A Feast of Consequences by Fish

It’s been six years since Fish’s last effort, 13th Star. That album was forged in the aftermath of his disastrous relationship with Mostly Autumn singer Heather Findlay who canceled their wedding shortly before the big day. Consequently it is a very dark affair, its lyrics littered with anger. 13th Star was mainly co-written with bassist Steve Vantsis who also contributed drum programming, samples, and keyboards which gave the album a distinct industrial edge. At some point Fish’s relationship with Vantsis soured and they went their separate ways after the tour in support of the album. For his part, Fish had surgery on his throat and found himself on the primrose path of matrimony.

Although Vantsis and Fish have buried the hatchet, their latest collaboration, A Feast of Consequences is a very different animal. The shadings of Nine Inch Nails have given way to a more melodic sensibility, Fish’s anger mostly ceding to introspection and a desire to look at the world around him.

“Perfume River”, the lead-off track, opens with some rather lonely bagpipe – Scotland fading in the distance – as Fish pleads to be taken to the titular body of water. The Perfume River lies in Vietnam and Fish traveled there alone in the wake of the end of his relationship with Findlay. Here he closes his mind “in soft surrender” and “in quiet resignation take[s] the lies”. He wants nothing more to escape his life that has been torn asunder:

Carry me down to the Perfume River; hold me down in the Perfume River

Where I’ll drown my sorrows, and I’ll die in hope

Push me away down the Perfume River to the swirls and eddies of the Perfume River

In these dark and muddied waters just let me float

The truth I don’t want to know

Lyrically this is not too far away from 13th Star, but musically, it’s nothing like it. The song is nearly eleven minutes long and meanders through multiple sections. The opening bagpipes give way to dream-like synths before Robin Boult’s acoustic guitar plucking enters. Slowly the song and tension build as drums and electric guitar are added to the mix. A vocal crescendo gives way to a briskly strummed acoustic guitar that banishes the miasma and ushers in a faster tempo. Fish’s vocals lose the sustained notes and drama as the pleading chorus takes over. A fantastic slice of progressive nouveau.

“All Loved Up” takes things in a totally different direction with a Keith Richards guitar lick and Fish sardonically discoursing on fame in the age of the Internet. It sticks out like a sore thumb here being more light-hearted lyrically and musically than the rest of the album but on the other it’s really just “Incommunicado” inverted and updated for the 21st century. There’s more to Fish’s life than lost love. “Blind to the Beautiful” follows and is rather sparsely arranged. Acoustic guitar, piano, and accordion, courtesy of Foss Paterson’s keys, carry the tune with occasional flourishes of a doleful violin. Elizabeth Antwi’s voice is featured here to great effect for the first time since “Incomplete” twelve years ago. It has all the ingredients for another song about the loss of love but the beauty here is nature. With lines such as “The ice retreating, mountains exposed in the sun,” this song is decidedly a lamentation over environmental destruction and our indifference towards it.

The title track is straight-ahead rock and the name is a play on a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson – “Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences”. It acts as something of a companion piece to “Blind to the Beautiful” in that most of the lyrics here seem to refer to a relationship that nears its final moments (“I tear a page from the book of faces/Throw your letters in an open fire”) but the environmental theme crops up again at the end with “We were running out of World, running out of hope, running out of resources/We were running out of time, running out of space, running out of tomorrows.”

What comes next is a half hour suite concerned with The Great War. Referred to as the High Wood Suite, it consists of five songs: “High Wood”, “Crucifix Corner”, “The Gathering”, “Thistle Alley”, and “The Leaving”. The High Wood is a site in northern France which saw fighting during the Battle of the Somme and Fish was apparently inspired by reading a book on the battle, visiting the site, and then learning that his grandfathers both served in that area during the war.

The first three songs were co-written with keyboardist Foss Paterson and so the opener, “High Wood”, leans heavily on piano which is complemented by a string quartet. The drums eventually begin a harrowing march as the song shifts gear to the events of 1916. The chorus is almost a chant, adding a bit of primal menace. “Crucifix Corner” opens with more piano and sustained guitar notes as battle nears but Boult’s six strings churn out a galloping riff for the cavalry charge in the second half of the song. We flash back to 1914 with “The Gathering”. What sounds like a Salvation Army band sets the mood as the country prepares for war and young men ready themselves to be shipped out. Duty, honor, and hope for a better future rule the day. The brass sounds very odd on a Fish record but the chorus features the customary wall of guitar and organ.

The brief retreat to better days ends with “Thistle Alley” with the nightmare of the war resuming. This is the heaviest song of the suite and marks a return to the sounds of 13th Star. Gavin Griffiths’ bass drum is brought up in the mix to emphasize the plodding rhythm while the guitar alternately bubbles underneath and cuts out jagged chords. Vantsis left his mark on “Thistle Alley” but the piano and strings which bookend “The Leaving” signal the return of Paterson. Boult, however, owns the middle section here with layers of guitar reminding the listener that, while the war may have ended, the loss and pain had not.

After a half an hour of Fish investigating The Great War, “The Other Side of Me” sees him looking inwards and at his own life once again. But he seems to have come out of the darkness and found some solace. Aidan O’Rourke’s bittersweet violin is a highlight of this song as is Robin Boult’s rather Gilmour-like solo. The Floydian feel is bolstered by Antwi’s backing vocals here as well. The song feels like “Sugar Mice” with a happy ending. “The Great Unraveling” brings the album to a close. The positive vibe of “The Other Side of Me” is tempered here with a bit of pragmatism. The singer is no longer the lost soul of “Perfume River” seeking to just be someplace else; instead he has gone through it all and come out the other side able to move on and a bit wiser.

The lives that we played before,

Stretch into our past define us,

Instinctively hearts entwine

Love brings us closer to carry us forward

If, as my ears tell me, the strength of 13th Star lies with its consistency of mood and tone, then the great virtue of this album is its diversity. Instead of a single event providing the focus, here Fish is looking inside but also at the world around him. In addition to love lost, he has fun with celebrity & the Internet, mourns for our environment, and spends half the album looking back at one of his latest interests, World War I. The variety of lyrical subject matter is reflected in the music. While mainly a rock album, it speaks well of Fish that you can find flugelhorn on one track and a hip-hop drum box on another. The tonal palette brings together your typical rock instruments and pairs them with strings, brass, and drum loops to great effect.

Foss Paterson doubled his songwriting credits with Fish on this album with much of the High Woods Suite being co-written by him. Those songs are dynamic with slower passages that highlight his piano work giving way to louder sections where he harmonizes with Robin Boult’s guitar. Speaking of guitar, it was great to hear Boult alone on this album. Normally he’s to be found sharing the six string duties with Frank Usher or Steve Wilson but he’s basically on his own here which was really nice for me to get a sense of just what he brings to the table. He ably moves from acoustic to electric, gently picking one moment and slashing out distorted walls of sound the next. His parts always fit in with the greater whole whether that means providing a lead or adding to the overall picture.

Fish’s voice also merits mention here. It sounds clearer and he sustains more notes than on 13th Star. While he will never be able to sing the vocal gymnastics of something like “Grendel” again, his voice has regained much of its dramatic flair. 13th Star featured more bursts of raw emotion while this album is more about sustaining emotional arcs across songs. There’s less anger present here. And Liz Antwi’s return is most welcome. She provides nice counterpoint which helps make the songs about relationships less antagonistic and take on a more pensive feel, more about looking back at past troubles rather than being mired in them.

This is certainly one of Fish’s strongest efforts. Not only are the material and performances strong, there is a lot on A Feast of Consequences that sounds like nothing Fish has ever done before yet sounds quintessentially Fish.

Dirty Wars Starring Jeremy Scahill

I wish I had been at either of the screenings of Dirty Wars that Jeremy Scahill had attended here in Madison because I would have loved to have asked him who he felt the movie's audience was. On a substantive level, the film followed Scahill, an investigative reporter, from Afghanistan to Somalia and points in between as he looks at the covert wars carried out by the U.S. government. Stylistically, however, Dirty Wars made me feel like I was watching Tony Scott's Enemy of the State. Was this thing aimed at aging anti-war lefties or younger apolitical folks who might be drawn into examining American foreign policy a bit closer?

Scahill is no stranger to war zones. He eschews military escorts, green zones, etc. and instead heads out onto the battlefield where the news is. He reported from Iraq both before and after the U.S. invasion in 2003 as well as from Serbia as NATO bombs fell and the movie begins in Afghanistan with the aftermath of an assault by U.S. forces on the home of an Afghan family. Scahill takes a journey into a part of the country that is not under the control of NATO forces and is especially unsafe after dark.

There he meets the family who was the victim of US aggression. As they sang and danced at a family gathering, American troops raided the home. The family's patriarch, a local police chief who had worked with American forces, was dead as were others including three women, two of whom were pregnant. Scahill talks with survivors of that deadly night and watches cell phone footage of the party and the aftermath. A man claims that American soldiers dug their bullets out of the men and women they shot. Anti-American sentiment was running high along side the pain of lost loved ones. But who exactly raided their home?

Scahill found the beginning of his answer with the work done by an English war correspondent named Jerome Starkey. Starkey took photos of one General McRaven at a ceremony in apology for the raid which involved presenting the family with a sheep. McRaven, it turns out, worked for JSOC – Joint Special Operations Command. Scahill doesn't recognize the group and redirects his search to find out more about them.

There are many scenes showing Scahill at home scouring Internet results and shuffling through paperwork as he traces the origins of JSOC and their ever-expanding role in the projection of American power around the globe. He eventually continues his travels to see how our “war on terror” proceeds out of the limelight.

In an all-too brief sequence in Somalia, our intrepid reporter meets a warlord named Mohamed Afrah Qanyare who is happy to take our tax dollars to be an American proxy in fighting terrorists. He chillingly says of we Americans, “They are the war masters.” Scahill also travels to Yemen where he meets with Anwar al-Awlaki's father. Al-Awlaki, you may recall, was an American citizen killed by drone sans due process. The same fate befell his teenaged son. Immediately after 9/11 al-Awlaki preached peace and was a minor media figure. But, as Bush II's wars dragged on, he witnessed his fellow Muslims suffering and dying at the hands of America. The anti-American sentiment expressed by the Afghani man early in the movie returns as we learn that al-Awlaki became vehemently anti-American and promoted attacks on Americans.

Dirty Wars left me feeling ambivalent. On the plus side, Scahill and director Rick Rowley do a great service here by illuminating how the United States fights terrorism now that we've left Iraq, are winding down operations in Afghanistan, and have generally pushed the War on Terror out of our minds. It seems that Breaking Bad garners more public attention than does the fact that America is still at war with soldiers killing and dying. Dirty Wars is also important for showing us the victims of American aggression. In the wake of 9/11 President Bush asked no shared sacrifice from the American public. The rich got tax breaks and the middle class was asked to keep going to Disneyland. The mainstream media and government made sure that we never got to see dead American soldiers; all we saw were caskets with American flags draped over them. Ever further from view were the dead innocents who perished at American hands. Apparently we cannot have the American sense of moral superiority challenged.

While Dirty Wars is important for not letting the War on Terror slip down the memory hole and for giving a faces and names to people that we kill, much of the impact is dulled by aesthetic choices that turn the movie into a half-baked spy thriller. For instance, people are introduced by freezing the frame as if it were a surveillance photo. Plus there's too much focus given to Scahill as the tireless seeker of truth and, furthermore, he comes across almost as a parody. In Blade Runner Harrison Ford's voiceover narration sounds incredibly disinterested. Here, the opposite holds. Scahill comes across as being overly earnest. When I've heard interviews with him, he sounds like a normal guy who is sincere and very passionate about his job. His narration comes across as being so fake that it's melodramatic. In real life he seems humble which is in stark contrast to the braggadocio that comes across in his description of his decent into that dangerous region in Afghanistan.

The focus on Scahill and his quest to uncover JSOC gets in the way of presenting a broad picture of the nefarious methods our government employs to carry out its foreign policy objectives. Dirty Wars comes across as being a series of portraits rather than an overview. Scahill's interviews are revealing but the focus remains on individuals at the expense of showing large-scale patterns of dirty wars. I think it would have been more effective to reveal more raids resulting in the deaths of civilians, for example, to establish a pattern of behavior. The movie makes it feel that the incident in Afghanistan at the beginning was unique instead of being part and parcel of our policy. It's not uncommon to hear reports of terrorists being killed and then to hear that many civilians also died. NATO and the US deny the civilian deaths until the likes of Scahill and Starkey reveal the truth. This is an established pattern. We are told as much but this is a visual medium we're dealing with. An anonymous man saying so just doesn't cut it. Similarly, the fact that American policy and actions generates anti-American sentiment is something that got lost in the shuffle.

Dirty Wars has an important message to tell but it gets muddled along the way by a weird desire to emulate Tony Scott.

Help Kickstart World War III!

This one goes out to Gregory Humphrey because, well, because Obama!

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Modern Trailer

There were still a couple parts that I laughed at.

There's Much More to Poland Than Pulaski, Pierogi, and Pączki

Having some Polish blood I thought it was time to learn about the history of the country from which some of my ancestors had emigrated. The modern story of Poland wasn't completely foreign to me as I grew up with the Solidarity movement often on the news and getting to know some folks here in Madison who hail from Poland led to hearing stories of life under the Soviet yoke. But the Poland of several hundred years ago was, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, a known unknown. General medieval European history books tend to ignore Eastern Europe as it wasn't a part of the Roman Empire and histories of Byzantium will incorporate the Balkans but not farther north.

And so I picked up A Concise History of Poland to help dispel my ignorance.

Presumably owing, at least in part, to a lack of written documentation from Poland's early years, the first chapter is a bit rough around the edges. The authors date the beginning of Poland to 966 A.D. as this is when the country became a Christian nation. Poland was ruled at this time by the Piast Dynasty, its namesake having come to power in the mid-9th century, although “Piast” was a title bestowed by later historians. These people were Slavs and the book discusses their linguistic unity as well as their identity in relation to the Germanic peoples to the west.

Piast Poland gave way to Jagiellonian Poland in 1386 when Jagaila of Lithuania married into Polish royalty and annexed his wife's country. This was the beginning of a centuries long relationship between the two peoples and in 1569 they became a commonwealth. But rather than going on about wars with Tuetonic Knights and who ascended the throne when, I will rather mention that I found it very interesting to learn about the proto-republican elements of Poland during the Middle Ages.

The book emphasizes the role of the szlachta, which was basically the landed nobility, as a check on royal power. There were also assemblies called sejmiki which started off as bitch sessions for the szlachta but eventually morphed into the Sejm, the Polish parliament. Unsurprisingly, taxation was often a bone of contention – something medieval Poland had in common with western European countries.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ended in 1795 when it was divided up amongst Austria, Prussia, and Russia. It's a sad period in the country's history and over the course of two chapters the reader learns about the struggles of ethnic Poles to retain their language, culture, and identity. There were a handful of uprisings but they failed for various reasons. One can really see the Poland of the 20th century reflected here with the Poles' ethnic pride and allegiance to Roman Catholicism being constant themes that run from the late 18th century up through the Battle of Warsaw and the Solidarity movement.

Poland became a country again after World War I but the joy over the return of statehood didn't last very long as the next world war ended with Soviet control of Poland. Again Poles found themselves in a battle to save their culture and identity. With the collapse of the Soviet Union Poland found freedom but, as the book ends in 2001, it is still in the throes of growing pains as it struggles to found a solid economy.

A Concise History of Poland is just that weighing in at under 300 pages. It is 99% political history which means that the reader is bombarded with the names of rulers and leaders of political movements one after another. It was a bit intimidating as I'd never heard of the vast majority of these people and couldn't pronounce most of their names. With history books concerned with Western Europe I have some background but most of this book was truly terra incognita. But once you realize that there isn't going to be a quiz on this, you can worry less about remembering names and keeping your eye on the big picture.

Despite the brevity, Lukowski and Zawadzki do a fine job of making sure the reader understands the historical contexts of major events and provides motivation for all parties involved. For instance, when talking about various revolts in the days after 1795 when Poland did not exist, the actions of those involved in the uprisings are discussed as well as the concerns of Poles in other areas whose lives had taken up orbit around the economic structures and concerns of the empire that ruled them.

Because of the demands of concision, the book feels uneven. There are nods to cultural figures of the times but throwing in the names of a couple poets and painters here and there just felt like half-hearted attempts at balance. I finished the book almost feeling more ignorant than before I began it. I suppose this means that I have a lot more reading to do. On the plus side, the book does include a goodly amount of photographs and illustrations and lots of maps. The gods be praised for the maps! I found them extremely helpful as my geographic knowledge of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states is lacking. It was also gratifying to re-learn that it was a Pole, John Sobieski that saved Europe in 1683 at the Siege of Vienna with his defeat of the Ottoman forces.

The New Adventures Continue: Cat's Cradle Trilogy

Doctor Who's New Adventures began with the Timewyrm quadrilogy and continued with the Cat's Cradle trilogy. The three stories here are linked much more loosely than the previous series with only a silver cat being the common thread.

Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible gets things going. It was written by Marc Platt who also wrote “Ghost Light”, one of my favorite stories from the television series. That episode began life as a much different story which involved The Doctor returning home to Gallifrey. The story was radically changed for television although Platt would later adapt his original idea into Lungbarrow, the fin*-al New Series adventure, still five years down the road.

But Platt didn't let go of his affinity for Gallifrey and threw some history of the Time Lords' planet into this novel. We get a glimpse of ancient Gallifrey as its Enlightenment is just beginning. The Pythia rules with an iron fist, abetted by her gift of second sight. But her days are numbered as Rassilon and his cohorts are looking to overturn the hegemony of faith and superstition and replace it with an ideal of reason and science. The Gallifreyans are not yet Time Lords but Rassilon has begun the process of mastering the fourth dimension. A proto-TARDIS has been constructed and is ready for its first mission.

Meanwhile The Doctor and Ace are enjoying lunch in England when reality suddenly begins to twist and contort around them. A mysterious silver cat appears and lures them back into the TARDIS where an alien creature of some kind has breached the ship's defenses and lies between the inner and outer doors. The Doctor runs off into the interior of the TARDIS in an attempt to expel the intruder but his plan goes awry when the TARDIS collides with the Gallifreyans first time ship, the Time Scaphe.

Ace finds herself in a city of eldritch buildings that are abandoned. She runs into what turns out to be the crew of the Time Scaphe. One of the them, Vael, is arguing with the rest. Vael has betrayed his fellow Chronauts and pledged his allegiance with The Process, a large slug-like creature with a mouth full of vicious-looking teeth at one end that curls up and rolls around, leaving a trail of slime wherever it may roam. The Process has enslaved the Chronauts and has them seeking out a stolen future.

For his part, The Doctor is nowhere to be found and Ace sets out to find him. She runs into a teenage boy named Shonnzi who communicates with The Doctor in his dreams. Ace also discovers that the realm she is in is bordered by other duplicate realms which are offset in time. And so, while the Chronauts she first met are older and have forgotten who they are and where they came from, there are younger versions who have just arrived. It turns out that the landscape around everyone is the TARDIS split asunder and that silver cat is a corporeal form of its warning system.

Platt has a myriad of good ideas here but the story just doesn't gel. I really enjoyed the parts of the story on ancient Gallifrey. It was nice to get a view of The Doctor's homeworld that wasn't a narrow view of a stodgy and aristocratic hierarchy. Plus we witness the ascent of Rasillon. Unfortunately the rest of the book is a mess. For one thing, the Process is a rather bland villain. It, well they, actually, as there are two of them – the same being from different times – don't do much beyond roam around leaving slime trails and mindlessly yelling about the necessity of finding the future. They are petty tyrants instead of either complicated, fully-realized actors or wonderfully diabolical bad guys who chew the scenery like there's no tomorrow. And while I loved the notion of multiple iterations of a city all existing in different time streams yet physically abutting one another is a very neat idea, as is multiple groups of the same people being displaced in time, the story just doesn't do anything interesting with these ideas. The interesting elements of the story are relegated to the background while Ace wanders and runs into people who complain and bicker and a bland villain issues threats and blathers on. Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible is just never able to fully-realize all the wonderful elements that Platt came up with.

Cat's Cradle: Warhead was written by Andrew Cartmel, the show's script editor during the Seventh Doctor era. I think the novel marks the first time Cartmel has produced a Doctor Who story of his own instead of editor those of other writers. The cover is highly reminiscent of that of Iron Maiden's Somewhere in Time which put me in a dystopian, Blade Runner-esque frame of mind. Indeed, the earth of the near future in Warhead is dystopian. Pollution ravages the environment and, instead of the Tyrell Corporation, we have the ominous and powerful Butler Institute.

The book begins with The Doctor laying a trap. He visits Shreela, a science journalist, who lies in hospital dying from the poisons now common in the environment. He asks her to do one last thing before she passes and that is to publish a story that links certain proteins in the blood to telekenesis. In publishing this story, The Doctor hopes to get the head of the Butler Institute, Matthew O'Hara, to make a move.

The Doctor breaks into the offices of the Butler Institute in New (New New?) York to gather information. There he meets Maria, a cleaning woman, who helps him. In a nice, albeit mournful, digression, Cartmel gives us Maria's backstory. She grew up in California where partied as a youth but found her life thrown into chaos after the death of her love, Jerome. She moved to New York but she found her life plans hindered by economic migration laws. Tragically, she would die a prolonged death owing to both the toxic air outside and the poisonous cleaning chemicals she used everyday.

In another tangent, Cartmel has The Doctor meet up with a serial killer named Bobby Prescott who has a bit of information that our hero needs. Again, we get a nice, although very disturbing, digression. Prescott's tale, relating how things used to be better, emphasizes the corrupt nature of the society in which the story takes place. With this information, The Doctor sends Ace on a mission to Turkey where she recovers a drum. Drum as in barrel, not percussion instrument.

Inside the drum is a teenage boy named Vincent who has been embalmed in some kind of chemical cocktail. Vincent has the unique ability to channel the mental energy of others and focus them into a burst of telekinetic power. He too has a role in The Doctor's plan which is to foil the machinations of Matthew O'Hara.

Cat's Cradle: Warhead is an unqualified success. Cartmel constructs a believable dystopian future that sees the characters roaming multiple locations around the world in a way that the television series never could. Yet he also connects his story to the TV show. Shreela is a friend of Ace's that we met in “Survival” and the evil Butler Institute and Matthew O'Hara brought the Third Doctor story “The Green Death” to mind. There are some fun action sequences and a good old fashioned shoot out. But what stands out most is characterization. The Doctor is scheming and manipulating and makes for a nice parallel to O'Hara who is less an embodiment of evil than a man who has lost his moral compass and is using his power for the wrong side. Ace is an action hero here alternately dodging bullets and letting off a few rounds. The real treat is how subsidiary characters like Maria, Prescott, and Vincent are all given backstories. Warhead arguably doesn't twist or stretch the Doctor Who formula but it is a fun story that fleshes out characters who, on television, would have been little more than cardboard cut outs.

The trilogy comes to a close with Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark and see the series venture into fantasy territory.

The TARDIS lands in the Welsh village of Llanfer Ceirog which The Doctor has apparently visited previously as he knows Old Hugh and his wife Janice. All is well and bucolic but, being Doctor Who, the pleasantness can't last for long. And it doesn't. Ace wanders the countryside and finds a mysterious stone circle but is chased away by an ornery Emrys Hughes upon whose land Ace was trespassing. She returns and tells her story to everyone. At first The Doctor is keen on R&R and refuses to investigate but, upon hearing that a village was once located on Hughes' property, he becomes intrigued and has Ace take him to investigate. They arrive at night to find the stone circle populated with lights.

But unexplained lights in the middle of the night are the least mysterious things happening. A bus has crashed on the M40 (not quite sure where this is exactly other than a more populated area not too far away) and no one survives. There are a couple odd things about this tragedy. First is that the only person the police can identify is the driver, Selwyn, who is Emrys Hughes' brother. Secondly, all of the passengers are wearing new clothing, are carrying suitcases full of cash, and some of them have a peculiar birthmark on their necks. Back in Llanfer Ceirog the local veterinarian delivers a foal and notices that the mare has a wound on her forehead. Poking around the hay he discovers a horn. Back at home, he calls a number in an ad asking for people to report any sightings of strange animals. The ad was placed by Inspector Stevens, a paranormal investigator and the laughing stock of Scotland yard who is also investigating the bus crash. Lastly there's a couple of American boys who are hitchhiking around the UK. They wander through the forest surrounding Llanfer Ceirog and find an injured centaur. After reporting what they've found to the local constabulary, the pair are shocked that he merely pours gas on the creature and burns it alive.

The Doctor figures out that the stone circle is actually a teleportation device and he and Ace find themselves whisked off to a land called Tir na n-Óg. It isn't long before they are taken prisoner by a group of humans and taken to their leader. The leader, Dryfid, explains that there is discord in the land now that the sun has disappeared. A delegation had been sent to the home of the god Goibhnie to ask that he restore the sun but it didn't go particularly well. And so they have devised a plan to use the stone circle/transmat device to take them to Earth. Wanting to remain oblivious to the folks on Earth, they have decided to leave the other residents of Tir na n-Óg behind and they are none too pleased. These include unicorns knows as Ceffyl and the Firbolg which are centaurs.

Dryfid refuses to let The Doctor and Ace return to Earth but he does let them seek out Goibhnie who turns out not to be a god after all...

Witch Mark is another fun entry in the New Adventures. Inspector Stevens reminded me of Fox Mulder although the novel pre-dates The X-Files. The storyline that takes place on Earth had the vibe of The Wicker Man though it was inverted a bit as Stevens was not a skeptic. The scenes taking place in Llanfer Ceirog were really classic DW with strange events and weird creatures in a rural village. The adventures in Tir na n-Óg are less successful as the build-up of strange, unexplained events is replaced with expository scenes and action but author Andrew Hunt gets credit for letting the mysteries unfold in their own time. A lot of DW stories reveal everything too soon leaving a large chunk of time with The Doctor and his companions, if they're not imprisoned, running around from dead end to dead end until a window of opportunity presents itself for the final victory. Here the Earthly conundrums give way to one cental mystery, namely that of Goibhnie's identity. In the end, the central problem is wrapped up a bit hastily but there's no denying the fun had along the way.

Next Door Brewing Is Now Fully Armed and Operational

Next Door Brewing had a soft opening yesterday and The Dulcinea and I availed ourselves of the opportunity to check out the latest purveyor of brews in Madison.

Unfortunately, The D forgot her camera so no photos.

Next Door's layout was very open and spacious. The bar and dining areas are separate yet connected via an expansive opening in the wall. It was well-populated and the brewhouse was off of the bar's seating area. Communal seating is the order of the day in the dining room with a couple long tables and one very large raised one. There were also a couple smaller tables for those parties not feeling particularly social or perhaps not wanting to inflict a small child onto undeserving strangers.

We were seating at the raised table and were soon joined by a friendly older couple. The ladies were denizens of the neighborhood and keen to check out the newest addition to the area. The crowd here was mostly older and seemed to be comprised of locals. There was also a smattering of families with young children. The D remarked on how different the atmosphere was in contrast to that of Karben4's opening night. A lot fewer 20 and 30-somethings looking to overdose on hops. There was no music playing and televisions were locked in cabinets awaiting a sporting event. Less of a bacchanalia vibe and more of a sense of people wanting to relax and usher out the work week.

We had originally planned to sample Next Door's beer and then head out for a repeat performance at La Taguara but opted to sample the gastro-grub. I'm a complete sucker for onion soup and so ordered the white version on offer. It was a bit lighter than the more familiar version made with beef stock but still tasty. The D began her meal with the sauerkraut sausage balls which were comprised of pork sausage and Stalzy's kraut. The nuggets of porcine goodness were then breaded with what appeared to be panko and then fried. Very tasty stuff. The kraut added just a touch of tartness.

The pork shoulder sandwich had an Asian twist with kimchi sauce while the chicken sandwich looked to North Africa for inspiration with housemade harissa. Both were delicious. For dessert Next Door offers Calliope Ice Cream and we went with the Hot Peanut Butter which was tastilicious.

The menu isn't staggeringly huge by any means but is goodly-sized and offers a fair variety of dishes. Bonus points for using dark meat chicken in the Chicken and Tarragon salad. Samara Kalk Derby will no doubt be disappointed. More bonus points for not offering pizza or deep-fried chicken strips.

The beer list featured four brews: a cream ale with oats, a pale ale, a mild, and a golden ale. The D went with Wilbur!, the cream ale, while I had, Les, the mild. Wilbur! was similar to Spotted Cow although a bit smoother and less fruity. Les was a real treat. Smooth and malt forward yet with English hops accenting the whole affair. I was impressed because A) it was a wonderful change of pace to taste earthier English hop varieties instead of the ubiquitous citrus/pine resin flavors in fashion and B) it was a true session beer at 3.8% ABV, if memory serves. It was a hot day, I was eating a meal, and Les was not bashing me across the tongue clamoring for attention. Brewmaster Keith Symonds gets kudos from me for not coming out of the gate with a beer menu that is the equivalent of a Zak Snyder movie. There were no C-hops lying in wait to drown you in alpha acids nor was there a Belgian quintuple Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Instead the brews were light and easy going - wholly appropriate for the weather - and complemented the communal ethos of the place which Symonds says is about chatting with people you don't know. Who wants to sit next to and try to strike up a conversation with someone getting shit-faced after a few sips of bourbon barrel imperial barleywine?

From food to beer to ambience, Next Door is carving out its own niche in the both the food and beer scenes. With opening day apparently having gone off without too many problems, we can now look forward to finding out how well breastfeeding fits in with the communal atmosphere.

A Sneak Peek and Two Interivews of Interest

Errol Morris' next film is The Unknown Known, a profile of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and he has released a sneak peek.



Looks to be entertaining.

Terry Gilliam's latest film, The Zero Theorem, is scheduled to open later this year. It's about a computer genius who is directed to solve the titular mathematical problem which would give the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

The Playlist has a nice interview with Gilliam about the project.

It’s a very hard thing to describe as far as storytelling but there is a man who really wants to be on his own even though his work is about a very big question; whether the universe is in control or chaos. He just wants to get away from people and everything, just be alone, and yet he’s not allowed to be. Some of that is good and some of it is bad. He discovers his humanity in the course. Where he ends up is a surprise.

It looks suitably bizarre. Should be good.



Another good interview comes courtesy of Filmmaker magazine. This time around the subject is visual effects artist Douglas Trumbull. He talks, amongst other things, about working with Stanley Kubrick on 2001 and Terrance Malick on The Tree of Life as well as his new film process that builds upon IMAX.

I’m working on a film right now that is an experiment for the process where we are shooting 3D, 4K and 120 frames per second and will project at 10 times the brightness of cinemas... The movies will be so unusual that they won’t make any sense on your laptop, television, tablet or cell phone. My objective is to go totally weird and make something people feel is really worth going out to a movie theater to see.

Will America Ever Break the Habit?

After our invasion of Iraq turned up no weapons of mass destruction in that country, President Bush did a little bait and switch with bringing freedom to the Iraqis brought out as the prime motivation for our Middle Eastern incursion. "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands," he said in 2005. This notion of bringing liberty from the barrel of a gun was nothing new. Walter Nugent points this out straight away in his Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion when he notes that Thomas Jefferson, well-known advocate of individual freedom, envisioned the United States as an "empire for liberty". "But imperialist he was," Nugent says of the Founding Father.

Nugent splits American imperial ambitions into three phases. The first is the acquisition of the lower 48, the second is the empire building done in the Pacific Ocean as well as the Caribbean & South America, and the last is the post-WWII era which utilizes more indirect methods of control. Each of these phases, Nugent opines, are undergirded by a sense of American moral pureness and superiority. American expansion is always accompanied by proclamations that we are committing a moral right and never justified on selfish grounds such as economic gain or for strategic concerns.

The bulk of the text is devoted to how the original Americans expanded their 13 colonies into what is today the continental United States. I recall a fair amount of high school American history class – everyone knows the Louisiana Purchase and “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!”, for instance, but Nugent goes into some depth here. He begins with Transappalachia. America was able to play the English, French, and Spanish off of one another and gain favorable borders after winning its freedom. The desire to expand had to do with a lust for land and profit-making but there was also a strong sentiment that would later be known as “manifest destiny”. Even the earliest Americans felt that they had a divine mandate to exercise dominion over the land.

One of the great things about the book is how Nugent provides a fairly detailed political and historical context for events. For example, rather than simply saying that the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1793, we learn about the pressures facing everyone at the bargaining table. The English colonial secretary, the Earl of Shelburne, was facing empty coffers and a need to split the Americans from the French. Meanwhile in Paris the French foreign minister was desperate to have the Americans honor their treaties with his country. Over in Spain, King Carlos III was attempting to get on the good side of the Americans as their newly formed country now abutted the Spanish Empire.

Subsequent chapters deal with the Louisiana Purchase, the disastrous War of 1812, the acquisition of Florida, Texas, Oregon, etc. The treatment of Indians is well-known and Nugent doesn't cut America any slack in this regard. But he doesn't dwell on this topic either. Much more emphasis is placed on the stratagems and subterfuges used by the men who have run this country. For example, the ink was barely dry on the Louisiana Purchase when future president James Monroe and diplomat Robert Livingston started claiming that the deal included West Florida when they knew damn well it didn't. Soon Jefferson and Madison were spouting the same nonsense. That autumn insurgents took the French fort in Baton Rouge and Madison seized the moment to declare West Florida as belonging to the United States - much the chagrin of our erstwhile allies who had played such a significant role in helping the colonists gain their freedom.

One of things that drew me to reading Habits of Empire was watching John Sayles' Amigo, a film about America's venture in the Philippines at the tail end of the 19th century. I realized that I knew precious little about how my country ended up with all those islands in the Pacific.

It started with a search for islands that could act as the maritime equivalents of rest stops for trade ships. Then the military, in the form of the Navy, and the guano industry aligned interests and in 1856 uninhabited guano-rich islands were declared fair game by the Guano Islands Act at the behest of the American Guano Company. The Midway Islands followed in 1859. Samoa involved chicanery. The natives didn't have a monarch who had authority to cut deals in a manner that Westerners were accustomed. So the United States basically went out and found one.

Hawaii is a very sad tale. Americans moved in and initiated reforms which would benefit themselves. Whites established industries such as sugar and soon Hawaii was home to a wealthy white elite that owned most of the land. In the late 1880s King David Kalakaua's policies weren't rigged in favor of the upper classes so they fomented an uprising and forced Kalakaua to the real power over to them and the government cabinet they populated and controlled. Voting was restricted to landowners, most of whom were white. Pearl Harbor came under American control, laws were passed that mandated all schools to teach in English only, et al.

We gained the Philippines after defeating the Spanish. Many American politicians viewed the Filipinos as savages, unable to rule themselves. And so the American mission there was one of “benevolent assimilation” backed by “the strong arm of authority”. Unsurprisingly, the same people who didn't want the Spanish in their homeland also didn't want Americans there. A tense occupation collapsed into war when an American soldier killed two Filipino soldiers and then yelled, “Line up, fellows. The niggers are in here all through these lines.” A day later 59 Americans and some 3,000 Filipinos were dead and a war was on.

Nugent gives scant attention to his third phase of American expansion as he considers it to be ongoing but this does invite the reader to look at how phases one and two resonate today.

One of the most obvious continuities is the use of questionable assertions or outright lies to enter into war. The sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in 1899 as a pretext for war echoes in the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. In the Philippines Americans tortured Filipinos. The most notorious form of torture was the so-called “water cure” which we call water boarding today. In that same war the American military gathered civilians and placed them into areas around various villages with the warning that, if they left this zone, they were putting their lives at risk. Nugent notes that this “tactic also prefigured the 'strategic hamlet' policy that the Americans would use decades later in Vietnam.”

The episode in the Philippines also demonstrates how America has traditionally viewed itself as being superior to other nations. The notion that the “savages” couldn't rule themselves was tweaked a little for our Iraqi incursion. Bush did not describe the Iraqis as unfit for democracy, but instead claimed that America was doing God's work in bringing democracy to an oppressed people. Despite the change, the American paternalism remains the same.

Finding the man named La Mamea to act on behalf of the Samoans doesn't seem all that different from America propping up friendly dictator the past several decades. And on and on it goes. This country has lied, stolen, cheated, betrayed allies, and killed in the name of expansion and exerting its influence. And nearly every time it has been done under the guise of moral rightness and with the supposed approval of the Judeo-Christian deity.

Habits of Empire is a real eye-opener. It provides overwhelming evidence that we Americans should be highly skeptical of the foreign policy claims of our politicians and to ignore their grandiose claims of American exceptionalism. Underneath all the moral rhetoric, America has proven to be motivated by greed just as much as any other empire.

Madison's Bland Skyline

The Guardian has a neat photo quiz of cities around the world. The skyline of Doha, Qatar really caught my eye.



It reminded me of just how bland Madison's skyline is by contrast.


(Photo found here.)

The Capitol and the convention center stand out but most of everything else is a boring box of 8-10 stories. I got my hopes up when I read that Curt Brink is looking to demolish some structures on the 900 block of East Washington. He proposed Archipelago Village back in the mid-aughts which featured a 27-story skyscraper and designs "influenced by the architecture of Stockholm, Sweden, and Central Park West in New York City." Ten out of ten for style, in my book. There is at least the prospect of some new buildings that are at least aesthetically interesting.

Perhaps the time has come to revisit the laws which limit building height around the Capitol. If Brink and his co-conspirators want to build a 20-story colossus on the 900 block of East Washington, let them. Is the view of the Capitol going to be more severely impaired than if the building were erected a block away where it would be legal? Let's keep the dome visible from some vantages but a blanket ban within a certain radius seems counterproductive. If density is efficient from various urban planning perspectives, limiting height uniformly limits density. Pack those people in, I say. In addition to a better skyline, it may spur improved and expanded public transportation and perhaps get that near east side tech corridor off the ground.

But don't forget the green spaces.

Stalingrad Trailer

There's a new trailer out for Stalingrad, an epic 3D IMAX love story set in the midst of the Battle of Stalingrad. It looks to be a really intense experience. Unfortunately director Fedor Bondarchuk apparently reckons himself the Russian Zak Snyder with actions being slowed down in media res. Too bad.

It has a Columbia Pictures logo in the opening so it will presumably get a release here in the States.

A Very Curious Gargoyle

The Paisley Abbey near Glasgow underwent some renovations in the 1990s and ended up with a really neat gargoyle, one that H.R. Giger would approve.

Wie sagt man "Haute couture" auf Deutsch?

Bavarian fashion will be all the rage if Chicago's Erika Neumayer has her way. She is the proprietor of Rare Dirndl and is selling handmade nouveau Bavarian clothing. But these aren't your Großmutter's dirndls.



Her dirndls have names like "Acid Rain" and "Wicked Garden" along with ones featuring Nirvana and Soundgarden song titles. Neumayer also makes trachtenhemden, those plaid shirts men wear with lederhosen.

It all looks very nice but, unfortunately, my budget dictates haberdashery more like this.

Venezuelan Home Cookin'

Due to a distinct lack of any desire to cook on Sunday in the heat, The Dulcinea and I headed over to Madison's newest (and first?) Venezuelan restaurant, La Taguara which opened earlier this month on the 3500 block of East Washington in what was formerly Dimitri's Gyros. Other than Hugo Chávez and that Caracas is the country's capital, I have to admit to a lot of ignorance when it comes to Venezuela. So why not learn a bit about their cuisine?

The space is steeped in the blue, red, and gold – the colors of the Venezuelan flag. One poster proudly proclaims that the country is home to the tallest waterfall while another notes that, while Venezuela may be equatorial, it features a variety of climates from desert to alpine.

Other than that there would be a lot of corn involved, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Would it lean towards Mexican food or perhaps be similar to the Peruvian food I'd eaten here? The gentleman behind the counter proved to be a wonderful guide to the two perplexed customers who stood before him. To say he was friendly is like saying that Lady Gaga is a bit of a show-off. He was welcoming, explained the menu, and even gave us free samples of the passion fruit juice, tamarind juice, and the sugar cane with lime juice. (All three were very tasty.) He may have been a complete bastard before coming to Madison but he has sure got that Midwestern nice thing down pat.

Here's the tamarind juice:



We were told that many people are turned off by the color. Doofuses. This stuff is grand with its mellow plum-like flavor.

I ordered a Fresskolita.



I ordered it simply because it was the first item listed under Venezuelan sodas. Apparently it's the most popular soda in Venezuela. I was told that, if I ask someone about Venezuela and he or she doesn't mention this stuff, then I can rest assured that they are not from Venezuela. It tastes like cream soda with a dash of bubble gum. Curiously tasty.

As an appetizer I ordered tostones which are smashed green plantains fried to a crisp.



They were nice'n'starchy and who doesn't like fried starches? They came with guasacaca which is a cousin to guacamole. While avocado-based, it's much less viscous and has a wonderful smack of tartness from vinegar. This stuff belongs on every table. The tostones also came with a side of picadillo salad which is pica de gallo ohne the chilis. Plenty of lime juice and cilantro here which was fine by me.

The D ordered Cachapa con Queso y Cochino Frito.



What we have here is a corn pancake folded over Venezuelan cheese along with pork served with more of that fantastic guasacaca and sour cream (nata). The pork was crispy which meant it was a little on the dry side but this is apparently the intent of the dish. The pancake made up for it and it was spongy with the cheese adding moisture. There wasn't an overabundance of the gooey cheese but that was perfectly fine. Hack off a piece, dip it in the nata and/or guasacaca and you've got a perfect fatty mess on your palate.

Not only did I order the most popular soft drink in all of Venezuela, but I also got the country's national dish, pabellon.



Shredded beef is accompanied by black beans, rice, fried plantains, and an arepa which is a corn cake. The rice and beans weren't heavily seasoned but good. While the beef had what looked like minced red pepper, the seasoning took a back seat to the flavor of the meat. My fried sweet plantains found themselves dipped in the guasacaca leftover from the tostones and were great. Silghtly crispy on the outside and warm and sweet on the inside. The arepa was served plain and it too found its way in guasacaca or had some picadillo salad placed atop it.

I was a bit surprised at how simple the food was although perhaps I shouldn't have been. And I don't use “simple” here in a derogatory manner. The seasoning was just not complicated. A little salt & pepper, some peppers, garlic, and onions. Everything seemed to be peasant food, so to speak, made with the staples of the Venezuelan kitchen. Rice and beans – how much more basic can you get? The brighter, more sprightly flavors came from the guasacaca and picadillo salad which added citrus, tartness, and fresh greens to the mix. I felt that I was eating Venezuelan comfort food and loved every bite.

The D grabbed an order of quesillo on her way out the door. Think flan. Oh, it was rich,creamy, and just delectable.

Back in June I pondered why children's menus are generally the culinary equivalent of the Yugo. Earlier this month my question was answered up at Slate. I bring this up because La Taguara gets good marks from me on their kid's menu. Yeah, it's heavy on hot dogs, which are also on the adult menu, but it also has mini empanadas and a smaller portion of pabellon. And there's nary a chicken nugget/tender to be found. Good on them.

The Case of the Disappearing Pizza

Somebody forgot the Categorical Imperative.

You Don't Brew a Radler

Earlier this summer I read that Schell was going to be releasing a grapefruit radler. Well, it finally came out but I haven't tried it yet because it's not a radler. It was very disappointing to read that it has 4.6% ABV and basically followed Leinenkugel, Sam Adams, et al. To paraphrase a friend of mine, you don't brew a radler in the same way that you don't distill an Old Fashioned. You mix a radler. Schell's “radler” isn't even what I would consider a session beer. What gives? Don't get me wrong, Schell makes some very fine beer. Indeed, bottles of their brew have been adorning my refrigerator all summer. But their “radler” is a fail.

Since it turned into summer again, I bought me some radler fixins this past weekend.



To be honest, I prefer Capital Lake House for my radlers but Jenifer Street Market had none. (?!) So I went with the next best thing. About 50/50 with the Totally Naked (but 60% soda and 40% Lake House). Grown Up Soda is some fine soda. More tartness and less sweetness.

Good stuff, Maynard.

UW Cinematheque Announces Fall 2013 Schedule

This autumn should be a hoot because the UW Cinematheque will fill screens with the Teutonic goodness of Werner Herzog's cinema. But wait! There's more!

Check out the schedule here.

Other highlights for me:

Eraserhead - David Lynch. What more need be said?

Fantastic Voyage - make a nice mango cream pudding for this one and watch Raquel Welch in all her glory.

The Hidden Fortress - Kurosawa. What more need be said?

Drug War - I read some good things about this film by Johnnie To when it screened in Chicago.

Plus more from Howard Hawks, Emile de Antonio, Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni, et al.

And So It Begins: Doctor Who's New Adventures

After Doctor Who went off the air in 1990 Virgin fiction editor Peter Darvill-Evans obtained the rights to publish original stories for the series. The Virgin New Adventures kicked off in 1991 with the promise of "stories too broad and deep for the small screen". The series continued for six years and 61 titles. Some of the authors were associated with the TV show in its final years: Andrew Cartmel was teh script editor for Sylvester McCoy's era; Ben Aaronovitch wrote Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield for the small screen while Marc Platt is responsible for one of my all-time favorite Doctor Who stories, Ghost Light. Virgin also recruited some authors who eventually work on the new series. Indeed, Russell T. Davies, the man who resurrected the show in 2005, contributed Damaged Goods to the NAs. Paul Cornell adapted his NA, Human Nature, for the Tenth Doctor and Martha while Kate Orman's Night of the Living Dad became "Father's Day". But it all began with the Timewyrm Quadrilogy.

Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel was the first NA to be published. The Doctor and Ace travel to ancient Mesopotamia where they meet up with Gilgamesh and the titular villain. The Timewyrm was once a woman Qataka from the planet Anu. Her experiments with mind control were not welcomed by her people and so she was put to death. Before her execution, however, she managed to offload her own mind into a snake-like cybernetic body which fled Anu. Qataka's people followed her and managed to destroy her ship but she was able to get away in an escape pod. The pod landed in ancient Mesopotamia and she adopted the name Ishtar.

While the Timewyrm is a pretty neat villain, the rest of the story is very middling. The Doctor and Ace don't resemble the ones walking across the field in the end of Survival that much. At times their bickering read more like Sixie and Peri than Seven and Ace. The story involves a lot of running back and forth between the cities of Kish and Uruk and visiting the temples at each. Dealing with Gilgamesh here and having skirmishes with the Timewyrm there. Frankly, I didn't find very much breadth or depth here. Gilgamesh is a hyper-generic cliché who wants nothing more than to eat heartily, fuck all the maidens he can, and smite his enemies. On the plus side, he has a Neanderthal named Enkidu as his companion who reminded me of Nimrod from “Ghost Light” which I had watched not long before reading the book. While Enkidu is not a particularly well-developed character, he does have a couple conversations with Ace about his loyalty to that goombah Gilgamesh. Ace reacts very badly to the social mores of the time she finds herself in and these conversations at least hint at something interesting, namely, the relativity of cultural norms. It's not a theme that is deeply probed by any means but it was nice to see it pop up.

For the most part the characters here are cardboard cut-outs and the cities of Uruk and Kish are Potemkin villages. Peel doesn't manage to make these places come to life. Uruk was the metropolis of its day yet the book is unable to convey this and sticks to a couple buildings and various hallways just like the classic series did. Indeed, most of Timewyrm: Genesys comes across like a very generic story from the 1970s. About the only things here that would have felt out of place in the TV show was Ace using a wee bit of profanity and an adolescent priestess named En-Gula wandering around in a profound state of undress.

The story ends with the consciousness of the Timewyrm escaping into the TARDIS circuitry which is ejected by The Doctor. Unfortunately for him, the Timewyrm melds with the circuitry and takes on the ability to travel in time and space.

While Timewyrm: Genesys was not a good start to the NAs, Timewyrm: Exodus improved matters considerably. DW stalwart Terrance Dicks does a nice job of writing the Seventh Doctor and Ace, characters which he never wrote for television.

The TARDIS takes our heroes to London in 1951 but they find that things are not as they were recorded in the history books. Here Hitler won World War II and Britain is something like a Nazi protectorate. Paramilitary Freikorps units roam the streets hassling Jewish merchants and basically acting like they own the place. The Doctor resolves to find out how history was diverted and put it back on the right course.

The Doctor and Ace have a run-in with the Freikorps but manage to bluff their way out of arrest with The Doctor posing as a Nazi official. They then witness a man being stabbed who passes an envelope to The Doctor before plunging into the Thames. They are eventually turned in by an informant and meet one Lieutenant Hemmings who figures into a later book. Hemmings tries to get the travelers to talk and admit they are with the resistance but fails. Instead The Doctor and Ace go free posing once again as a Nazi official and his assistant. Curiously enough, a (the?) TARDIS materializes near him at one point, he enters, and is whisked away.

In order to kickstart the process of getting history back to where it should be, our pair travel back to 1923 where they find Adolf Hitler during the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. Much to Ace's incredulity, The Doctor saves the future führer. They meet up again in the 1939 of this alternate timeline in Nuremburg and The Doctor becomes an aide to Hitler.

Timewyrm: Exodus is something of a sequel to the Second Doctor television story “The War Games” in that it features the return of The War Chief, a fellow Timelord, who is disguised as Doktor Kriegslieter here. He is out to mess with history yet again. Like The War Chief, the Timewyrm had the same idea but her plans took a turn in the wrong direction when she became trapped inside of Hitler.

Unlike the previous book, the dashing back and forth around Germany and London here is a lot of fun. I mean who doesn't like to see Nazis and their sympathizers being deceived at every turn and imploding? The characterization is a bit thin but Dicks manages to bring Hitler to life well. He's not portrayed as simply being evil incarnate but as a human being with foibles like the rest of us who is extremely evil. That The Doctor aids Hitler brings up a lot of moral questions but, unsurprisingly, the book avoids them. While Dicks may not mine the moral landscape here, he does treat The Doctor's actions with some seriousness. They didn't feel cartoonish and Dicks at least acknowledged the dilemma.

Timewyrm: Exodus may not be a great story but it was genuinely a lot of fun. It had a brisk pace but not too brisk. It was a hoot to read as The Doctor toyed with Adolf Hitler. In addition we had The War Chief's machinations and Dicks kept us guessing about how the Timewyrm fit into things. In the end The Doctor frees her from Hitler's body and sends her off into the Time Vortex.

In Timewyrm: Apocalypse the TARDIS again brings The Doctor and Ace to a new world in pursuit of the Timewyrm. This time it's the planet Kirith. The natives live seemingly perfect – too perfect, perhaps – lives. Their history says that the previous inhabitants destroyed themselves in nuclear war and that they, the current inhabitants, were rescued from a primitive state by the Panjistri and given civilization.

The Doctor and Ace rescue a young man named Raphael who had been pondering his memories of a friend that he supposedly never had. Ace befriends Raphael and they eventually head out on a little adventure to the harbor where they discover a Panjistri genetics lab with a very large and very mean experiment inside. Meanwhile The Doctor is shown some ancient ruins that are, in fact, not particularly ancient. The Panjistri have obviously pulled the wool over the eyes of the Kirithians.

It turns out that Kirith and its inhabitants are merely part of a grand experiment being carried out by the Panjistri who reside on the planet's nearby moon. The Panjistri are led by The Grand Matriarch whose body is inhabited by the Timewyrm and is trying to delay the destruction of the universe as predicted in the prologue of the book which dealt with the mathematicians at Logopolis. Of course her plans are foiled by The Doctor and she is once again banished into the aether.

Timewyrm: Apocalypse just never really clicked with me. Kirithian society was rather bland – just another bunch of “primitives” for The Doctor to enlighten. The Grand Matriarch is something of a badass and had a suitably convoluted stratagem for achieving universal domination but she and the Timewyrm come into the story too late for them to rescue the story from its doldrums.

Timewyrm: Revelation completes the quadrilogy and establishes an identity for the New Adventures that is all its own. The first three novels were essentially souped-up stories from the television series but this novel takes Doctor Who somewhere new. It has an antecedent in The Ultimate Foe but it takes that adventure in The Matrix to a whole new level. Imagine if The Pilgrim's Progress had been written by Philip K. Dick. This is Doctor Who's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

It opens on Gallifrey where a hermit sits underneath a tree tending a flower before moving to the village of Cheldon Bonniface in 1992 and St. Christopher's church. Inside the Reverend Ernest Trelaw converses with two new parishioners, Peter and Emily Hutchings. Oh, and St. Christopher's is inhabited by a spirit, an intelligence named Saul who is familiar with The Doctor. No one there, including Saul, can shake the feeling that The Doctor will arrive soon. And in a Perivale schoolyard, a bully named Chad Boyle has decided that he's had enough of a classmate named Dorothy – our future Ace – and so he kills her by bringing a brick down on her head.

With the introductory material out of the way, the TARDIS lands in Cheldon Bonniface sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Doctor reacquaints himself with his old friend George, an innkeeper, over a game of chess as Ace retires for the night. Her sleep is disturbed when she is attacked by a figure clad in an astronaut suit – I couldn't help but think of “The Impossible Astronaut” here. Ace flees into the woods but soon finds herself on the surface of the Moon. For his part, The Doctor discovers that George is in fact Hemmings from Timewyrm: Exodus whom we last saw entering a TARDIS which immediately dematerialized. Hemmings believes he is in the employ of a Norse god while the astronaut turns out to be Chad Boyle who is intent on stalking Ace. Plus St. Christopher's is brought to the Moon for good measure.

And thus it begins.

I will forgo any more plot synopsis and instead focus on author Paul Cornell's writing. The rest of the book only gets more surreal and I really appreciated the bizarre tale he wove here. There is a scene early on in the TARDIS which foreshadows the rest of the story. In it The Doctor enters the room with a couple of mugs of hot cocoa and he converses with Ace about dreams. Our Time Lord is very pensive and the scene has a patina of melancholy that gives it a fragile beauty. There's no running down corridors here but instead it just has a mood that I can relate to.

As Ace evades the murderous intent of her childhood nemesis, The Doctor is forced to confront his conscience in the form of his previous incarnations. If you think the new series pioneered The Doctor having any sense of guilt or affection for his companions, think again because it's all in here. At one point The Doctor concludes that the only way to make things right is to have Ace die but he relents and resolves to find another way as killing her, even for the greater good, is simply not the right thing to do. He cannot let that happen after having seen the fates of Adric, Sara, and Katarina. The Doctor dealing with pangs of guilt provides a relatable emotional core for the story around which the surreal action can take place.

On a stylistic note, I really like the presence of St. Christopher's and its inhabitants on the moon. They make for something akin to a Greek chorus. Scenes there occasionally heighten the tension but also provide some respite from the action, the emotional turmoil, and the surreality of the main story. They provide welcome breaks allowing the reader to contemplate the tale and add their own little brand of weirdness into the mix.

All in all the Timewyrm saga is a mixed bag. I am hoping that the New Adventures continue in the vein of Revelation which delves into The Doctor's psyche, his relationships with his companions, and throws in a surreal tale to boot. These elements make for a far more interesting “adult” vision of Doctor Who than merely adding some nudity and profanity.

Next up is the Cat's Cradle trilogy.

Kim's Noodle to Pull Up Stakes

While enjoying a plate of chow fun at Kim's Noodle on Monona Drive the other day I was directed to a sign which noted that the restaurant is moving to West Washington in October. It shall also be rechristened "Viet Bistro".

Was the street construction killing them? Or was perhaps business was just slow generally?

Berghoff Reinvents Itself: Germaniac Kotbusser

Earlier this year the venerable Berghoff underwent some remodeling. Owner Ben Minkoff brought in a couple of consultants who designed new labels and reformulated the brand's beers in order to elevate them above their less than premium status and into craft territory. Minkoff gets credit from me for not abandoning Berghoff's focus on German style brews and the reorg even begat a new line of special brews called the Überbier series. The first entry is Germaniac, a Kotbusser-style ale.

What is a Kotbusser? It's a northern German pale ale that presumably originated or was popular in the city of Cottbus. The Kotbusser was formulated with wheat and oats, in addition to barley, and had honey and possibly molasses. From what I can piece together of the beer's history, it went the way of the dodo in the late 19th century after Germany became a country and the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot became the law of the land. You can check out a Kotbusser recipe from 1853 over at Ron Pattinson's blog. Note the absence of molasses and the low hopping rate.

One of the consultants brought in by Berghoff was Randy Mosher, a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to brewing has he writes about tasting, brewing, memorabilia, and apparently just about anything related to beer. His book Radical Brewing contains a recipe for Kotbusser so Germaniac was likely his idea.

Germaniac is a pretty beer, pouring a light gold color and clear. There was a modicum of bubbles in my glass and my pour produced a small head which went away all too quickly. My nose caught a sprightly grainy aroma along with some spicy hops and a sweetness that reminded me of creamed corn.

On the tongue Germaniac has a medium body that was fairly smooth and a bit creamy – no doubt due to the addition of oats to grain bill. I was a bit afraid that Berghoff's move towards craft and words “pale ale” on the label meant that this was going to be hop bomb but I was pleasantly surprised. The malt shone through first and was very bread-like. Being an ale, there was also a hint of fruity sweetness that was accompanied by some earthy flavors which, I presume, are from the honey and molasses. All of these made for a nice ménage à trois. But it wasn't long before the hops made their presence known. As in the aroma, the hops here were the noble, spicy kind and provided a nice counterpoint to the rest of the flavors.

The hops also gave the beer a dry finish and left a lingering grassy taste. As I drank, I noticed that Germaniac didn't leave much Schaumhaftvermoegen and what there was didn't stick around for long.

Junk food pairing: At 6.3% A.B.V. Germaniac is no session beer so bust open a box of Chicken in Biskit crackers for some padding.

I really enjoyed Germaniac but I made the mistake of drinking it on a rather warm summer day. This is more of a spring beer, to my taste – something to alternate with New Glarus' Cabin Fever. It has a little bit of heft to it for those days when Jack Frost is on the run. Still, I liked having both the malt and hops up front as well as the subtle accents the honey and molasses bring to the table here.

It was a very pleasant surprise for me to have Berghoff resurrect an extinct northern German style of bier. Perhaps Minkoff's next beer will be a Breyhan. I won't hold my breath but I do look forward to tasting what they come up with. Best of luck to Berghoff on trying to ingratiate themselves into the craft community. Beer Advocate's Germaniac page has no reviews and the geniuses there have made an epic taxonomic failure by categorizing it as an American Pale Ale so it seems that Berghoff has a long row to hoe.

Mass Quantities of Beer Consumed at Olin Park 2013 Edition

The weather couldn't have been better for this year's Great Taste of the Midwest. Very temperate with the sun being hidden by clouds every so often. Next year will either be a monsoon or 100+. Mark my words.



Everyone has their own approach to the GT. Some are out for rarities while others look for those massive whirlwinds of flavors like imperial stouts aged in a pickle barrel with lingonberry, cubeb, and haggis tapped through a hop rocket of brett-laced coffee beans shat out by a palm civet. There are those who seek out breweries whose beers are unavailable at home or perhaps breweries who are new and foreign to their palates. Plus there are a host of other stratagems too.

My own plan is to map out German styles, rye beers, and a selection of other brews that sound interesting. And there a few breweries that I hit every year. Oh, and I plan to avoid the long lines at Three Floyds, Bell's, and whatnot. I was tempted to wait in the Surly line this year but opted out. Too much good beer around to wait very long. Plus you always discover interesting brews as you wander around or run into a friend who makes a recommendation. Or you may run into Tyranena's Rob Larson dressed as a satyr.



I tasted 30+ beers and my palate was treated to some incredibly tasty suds. It's difficult to choose favorites and I refuse to label one particular brew as the best. Having said all this, I do want to note some highlights.

The first beer I drank was served from one of these guys.



The folks at Metropolitan brew German-style lagers and do it well. I have missed out on Arc Welder in years past so I was determined to have some this year. I was not disappointed.



Arc Welder is a rye dunkles which combines one of my favorite styles with one of my favorite adjunct grains. This was fantastic. The roasted malt was complemented very well by the spicy rye flavors with hops helping out on a dry finish.

The folks at Lakefront were throwing a disco party.



I wouldn't normally stop at the Lakefront tent but they had Dan on top. Dan was the first entry in their My Turn series and it's a Baltic porter.



Another great beer full of roasted grain goodness with a heft of sweetness and a bit of hops in a (rather futile) attempt at balance. I am still kicking myself for not having bought some of this. If anyone knows of some bottles lurking around, please let me know. They also had a rum barrel Eastside Dark. Pretty tasty but I have to admit that the rum was overpowering. But I like rum.

I drank every Berliner Weiss I could find and there were some really tasty takes on the style. The one that really stood out for me was from the folks at Flossmoor Station.



It was one of the most sour Berliner Weisses I've ever had but what made it interesting was the pronounced lemon flavor. Light,citrusy, and refreshing, it was a fine summer beer.

Tenth and Blake may be the crafty arm of the MillerCoors conglomerate, but they make a fine Berliner Weiss and the novelty of having the Schuss come in the form of tapioca balls a la bubble tea. I went with kiwi this year.



Although I don't have a photo, their sour apricot ale was also very tasty.

New Albanian had a good dunkel and a funky banner.



They also featured an accursed smoked porter that would have made H.P. Lovecraft proud. I didn't sample it but I cannot doubt the unutterable flavors that must have lurked in its stygian gloom. Plus there was a blasphemous poster for it that was filled with eldritch symbols of non-Euclidian geometry. Cthulhu fhtagn!



We wandered over to the real ale tent but I didn't find what I was looking for. However I did spy Red Eye's lemongrass blueberry rye.



I was really impressed with this stuff. The blueberry in the aroma was enticing. It was very smooth and found a perfect balance among all the flavors. It was nice to see a fruit beer where the fruit didn't overpower everything else.

Other fine beers worthy of mention:

Metropolitan's zwickel. Full of yeasty deliciousness and very fresh in contrast to the odd German zwickel that appears on store shelves. A much-underappreciated style, in my humble opinion.

Hopfentea, a Berliner Weiss steeped on tropical tea from Perennial. A wonderful mix of sour, fruit, and herbal flavors.

White Winter Winery had a meadjito that a friend of mine recommended but they were out by the time we got to the tent. I sampled their cranberry mead and it was light, just dry enough, and tasty.

Speaking of meads, the charnel house that is B. Nektar was pouring the spectral Necromangocon which merged honey with the foetid taste of mango and the loathsome miasma of black pepper.

Zanzigz had a nice sessionable rauchbier while Barley John's had a good roggenbier.

The Great Taste was an absolute hoot. The weather was perfect and, as I do every year, I ran into people I knew and chatted with people I didn't. I had one of my favorite foods, an Italian beef, thanks to the FIBS cart. And, of course, I drank lots of great beer and mead. There seemed to be less frat boys puking their guts out this year although a couple of them decided to hit on two pulchritudinous former co-workers of mine as we were chatting. The ladies' uninterest was palpable. Too bad those guys didn't get the message.

Lastly, apologies to Jon(?) from White Winter Winery. He was handing out meadjito recipes when I asked if he knew about mead or was just a pretty face handing out business cards as I was looking to ask about the 9 year-old bottle of their raspberry mead I have in my cellar. Turned out he knew a helluva lot about mead. D'oh! Hopefully he won't hold it against me. For too long, anyway.

The Pre-Great Taste of 2013

The Great Taste festivities kicked off for me last week on Thursday when the friendly folks from Vintage showed up at Dexter's to put a face on their tap takeover. Brewmaster Scott Manning arrived with his minion, Clint, in tow a little after three o'clock.

Truth be told, I started the evening with a Rogue Farms Dirtoir Black Lager because I love dunkels and just couldn't resist. The bartender thought my choice was odd as I was wearing a Vintage t-shirt. It was a fine brew, full of that roasted grain flavor that I crave. After finishing it off I made the switch to Vintage. I started with Scott's Grodziskie, a.k.a. - Grätzer Ale because 1) I asked that he brew it, 2) it's incredibly tasty, and 3) my significant other began her evening with, if memory serves, a Honeycrisp Brandy Dedication which is an abbey dubbel aged in an apple brandy barrel that weighs in at 10.8% ABV and immediately pronounced that I was the designated driver. (That stuff was good too.)

I next tried the Hibiscus Saison-Barrel Aged w/Brett. (It's actually a blend of mostly hibiscus saison with some wee heavy.) Beers laced with brettanomyces are something I am still trying to figure out. I've had a couple on different occasions and, while I finished each bottle, I saw no reason to open another. However, I found that the Vintage saison was incredibly tasty. I enjoy the untainted version of this beer and discovered that this one had a pronounced strawberry flavor which went perfectly with the floral aspect. Clint was kind enough to explain that they used a strain of brettanomyces - bruxellensis - that was light on the popular horse blanket flavor. No doubt sitting in old apple brandy barrels added to the deliciousness. It was light, fruity, and floral with a hint of sour/mustiness - just perfect summer beer.

I am surprised I'd never met Clint before. Scott must have mercy on him as the guy is always gone when I'm at the Vintage instead of slaving away. I hope he didn't get too mad at me when I told him that Tippy Toboggan was one of my favorite brews and that I'm looking forward to the next batch. (I think I used the word "fuckin'" in my description.) He got that look on his face that reminded me of the flower pot of petunias in Hitchhiker's. You see rye coagulates during the brewing process which makes for a lot of work - presumably for him - to keep from having a vat full of an oatmeal-like substance. Sorry, Clint.

A few more highlights of the night: My friend James had Petrus Aged Red which is a Flanders Oud Bruin. Fantastic stuff. Loved the sour cherry flavor. Dexter's pretzel twist was great. The menu states that it comes with a choice of "Stone-Ground, Dusseldorf[sic], Peppadew, Habanero Mustards, and/or Nacho Cheese". Luckily they had horseradish and it cleared out my sinuses. Fine stuff. What kind of philistine puts nacho cheese on soft pretzels?

Coming soon at Vintage is a Baltic porter (begged & pleaded for by yours truly). I am hoping Scott keeps the name he's been using – Uthbert. It will feature smoked wheat left over from the Grätzer Ale. Robin Shepard's taste buds with thank me (and Scott and Clint) while Scott and Clint will thank me when Shepard declares Uthbert beer of the year giving Vintage the honor two years in a row.



On Friday we headed to 608 as Capital was taking over the taps and there was the promise of brewmaster Brian Destree in attendance. On tap were Capital Dark infused with coffee, mint, and vanilla; Appleanche, a doppelbock with apple; and Capsized given the hop rocket treatment.

I started with the Dark infusion. It was a good...malt beverage. The mint was very prominent followed by the coffee with the vanilla bringing up the rear. I liked it as a mint julep malt beverage but I love the dunkles and all of that roasted grain goodness got drowned out by the other flavors. I guess I should note that the infusion was done via hop rocket.

Here's Appleanche:



The Dulcinea loved the stuff and I enjoyed it as well but methinks my tongue was tainted by mint. I tasted fresh apple cider first with it giving way to a bit of malt and some hops at the end. It was good but I suspect the beer aspect will be more apparent when my tongue is fresh. There was more hop flavor than malt. The stuff comes out in bottles soon so I'll be able to try it again and render a final judgment. There was also Capsized IIPA with a Citra hop rocket but I didn't try it.

I chatted with Brian Destree for a bit and found out that Pumpkinataur Wrex will be returning this autumn and that he has a brown ale aged in rum barrels in the pipeline. That is due in January/February. He also mentioned that this year's Eternal Flame was going to be revamped. Instead of a vertical doppelbock, it's going to be an imperial stout with chili. He remarked something akin to, "It'll be different but it will still be hot." I hope I got all that right. For whatever reason, I neglected to ask about the fate of the whole vertical beer project.

I have to admit a certain disappointment at hearing that the Eternal Flame project seems to be dead in the water. On the other hand, it is quite obvious after only a few words that Destree is enthusiastic about his trade. He commented on the Capsized hop rocket with paternal pride and, overall, just seemed excited about the new brews that will be appearing in the coming months and the opportunity he has to, at least in part, remake Capital in his own image. More power to him.

Oh, and 608 did not have horseradish. Soft pretzel and no horseradish? Forsooth!

We ended Friday evening with a brief venture to the Capital Tap Haus where they had some Mutiny IPA infused with pineapple and grapefruit. I shit thee not: I drank a whole pint of an IPA. The fruit flavors were rather muted to my taste but I liked the combination.

Look at these Katzen

Just look at these troublemakers. Lying around in a box looking cute as they plot subterfuges.

And now something competely different from Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog doesn't want people to text and drive so he has made a 35-minute PSA called "From One Second To The Next". It starts out with a sad tale from right here in Wisconsin, Milwaukee to be exact.

Cell/smartphones are forged by Lucifer himself.

Schell's Schmaltz's Alt: The Mud Ducks Strike Again

Notice the proper glassware in the photo.

The altbier hails from the Rhineland and is most closely associated with Düsseldorf these days. It's not a particularly popular style in the United States and, from what I've read, it's considered something of a regional specialty in Germany. The altbier is an Obergäriges Lagerbier, a top-fermenting lager beer. I've read that the altbier is a descendant of various medieval brews which I've come to regard as true but such a broad statement as to be meaningless. Like the koelsch, the alt is the product of a Reinheitsgebot but not the one in Bavaria that everyone is familiar with. This one in the Rhineland forbade the brewing of bottom-fermenting bier. My guess is that, as lagering became more and more popular, laws were enacted to protect the established breweries that didn't lager their bier. This is pure speculation on my part. But lagering was trendy and the brewers in the region split the difference.

Truth be told, I've never had an altbier from Germany. The Malt House occasionally gets a barrel of Uerige but it seems that every time they do, I am either busy, too lazy, or simply forget that they have it. I have tasted a handful of American iterations of the style and it seems that American craft brewers consider the style to be an ale and skip or skimp on the whole lagering process. Thusly a lot of the fruity flavors formed during fermentation remain.

I have recently become enamored of Schell's beers and figured that I'd give their alt a go.

Schmaltz's Alt pours a deep copper. You can see this if you hold your glass to a light. Otherwise it appears a very dark brown, almost black. I got a nice foamy head that stuck around for a while. I was rather disappointed in the distinct lack of Schaumhaftvermoegen. It just slid down the side of the glass. There is a moderate amount of bubbles in the beer. The aroma leans heavily towards caramel but my nose caught toasted grain as well.

The caramel and toasted grain carry forward into the flavor where they are joined by a fruity, plum-like taste as well as that of more heavily roasted grains that give a slight coffee flavor. There are no fruity esters to be had here. Schmaltz's has a nice malty flavor with the caramel being most prominent. While the taste leaned towards sweetness, it was never cloying and had a medium mouthfeel. Some balance is provided by noble hops. I say "some balance" because the hops are a bit faint. You can certainly taste them but they are relegated to the background for the most part. My understanding is that altbiers are generally hopped like a Bohemian pilsner whereas Schmaltz's has much fewer IBUs. But there is no doubt variation in hopping in Düsseldorf so it's probably not fair to say that Schell's take on the style is way off base. It finished with a spicy dryness courtesy of the hops.

While a bit more hops would have been nice, this is a fine bier. (Metropolitan's Iron Works Alt is a good example of malt-hop balance.) The malt takes center stage here but it isn't cloying like most domestic alts I've had. The Schell's website say it's 5.1% ABV which I believe is just a smidgeon above the stuff you get in the Rhineland but the hop dryness and aging have made this stuff eminently quaffable.

Junk food pairing: Schmaltz's Alt pairs well with warm soft pretzels lathered with bacon-horseradish dip.

Best Historical Marker Plaque Thingy Ever

"Rumor has it he might even be a landowner"

I don't know how I missed this.