My first hour back in Atlanta after a 5 week stead was spent stuck in Lenox Traffic. I told the driver to let me out and ran, bags in tow,  inside Chipotle for a burrito and a beer.

I ignored the beer in favor of the burrito until theend, when I chugged it and burped  loudly as a swaggered contentedly to the trash bin. This was a bit of theater designed for all the other patrons who had stopped eating in favor of watching me devour the burrito.  Then I grabbed my bags with a flourish and continued walking  to East Andrews where I met Dave for his 30^th birthday party.  Happy Birthday Dave.

The bartended remained pleasant and professional even after I lectured him on Flair, and how it wouldn’t be tolerated. Then I allowed him to pour Dave the first of many Miller’s Gin and Tonics.

Flash forward a few days.  I am at the biggest Liquor Store in Great Bend Kansas. They don’t have Millers but they have one bottle of Hendricks that I grab at like it’s the last spoon in a game of spoons. Then Pop and I pick up Grandma and head back to the homestead  for what became a wonderful week of relaxation, food, drink, and shuffleboard.

One of the many highlights was the hour long bus ride to the Bunker Hill
(pop. 101) and its Bunker Hill Café.  Jerry was hanging out the side window Road Sign hunting the whole way, but most of the squirrelly signs dodged his dead soldiers. Who says there is nothing to do in Kansas.  Once there I had a Filet Mignon cut like a softball, with a side of hydroponic Tomatoes. Best steak I have had in a long-long time.  So long, in fact, that I can’t really remember enjoying one more. 

During dinner I secured an invitation to drive some monstrous tractors next time I am out there.  Turns out that these ones are equipped with satellite guidance, such that you only have to take control as you change directions.  Satellite Guided Monster Tractors. Cool.  

Driving straight has always been my week spot: My tracks always start bowing out until I have to concede defeat and trim them up, spending two passes only working the edges until I have  a straight line.    Well, its embarrassing but no one really notices, which can’t be said for actually missing ground, which leads to  embarrassing mid field  figure eights trying to catch strands of ground you miss. And if you just leave slivers of unplowed land out there weeds will give you away in a week.

Moving right along.  I called ex-colleague and old friend Rich Hamel up to tell him about the Bunker Hill Café. Rich is a Storm Chaser, who has therefore become familiar with Kansas. “Salina is Storm Chaser Central” he tells me.    Well, now he knows where to get a good steak, but I hope he doesn’t go there in a hurry, since the service is quite slow.

The big joke going around Bunker Hill is about the neighborhood town of Susank.  It Starts with the gambit, “If Sue Sank who would save her?”. The answer? “Ellinwood”.

Population 2000.

When a spot at the Mina bar opened up after about an hour’s wait I felt obligated to give it to another regular who  I was sharing a drink with .  A Great Lady with hands like Dr. Bernice:  our huddled conversation over the last hour surely intrigued a few of the other diners.   

She paid for her drinks with fruit and mine with Cash.   But I didn’t want to eat at the bar reaching over her exotically furred shoulder so I decided to make for the hills.  Russian, specifically, via Nob.

I made it about three blocks when I noticed  Canteen,  a “row  boat” sized diner affixed to the Commodore Hotel.    I hastily ended the call I was on, and walked in  for a bite of what my instincts told me was going to be terrific food.

The place can sit 24 people uncomfortably.   The barstools are welded to floor along the lime green countertop. Exposed light bulbs hand from the ceiling, reflecting off the aluminum backsplash the lines the exposed kitchen.  Small booths line the back wall inset built-in bookshelves. 

They left a full bottle of water on my table for me to pour at leisure, served me a dolup of beet salad to clean the palate, put a piping hot roll on the table once I ordered,  served up the best bits of halibut ceviche I have ever eaten,  and cooked up a  white bean soup with a surprising complexity that allowed the dish to transcend the  ‘comfort food’ caste that bean soups are normally consigned to.  In short, I fell completely in love with the place.

After dinner I walked into the hotel lobby and read that the cook is actually the exChef of Rubicon.  I wasn’t surprised.

A week later I was sitting at the Frascati bar talking it up with two foodies.  I quickly learned the gentleman considered it a special pleasure to be able to introduce such a great restauruant to his date, who is usually the one doing the entertaining.     I made it clear that I was in fact Frascati’s number one fan, an opinion I buttressed by pointing out all the restaurants I had frequented in the last few years, including Canteen, which I had been to three more times in the last week.     But when I mentioned the frequency that I attended Michael Mina the woman showed a split second of   shock and confusion, and in the proceeding inquisition I came to understand  that she wasn’t simply doing marketing for Aqua, she was the wife of the owner (I used 'date' in the broader sense of the word earlier). 

In understood her surprise that I would hang out there, since the place lacks what most people under 60 would call a scene, but could offer no explanation except that I am creature of habit, get along with staff quite well, and have a knack for securing free drinks there.

She pivoted into a spirited pitch for Aqua, gave me her card, and suggested I come in on a Thursday, some Thursday.

So I went on a Sunday.    If in fact the Thursday scene is as wild as she purports I would want to go there first on an off night to case the place.    I started with the soup, which was poured of an oyster flan.    One of my first forays into fine dining was the Water Chesnut soup and Joel, which is simply heaven, with a layer of custard along the bottom.  So I was drawn to this soup, which was terrific.

The next dish was the Monkfish, which  came out  crusted in something green (tobiko maybe, I never fully read menu entries) and had veins of cartilage running through it that you could feel when you cut into it, but not when you chewed it.

These little mysteries ensured that I loved the dish, even though it was all I could do to finish such a surprisingly generous portion size.  (Generous is a relative term to be evaluated in terms of Michael Mina, Aqua, Joel, and my stuffed belly). I managed to weasel a half glass of wine out of the bartender too, which I finished with a complementary array of little candies.

Walked back up the hill listening to the new Broken Social Scene album, stuffed and content.

Broken Social Scene put on one heck of a concert last Wednesday night. Everything  prior to the last ten minutes was a brilliant display of music and muscicianship.  The new songs are a bit more anthemic- they can be sung along with  in concert- but the most noticeable difference between the two albums is the production values. The new album is expansive like the first, but affords each instrument less space.

There still are a armloads of instruments to elbow you around, as evidenced  during the concert, where there were between seven and fifteen people playing at any given moment.  Everyone on stage looked to be having a good natured type of fun, which had me thinking that maybe the ubiquitous “Collective” appellation refers to fact that these guys look a bit like a Christian Rock band with an affected scruffy look.  Its Polyphonic Spree with beards instead of robes.

But its all good. Heck, its all great, except for the last ten minutes.

The beginning of the end was when the lead singer expressed some disappointment that there wasn’t enough dancing during Hotel, their funkiest number.   Shortly after that  he launches into a short but idiotic polemic.  When he said “I don’t want to get into one of those ‘less-talk-more-rock’ moments”, I shudderred and had to bite back just that heckle, but I was further stunned when he continued with “but I just have to say I love San Francisco, and I know its been a tough year, with all these White Men trying to ruin the country”.     That's nearly an exact quote, of the entire speech.

Then they played a muddled version of Its All Going to Break, which is a standout song, but fail flat due to their attempts to demonstrate the  feedback tricks they learned opening for Wilco on the Ghost is Born tour.

Then the lights came on and their 3000 lily-white fans left the building. I saw only one black person.   This completely white San Francisco Audience is the Lead Singer’s favorite, if we take his repeated comments as face value, but it was comprised completely of White Men and Women.

Hey, I didn’t think anything of it until he decided to use “White Men” and an epithet.

Idiot.

The first we see of Sean Penn in the Interpreter is him sitting despondently in a dive bar after rebooting its jukebox so he can hear ‘If I had a boat’ by Lyle Lovett, instead of the upbeat song playing when the scene begins.

The problem with starting every movie in a dive bar with Lyle Lovett playing in the background is that its likely to be the best scene in the movie. Oh, and its not likely to make a whole lot of sense.

'If I had A boat' was  meant to be a lighthearted one-off of Townes Van Zandt’s “Buckskin Stallion”, which was truly a morose song. Had Penn’s scene continued for another minute Lyle was going to crack a joke about Tonto telling the Lone Ranger to kiss his ass. But in Hollywood you can always cut away from the inconvenient parts.

Then again, Penn was last seen bailing water out of a canoe he had garrisoned in hopes of rescuing drowning hurricane victims. He had forgotten to plug the hole used for draining the thing,  as so the only relief he provided was purely comic. Which is probably what Lyle was going for too.

Unlike Penn's boat, this movie sank under the dead weight of its internal contradictions. For instance, Penn can't sleep at home because it reminds him of his recently dead wife, and he can't do his job because of his attraction to  Nicole Kidman.

Or this gem: The movie is an adaptation of a book about a Muslim bus bombing, but somewhere along the way the Muslims were replaced with African Despots, yet the lecture remains the same. 

You would think that whether the movie's antagonists are African warlords or  Muslim Terrorists you would be able to muster up a few points outside the traditional liberal othodoxy, but all this movie can scrounge up  is piles of the same old circle of violence claptrap, and one-and-a-half anti-UN lines.  

Not surprisingly, those are the best 1.5 lines in the movie: “You’re having a Bad year”, he says to the militant turned  U.N. interpreter.

He’s referring to such banner UN programs like Oil-for-food, and Child Sex slave rings, but rather then mention them, he gets his line in and the movie quickly moves on to the attractive U.N. Functionary’s  more savory Circle of Violence lectures. She eventually wins Sean’s character over, a conversion shown in movies climax by Sean Penn hammering the point home by emotionally explaining “This is how you put down a gun”.    

And everyone in the theatre knows that even though the movie is about African Warlords, its not about African Warlords.  It about Michael Moore’s Muslim minutmen, and the hopelessness of our war against Iraq.   Its unfortunate that this movie lacks the courage to make its point directly.  It would have been a laughable point, but at least they would have been honest.

Pitchfork likes what Ryan Adams is up to these days.   I had stopped listening after RockNRoll, but have started again with Cold Roses.  .   I like it well enough that I have to go get his latest,  Jacksonville City NIghts. 

His songs about Jacksonville tend to be damn fine.

Look a how the pitchfork ratings are clawwing back. His next album promisses to top Heartbreaker!

 Ryan Adams and the Cardinals: Jacksonville City Nights
[Lost Highway; 2005] Rating: 7.7 - Review by: Marc Hogan 

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals: Cold Roses
[Lost Highway; 2005] Rating: 7.2 - Review by: Amanda Petrusich 

Ryan Adams: Love Is Hell, Pts. 1 & 2
[Lost Highway; 2003] Rating: 3.1 / 4.0 - Review by: Hartley Goldstein 

Ryan Adams: Rock N Roll
[Lost Highway; 2003] Rating: 2.9 - Review by: Amanda Petrusich 

Ryan Adams: Demolition
[Lost Highway; 2002] Rating: 5.5 - Review by: Alison Fields 

Ryan Adams: Gold / Side 4
[Lost Highway; 2001] Rating: 6.0 / 8.0 - Review by: Christopher F. Schiel

Ryan Adams: Heartbreaker
[Bloodshot; 2000] Rating: 9.0 - Review by: Steven Byrd

Saturday, Nov. 19 - at Portland, OR (HBO)
Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Sharmba Mitchell
Andre Ward vs. TBA.

Saturday, Nov. 26 - at Sheffield, England (PPV)
Ricky Hatton vs. Carlos Maussa.

Saturday, Dec. 3 - at Las Vegas, NV (HBO-PPV)
Jermain Taylor vs. Bernard Hopkins
Oscar Larios vs. Israel Vazquez
Ike Quartey vs. Carlos Bojorquez
Vernon Forrest vs. TBA.

Saturday, Dec. 10 - at Uncasville, CT (HBO)
Winky Wright vs. Sam Soliman.

Saturday, Jan. 21 - at Las Vegas, NV (HBO-PPV)
Manny Pacquiao vs. Erik Morales.

The reason I haven’t been writing much is not that I am not having any fun, its just that so much of what strikes me as funny these days doesn’t transfer to print. Not without extended setups and small payoffs. Here, watch:

Alex and I were talking about the metabolic loads of 400 meter runs versus 200 sprints.  They are completely different, we agreed, but he went one further pointing out that some athletes can run 400 meters faster than they can run 200 meters.

In subsequent conversations he pondered the utility of Alliances in his weight loss pool.

These things are funny to me.

Or there is Heather, reprising her “Those motorcycles are side by-side” declaration with this  gem after Saturday’s Costume Party: “She totally speaks like a gangster now….or maybe that’s just because she was dressed up as one”.

If these aren’t making you laugh, you’ll understand why I haven’t  wrote about them.

Then there are the movies I have been seeing. Constantine, for instance.  What am I going to say?   It's Keanu’s best bit of acting ever.   The best Sunday night movie I have seen since Starship Troopers?     An  instant classic, alongside the Dark City and Soldier.       All those statements are true, in their own half-baked way.

The Interpreter is the worst movie I have seen in a long-long time.   Wow.   I say this  even though an opening scene put Penn in a dive bar, resetting the juke box to play "If I had boat" instead of some zipity crap.   Every movie should start with a guy in a juke-joint playing Lyle Lovett.  

I've got a nice Dave Mathews version of that song, but its too far removed from the original "Buckskin Stallion" to really work.   See, Lyle Lovett wrote the boat song, as a jocular ribbing of Townes Van Zandt's "Buckskin Stallion Blues".    You'll get the joke if you compare some of there lyrics. Here, watch:

If I had a buckskin stallion
I'd tame him down and ride away
If I had a golden galleon
I'd sail into the light of day
If I had your love forever
I'd sail into the light of day

                        (townes)

And if I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

                        (Lovett)

You see, Townes was always a bit morose. The Van Gogh of song, they say.  Lovett was just wiggling his ears, so to speak. The notable thing is that both songs are great.

Moving right along.

I could mention that I joined Crunch Fitness.     

I joined Crunch Fitness.   I used to be made of sturdier stuff, both principled and self-defeating,   but the gym had everything I wanted for a lot less than I was currently paying, so I joined.  Lots of people are poised to tell me they told me so.   I’ll let you know if this is a trend:  If I go back to Green’s sports bar, making mix tapes for girls,  or slouch in any other ways. 

The have been listening to the three Constantines [no relation] Albums continuously.  I’ve got a heck of playslist set up right now. It rivals the Modest Mouse primer I made a long time ago, but I am reluctant to begin foisting it upon people.  I think I should start with Andy, but he’s  a new dad, so I’m giving him a month or two.

Now I have to go check dictionary.com to see if its really possible to “foist” something upon someone.