The Smiths - The Queen is Dead

OK, here we go with the second record you have to have in your collection.

The Smiths put out a lot of great singles, but to me The Queen is Dead is their best full length record. Ten great songs including the title number which managed to rhyme spanner with piano. While there were no huge club dance hits on this record, we got to see Morrisey stretch his song writing beyond the dark sad songs they had specialized in up until then and add a sense of humor to the mix. We also learned that in Morrisey's world Wilde trumped Keats and Yeats combined.

The reason I love the Smiths so much is that on the surface Johnny Marr gives us fantastic danceable pop tunes, but lying just below the surface are smart, painful lyrics. So you could be dancing your ass off while still maintaining a sullen bad attitude. This album won't stop you from downloading half a dozen other Smiths singles off iTunes, but for start to finish listening you can't beat it.

Chicken Fried Steak

I had never heard of chicken fried steak (CFS) before I moved to Texas in 1976, and I was a little afraid they were going to serve me some kind of mutated half chicken, half cow the first time I ate it. But that was not the case. I fell in love with a cheap cut of steak battered up like fried chicken and fried up in a pan with white gravy. Of course you also have to have the appropriate sides, which I say are mashed potatoes and green beans. A roll with butter and iced tea would complete the official meal of Texas.

Now I have written recently about Texans having two main food groups: Mexican and BBQ, but I was negligent in leaving out the CFS. Every little cafe and tavern in Texas seems to have CFS on the menu. This makes me wonder, where did CFS come from? We know Tex-Mex is our take on Mexican food and all the southeastern states that were settled before us have BBQ. Although the Texas version is a little different, I don't think we can lay claim to inventing BBQ. So did we invent CFS?

A quick search of the interweb gives us the definitive answer: The precise origins of the dish are unclear but many sources attribute its development to German and Austrian immigrants to Texas in the nineteenth century who brought recipes for the classic Austrian dish wiener schnitzel. Lamesa, on the Texas South Plains, claims to be the birthplace of chicken fried steak. Good enough for me.

As much as we love Mexican food and BBQ, I think we now have to say, chicken fried steak is the "official meal of Texas."

Real Rain

Yesterday I was reminded what rain can really sound like. That hard southern rain where two inches falls in an hour. The kind of rain that if you get caught out in it, you not only get drenched, your head hurts from the pounding.

Yes it does rain a lot in the Pacific Northwest, but I think it would make more sense to say it rains consistently, not a lot. In 30 minutes yesterday we got more rain than Portland does in a month. As cool as it is to watch, there are two major problems the rain brings with it. One, flash floods and two, it feels like you are taking a sauna in a swamp with a plastic bag wrapped around you when it stops and the sun comes out. Flash floods are not very fun either. Freeway underpasses and other low lying areas fill up with water fast and can make the roads impassable. Also, the rain seems to activate all the oil on the road and makes driving a contact sport.

It's funny when something you don't really notice any more in Portland, can bring everything to a stop in Houston.

BBQ or Mexican?

You have all played the game before, if you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life what would it be? The funny thing is most people have an answer for this, but if we think abut it, eating the same thing for a week would drive us crazy.

I have been back in Texas for a few days now and there are basically two types of food we survive on here: BBQ and Mexican. To be clear, the Mexican food should be referred to as Tex-Mex as it different from what they eat in Mexico and the lame stuff they call Mexican food on the west coast. So far, the majority of my meals have come from one of these two categories. Saturday night we went to an upscale Mexican restaurant where you basically pay a little more to sit in a nice atmosphere and eat the same thing you would in a Cantina, but still very good. Sunday night we went back to the old tried and true family Mexican restaurant Ninfa's. Ninfa, like many restaurant owners turned her ability to cook for a large extended family into a chain of restaurants here in Houston in the 70's. She passed away last year but the restaurants are still around.

For lunch we are heading to Goode Company BBQ. Jim Goode has turned his talent for making a great BBQ sauce into a chain of BBQ and seafood restaurants. As you might have guessed, we are not totally against chain restaurants here in Texas, as long as we know the person who started them and we can still go down to the original place they started. Tomorrow I will hit Otto's BBQ, George Bush Sr.'s favorite BBQ place in Houston. On this one issue I may have to agree with him. Then on the way to San Antonio I am sure I will hit another of the 100 best BBQ spots in Texas for lunch. Every small town has a great BBQ restaurant so the picking is easy.

In case you don't know, San Antonio is mostly populated by Mexican-Americans, so guess what I'll be eating there! After a few days the pendulum will have swung too far to Mexican and I'll have to get a little more BBQ in Houston before I fly home to Portland where I will go back to eating sushi.

I guess this is a long way of saying, you can't live on one kind of food.

The Clash - London Calling

I am going to get this thing started with the best record I own, The Clash, London Calling. I couldn't wait to get this record, I kept checking the record store as I knew it was supposed to be released the same time in the US as in the UK. 1979, Cactus Records in Houston, Texas. A beautiful double album (now on one CD) that goes from power punk to reggae to a top 40 hit, Train in Vain.

I played this record all weekend until I knew every word by the time I left for school on Monday. To this day, if I hear a song on the radio or my shuffle I instinctively start singing the next song in the original album order. 19 amazing songs (Train in Vain is a hidden extra), who puts that many good songs on one record these days?

When you buy this record, your are going to have to make sure the neighbors are away, because you are going to want to turn it up loud. Your going to dance and jump up and down and you may feel like smashing a few things, that's the contact high from all the speed Mick Jones was on at the time.

The 100 records you should own overview

OK, lets set the ground rules for this thing. There are a lot of great bands and there are a lot of what used to be called, great albums. They don't always go together. The Beatles made a lot of crappy records, in fact I think they only made one that sounds good start to finish and that's the White Album (it may or may not make the list). The first four Led Zeppelin albums are all great (II and IV will make the list), these guys knew how to make a record start to finish. The Who only made one good album, Who's Next. All the good Who songs that they play over and over again came from this one record.

This will not be just a trip back to last century. There are some great bands that are alive and well and even a couple of classics from the 2000's, but more on that later. What I want to do here is mine my collection and refute the iTunes paradigm that you only need to download the singles you like. There is a place for that, but not here. Here you will be turned on to rare, and not so rare records that you can sit down and enjoy for the entire playing time.

So every so often I will post a new record review and in a couple of years, you'll have a great collection. Enjoy!

Missing Texas?

It is strange that I have lived in Oregon for 12 years, but I still do not call myself an Oregonian. When people ask I say I am from Texas. I have not lived there since 1991, and I wasn't born there, but somehow it dominates my sense of self. The bigger mystery to me is why I still identify with Texas so strongly when I have no intention of ever moving back there. My parents, brother and sister all live there so I still have very strong ties to the state. We visit once or twice a year so it's not like I am pining for a long lost motherland. And the biggest irony of all is Oregon is much more in line with my personality and beliefs. Oregon is a blue state, Texas as red as they get. The Prius is the state car of Oregon, in Texas the SUV is king. When it comes to race and sexual politics Texas is still the old south, while Oregon is a little more forward thinking, etc., etc.

However there are some drawbacks to living in Oregon. All you ever hear about are Pac 10 sports and I wish most of the Pac 10 teams would fall off into the ocean with all the Florida schools following close behind. Crowding into a sports bar with a group of alumni you have very little in common with at 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning is not as fun as heading out to Darrel Royal Memorial stadium on a Saturday afternoon.

Basically I am saying I would be happy to have a private jet that lands in Austin every Saturday morning and leaves loaded up with Green Mesquite BBQ at 2:00 a.m. on game days and buzzes by Houston for Christmas and birthdays. And for less than 400 hours a year Texas still gets to be where I am from, versus the 8,360 hours spent in Oregon.

Alberta Street Oyster Bar and Grill

New restaurant night moved to Tuesday this week as we knew we'd be meeting our friends Jenny and Al Campbell for dinner at a new restaurant, the Alberta Street oyster bar and grill. This area of town has been transforming over the last few years and is now home to many great restaurants and art galleries. They even have their own answer to the Pearl District's First Thursday (the first thursday of the month all the galleries stay open late) called last Thursday - there's more street art and a little more funky vibe than the posh Pearl affair.

Back to the review. The restaurant was more upscale than I expected from the name. Most of the oyster bars I have been to in New Orleans are a little grungy. The waitress was very nice and quite attentive. I ordered the steak special which I have to say was very good. Everyone else loaded up on appetizers. The fois gois was excellent as was the tuna tar tar. I enjoyed my arugula salad and the beet salad was also very nice. The only disapointment was the sea bass, which tasted a little fishy. For dersert we tried the apple tart and the highly touted s'more and I think we all agreed that the apple desert far outpaced it's camp fire friend. And just in case you think I forgot, yes we did try the oysters and they were great.

Alberta Street oyster bar and grill
2926 NE Alberta StPortland, OR97211
(503) 284-9600

Hours:
Sun-Mon, Wed-Thu 4:30pm-10pm
Fri-Sat 4:30pm-11pm

Citysearch review

Impending Meeting

Ever have to go to a meeting or a presentation that you know is not going to go well? Happens all the time in advertising. You have to meet deadlines or people don't want to listen to your input and have gone down a road that can only lead to misadventure. It's a crappy feeling waking up knowing you are about to waste several hours of your life.

The thing is you don't want to be right. You in fact hope very strongly that you will be wrong and that everything will turn out OK, but there is a big difference between knowing something is going to go wrong and taking a chance on something that could be great. We see a lot of great ideas in this business that are risky. In those cases you can be hopeful, you can feel like we are doing the right thing and if it doesn't work out it wasn't your fault. Not the case today. If it doesn't work out I'll only have myself to blame for not pushing hard enough for another idea.

Nicknames

I had a nickname all through my school years and to be honest I didn't care one way or the other about it. I didn't like or dislike the name. In fact I didn't think much about it until my junior year in high school. I was running for an elected office in my senior class and the vast majority of people knew only by my nickname so I wondered if they saw my real name on the ballot would they know who to vote for. To my surprise everyone got it right and I won quite easily.

Here we are in 2007 and I feel like President Bush has given nicknames a bad name. A great Texas tradition of slapping everyone you know with a friendly moniker has been tarnished by "old Blackie" mismanaging the Katrina disaster relief effort. I shudder now when John Stewart uses one of Bush's shorthand names in his mocking voice. So, the question is, is Bush killing the nickname?

Maybe, or maybe nicknames are better left for school days. I still have fun thinking back on some of my favorites. My good friend Grey Kitchens became Pink Bathrooms. Jimmy Springfield became Springding. Hunt Holesomback who fainted one day in a meeting became Hunt Holdmeup. All fun with real names. Some were even more creative. There was a guy in school who I have no idea what his real name was, we always called him Mark Boom's mother's other son. Before Brangelina there was Flang (Floyd and Angie) and last but not least we could never come up with a good nickname for one of my closest friends Kirk Cameron, he became, the guy with no nickname.

Recommended Reading

I came late to reading. Although both my parents are big readers, I don’t remember being pushed to read much as a child. In high school and college I skirted my reading responsibilities as much as possible. Then a strange thing happened. Traveling around Europe for a year after I graduated I became an avid reader. You’d meet people on trains or in hostels and you would trade books because you didn’t have the backpack space to carry all the books you could read. This has lead to a small obsession with collecting modern first edition books.

Below is a list of some of my favorite books.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marques
Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marques
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Brothers K by David James Duncan
The River Why by David James Duncan
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig

All-Time Greatest Sports Books

Ball Four by Jim Bouton
Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger
The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
Paper Lion by George Plimpton
The Sweet Science by A.J. Liebling
A Season on the Brink by John Feinstein
Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins,
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella

Belize Vacation

It is hard to say why we decided to go to Belize for vacation, as it was not initially on our radar. We were looking for a nice relaxing getaway where we could unplug and de-stress. We considered Costa Rica and Hawaii, but after reading a New York Times review of the Francis Ford Coppola resorts in Belize we became very interested. My first inclination was that we would not be able to afford what seemed to be the playground for the rich and famous, but when Barbara's brother David and his wife Meg joined us we found a two bedroom beach front bungalow was within our price range.

I have to say making the arrangements is a little old school. Your e-mails are not immediately returned and there is some faxing back and forth, but all in all pretty painless. Getting to Belize is fairly painless too, it was only two hours from Houston or Atlanta. Once there we took a small plane (11 seats) to Placencia, the town 10 minutes from the Turtle Inn resort where we were staying for seven nights.

Arriving at the resort I had one of those great modern travel moments - the place actually looks as good as it did on the web site. Our bungalow was on the beach, as advertised. The place was beautiful, 10 steps to the water and not too many more to the pool and restaurant. They also had plenty of bikes for us to peddle 15 minutes into town where we stocked up on water and Belkin, the local beer. While the food and in-room refrigerator were great, it was nice to be able to economize a little by going into town.

On to the unplugging and de-stressing. There are no TVs, computers, newspapers, cell phones, etc. in the rooms at the resort, so you can really forget about the outside world. There is a Internet cafe in town and I am sure you can get on the hotel's computer if you had to, but we were all about reading books, swimming, eating good meals and basically being lazy. To that end we didn't participate in any of the array of cool events they offer at the resort until Thursday (day 6).

When we finally got going we signed up for the boat trip along the Monkey River. It was a great trip that highlighted the wildlife and vegetation of Belize. Our guide told us this was the river that they shot some of the movie Apocalypse Now on and why Coppola fell in love with Belize. We saw a ton of amazing birds, a few crocodiles and the highlight of the trip was when we stopped and hiked a little way into the jungle to see the howler monkeys. We came upon a family of five monkeys and when they started screaming you felt like you could hear them a mile away. Another neat part of the trip was encountering a group of manatees on the way back to the resort. Amazingly beautiful animals.

On Friday, David and Meg did the snorkel/scuba trip which they said was one of the best they have ever done (and they are pretty experienced). There are several other tours that are offered through the hotel or that you can arrange in town. Although we didn't participate in any others, we heard good reviews from the other travellers we talked to.

There are also several good restaurants in town, so you don't feel like you have to eat at the resort every night. We took a cab there as we didn't feel safe riding the bikes at night - there are no lights and people drive pretty fast. If you have a chance to go we can recommend the French Connection, a relatively new place that offers upscale seafood and french inspired dishes. It is owned by a nice young couple from England. You should also check out the Tratatoria for some of the best old school Italian food I have had in a while. The portions are huge and very reasonably priced, plus the guy who owns the place is a whacked out old hippy who will keep you entertained.

Come Saturday we were very sad to leave. Belize was a great experience that is made even easier by the fact that everyone speaks English and is happy to take US dollars. If you get to the Belize City airport early enough you can close out your trip with the Belize Special at the airport restaurant and a rum punch at Jet's Bar. A good way to go out.

What is the What

Dave Eggers has created an amalgamation of the Lost Boys of Sudan's experience through the real character Valentino Achak Deng. As you read the book it is hard to imagine that anyone could have lived through even one of the tribulations that Deng experiences never mind the entire story that unfolds in this amazing book . It is a rich narrative that allows you into the pain, despair and endurance that Deng experiences as he crosses the desert, surviving starvation, thirst and man-eating lions on his march to squalid refugee camps and finally his mystifying arrival in Atlanta, GA.

As shocking as the trek across the desert is, it is how the Lost Boys deal with their eventual arrival in the US that is most intriguing. The in-fighting and politics are juxtaposed with close personal ties and loss that continue well after their "old" life is left behind.

This book is a must read for anyone who has seen or heard a news report about Sudan or Darfur and thought, "how did this ever happen?"

Buy this book at Amazon

Hiroshi

Sunday night is new restaurant night at our house. The restaurant does not have to be new, just new to us (we have a habit of going to the same places over and over).

This week we checked out a new sushi place in Portland's trendy Pearl district called Hiroshi. It is a small, elegant place with a nice sushi bar located in the front and tables in the back. Overall the food was great. We started with the tuna tar tar appetizer which was very nice. We didn't go overboard on the sushi: fresh salmon, yellow fin tuna, a spicy tuna roll, a creamy scallop roll and the special Oregon roll, which was the highlight of the meal for me. My wife especially loved the spicy tuna roll.

Pros: The sushi was great and the portions were large, but not overwhelming. The waitstaff was attentive and the atmosphere was very nice.

Cons: I did feel we were paying a Pearl District premium when the check came.

Hiroshi Restaurant
926 NW 10th Avenue
Portland, OR 97209
Phone: (503) 619-0580

Hours:
Tue-Fri 11:30am-2pm, 6pm-9pm
Sat-Sun 6pm-9pm
Price: $$

Citysearch review