Abbott or Hobbit?
Posted on July 26, 2007
I have toured most of the major cathedrals of Europe, slogged up the narrow stairs of many a major-Duomo, seen enough of the glory of God and the riches of Popes to tempt me to a career change, but what would Jesus think about this place? I am in Taipei, Taiwan to teach a seminar and walk by this little Catholic church every day. Does St. Peter have a place for weird architects? The circular designs are typically Chinese, but there is something about the swoopy-doopy steeple that doesn’t quite work.
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American Cheese
Posted on July 13, 2007
Maybe it reveals me as the pious food snob that I am, but today, in a Continental jet wafting over Winnemucca I stare at a sealed, steamed-up baggie labeled “Pierre Creations: Charbroiled Beef With American Cheese†wondering just what it would taste like. First, I was stunned to get a meal on a plane, the first one on a domestic flight in more than a year. Then, my only choice was a cheeseburger. Glad I am not a vegan or a Hindu or a cardio case. What surprised me is that everyone around me gleefully accepted this artery-buster. But, why not? It is small (everything in moderation is my mantra), nobody’s watching, nobody will tattle.
American Cheese: I can’t remember when I last sunk my jowls into a hot glob of American Cheese (I don’t eat Nachos). When I was a kid I had a choice of American or Swiss. One was orangish, the other was more whitish and had holes. I grew up In the Midwestern US, an American/Swiss, Chop Suey/Chow Mien sort of place. Pizza was exotic: Eye-talian. American Cheese, in one form, still comes in true American-style “don’t mess with me†individually wrapped slices. Not wrapped, actually, but a mixture of substances (51% real cheese by law) poured onto each plastic wrapper and chemically induced to emulsify and congeal.
So, struggling with the plastic, I unwrap this “handmade†delicacy, which looks something like a prop from CSI. I take a bite: not a savoring, slow, tooth-sinker as when I first sampled Kobe beef, but a more businesslike, matter-of-fact chomp. It is…edible, a blunt cheddar that neither amuses or offends. Scientist say smells can provoke powerful memories, and this flashes me back to the White Castles (aka gut bombs or sliders) I snarfed by the half dozen while cramming for college exams, memories of slob roommates and barely making the rent. It certainly does not have the pure, lovingly assembled by mom ‘n’ pop elan of an In-And-Out Burger (but then I have never ordered one with cheese).
But, who am I to criticize? I, who am corrupted by rock star chefs who swing their cleavers as cheekily as Eric Clapton swings his axe, by a misapprehension that radicchio is superior to iceberg lettuce, that slabs of cold, fat tuna served with horseradish rate higher than tunafish with Mac ‘n’ Cheese.
I have forgotten what Kobe beef tastes like and I will forget this one too but, that aside, I am curious as to whether American Cheese may have lost respect in the rest of the world. And I do wonder what it would taste like on French Fries.
» Filed Under Airlines, Culture, Food & Wine, Misc. | Leave a Comment
Detroit: A Reluctant Renaissance
Posted on June 29, 2007
“Hey dear…where shall we go on vacation?â€
“Honeybun, how about Detroit?â€
It is not exactly my typical project, but I am working under a grant on a Ken Burns-style documentary on how homeless people, addicts and others who slipped through the cracks, have taken back their lives. What better place to do this than Detroit, which itself is on a long slog toward a recovery.
Even though Detroit has announced that it is hopping on the tourism promotion bandwagon (as most towns do as they gasp for revenues) it will take a long, long time for it to remake itself into a magnet for travelers. Yes, it is proudly constructing a “riverwalk,†a feature that gave San Antonio, an otherwise nothing town, a nice boost. Great perhaps for locals and conventioneers stuck in a downtown hotel, but you have head out of town to find the car culture that made Detroit famous: the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn and the Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills. Of course you can see the economic devastation the rise and fall of that industry brought this once-great urban area without traveling to the burbs.
Look at the Michigan Central Railroad Station (or should I say “cover your eyesâ€). Imagine this Beaux-Arts palace when it opened in 1913. It was designed by the same architects who did the recently-restored Grand Central Station in New York. Some of its top floors were never occupied. A victim of the automobile’s success, it closed in 1988 after car culture destroyed rail travel. There are no plans to restore this once-grand structure, however. In private hands, it rises like a post apocalyptic monolith, the center of a moonscape of a neighborhood and a turnkey movie set for Bladerunner-like SciFi flicks. If broken window syndrome is valid, this old station, visible for miles, is its foremost symbol.
But traveling with locals through the city, I do see a few flickers of hope. Between the burned out, abandoned houses I spot the restorations of urban pioneers and signs touting a “hip urban life.†Elegant buildings on once-grand boulevards are being restored, some as low income and supportive housing. None of this can be criticized as gentrification. It is rescue, a renaissance that is happening, but ever so slowly.
Meanwhile Mensa has announced that it will hold its 2010 convention in Detroit. Maybe they’ll have a few ideas.
» Filed Under Detroit, Misc., Photography | Leave a Comment
NanoBeat: What Would Kerouac Think?
Posted on June 19, 2007
When I was much younger than now, my image of a beatnik was the bongo-playing Maynard G. Krebs, a 1950s TV sitcom character who went apoplectic at the mere utterance of the word “work.†To my parents, beatniks were lazy, laughable bums who didn’t understand that life was all about battling crabgrass and the acquisition of a new Nash Rambler.
My writing heroes came after the beats: Wolfe, Capote, even the drug-addled Hunter Thompson…in fact almost anyone who wrote for Rolling Stone in the 70s including travel writer Jan Morris. Kerouac and Thompson tried to grow synapses between their brains and the page. For Kerouac it was marathon streams of consciousness on rolls of teletype paper. For “The Duke†it was buying the newest, fastest electric typewriter so he could barrel into his prose as he did across the Nevada desert with his stoned Samoan attorney. I was a news drone in the 70s, pounding out stories on deadline about fires, politics and garbage strikes in “inverted pyramid†style, a god awful journalistic convention which jammed the important stuff in the beginning so an editor could chop off the fun stuff like a butcher trims a string of baloney. I was nicknamed “thunder thumbs†because I typed so hard it angered my desk mates. It was not a place for someone with “On The Road†aspirations, but at least I remained sober.
I didn’t think about this much until a friend and one of my wife Pat’s clients came to town. Richard Brown is the senior marketing executive at VIA Technologies Inc., the Taiwan-based computer chip company. He was introducing something quite revolutionary, an inexpensive computer about the size of a woman’s clutch purse that is Kerouac’s stream of teletype paper and Thompson’s typewriter on speed all in one, with the addition of computery things like connectivity for research, email and video and photo capabilities. Many newspaper reporters, by the way, now carry camcorders and are responsible for videos and podcasts as well as print media stories.
So, we wandered down to San Francisco’s North Beach, the crucible of the beat generation, where Richard went on a shopping spree for all things “beat.†I have lived in or near San Francisco a good part of my life, but I had never explored it from the beat perspective. I should play tourist in my own town more often. We paid a visit to the Beat Museum, wandered Kerouac Alley, browsed the stacks at City Lights and settled down Vesuvio, where Richard showed us this new device. I had a bit of fun putting together this video which you can find here or on YouTube.
» Filed Under Video, California, Culture, Misc., Tech & Science | Leave a Comment
Where’s The Kibbles: Why We Rate Cat Food Over Air Travel
Posted on May 24, 2007
Cats, as you are well aware, know more than we do. I asked both of our cats, Max and Moritz, about that and they responded with their inscrutable “I don’t suffer fools” look. Every time I travel, Max plants himself inside of my open suitcase marking my black sweaters with tufts of fuzz while Moritz frequently deposits a turd at the front door. I know they know I will be flying and I know they know that that will, in most cases, be an unsatisfying experience. Max crawled between me and my newspaper, the other day, as I read the University of Michigan’s Consumer Satisfaction ratings which placed US airlines far lower that cat food, even lower that the IRS.
Flash Video and Full Story on ConnectedTraveler.com
Where's The Kibbles: Why We Rate Cat Food Over Air Travel [4:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download» Filed Under Video, Airlines, News | Leave a Comment
