Seen at Flix before a screening of Catvideofest 2026. What can I say? I laughed aloud multiple times and drowned in cuteness overload at the sight of all those kittens. 70 minutes well spent.
12 August, 2026
Coming soon, 25 Juli 2026
Seen at Flix before a screening of Her Private Hell which I enjoyed. I liked how the fog has settled upon the neon city with no explanation. It jumps between Elle's life and the dream world(?)/flashbacks(?) of Private K and I loved how they merged towards the end on the crystal world.
Since I enjoyed Under the Silver Lake I figured that David Robert Mitchell's latest, The End of Oak Street, would have a little sumpin sumpin arty to it but, after seeing the trailer, I became convinced that it was just summer blockbuster schlock.
Tell me, Christopher Nolan, of the man of many turns
The email arrived in the morning, about 7 hours before I was to see The Odyssey on glorious 70mm IMAX.
Unfortunately I have some bad news. We encountered an issue with our film system lamp before our first show of the day today and had to cancel the show. The nature of the issue requires in depth technical repairs that will effect all further shows for today.
Dammit!
I was in Indianapolis for Gencon and decided to avail myself of the opportunity to see Christopher Nolan's latest epic on the big-big screen and on genuine film, the way he and his cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, intended. Back in 2023 I saw Nolan's Oppenheimer on 70mm IMAX there and was looking forward to further Nolanian celluloid revelry. But cruel Fate intervened which meant I was relegated to seeing it projected digitally onto the IMAX screen at the Indiana State Museum which, I should add, has an exhibit going on now about cats and dogs.
Well, I will have to be content with looking forward to Nolan's next summer blockbuster on 70mm at a Gencon coming soon. (When the Signia by Hilton Indianapolis is open and I get a hotel room downtown again. Rant over.)
Truth be told, I am not a Nolan fanboy. I respect his love of film, the IMAX format, and practical effects quite a bit but his output after The Prestige - what I've seen of it - has been hit or miss. I love that he loves film but I don't necessarily love his films. Going into the theater last month my main concern was peeing as much as possible before taking my seat as The Odyssey is nearly three hours long and I wanted to see every byte of every digital frame. I am incredulous that men in middle age or older make these 3 hour epics and don't include an intermission. L-A-M-E. I get it, it's your movie and you can sit around in an editing bay and hit pause at your leisure to take a leak. However, I do not have that luxury.
Beyond prostate issues, my hope was to simply have a good time watching Homer's poem brought to life on a ginormous screen. On that count, The Odyssey delivered.
It had been several years since I'd read the poem (Robert Fagles' translation) so it was not exactly fresh in my mind as the lights went down but I recalled various plot elements from the written work that Nolan had discarded as I watched.
I want to add that there was one trailer at this screening. Well, not a trailer, really, as it was a few minutes of Dune 3 or whatever it's called. Basically a bunch of futuristic flying Higgins boats land on some planet. Ramps open and space infantry run out looking for shelter on some kind of Herbertian version of Omaha Beach. Laser cannons make mincemeat of many of them before a giant worm emerges from the ground and basically it's real shit show for the poor space infantry.
I am not someone who maintains that Nolan had any obligation to slavishly adhere to the source material but some of the things he excised disappointed me. The Odysseus in the movie wasn't as clever as Homer's hero, e.g. - where was the "nobody" subterfuge? Odysseus is supposed to be hubristic - he didn't tell the cyclops his real name in the movie, did he?
Instead it seems that Nolan crossed Homer with The Deer Hunter. Matt Damon's Odysseus is suffering from PTSD after the Trojan War and 10 years of wandering doesn't help. Speaking of the wandering, Scylla was really neat and Charybdis looked fantastically menacing on the IMAX. Those giant armored warriors - weren't they cannibals in the poem? I suppose the main point was that Odysseus lost a lot of men and was left with but one ship. Still, that scene feels incomplete, a bit random.
The Odysseus of the film is a bit one note - he's got shell shock. His cleverness doesn't get the attention it deserves, although the Trojan Horse scene is really neat. It gave you a taste of his ingenuity and a large dose of the horror of war that has so traumatized him.
The Circe sequence in the film was great fun and the transmogrification of Odysseus' men into pigs was simply fantastic. The way they gorged themselves with the stew and how she massaged them and put her hand in their mouths to mold their faces into porcine visages was at once entrancing and grotesque.
Didn't Odysseus schtup Circe and Calypso in the poem? He is oddly asexual in the film.
I recall being rather appalled at the graphic violence in the poem as Odysseus puts paid to the hopes of the suitors by terminating them with extreme prejuidice. If I recall correctly, Homer describes evisceration and a pecker or two being lopped off. Odysseus is absolutely vicious. While he is definitely out for blood in the movie, it's mostly stabs and slashes with no viscera falling out.
Robert Pattinson is a fine actor to my mind and he is generally good as the venal, arrogant jagoff of a suitor, Antinous, in the movie. Yet I had to wonder why Nolan had him verbalize what we were able to so plainly see in the scene where Odysseus returns. The weapons that line the great hall are stowed in a room upstairs so that they're inaccessible to the suitors who are locked in when Odysseus appears to take his revenge. But one of those who sought to gain entry into Penelope's knickers and purse enters the store room and busts a hole open in the floor down which he drops weapons for those confronting Odysseus. Every time he drops a spear or some kind of melee weapon, Antinous is shown in close-up urging someone to take up the newly available weapon.
A spear drops down so he says frothing at the mouth, "Get the spear!" Then a sword falls to the floor and we again cut to the suitor in close-up who shouts, "Use the sword!" It made for a weird, superfluous kind of play-by-play.
And there's Athena. Rather than a goddess of war & strategy who favors Odysseus because of his cunning and actively intervenes on his behalf, she's just this robed apparition in the movie that glumly stares at our hero for a spell before disappearing. And she's not clad in armor nor does she have a shield nor a helm nor any weapon of any kind. She appears in robes looking more like a sullen Aphrodite than a bad ass who wields an Olympian croupier stick as she plots of the fates of men. It's like having Thor appear in a suit & tie with no hammer.
OK, so Nolan's movie is missing a lot of the cool bits of the poem. But as far as spectacle goes, it was, um, spectacular.
The Trojan Horse was really neat. Rather than standing upright on all four and being on wheels, it has its two front legs up in the air with no helpful wheels. And so it's a hard slog pulling it into Troy meaning Odysseus and his men are thrown about as the horse is dragged inside the city walls and they relieve themselves in situ. The sack of Troy was exciting and visceral. And horrific too so it's no wonder that Odysseus agonizes once the war is done.
As I said before, the scene with Scylla and Charybdis was thrilling. The long shot of the whirlpool churning away amongst the rocks was gorgeous on the IMAX and made me feel the peril in my bones. The sequence where Odysseus' men are slaughtered by the giants was heartrending. This bit also benefited from the IMAX format by emphasizing the large size difference between Odysseus' men and the badass islanders. The heroes of the Trojan War are puny in contrast to the warriors who are built like Tiger tanks and you just know they're doomed from the start.
Circe was cool but I felt that the scenes with Calypso didn't get across just how long he had been there very well. But I think Nolan gets away with combining the nymph and the Lotus Eaters.
I felt that The Odyssey was an old school Hollywood epic full of beautiful actors with lots of dramatic conflict, thrilling action, and a fairly simple good vs. evil binary. Trading the wily, horny, hubristic hero of the written word for a shell shocked warrior rendered a more simplistic Odysseus. Nolan's hero is imperfect but not flawed.
I've been thinking about theme here. Zeus' Law™ is invoked multiple times during the course of the film, - the concept that people should welcome visitors and treat them well and, in turn, guests should treat their hosts with kindness. Odysseus sees the Trojan Horse episode as a violation of it in that he treated his hosts poorly. Really poorly. The sack of Troy here is a lengthy sequence full of Greeks committing atrocities. It is quite intense as we see that women and children are not spared.
And so he feels tremendous guilt - a bit like the subject of Nolan's previous film, Oppenheimer, dare I say. I'd need to watch The Odyssey again to get this straight but I think our hero sees Zeus' Law™ breaking down everywhere in his homeland and he is exiled at the end of the movie for dishonoring the ultimate law of hospitality in a scene that reminded me of the end of The Lord of Rings, like he's being sent to the Valinor Home for Naughty Kings.
Odysseus sees the Bronze Age coming to a close and a dark age, of sorts, beginning because Zeus' Law™ is being ignored. And he has contributed to this.
Does this, along with a generic "war is bad" thing count for deep thematic content? It's a general exhortation/admonition that we should be nice to one another. I suppose this is the true modernization of the tale.
Before I end, the soundtrack deserves mention. Nolan eschewed the conventional orchestral accompaniment with sweeping washes of strings for music that sounded like it had one foot in the ancient world and the other in 2026. Were replicas of ancient instruments used? Sampled? The music aimed to manipulate the audience just like a typical soundtrack would but it felt older, more period. Good stuff.
Despite some shallow characterization and missing source material I simply had a good time watching The Odyssey. It was wonderful to see so much of the epic brought to life on a very large screen. Watching Antinous get what was coming to him was extremely satisfying while seeing Argos lying on a dung heap tugged at my heart strings.
However flawed Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey may be, it is still full of thrills and a lot of fun.
Rhiannon Giddens covers Elizabeth Cotten
Rhiannon Giddens has released another track from her upcoming album, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, which comes out next month. It's her take on "Freight Train" by the great Elizabeth Cotten.
Song of the day, 12 August 2026
NPR's All Songs Considered recently did a multi-part Grateful Dead extravaganza so their music has been floating through my brain lately. While there are surely some fine live versions of "Terrapin Station", I don't believe they ever played the entire song live. However improbable, the strings and horns rarely seem cheesy or get in the way for me.
I just like the way it wends its way through the various sections. It feels purposeful and adds some dynamics to the tune. Let's hear all 16+ minutes.
Stay off the Yahara River in early November
The Dave Matthews Band will be in town for a show on 4 November so put those canoes and kayaks away until they're safely out of town.
11 August, 2026
Song of the day, 11 August 2026
I just learned that The Mindbenders were from Manchester. Brings back memories of high school dances where Phil Collins' version was played many a time.
10 August, 2026
Song of the day, 10 August 2026
More Mancunian music.
I didn't know Van der Graaf Generator were formed in Manchester until recently. Here they are at Shank Hall in Milwaukee back in 2009. I was at this show and "Interference Patterns" (heard here) and "Man-Erg" left me gobsmacked.
09 August, 2026
Just when you thought the war on the Eastern Front couldn't get any worse
I'd swear that I've read a book dedicated to Operation Barbarossa or, at least the Battle of Stalingrad but cannot for the life of me recall which one. I scanned my bookshelf a couple times but nothing on the topic that I have already read.
What a horror story. The whole, um, shootin' match, so to speak. If two armies fighting isn't bad enough, there's life on the front with lice and boot shortages, and so on. Winter settles in and everyone - combatants and civilians alike - suffer from frostbite, if they don't freeze to death. In Stalingrad civilians endured the horror of urban warfare. If there weren't bombs being dropped on them, there were artillery shells. If death wasn't coming out of the sky, it was coming from Wehrmacht soldiers out on the street attempting to take the city block by block.
And then, when the Germans retreated, they raped and pillaged and destroyed what they could on their headlong flight back to the Fatherland. The Poles suffered horrendously when the Wehrmacht was making their way east and did so yet again with the surviving armies in retreat. Desperation, starvation, ripping fetuses out of pregnant women's bellies - the sheer horror and depravity boggles the mind.
And so I had some background going into Geoffrey Megargee's War of Annihilation.
The book's subtitle is "Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941" and Megargee brings in the Nazi's attempts to kill the Jews they encountered as they plunged into the Soviet Union, a tact that I had never encountered before.
The photograph above doesn't really betray it, but the tome is fairly short - about 150 pages of exposition. It begins with the proximate origins of German antipathy towards Jews and Slavs.
Put simply, by 1900 many Germans had come to believe in their complete superiority over other peoples, while they also felt that Germany stood under threat from all sides. Foreigners, and especially the Slavs and Jews of central and eastern Europe, became the focus of increasing distrust and hostility.
This is followed by a section demonstrating how the Wehrmacht commanders capitulated to Hitler's demands regarding racial matters.
Let me back up a bit. Megargee notes how the history of Operation Barbarossa has come down to us in large part via the memoirs and testimonies of German commanders, that the losers have written a lot of the history here.
Thus, for reasons both innocent and insidious, their accounts constitute a mix of truth, half-truth, omission, and outright lies that has been difficult to untangle. Professional historians, for their part, skeptical though they were, often did not pick up on the problems in the Germans' accounts.
Wehrmacht generals, not unsurprisingly, blamed Hitler for basically everything. They were just following orders. But Megargee shows how the upper echelons of the Germany military had defied civilian authorities in the past yet they went along with Hitler's genocidal policies in World War 2. Their views were in accord with Hitler's.
What was new to me here was that the German invasion of the Soviet Union wasn't merely about Lebensraum and natural resources such as oil from the Caucasus.
This was to be, quite literally, a Vernichtungskrieg, a war of annihilation, in which the army would take an active role in pursuing National Socialism's racist goals.
The book proceeds to give a very high level overview of Operation Barbarossa in 1941 punctuated with episodes demonstrating how the horrific Nazi racial attitudes and polices were put into practice.
While there were field commanders who had no interest in pursuing the Nazi's genocidal intentions, very few protested. Some individual soldiers risked their lives showing kindness to the civilians caught up in the battles, but they were few and far between.
It's difficult to find words that have the emotional impact to describe the events in the book. So many people call those with whom they have a disagreement with "Nazis" that it feels like most people have little to no idea about real Nazis, what they stood for and what they did. Someone called J.K. Rowling a "nazi" for advocating for women-only spaces - biological women, that is.
This is what real Nazis did:
Here we see an SS death squad murdering a Jewish family in Ukraine. Can you imagine how deranged one must be to shoot a woman holding her child like that?!
Megargee documents the treatment of the countless Russian soldiers who surrendered to the Germans. The injured were left to die in agony, some were just shot on the spot, while others were sent back to Germany to fill the labor gaps left by the men sent off to fight the war. We learn of how some POW camps had no shelter whatsoever from the elements so Russian soldiers curled up fetal on the ground totally exposed to the elements. With food becoming an ever precious commodity in Germany, rations for the Russian laborers was constantly being lowered.
SS Einsatzgruppen, that is Nazi SS death squads, followed the Wehrmacht east to carry out Hitler's sadistic policies to eliminate Jews and they often times enlisted the help of the Wehermacht as well as local police to do their dirty work. The numbers are absolutely appalling.
The Einsatzgruppe, together with a battalion of Order Police, also killed another seven thousand Jews in the Mogilev (present day Belarus) ghetto on October 2-3 and 19. Fewer than one thousand of the inhabitants remained alive to be placed in a forced labor camp. Another seven to eight thousand Jews in Polotsk and seven thousand Jews in Borisov were also killed. To those figures one can also add over 1,500 mental patients that the Einsatzgruppe killed in improvised gas chambers in Mogilev.
The use of Zyklon B was pioneered during Operation Barbarossa.
In the Ukraine in addition to mentioning the shootings at Babi Yar (Ukraine) the previous month, Ensatzgruppe C reported killing 3,145 Jews in Zhitomir...A further 410 Jews were killed in Cherson...The report, which also included Einsatzgruppe D's operations, mentioned the liquidation of 4,891 Jews in the region east of the Dnieper - and actually we know that the figure only covers the first half of the month.
...
Other murder squads, for example, killed ten to twelve thousand Jews on October 12 in the city of Stanislau, in Galacia. The next day, Higher SS and Police Leader Jeckeln had an Order Police battalion shoot approximately eleven thousand Jews in Dnepropetrovsk. Including those figures, even this incomplete accounting brings the number killed in October to over ninety thousand, most of them Jews, and not including prisoners of war or civilians whom the army eliminated.
At one point Megargee describes how Wehrmacht commanders had to remove their soldiers from their grisly genocidal duties because killing thousands and thousands of civilians was taking its mental toll on the men. I cannot imagine what that does to a person.
German war planners used language in their correspondence filled with euphemism such as "necessary harshness" and "special tasks". Despite their hatred of Jews and pride at being part of Hitler's machine, many Nazis were reluctant to plainly describe their genocidal orders.
********
So much food for thought here. Let me begin with the banal.
While Operation Barbarossa brings to mind divisions of Panzer tanks rolling across the steppes creating safe passage for the German equivalent of deuce and a half's, the Germans used hundreds of thousands of horses for transport. The number 160,000 sticks out but I cannot recall if that was the number killed in 1941 or for the entire campaign. Perhaps even for a single month in 1941. Regardless, Operation Barbarossa was not kind to our equine friends.
Another observation of the mundane: why did the Germans seek to replace the rail track in the Soviet Union instead of just capturing Soviet rolling stock? (I think German tracks were of a narrower gauge.) Jesus, laying thousands of miles of track was an enormous undertaking. No wonder it took ages for supplies and reinforcements to arrive. Not enough Soviet locomotives and rail cars?
Concomitant to this is Megargee's observation that German war planners gave logistics an inferior position beneath operations. They were outlining what they wanted to do on the battlefield heedless of whether the soldiers doing the fighting had enough ammo, food, or clothing. It's easy in retrospect to look at the Nazi's mistakes and say "Duh!" but I am very glad they made them.
Reading War of Annihilation reminded me that anyone linking someone to the Nazis - the real Nazis - over political disagreements is a fool who deserves all the slander and libel lawsuits that the law in their country allows. Their ideas are not to be taken seriously and should be viewed simply as someone out to hurt those with whom they disagree and not someone who has anything substantive to contribute to a conversation.
Secondly, I was reminded of the great capacity of your ordinary average non-megalomaniac to both ignore and to perpetrate the most heinous deeds. Most people aren't August Landmesser.
Most people are happy to go along with prevailing winds and very few are willing to risk tacking their own course. Good men do nothing all too often.
Lastly, a police officer killed a suspect last month here in Madison and the police chief's press conference was interrupted by protestors, at least one of whom yelled "Zero power to Zionists...." I find this injection of "Zionism" into a situation not all related to Israel to be profoundly disturbing. If we in the United States have our own Kristallnacht, it will be lead by zealots of the Left bearing placards featuring George Floyd's face and, I fear, a lot of good people will do nothing.
I wanted a new chip, and for my sins, they gave me one.: Weston's Family Farms Sea Salt 'N' Vinegar Potato Chips
Last month I was taking my weekly walk through the organic junk food aisle at my local supermarket and saw plenty of salt and vinegar snacks. Making my way down the aisle I saw many that I had already sampled and felt a bit discouraged. Kind of like a sullen teenager convinced no one would ever find them attractive, I questioned whether a new salt and vinegar chip would ever appear at my local grocer.
As the rows of chips were about to give way to meat sticks, my eyes beheld bags of salt and vinegar chips from Weston's Family Farms, a brand hitherto unknown to me. Truly a blessing.
"Calbee" was printed above "Weston's Family Farms" and the interwebs tell me that it's a Japanese company founded in 1949 that expanded to the U.S. in 1970. The homespun, British name seems to be all marketing gimmick and a rather new one at that. It appears that the brand was introduced just last year. I could find no testimonials from a young farming couple about how chips from Lays, etc. induced allergic reactions in their children and so they decided to make wholesome junk food. Thankfully.
So how did the big multinational conglomerate do?
Ridges! Dark yellow with occasional brown bits, these chips were quite a bit thicker than your average potato chip. Sticking my proboscis into the bag and taking a big whiff, I smelled a lovely, earthy spud aroma followed by oil, and a saline scent.
Being thicker, these had a nice crunch to them that fell just below that of your typical kettle chip. The potato flavor was excellent - not particularly sweet with a very fine earthy taste. On the more teleological/important side, I didn't taste any more salt than normal and found them to have a medium tanginess which led to some mild numbness on my tongue after a serving.
If I have a quibble it's that, after chewing these chips, the paste was a bit mealy to my taste. Not enough to ruin my gustatory experience but definitely noticeable.
All in all, some very good chips.
Song of the day, 9 August 2026
Mancunian music! Is there a The Chemical Brothers tour in Manchester?
Prepping for Manchester: Re-watching Life On Mars
With my trip to Manchester, UK coming up quickly, I decided to re-watch Life On Mars. It had been many years since I had the pleasure of watching the Gene Genie in action. I laughed aloud many a time to his brutal quips.
In addition to his disparaging repartee, there were also the jibes from Ray. I laughed heartily in the scene where Chris asks what a nol-au-vent is and Ray replies with all the confidence and aplomb of a gourmand as a cheap cigarette smolders between his yellow fingers, "It's puff pastry shell filled with a savoury meat mixture." That line was delivered just perfectly.
Oh, and the scene where the gang busts out of the building with the pool and chase a suspect in their swimming trunks cracked me up. In another, Gene says something about a Bakewell tart and, having been doing some prep for the trip, I knew what it was.
I kept waiting for the Quattro but, after it never appeared in the series 2 opener, I figured it must be in Ashes to Ashes. With Ray smoking a cigarette in basically every scene he's in, I wondered if the actors were tobacco lovers themselves or if they were given clove cigarettes.
Hopefully I'll be able to find a filming location or 2 while I'm in Manchester. The most prominent one, Stopford House, whose exterior stood in for the police station, is out in the burbs. We shall see...
Comestibles
I met a friend down at Working Draft Beer earlier this week. My neighbor was there behind the bar doing his thing - I think he's a taproom manager - and he came over as I was sitting at the bar to offer his expertise. I was perusing the maltier side of of the beer menu and he helpfully remarked that the German pils, Hindsight, was freshly tapped. Well, within the last 24 hours.
That settled it.
Oh, it was tasty! A delicate crackery malt with a gentle spicy hoppiness. Working Draft has become the go-to lager spot in town. They're also the go-to smoke beer joint as well. It hasn't been too long since their smoked hefeweizen was on tap and now they've got a rauch Dortmunder Export available for my delectation. Madison is not Bamberg but thanks to Clint and company, there is fresh rauchbier to be had a few times (or more) a year for those of us with refined, smoky tastes.
The next day my ladyfriend and I went to Chicken Licks (née Lips) to satisfy her craving for Buffalo wings. I think my visit there a couple weeks back triggered a spicy, fowl desire in her brain. Because it is her way, she ordered for me and about 15 minutes later I was presented with a basket of chicken wings at Original Sexy Level 3 hotness.
I think that, had they been any spicier, I may have suffered a medical incident. A couple wings in, my right eye began to tear up which, of course, caused my nose to run. Oddly enough, my left eye never watered at all. Was this due to the angle at which the wings entered my mouth? Perhaps I favor my right side when eating them and a chili miasma crept up to my eye.
Very, very hot yet I could still taste the chicken and the chili flavor.
I think that the kitchen offers yet further levels of fiery goodness for chiliheaded gluttony.
Yesterday at the grocery store I saw more autumnal flavors on the shelves. This time they were accompanied by those generally associated with Christmastime.
Apple season hasn't even started yet the pepperminty flavor of Christmas is here. Uff da!
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.
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