found a spot not too far from the stage for the opening band, Nap Eyes. Hailing from Canada, this group of 20-somethings reminded me a little bit of Pavement here, a tad of Silversun Pickups there. Despite the songs feeling a bit undercooked, they were good overall. For their part, the band seemed thrilled to be opening for Pavement.
I returned to the bar for another tasty treat and grabbed a Pils from Dovetail. It was just swell. Expensive but at least they had good beer on tap. Wandering back from whence I had come, I found that my spot had been filled in so I settled for the nearest opening as close to the front as I could get. About half an hour after Nap Eyes had finished, Pavement stepped onto the stage.
Stephen Malkmus got things going with the two-note chiming of "Grounded" and I got very excited as a 30 year dream was finally being fulfilled. Spiral Stairs was grinning as was Mark Ibold and the pair were in good spirits the entire night while Bob Nastanovich seemed to be gearing up for mischief. Touring keyboardist Rebecca Cole had a smile on her face and looked to be ready for a good time. Steve West had a more serious look but that's drummers for ya. I think in all of the concert videos I've seen, he has looked like he was intensely concentrating.
Not having looked at any setlists, I was curious if they'd avoid Crooked Rain Crooked Rain for the most part but "Gold Soundz" was played early and followed up by a great "Silence Kid" featuring Nastanovich on cowbell. The show touched on all of the band's albums along with some non-album tracks thrown in for good measure.
When they started "AT & T" I heard a blood curdling scream to my left. Turning to look at the source of the sound, I saw a woman falling onto her companion gripped by elation. I cannot recall the last time I witnessed someone so incredibly thrilled to hear a particular song at a show. Once the tune was done, she yelled "Thank you for playing my favorite song!". "Fight This Generation" was great and afterwards Spiral Stairs looked over at Malkmus and commented that he didn't say "generation" right and proceeded to enunciate it with an exaggerated tone. This prompted a group of women behind me to do the same. They sounded like the woman from Citizen Kane who says "Charlie Kane" at one point in the film. Is it Susan? Was it a New York accent?
While I was hoping to hear "Transport Is Arranged", I did not. But they did play a couple Terror Twilight outtakes - "The Hexx" and "Harness Your Hopes", which were both great. Spiral Stairs got to step out on "Date W/IKEA" and, unexpectedly, "Painted Soldiers", a song I adore. Also unexpected was a slow jam on "Stairway to Heaven". When Malkmus started scratching out the melody, I thought, "Am I hearing what I think I'm hearing?" It was sloppy and different lyrics got thrown in and it was just glorious.
"Unfair" is the song that got me into Pavement and so, when they started playing it, I kind of went bonkers. But, having gone solo, I didn't have anyone to fall onto. It was great! The whole show was great. The band were in good spirits, smiling and goofing around, and the vibe in the audience was fantastic and I should be so lucky to have it at every concert I go to. There was the "AT & T" lover, the women shouting "Generation!", and Nastanovich grabbing a woman just offstage and dancing with her during "We Dance". Also thousands of people shouting "No big hair!" People just seemed to be having a good time and the whole night just had a great, joyous vibe.
A couple different people recorded the show on video and have put everything up on Youtube.
23 July, 2026
A Polish IPA
I couldn't resist tasting a Polish take on the American IPA.
Żywiec is a large Polish brewer and I was curious to find out if they went all in with the fruity hops and made something like Hawaiian Punch or if they were going to ease their customers into this new-fangled American way of doing things.
Luckily for my tastebuds it was the latter. A caramel-tasting pale ale gets a dose of herbal/spicy hops that easily counters the sweetness; a nebulous bit of tropical fruit lurks in the background.
A tasty brew.
22 July, 2026
A couple more new Son Volt tunes
Jay Farrar is in full Woody Guthrie mode these days.
"Raw power at the root and heart of evil"
"Skeleton at the Feast" is vaguely Rolling Stones flavored with that slide guitar.
The latest came out only today and sees the band musically doing a tribute to Neil Young with a very -"Cortez the Killer" kind of tempo and feel. Plus more Guthrie-esque lyrics about life under Trump.
Pink Floyd in Madison '73 - in colour
Pink Floyd kicked off the tour for Dark Side of the Moon here in Madison on 4 March 1973. While I have never seen an audio recording of that show in general circulation, I now see that there are a couple videos from that show - high res scans of Super 8 film.
It is really neat to see and hear the tunes from Obscured by Clouds.
17 July, 2026
Catibal Lector
My ladyfriend recently received a rather odd gift:
Some kind of cat dome mask. To prevent cat attacks? Keep a feline friend from gnawing at a wound? Whatever it is, she didn't order it and cannot get anyone to cop to having done so.
While I am sure it has a legitimate use, we both found it rather creepy. For my part, it looked like it was meant for a feline Hannibal Lector.
""Well, Skip, have the cats stopped meowing?"
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