hope & change?

i don't know about anyone else but seeing the all-white united states senate turn away it's only black member made me just a little uncomfortable. yeah, i know all about the problematic issues of burris' appointment but i just don't think this looks good. at all. add to that the fact that he's totally legit legally & there's a good chance the senate broke the law when they did this.
things should never have come to this. it really is shameful.

2008 restaurant news from the city of my dreams

this is from tom fitzmorris' daily blog about new orleans restaurants that i receive. he's a great source for news, not so great in terms of restaurant criticism, & a decent food writer in general. he's steered me way wrong w/his incomprehensible love of muriels & his gushing about mila. but no one is a 1000.00% hitter, esp in the food world.

i will say that if you ate at just the restaurants he's listed here, you'd do pretty well. they pretty much cover the amazing range of food you can experience in that great city.

the best news here is about scott boswell's stanley restaurant. i stopped in here this summer & would have bet anyone anywhere $100 that it wouldn't be open this year. every day i'd peek in & it was either empty & gutted or there was one guy(boswell? i'm not sure.)looking forlornly at blueprints spread over a beaten up sawhorse. it looks great in the pic fitzmorris published:




i'm looking forward to eating there.



About 100 More Restaurants
Nothing Big Happened In 2008

I hated writing this column. It's about the most boring year for New Orleans diners that I remember.

This has been a year of few major openings (but no major closings) and few major improvements. The restaurant business has had to struggle so hard to revive itself that it's not surprising that it spent most of the year marking time and catching its breath.

That thought didn't well up until I began to look for a restaurant to call the best new restaurant of the year. Nothing jumped out of my mind. I kept thinking. Still nothing. So I decided to ditch that old concept and invent special awards for this year only.

Was the best new restaurant MiLa, the Rushing couple's slick, innovative, polished new restaurant in the CBD? I rated it five stars in an earlier column this year. But it opened in 2007. So it's the Best New Restaurant of Last Year. (Which is different from Best New Restaurant of 2007. That was Bistro Daisy.)

Patois? Another good one, a delicious bistro a block from Clancy's, successor to the just-okay Nardo's, with a chef who did good things at the closed Bank Café in the Marigny. But that opened even earlier in 2007 than MiLa did. It's the Best Almost-New Restaurant of 2008.

Pellicano Ristorante did open this year, in Kenner. And it is very good--four stars' worth. But it's not well known, hard to find, and lightly attended. The best thing to happen there lately is that the management finally put up a sign big enough that you don't drive right past the place as you search for it. By the way, despite the name, it's not Italian, but contemporary Creole. Best Unheralded New Restaurant of the Year.

O'Brien's Grille? The Gretna steakhouse was a welcome addition to the sparse population of white-tablecloth restaurants on the West Bank. Good steaks, stark exterior, cool interior. Good steaks. Good service. Opened on St. Patrick's Day this year. Best New Limited Menu of the 2008.

A good potential candidate for the Unqualified Best New Restaurant of the Year would be Rambla, the new Spanisgh and Basque restaurant in the CBD. It was opened by Ken lacour and Kim Kringlie, the owners of Dakoa and Cuvee, and Bob Iacovone, the chef at Cuvee. But it's only been open a few months, not long enough for me to recommend it, or to go there myself. The few reports have been good, however. It's in the International House Hotel on Camp at Gravier, where the Lemon Grass Cafe was.

As I continued cogitating on this, a few other newsmaking premieres came to mind. But they all involved rebirths. The big story of the year was the return of Charlie's Steak House, a minor player on the scene for seventy years. Because of the current imperative that all real New Orleans restaurants be funky, it has been a subject of intense interest since the hurricane shut it down. Now it's back, same old place. Best Reincarnation of the Year.

There were two more unexpected, welcome returns from the dead this year. Coincidentally, they're less than a block apart: Maximo's, which has a new owner but the same chef, and Café Sbisa, operated--until early this week--by Glen Hogh, the owner of Vega Tapas Café. They jointly win the Best Reborn Neighbors of 2008. The fate of Cafe Sbisa, however, is uncertain. See the story above.

Early in the year, Chateau Du Lac moved from its tiny, unattractive space in Kenner to a much more appealing bistro in Metairie Road. That made it twice the restaurant it was, qualifying it for Best Expanded Restaurant of the Year.

Kevin Vizard, a chef whose work I've always enjoyed, did the opposite. He left a rent increase on his post-K St. Charles Avenue (Best New Restaurant of 2006!) to opened a smaller, tighter new Vizard's on Magazine Street this year. The best news here is that he didn't just close and disappear for a couple of years, as he has been known to do in the past. Best Shrunken Restaurant of the Year.

After struggling to establish his own cuisine at Peristyle, Chef Tom Wolfe--who bought the restaurant right before Katrina--gave up that fight and started another one. He renamed the place Wolfe's (no big deal; it's had at least three other names in its past) and reopened with a new menu that was supposed to be more in a Creole vein. But the changes have been subtle; the menu reads much like the Peristyle version, to me. Best Side-Stepping Restaurant of the Year.

The year began on a very optimistic note at La Provence, with Chef Rene Bajeux--probably the most gifted French chef in town then. He was in the kitchen cooking and in the barnyard raising pigs and chickens, saying it was great to be a chef again. Then he was gone. Randy Lewis, who we remember from Indigo a few years ago, came in as not only chef but partner with John Besh. His changes were deeper than we expected, winning the Best Hard To Dope Out Restaurant of 2008.

After a long foreplay, Chef Scott Boswell of Stella! finally reopened Stanley!--his cool post-Katrina grill and soda fountain--in the Lower Pontalba at year's end. He wins Best New Restaurant of Last Year, Next Year.

While all this was going on, the increase in size of the New Orleans restaurant community continued. On the first day of 2008 year, 884 real restaurants were open in the New Orleans area. Two weeks before year's end, the number is 980. We had 809 before Katrina. To put this in perspective, almost all other parts of the country saw their restaurant populations dwindle. New York and Los Angeles have seen significant drops. We are not doing badly.

But I'm hoping somebody wakes us up in 2009.

rappin' rednecks

the outrigger dirtbags all loved rap (herve, donnie, jay. yeah, i finally named you shit-asses). there was nothing that excited these slackjaw white boys more than being able to posture about slut girls & slapping bitches & dope. no music interested me less than this james brown ripoff shit (nwa was one of the worst offenders but there were a whole lot more). i remember when i finally got these fools to listen to early/middle james brown. debts were instantly recognized.

ann is still mystified by my interest in a certain kind of music. i have no idea what to call wu-tang, jay-z, kanye. each of these represents something different, i know that. i'm not THAT stupid. but a lot of it seems to be lost on me. my ipod is full of afrika bambaataa & grandmaster flash, jedi mind tricks & masters of ceremony, the man, george clinton & all his manifestations. i've got massive attack & tricky & ne-yo & lil' wayne. you got akinyele??? i do. & lots & lots more. a LOT of it sounds the same. that's ok w/me. it has a good beat. i like what i hear but i don't go much deeper than that.

dylan? i psychoanalyze & dissect in terms of him, me, the music itself & the society that produced all of it. lil' wayne? not so much.

i was content to live in ignorance as far as this wide range of music was concerned. hell, i live in ignorance a lot. for example, i don't like opera. in fact, i can't stand it. what it is & the culture that supports it. i'm pretty sure i will die w/this conviction (sorry, philip, you tried your best). but i fancy myself as a man who is open to persuasion, as richard thompson sang. it took something from out of left field(& will oldham doesn't get any more left field)to re-focus my attention. if you don't think this song speaks to these guys, just watch him when he lip-syncs the kicker line: " you can't tell me nothing."

the outrigger shit-asses didn't have it in them but these white boys are definitely full of whatever is in this music.

enjoy.

" i had to learn the simple things last..."

"...which made for difficulties."


i'm not really sure when it became clear to me that poets were the best critics of poetry. i'd resolved at some point to teach a class on "poet critics." what made me come to this conclusion was simple: i read what poets had to say about poets & poetry. specifically, i read what olson wrote about melville (a poet at heart & he returned to poetry in the end), what creeley had to say about whitman, what duncan said about olson & so many more.

academics have never accepted poetry as simply something someone's trying to tell me, a message, "the news" (as pound said). they've made it some arcane thing, describing it w/arcane language that poets & every day folk never use but other academics can (or not & then more arcane language ensues...). can you imagine any academic writing:

"i take SPACE to be the central fact to man in america, from folsom cave to now. i spell it large because it comes large here. large & without mercy."


that's from charles olson's astonishing book, "call me ishmael," on melville. this isn't how they write or speak in academia. it's one reason most college level lit departments are w/o direction or meaning & in a panic as to what to do or how to do it. they might start by listening to the poets. that's a really good place to start.

i was stunned when i found these clips of olson. i'd heard him on tapes reading (in & of itself, a revelation) but seeing the man (tho you can't really see here just what an imposing FIGURE he was...all 6'8" of him) is truly a delight. i think you get the sense here of how important he feels his message is & his need to make himself understood. that's what most of these guys are up to & that's not what you'll be taught in college.
enjoy.

polaroids, rip

i've talked w/a lot of female friends who THANK GOD that the digital age started well after their days of wild oat sowing. on the other hand, i curse god & whoever else that this is the case. i mean, i'd have photographic documentation of even one-nighters, or so it seems. there are websites totally devoted to irate boyfriends posting pics of girlfriends who'd dumped them or cheated on them or just to show them off. & yeah, there are even posts from guys who'd just gotten lucky one night. those guys really want to share. i check these sites a lot. initially, it's mind-boggling that someone could be such a pig but then i think back to a few bad break-ups & then run those emotions through a booze-addled brain & think, well, i guess i see how it could happen. i can only imagine the fears ann marie, lynn, haller & all my female friends w/daughters must have.

i got to thinking about this after reading that kodak is dis-continuing their "instamatic" film for their polaroid cameras. the "model 95" camera was introduced nearly six decades ago "at a pricetag equivalent to some $850 today." their color version debuted in 1972 (junior year in high school!!!). i don't think the importance of these devices can be overstated. the erotic was taken out of the hands of the pros & given over to, well, anyone who could afford the camera.

i have to confess. people taking pics of their trips to cancun or machu picchu or where ever never made much sense to me. you can't remember it? why did you go somewhere you can't remember? family reunions? who the hell WANTS to remember those? but sex? even bad or grotesque or embarrassing or humbling sex? now that's something i want to remember. the erotic is different for us at different times (except perhaps for the deviant which is what precisely marks him as deviant). who knows how my memory will interact w/some old polaroid, what glory might be lurking there.


somewhere in tom mcguane's novel, panama, the main character has been spying on his stepmother, "until i saw things i shouldn't have" & he stops spying. that passage always amused me. i got caught spying on natalie & the shame of it stopped me dead in my tracks. but when it comes to family no amount of shame will stop whatever habits you've developed in regards to them. so going through my mother's drawers was just something i did habitually. the whole family did this to each other since there were no locks on any doors (excepting the bathrooms). there simply was no privacy in the jones family. so stumbling on the polaroids in mother's nightstand was just, what?, luck? i don't think so.


the odd thing about the polaroid shot was always the frame: those four white borders seemed to reduce size, block out context, freeze the size, contain the content. so seeing a cock in my mother's mouth was initially almost scientific in its affect. frozen like that & reduced to an object, the ACT becomes something that can be addressed from various points of view. of course, none of them included "WTF, THAT'S MOM!!!" i was in my 20s at this point & had had my cock sucked many times. i'd seen LOTS of porn. " i wonder," i kind of mused, "who that is? it's not bobo...no potgut...it's her bedroom, i'm sure of that...etc." actually, i never found out whose cock it was. i'm not sure that would have really mattered. what stays w/me more than anything is the imposition of the medium on the act.
that & the fact that she kept the polaroid. there it was in her drawer & now, in my hand. this little piece of homemade erotica. what was i to make of the fact that she chose to save it? that she could & would take it out & look at it, as i was looking at it, tho i supposed in a different way.

i had some polaroids until just recently. i still remember one of natalie, her incredible luscious womanly body, all soft curves even at that age. over the course of years, i'd looked at the pic...in g'ville, in virginia, in sf, at the institute. each time those curves seemed more distant, less visible. the last time i looked, there was no telling who it was & her body had become an almost abstract form lost in the reddish black background.




in "camera lucida," roland barthes' great contemplation of photography, one critic notes:

"Barthes sees Death implicit in each photograph. He is struck by how the photograph moves you back through time. How you always have the past with you. Each photo documents a 1/60, 1/ 125 of a second that existed. Death is the final moment of a life and the last possible photograph. At the same time, Barthes sees the photograph as a kind of resurrection. It continues after the person is gone. It has a life of its own, in scrapbooks, on walls, in cardboard boxes, as long as the paper exists. Barthes likes the fact that what he sees has existed in front of the lens. The past is as certain as the present."

it is no surprise that andy warhol understood what the polaroid meant. his sense of irony was god-like & it's really what defined him as an artist. each starlet wannabe's polaroid always already condemned them to exactly where they did not want to be & never thought they could be: the past. their instant celebrity made them an immediate memory.
walker evans the great modernist photographer worked almost exclusively w/polaroids in his later years. it was easier for him to handle than the bigger apparatuses he'd used in is youth & it was free. kodak gave away the cameras & the film to a few "big name" photographers. if you look at the photos in evans & agee's "let us now praise famous men," (shot earlier w/o polaroids) what strikes you is the timeless quality, the nearly monumental aspect of ephemeral, meaningless things & people. it's no real surprise he ended up where warhol began, where we all began really. w/polaroids, we could make the past "as certain as the present" quicker & make our present appear more immediate. more personal too since we could possess it (& hide it away in our bedside drawers). no wonder polaroids were so popular! they were truly magic.


that magic's all over now but ann marie, lynn, & haller can't sleep any easier. the new technologies are even more exact (perfect color!!!) & much more easily shared. 16yo girls are sending prospective boyfriends nude pics of themselves (this is more mind-boggling than the piggish boys posting the pics) like resumes. our intimacies are totally open to the public sphere & the possibility of infinite reproduction begs the question of value & meaning (warhol, again). & tho all my pics are just a computer glitch away from the all encompassing ether, i don't feel the anxiety of imminent loss.

i do mourn the loss of my polaroid of nat but that happened naturally w/the passing of time...like, well, the real thing. you know, like what happens to us all: death.

donald westlake 1933-2008

"Parker kept climbing. There was no way to know how high the hill was. He climbed to the north, and eventually the slope would start down the other side. He'd keep ahead of the dogs, and somewhere along the line he'd find a place to hole up. He could keep away from the pursuit until dark, and then he'd decide what to do next. He kept climbing."

--Nobody Runs Forever, Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)


i'd just started reading his stuff again, the parker novels. i'd read them long ago at new college during a non-stop read of all things detective or criminal. parker was a criminal. parker was a sociopath. parker killed remorselessly & drank & fucked. i liked the guy, i remembered.
reading it again, i noticed the skills first. perfect jumpcuts, simple dialogue, quickly drawn characters, & the prose. that quote has it all there. simple stuff but hard, very hard, to pull off.
they've made a lot of his books into a lot of bad movies. the last one was a terrible mel gibson vehicle. awful. but john boorman's "point blank" w/lee marvin did it right. lee marvin is the perfect parker. marvin is the guy you see in westlake's parker novels when you read them. there really aren't any actors like marvin anymore. hopefully, you don't know any characters like parker. & you don't read novels like westlake's parker novels anymore either.

his first three parker novels(published first between 1963-1965)have just been re-released w/the university of chicago imprint:

the hunter
the man w/the getaway face
the outfit

Prolific mystery writer Donald Westlake dead at 75
The author of more than 90 books collapsed from an apparent heart attack

"...all the david copperfield kind of crap..."

j.d. salinger turned 90yo today.
i imagine he got up, brewed some coffee & went to work, writing. just like i imagine he's been doing the last 50years or so. like a monk w/his meditation. i'm imagining that salinger views writing pretty much as a kind of meditation, a way to slough off the encumberances of self.
in william gaddis' great book, "the recognitions," there's a moment when the main character, wyatt, describes working on a painting & losing yourself in the work to someone & they say, " well, that must be satisfying" & wyatt is stunned by this failure to SEE, " there is no one to be satisfied," he stammers. but his interlocutor persists, "well, at least YOU know you've done something." "it's just the doing, it's never done," wyatt mumbles.

"catcher in the rye" is one of those incredibly deceptive novels. it seems to be a quick read, seems to address teenaged angst. but the novel is hanging on a more significant story structure, one that most westerners aren't aware of. i think this was one of the first novels whose underlying structure i discovered for myself. a little satori moment. i'd been studying the world's religions. i just read the buddha's life story. it all just clicked. holden was the buddha.

& he is, kind of. that's the kind of thing you do in college lit courses. it's the kind of thing that probably drove salinger to his very famous reclusiveness. maybe cornwall is a nice, peaceful place. who knows? but he hasn't published anything for a long time now. i do imagine him writing. every morning. & i'm hoping for a HENRY ROTH miracle. i remember years ago, in the nyt, john updike listed in his top 10 novels of the year, "hard heart," by salinger. what the hell happened to it? back into the famous file cabinets, i guess. maybe he's just teaching us about patience. & desire. maybe "hard heart" & all the imagined books will be published sometime in the future. until then, we can always re-read:

"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'F- you' right under your nose."