A Slight Delay

Odds are better than even that neither Susan Quinn nor Nick Taylor thought, much less knew, that their respective books on the WPA and the Great Depression would end up being quite so topical. Inadvertently or not, though, neither Taylor’s American Made: When FDR Put The Nation to Work nor Quinn’s Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times could have been timelier.

In the latter part of last year, Wall Street posted losses the likes of which had not been seen in nearly 80 years. This has led to no small amount of talk and speculation about Depression 2.0, and whether the United States, and the world, are headed down the same long, dark road last travelled in the early 1930’s. Similarly, programs promising jobs and economic stimuli have nearly invaribly drawn comparison to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s litany of “alphabet soup” agencies–the NRA, AAA, CCC, and especially the WPA–formed to fight the poverty, joblessness, and despair that the 1929 crash left in its wake. Reams have been written trying to study, debate, and make sense of what happened, and (more recently) whether it might happen again, so neither Taylor nor Quinn are exactly covering new ground; but given the overall shape of recent events, both books are uncanny in their timing. Read the rest of this entry »

You wouldn’t think that the passing of a tabloid would have inspired so much press. But when the Weekly World News folded (pardon the pun) in 2007, sources as diverse as Wired and Reuters took notice.

For 28 years, the WWN was something of a high-camp version of the New York Daily News, or the National Enquirer crossed with The Onion.  The closing of the world’s most bizzare fishwrap left a void on newsstands, and in readers’ hearts, ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

Seven hundred billion for Wall Street? Check. Another twenty to thirty billion for the Big Three automakers? Well, maybe. A few billion for struggling newspaper and magazine publishers? Don’t hold your breath.

Running a newspaper used to be practically a license to print money; circulation and advertising dollars made it relatively easy for a newspaper or magazine, if well-managed, to stay in the black. These days, though, things are a bit different. The litany of troubled papers and magazines reads like a Who’s Who, or a series of items from a journalism geek’s version of the gossip page: The Miami Herald, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune Company, and others have all suffered, some forced to cut back, and others being put on the auction block. Granted, the failure of a paper—even The Gray Lady—wouldn’t have the same impact on the economy that the demise of the banking industry, or the automotive industry, would. But there’s still reason to pay attention, and to care. Read the rest of this entry »

So, here goes. One last post to wrap up 2008, and to give a sneak peek at what is/might be ahead for 2009. Before I write anything else, though, a quick “Thank you” is in order to anyone who’s taken time to browse, or even actually read, this mess. A more prolonged thank you is due those of you whose comments, emails, and encouragement have made this little enterprise something that’s not only worth doing, but hopefully also worth reading.

On that note, after the jump you’ll find a look back over 2008, and what I’m hoping will lie ahead in 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to food, it seems like there’s not much that’s exotic anymore. Even the local Friday’s has Chimichurri Sliders, and everybody else seems to have dishes from every corner of the globe just for the sake of livening up an otherwise dull menu. The challenge, then, isn’t finding something eclectic on the menu so much as finding it done well. Thankfully, Churrasco Grill falls neatly into the second category.

Churrasco Grill’s interior looks a bit like a walk-in closet with tables and chairs, or perhaps one of the earlier parts of the Marx Brothers’ infamous “stateroom scene.” It’s not altogether uninviting, but it’s cramped. And cramped conditions, combined with a wait of over an hour just for the appetizers, didn’t do much to improve the moods of six people who were already starving when we set foot in the place. Combine that with some wine, and the wisecracks start flowing. Was the Chilean sea bass having visa problems?

Then, somewhat belatedly, the appetizers arrive, the talking stops abruptly, and the chef is your new best friend.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every language has its expressions that don’t quite translate into English. Saudade, weltschmerz, and other lacunae bedevil translators since there’s no easy one-to-one translation for them. So you can imagine the problem posed by Yiddish.

Yiddish is the Marx Brothers to Hebrew’s Maimonedes, Lenny Bruce to its Ben Gurion, klezmer to its kaddash. It doesn’t pretend, or aspire, to be scholarly. Its cadences and meaning carry a different set of cultural baggage than Hebrew.*

Assimilation goes both ways; the speakers and their language, both of which came here in steerage ages ago, didn’t only assimilate into America; as so often happens, America assimilated some of the habits and language of the new arrivals, too. And what an assimilation. Read the rest of this entry »

Neither of the parties responsible for this album shies away from collaboration. Even taking his work as a producer out of the picture, Brian Eno seems to thrive on a collaborative atmosphere, as can be heard on work with John Cale, Jah Wobble, Daniel Lanois, Bill Laswell, Robert Wyatt, and scads of others. David Byrne’s no slouch either, having lent his pipes and trademark quirk to the likes of Cafe Tacuba, Caetano Veloso, and Selena. Oh, and Eno once did an album with that Byrne guy, who did a disc with the selfsame Mr. Eno, which was something of a classic.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that the second time out will be as satisfying. Does anyone even remember the name of the film that reunited the cast of A Fish Called Wanda? I don’t. And it was terrible, so I’m not exactly on tenterhooks waiting to be reminded. Ditto the excerable M*A*S*H* spinoff that wedded a handful of cast members and a C-list writing staff, with predictable results. The Buzzcocks, first time around? Phenomenal. Second time? Well, not so much.

So chemistry is a rare and fleeting thing. Even when two (or more) artists gel the first time around, there’s nothing to garauntee that the second coming will have the same spark. The last time that David Byrne and Brian Eno graced the same studio, the result was the groundbreaking, funky, and sometimes disturbed My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Now, nearly thirty years later, they’ve reunited, and the best news is that Everything That Happens doesn’t sound anything like its worthy predecessor. Read the rest of this entry »

You might be wondering what magpies have to do with writing, exactly. To be honest, I’m not altogether sure myself, but I’ve started this thing, so I’m sure I’ll come up with something. Let’s see, birds, birdsongs, feathers, feather your nest… Ah, there we go. Nests. When working on your next written project, make sure you have a sufficient quantity of stray twigs, small bits of thread, and perhaps some mud and wattles.

No, that wasn’t quite it, either. I’ve got it in my head somehow that magpies are great finders and hoarders of “stuff,” from the aforementioned twigs and thread, to perhaps also bellybutton lint (someone else’s; I don’t think magpies have bellybuttons, though I’ve never asked, either). I don’t know if they’re big on wattles, but… alright, before I get too far off track, here’s the point: Save everything. And I do mean everything. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that time of year again: the season when you’re just finishing the first 75 pounds of leftover turkey when the time comes to plop another one in the oven and endure another several weeks of leftovers. So after you’ve done turkey salad, turkey tetrazzini, turkey pot pie, turkey fritters, turkey croquettes, turkey thermidor, turkey soup, and turkey pudding, what do you do with those last, stubborn bits?

I decided to come up with something that’d give you the turkey-and-stuffing experience without having to go to all the trouble of making stuffing. I’m not generally big on brand names, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but I’ll make an exception here for Thomas Corn Toasting Bread, and for good reason. Whatever you don’t use for the recipe can be toasted and slathered with butter (or used to sop up the leftover gravy), and enjoyed thoroughly. It’s some good stuff. Mind you, it should not be confused with Thomas Corn Toast-R-Cakes, which taste like… well, like you just spilled cream corn on your countertop, wiped it up with a kitchen sponge, and then stuck the whole mess into the toaster instead of the trash.

Having clarified that, let’s move on to the recipe, shall we? You’ll need: Read the rest of this entry »

It would be a bit too easy to say that the cover story of the December 15 issue of Newsweek, Lisa Miller’s “Gay Marriage: Our Mutual Joy,” has ignited controversy. There’s already been plenty of that, before and since the passage of Prop 8 on November 4. So what Miller does isn’t so much ignite the controversy, as fan the flames. Vigorously.

This wasn’t likely her, or the magazine’s, intent. What she does, though, is synthesize the religious arguments written about here and elsewhere, taking on both sides of the issue cogently and eloquently. This is a subject that deserves to be debated, openly and at length, and Miller’s offering should hopefully be good to get that overdue conversation started, hopefully in more civil terms than we’ve seen up to this point.