Albums2010 #60: Seven's Travels

Atmosphere finally made a good record. Actually, although this is the first album of theirs I've ever listened to all the way through, I'm willing to bet that statement shouldn't include the word 'finally.' While hip-hop might not be my favorite genre of music in the world, I've develop an appreciation for the depth of the genre that might not be immediately obvious to people listening to Top 40 Radio. Atmosphere was mind-blowingly good when I saw them live last summer at 80/35 in Des Moines so reviewing an album of theirs was made my must-list months ago. I'm only sorry it took me this long to get around to it.

Seven's Travels, their 2004 album is awesome, plain and simple. Laid back, introspective, indy hip-hop at it's finest, its tracks interspersed with interludes on a plane on it's way to a destination (presumably Minnesota, if the last track 'Always Coming Back Home To You' is any indication). The overall sound feels pretty laid back but the lyrics tell a different story- Slug's lyrics (the rapping half of the duo- the producing DJ half of the duo is DJ Ant) are nicely introspective, but darker themes hide behind the jazzy, laid back beats- but the key to this albums' success, I think is that the anger and pain of failed relationships (which seems to be a theme here) doesn't overwhelm the music itself. Which is good.

National Disgrace is one of the tracks that made me sit up and pay attention. Dedicated to a variety of celebrities who dedicated themselves to being total fuck-ups to entertain the masses- but the rapid-fire lyrics bounce along and the song is a lot of fun even as it bemoans/accepts the loud, arrogant messiness that seems to be part of our national character sometimes.

Trying To Find A Balance, which is the second track on the album is what really made me pay attention to these guys. I had heard of them in a vague way without actually listening to any of their music. They opened up their set at 80/35 with this and had my full, undivided attention after that. From the guitar hook that anchors the track to the driving, bad ass lyrics that fill the sing, it was just plain face meltingly good.

Third favorite track is the last one- appropriately titled 'Always Coming Back Home To You' which is a- well, I don't want to say it's a love letter to Minnesota and the charms of Midwest living because that lacks a certain amount of street cred but that's exactly what it is. For one brief, glorious moment Atmoshpere takes the Midwest and makes it badass. That's an achievement worth enjoying- even celebrating.

Overall: I will be listening to more Atmosphere. Ranks right up there with Hieroglyphics, Aesop Rock, Talib Kweli and Lupe Fiasco as hip-hop/rap that I enjoy and actually has depth to it. My biggest complaint about rap these days is that's gone away from the hardcore social commentary that made it great, become a caricature of it's own success and now... well I don't even know what it is now. Step outside the mainstream of the genre and you'll find a surprise or two- Atmosphere is one of the best- and it's the best musical surprise I've had all year. **** out of ****.

This Week In Vexillology #5

Pass the crab rangoons and the sweet n'sour sauce kids, because this week, we've got China. Two times the China because we're throwing Taiwan in here just for fun, so buckle up and get ready- because here we go:

The bigger China, is of course, the People's Republic of China:

Adopted October 1st, 1949 for national and civil usage, red plays a prominent role in the flag, as it represents (surprise, surprise) the communist revolution. But- it's also a traditional color of the Chinese people. The large star represents communism and the four smaller stars represent the four social classes of the Chinese people (peasants, workers, petty bourgeoisie and patriotic capitalists.)

Awkwardly hanging out just across the Taiwan Straits from it's larger counterpart we've got Taiwan or if you want to drop it's official name into discussions just to make things super awkward, the straight up Republic of China. After the end of the Civil War in 1949, the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomingtang (KMT) fled across the straits and set up in Taiwan and amazingly enough, they're still there today. This flag was adopted on October 28th, 1928 for national usage and was the national flag of China from 1928 to 1949 when the KMT ruled China.

Overall the flag is said to represent 'a white sun in a blue sky over red land.' The upper left quadrant is taken from the old party flag of the KMT which was a blue flag with a white sun- each ray of the sun represents two hours of the day. The red recalls the Han Chinese, the dominant race in China.

The whole PRC versus ROC thing gets a little awkward* and contentious at times. There's a sizable pro-independance political party/movement on Taiwan and the PRC doesn't like that one little bit. One China after all! Though Taiwan can probably look askance at the notion of 'One China, Two Systems' given how dodgy some of Beijing's meddling in Hong Kong has been over the past few years. Interestingly enough, 22 countries and the Vatican still recognize the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the only China. Occasionally, you'll see in the news that Beijing has managed to flip one country or another into recognizing them so there's an interesting diplomatic tussle that's been going on for awhile now.

They managed to fudge the Olympics (and most other international sporting events) though, giving Taiwan a separate flag and making them compete as Chinese Taipei (whatever that means):

Pretty basic here... blue, red and white are the national colors. The sun is taken from Taiwan's national flag and the rings show that it's an Olympic flag.

Until next time keep your flags flying- freak or otherwise!

*(It gets even more interesting from the point of view of US Foreign Policy. Our opening to China is one of the fascinatingly complex foreign policy moves of the past century. We didn't want to leave Taiwan out in the cold, but opening up to the PRC stuck it to the Soviets and shattered the myth of a monolithic Communist bloc so I believe our official stance is that if push came to shove, we'd give Taiwan the capability to defend itself- and probably send a fleet into the Taiwan Straits just to make sure and our only interest is a peaceful settlement to the Taiwan Question by the Chinese people themselves. There's more to it than that but just take a minute and parse how subtle that is... and check this book out if you want the full 4-1-1.)

Food Adventures #17: Vintage Wine and Port Night With The Parents

Father Cigar has recently gotten into the wine auctions over at K&L Wine Merchants- so he put in a bid on a trio of consecutive vintages, won and you know what that meant...

VINTAGE WINE NIGHT!

The Cigar Parentals had run across this particular vintage on an early 1990s visit to the UK where they had stayed in a super-swank hotel near Gatwick. (The Cigar Parentals tend to have more expensive tastes than I do- so when they say it was super-swank, it was undoubtedly SUPER-swank) and they loved the Cos D'Estournel Saint Estéphe so much they kept hunting for it. When it come up on K and L, Father Cigar just couldn't pass it up so he snagged a 1998, 1999 and 2000 for everyone to compare and sample... extensively.

Mother Cigar did her usual thing of producing fantastic food to accompany all this wine- fillet mignon with red white reduction and pomegranate seeds, bread, multi-colored potatoes- but not the veg! The Missus and I snagged fresh produce from the New Bo City Market in Cedar Rapids and Mom roasted them up. They were delicious- in fact all the food was delicious.

While most everyone around the table liked the 1998, the Missus and I didn't. I thought the 1998 tasted a little weird. I'm used the red wines having that earthy, almost metallic bite but the 1998 tasted like- well, put it this way, people described it as 'kerosene' or 'wet wood.' And if you want wines that taste like that, then by all means, go for the 1998. The 1999 didn't have that weird flavor but it felt thinner than the 1998- a little watery, if that's the right word. The 2000 had the best of both, I thought- the body of the 1998 and the lack of weird flavor of the 1999. It was my favorite for the night.

I'm not a super wine snob by any stretch of the imagination but this was a fun night. It was very relaxing to sit around a table, eat some good food and drink some truly excellent wine- my ability to swish a glass around and inhale deeply and detect notes of wet wood or grass clippings might not be up there with this best of them but I do know what I like and I know good wine when I drink it.

There was a post-script to this deliciousness:

Vintage Port... oh yum. I seem to be inheriting Father Cigar's genetic predisposition to scotch and Mother Cigar's love of port. What's port you ask?

Port wine is typically richer, sweeter, heavier, and possesses a higher alcohol content than unfortified wines. This is caused by the addition of distilled grape spirits (aguardente similar to brandy) to fortify the wine and halt fermentation before all the sugar is converted to alcohol and results in a wine that is usually 18 to 20% alcohol.

Leaving aside the Wikipedia definition- it's delicious is what it is. And the older you get the more delicious it becomes... perfect way to end the night.

Albums2010 #59: Ceremonials

Like pretty much everyone, I was first introduced to Florence and the Machine with previews for the Julia Roberts movie 'Eat, Pray, Love' and like most everyone, I thought: 'What was that?' And then ran to YouTube to figure it out. That single from her first album, Lungs was good. Inspirational good. Like you would go work out at the gym and feel good about life's possibilities type of good- which is probably why they used it for 'Eat, Pray, Love.' (Which was a good book and an inspirational enough movie, I suppose- though it kind of bugged me. After all, not everyone gets the luxury of a book contract to go find themselves. Most of us just have to deal with shit.)

I thought I'd check out their sophomore effort, Ceremonials to see if it was any good- and lo and behold, it was. Artists that have iconic, powerful voices tend to be artists I like- and lead singer Florence Welch has one helluva set of lungs on her. Shades of Annie Lennox and Grace Slick combined with the essential ethereal weirdness of Kate Bush into something totally unique and wonderful.

Ceremonials is face-meltingly good. From the big sound of the lead single off the album 'Shake It Off' to the deeper, more orchestral sounds of 'Only If For A Night' and the interesting twists and turns of 'Seven Devils' (which was used in a promo for Game of Thrones, as Wikipedia reminded me) it's just awesome, in that avant garde, soulful, slightly strange way that makes me think of Annie Lennox at her weirdest or Kate Bush, well anytime.

But Ceremonials is to be commended because it's managed to pull of a first with the track 'Spectrum.' By itself, it's good- a nice addition to the album, but it really scored big- both on the charts and with me personally with the remix by Calvin Harris... mark your calendars kids and circle this moment in sharpie: this is the first time I've stumbled a remixed version of a song that's not only good but actually makes the original song better. A rare achievement indeed, in my book.

But how do you describe the sound of this wonderful album? I'm not sure you can I have a sneaking suspicion that Florence and the Machine intended it that way. Big and bombastic, orchestral, beautiful, ethereal, strange, soulful- they all fit- though Florence deserves mad props for making such extensive use of the harp. It's everywhere in this album and the way they use it packs one hell of a wallop. I love it. It's refreshing, its unusual and yes, the way they use the harp in this album is powerful. All of which makes Ceremonials a wholly satisfying musical experience.

Overall: *** out of **** This loses a star because I think Florence has to catch you in the right mood for you to really click with her music. Feeling introspective? Perhaps a touch of melancholy? Ready to jam out to some big, orchestral jams? Florence and the Machine is going to hit you just perfectly..

Late Night Chronicles 92: Thirty Days Of Thanks

I don't do this on Facebook. There are far too many 'like this is you hate cancer/death/murder/child abuse' type of posts that may give people a burst of enthusiasm about how they just proclaimed to everybody they hated horrible things rational human beings should hate anyway all over Facebook and I don't want to contribute to that trend because it solves exactly none of the problems that people want to solve.

The Thirty Days of Thanks thing is one of the few Facebook trends/memes that is actually worth a damn. But not wanting to splatter this all over my social media, I decided to do it all in one big super burst of gratitude. So:

1. For my wife, Allison. I got this feeling when I was a senior in high school that I might end up marrying an Allison and it turns out I was right. I had a lot of teenage angst and social awkwardness to deal with and no matter how lonely I felt or miserable I made myself (a lot of it was self-inflicted, I'll admit) I always believed that there was someone out there for me who would be the answer to all my questions, my soul mate, my best friend, my other half. And then one day in January of 2007, the night that Romo fumbled the snap on the goal line and sent the Seahawks through to the next round of the playoffs, this beautiful woman walks in with her brown coat and scarf, sees me and gives me the biggest, most beautiful smile that just lit up the room. It was pretty much game over right then and there for me, though I didn't realize that until later. I found out she was beautiful, intelligent, funny and had one of the biggest, most caring and compassionate hearts I'd ever seen. She makes me a better person every day and I still can't believe I got this lucky.

2. For ALL my family, extended, in-lawed or otherwise... and even though some of them may not be with us anymore, they're still here in spirit. I wish I had something more meaningful to say about them all, but they're my family. What more is there to say?

3. For friends, old and new. As life's gotten more complicated, I've gotten worse about keeping in touch with some of you but whether you've wandered out of my life or wandered back in or have never left at all, you've all impacted my life in some way, whether it's simple as always bringing beer over or something more meaningful than that, you're all amazing... thanks!

4. For our small menagerie of pets... people think we're out of our minds when we tell them how many pets we have but I wouldn't trade any of them for the world. They've each got their own personalities and problems but they bring so much joy into our lives (most of the time, anyway... unless it's 3AM and Winston wants to sit on my head or Samson decides he wants to be petted RIGHT NOW after leaving you alone all day... just the joys of pet ownership and I'm glad that we've been able to give them all a good home.

5. For both of my countries- the UK, where I was born and the US where I grew up. Mom, Dad and I didn't get citizenship until 2001, so I've always had that 'other' passport and that knowledge that I came from somewhere else even when I was very young. I think that knowledge only drove my intense curiosity about the world around me and deepened my love of geography and history and especially maps and globes. As the wife can probably attest, even to this day, whenever I see an old globe, I've got to figure out just how old and potentially inaccurate it is...

6. For anyone and anything I might have forgotten to give thanks for. (This is the CYA entry of the list.)

7. For marmalade and toast... it's one of the strongest memories I have from childhood. A nice, golden brown piece of toast, so warm the butter melts with real Dundee (or Rose's. We'll allow Rose's) orange marmalade. I miss that. In fact, I'm craving that. (Add to this least Cadbury Crunchies, blackcurrant Ribena, Lyle's Golden Syrup on toast, proper English breakfasts, any Cadbury's chocolate- the proper kind not the weird stuff they have over here. Oh and the salsa Doritos and Easy Place Chinese Food that kept me running throughout college.)

8. For caffeine because goodness knows it's kept me running in a variety of forms for several years now. And yes, the quantities I consume are probably not at all healthy for me and no, I don't care.

9. I might piss off a lot of people with this one but I'm thankful for snow. And I miss it right now... I have so many memories of walking in the snow, whether it was walking home late from school with the flakes quietly floating down in the Gym Parking Lot or getting up at 5:30 AM to snowblow out the sidewalks and driveways. While Mother Nature can keep her bitter, biting cold, I'd like at least some snow this year. It'd be nice to have a white Christmas for once.

10. For my grandparents- the three of them I got to know anyway for being shining examples of hard work, service and everything that makes their generation so great. They might all be gone now. But they inspire me to this day.

11. Thank you to all the Veterans that serve or have served in the cause of freedom... the freedoms we all take for granted today have been secured through the sacrifice of courageous men and women of many generations- including my grandparents, my great uncles, my great-great uncle- not to mention the wife's 2 uncles and grandfather. Thank you for all you've done or continue to do for the cause of freedom.

12. This one's kind of gross and I've been told before I shouldn't be so public with my gratitude for this so I'll let people try and decode it. I'm thankful for the ability to take a r****y s********g s**t whenever I need it. It's so satisfying.

13. For the ability to see, hear and walk. Too many people take these abilities for granted- I'm thankful for all three and have the deepest respect for people out there who work so hard to overcome any limitations in those departments- whatever the reson for them.

14. I'm thankful for the five years I spent as an undergrad work at the University Art Museum. My appreciation of art had reached a low point after that fateful vacation when we had been dragged into every art gallery in Santa Fe by my mother and my Uncle. (Some were cool, most were not.) Five years of walking the galleries and learning about the collection- because the Guards were the ones that got asked the questions- opened my eyes to the world of art and made me appreciate it a lot more than I had before.

15. For trying to figure out just how many things I'm thankful for- there are so many more than 30 but trying to put the most important ones to paper only makes me realize how many things I have to be thankful for.

16. For the random surprises life sometimes gives you. I remember when we were in Rome, it was the same weekend as the umpteenth edition of Live Aid and walking back up towards Santa Sabina, we were passing the Circo Maximo, when we heard the strains of none other than Duran Duran- and we walked over to check it out and got to watch the rest of their set. For free. Sometimes life surprises you- and sometimes it's awesome.

17. My health. It's not something I want to start taking for granted- it might not always be there after all.

18. For Zingers, Doritos and everything unhealthy for me. Because sometimes they just taste so damn good- in small quantities of course.

19. For the 1992 Presidential Election. I was in 4th Grade and whether it was the bad economy, the 12 years of Republicans in the White House or Perot with his crazy ears and his flip chart but it marked the moment where I started paying attention to politics. 2 degrees in Political Science later and I find myself doing something only vaguely related to my degree (PoliSci is about making laws, I know work with/for the people that help enforce them. An acrobatic stretch but one I'm willing to make) I'm not sure whether I should be thankful for this or not- but one things for sure, I started paying attention to the world around me and I haven't stopped since.

20. For the 2009 Hawkeye Football Season... I never realized just how interesting and entertaining I could find football and other sports until I was thrown into the thick of football as a guard for the department. Seeing what happens behind the scenes during a game, seeing the game from angles most people don't get to see, it turned me into a mild ESPN/sports junkie, much to the amusement/irritation of the wife, who wonders just who this beer chugging, sports enthusiast is that she married. Plus it helped that our football team was actually good that season...

21. I'd never volunteer to go back to night shift- but having done it for a year or so, I can attest to the fact that it's hard- really hard. I've got a lot of respect for people who do it full time, but here's the dirty little secret I'll share with everyone. Occasionally, every so often, when I have to hold over or cover a night shift for OT, some tiny part of me is secretly happy about it. I miss my bed, I miss my wife and the comforting snore of the dog but there's something about being awake when everyone else is asleep... there's something about watching the empty streets on the cameras or stepping outside to take in the silvers and oranges and tangerines- all the colors of the night coming alive that makes the air seem alive with some kind of strange promise and the possibilities seem almost exciting. I'm thankful for those quiet moments during a night shift... and then I go home in the morning and collapse in a heap and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

22. For 'Love In The Time of Cholera', '100 Years of Solitude', 'Autumn of the Patriarch', 'Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon' and that random Spring Break as an undergrad when I spent the week watching a Gilmore Girls marathon on ABC Family listening to whip-smart, razor sharp dialogue fly out of the television at me (it helped that all the women from Alexis 'Travelling Pants' Bledel right on up to the Grandma were pretty damn hot, too)- for all of these books and so many more and every movie or television show that has dared to be intelligent, almost demanding with it's writing- thank you. You make me want to be a better writer.

23. For that 'Just In Case You Need An Excuse To Party' Poster on my sister Rachel's door. Without that, I never would have noticed that my birthday coincided with the television debut of the Original Star Trek in 1966 and felt that instant kinship and Trekkie hood that condemned me to a lifetime of enjoyable geekdom. After I ate through Star Trek, I dabbled in Star Wars, then the X-Files, Babylon Five, Battlestar Galactica, Alias, Firefly, Stargate, Stargate Atlantis and my love of geek/nerdom and all it's glorious culture continues to this day.

24. For that crazy science fiction book club my Dad signed up for when I was kid that brought a kaleidoscope of science fiction pouring into the house (my never-read favorite: Chicks in Chain Mail- Volume 2). Our bookshelves were soon groaning and I was soon plunging into Tolkein, Eddings, McCaffery, Piers Anthony, Robert Jordan and too many more to count- one of the many things that helped turned me into a voracious reader.

25. For food, glorious, glorious food... some of the best memories I have amazing meals... whether it was the first time I tried foie gras at Bradley Ogden for the parents Anniversary or the Louis XIV cake at Vincent's in Minneapolis or just one of the many amazing meals my mother has cooked over the years.

26. For a good bottle of single malt... always reminds me of my Granddad. Plus, it tastes delicious.

27. For the incontinent donkey that shit all over my foot on a donkey ride on the beach at Weston-Super-Mare when I was 9. The old man running the donkey rides had been doing it for 20 years and no one had ever been shit on before. I was slightly traumatized by the destruction of my super cool zebra-striped canvas shoes but as my parents, aunt and uncle all realized what had happened and fell about laughing, the old man relaxed and laughed too and even I started to understand (dimly, because I was 9 and zebra-striped canvas shoes are important when you're 9) that it was pretty damn funny. That donkey and it's greenish-yellow runny shit taught me an important lesson: always remember to laugh at yourself now and again. And keep your feet away from the poopholes of donkies. Well two lessons, I guess.

28. For The Illiad. Sounds a little odd, I know but my parents had the perfect translation when I was growing up. I read it multiple times, had it read to me multiple times and while some aspects of the book went completely over my young head (Achilles and Patroclus, everything to do with poor Briseis) it helped inculcate a love of Greek mythology which in turn developed all too quickly into a life-long love of books of all kinds.

29. For my job, believe it or not. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with my job. Somedays I feel like it's a stressful, out of control monster that's threatening to eat my life and just make me miserable- but other days, my fingers fly faster over the keyboard than I thought possible, I ask all the right questions and everything just clicks so perfectly, so wonderfully it makes it all worth it. Every day is a different challenge and as an added bonus, I'm privileged to work with a group of professional, dedicated and talented Dispatchers- and despite the fact we tread on each other's toes sometimes in this tiny little space of ours, we still more or less get along.

30. For the last beautiful days of Fall- and for any beautiful day for that matter. Sometimes you just go outside, look around and the colors are sharp and bright, the sun is shining and everything seems so alive with possibilities and potential you just can't help being thankful you've been given the opportunity just to be here on this planet at all and how miraculous it all really is.

The College/Gilbert 5: An LNC Follow-Up

Sigh... I wrote a somewhat rambling edition of Late Night Chronicles on the subject last month but the City of Iowa City evidentally doesn't read my blog (or more likely read's Marc Moen's blog before they do mine) and have pushed ahead with whittling down proposals for the College/Gilbert lot.

In general, I hate most of them. Why can't we just have New-Pi move into that space and be done with it? But here they are, for your viewing pleasure. Personally, I'm rooting for either the 4 Zero 4 Development (8 stories w/New Pi and the Bike Library on the First Floor and beaucoup de photovoltaics everywhere) or Ryan Companies/Iceberg Development (5 stories w/New Pi on the first floor.)

What I'm expecting is the 20 story monstrosity that is The Chauncey LLC (complete with cinemas, bowling alley and 20% of the housing being for earmarked for 'workforce housing' whatever that means... though I'm pretty sure given the amount of retail/service sector jobs downtown is going to mean housing for students.) Just because that's how the City Council seems to be rolling these days.

Now that the runway at the airport has been reconfigured, thus allowing for taller and taller buildings downtown, I guess it's game on in a race for the sky.

Whisky of The Month #2: Dalwhinnie, 15 Years Old

Before we plunge into the Dalwhinnie, I gotta answer the question I just know everybody is dying to ask: what's the difference between whiskey and whisky? Well, it's semantics more than anything else but serious drinkers of the stuff will slap you around (metaphorically speaking) if you get it wrong. So:

Scotch and whisky refer to the stuff that comes only from Scotland. You can't have American scotch or even American whisky. (The Scots/whisky industry have worked hard to get both protected as copyrights.) However, everybody (meaning the rest of the world) wanted to get in on the action, so they were handed a vowel and got down to the business of making whiskey. (When I get around to a bourbon, sour mash or a rye we can start into those definitions.)

But to business:

Color: Pale Gold

Body: Smooth and not at all harsh. Some whiskys when you take a nice whiff of them will singe your nose hairs- not this. Smells good and goes down smooth.

Palate: Honey, lots of honey- with just a hint of peat. (The hastily tapped out note on my phone reads: 'Honey. Lots of it.')

Finish: Very warming... almost the perfect level of warming. Not too harsh and very gradual. Sneaks up on you- but pleasantly.

Overall: Michael Jackson scores this one at 76. (Out of 100) I think that might be a wee bit too low for my liking. He also described the nosy as 'faintly phenolic' amongst other things. Phenols seem to the resins they use in plastics. So he thought it smelled like plastic resin? Yeah, I didn't get that at all.

This Dalwhinnie was smooth, delicious and while it had some peat- it was the perfect amount of peat. I'm not against peat per say- a lot of the Islay scotches tend to go heavy on the peat and when the mood strikes me, nothing goes down better than a nice Islay. (Lagavulin 16 years old is the epitomy of peat-y whisky. It's also pricey as hell.)

I'd say *** out of ****. This was a very nice Scotch- but I don't think it quite rises to the level of excellent.

Here We Go Again: Rutgers Edition

By now, it's become official: Rutgers has accepted an invitation to join the Big Ten, bolting the Big East for a safer harbor on the heels Maryland's exit from the Big Ten yesterday. I spent most of the day yesterday watching the comments board on ESPN.com BLOW up and people lose their damn minds over Maryland's entrance to the Big 10- and for awhile it was amusing, after awhile it just got embarrassing. I mean, are these really Big Ten football fans? I hoped not. And sure enough, after awhile a scattering of positive 'hi theres' and 'welcome to the conference' remarks started to be seen.

For the rest of them, well, it's an internet comments board. Most of 'em are probably members of the tinfoil hat brigade that live in their parents' basement- so Maryland, Rutgers- ignore those dickheads- and please accept my apology if I sounded somewhat churlish yesterday. I genuinely don't like that this has become largely about money and media markets. I really do find it distasteful. But the more I think about this, the more I'm warming to the idea. Yes, Maryland, Rutgers, I'm glad to have you aboard.

Leaving aside the money and the media markets, let's step back and think about this for a minute. Ignoring sports, these days it seems like upheaval and change are the only constants in American life. I can understand why people get so pissed about it- I mean, everything else is going to shit- can't they leave our sports alone? You have to be quick, agile, flexible and always ready to accept change. People don't have one job for life anymore. They'll have five or six. The internet has proven to be a powerful tool that people are using to start businesses, publish books, record albums. It's changing the way we do business.

Ultimately outside my loyalty to the Black and Gold, my loyalty is to the Big Ten. If Iowa doesn't make it to the Big Dance, I try and cheer for the Big Ten teams that do. Ohio State versus Alabama in the BCS Title Game? Cheering for the Buckeyes- one of the few times I'll admit to doing so! And I think the Big Ten is making the right moves to stay relevant for the future. The population is shifting away from the Midwest and that's not good news for the Big Ten. Something had to be done. So, we headed east. With the addition of Rutgers and Maryland, we expanded our recruiting grounds in the Northeast exponentially- and I'm betting a lot of local talent is going to get interested in Rutgers, Maryland and a few of their Big Ten neighbors.

Though no one's mentioned it, field hockey just got a big boost and there's now the tantalizing possibilities of Big Ten Lacrosse joining Big Ten Hockey in the future. Madison Square Garden could theoretically host the Big East, ACC and Big Ten Basketball Tournaments at some point in the future. Basketball, though it doesn't pay the bills as people keep saying, also got a boost with the addition of both Maryland and Rutgers- hailing from the ACC and Big East, two solid basketball conferences.

People need to stop their hating on the Scarlet Knights. Rutgers brings an oomph to the Conference, academically and some rich history to boot. Founded in 1766, it would be by far the oldest University in the Big Ten (named for this dude, Revolutionary War Hero Henry Rutgers) and as people have pointed out, the birthplace of college football. Which might not mean much to a lot of people but I think it adds something to the legacy of tradition and history that's an important part of the Big 10.

I've heard that with Maryland coming aboard, they're knocking Illinois over to the Legends Division (joy. Illinois.) With any luck, Rutgers will knock Wisconsin over to our division...

The next moves in the Conference Re-Alignment Madness might belong to BYU, Boise State and San Diego State, all reportedly talking with the Mountain West Conference about coming back to the fold. But is the Big Ten done? I think it is- for now. People keep talking that 16 is the magic number to go to but I think once you get past where we are now, it becomes a little ridiculous. If you end up with 16 or 20 teams, why not just split them into separate conferences again? Undoubtedly, further moves will be dependent on what's driving this madness: money.

So if we go to 16, who do we get? (I'm not going to say when. I refuse to say when...) Well, Delany and Company seem to be operating under three basic rules. First, new schools bring either brand/new television markets to the conference. Second, schools are within the contiguous footprint of the Conference and third, schools are members of the AAU. I've heard Kansas, UNC, Virginia, Duke and Georgia Tech tossed around. All I can say to that is while I will be even less thrilled about going to 16 schools than I am about going to 14, I'd be fine with Kansas, Virginia and/or Georgia Tech. UNC, Duke? F--k that s--t.

In the meantime Rutgers: Welcome Aboard!

Twinkies Never Say Die: A Snackopalypse Follow-Up

They ain't dead yet.

Yeah, Hostess still has a heart beat. They've gone into mediation with the Baker's Union who represents around 33% of their employees and whose strike which I still think was spectacularly stupid- so they might still be around for awhile yet. What I didn't know what that Hostess management had the balls to ask the bankruptcy judge to liquidate the company and pay out $1.75 million in executive bonuses.

The Union raised Hell about it and rightfully so. Bonuses? Seriously? And I don't care if they've become part of executive compensation packages as a posed to incentives for good work- they're still cherries on top of the executive pay sundae and if your company is going under, you have done nothing right. No bonuses for you.

But Twinkies might still survive... for now. The problem remains that they aren't the healthiest thing around, don't necessarily taste that great and you can't run a company off of brand nostalgia forever.

Ride The Divide/180 Degrees South --A Double Review

I heard about both of these documentaries here and there on Facebook and as I've had a couple of mornings free now and again, I took the time to crash on the couch with Winston and, once I got him arranged and in a comfortable position sat down and watched them both.

Ride The Divide tells the story of the Great Divide Mountain Bike race, which is a 2,700 mile bike race from Banff, Alberta down the length of the Continental Divide to Mexico. The route crosses the Continental Divide thirty times and stays as close to it as is practically possibly and features main dirt roads with gravel stretches and a few short completely unmaintained stretches. The documentary follows a group of riders attempting to take on the challenge, some of them for the first time.

Mike is a 40 something Dad, looking for a big challenge to tackle. Mary is attempting to be the first woman to complete the route and Matthew Lee, who has completed the route before and is about to become a father for the first time. The camera crew, lead by Hunter Weeks follows this main trio down the longest mountain bike trail in the world, watching as the miles roll by and the difficulties of the route take their toll on all the riders.

Mike breaks down and quits. The racing pace is too much for him and he wants to complete it later at a touring pace. Mary runs into severe problems with her legs that almost knock her out of the race but she perseveres well into Colorado before she too breaks down and quits the race- but she's coaxed back into and finishes the route. Matthew Lee, having done it before races ahead to finish first.

This movie was interesting but it was also kind of a letdown at the same time. For some reason, I was expecting more. While the scenery was beautiful, it's essentially nothing more than a super-RAGBRAI running down the Continental Divide. Where Ride The Divide almost takes flight is in the stories of the riders themselves... what about Mike? Why suddenly decide to ride the divide? And Mary? Is there more to her story? And what about Reuben or the random English dude? The dividing line between good and great is a tricky one to walk and if the filmmakers would have brought more than just some of the stories of the riders to life, they'd have made a great documentary.

180 Degrees South is a distant cousin of Ride The Divide but about something totally different. Back in the late 60s, Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins who went on to found Patagonia loaded a bunch of friends into the back of a van and drove the Pan-American highway down to Patagonia- when Jeff Johnson found some of the footage of that trip, he decided to take a trip of his own- only not by land but by sea. Spending months at sea and delayed for a month at Easter Island where he meets a travel partner, Mahoke, he eventually reached Patagonia (in Chile, not Argentina) with a shot at achieving his goal of getting to the top of the volcano Corcovado.

This movie is far, far more seductive that it's distant cousin, Ride the Divide. Ride The Divide is just a bike race- a bad ass, super long bike race over humongous mountains, to be sure, but a bike race nonetheless. 180 Degrees South is a fantasy that I think everybody has at some point in their lives: just throwing a bunch of shit in a bag and going somewhere for the sake of going somewhere. Losing yourself in a country or vanishing into a landscape and the unspoiled wilderness of Patagonia (that Tompkins and Chouinard have worked to protect) is perfectly suited to that. I thought Ride the Divide had gorgeous cinematography. This thing has it beat hands down. The land is so big, so wild and so empty and the views and the shots the filmmakers pull off literally take your breath away and they managed to bring the message of the importance of conservation to the audience without devolving into preachiness or scare tactics which is utterly refreshing.

At the end of the day, this movie made me want to live in the mountains. Recent political developments aside, I thank my lucky stars my mother tasted the East Coast once, shook the dust of it off her feet and kept us going west on family vacations after that. The higher elevations always seemed to make my allergies better and one of my lasting regrets is that I never beat myself into good enough shape to climb a mountain. I'd like to do that before I die. The mountains were beautiful and so peaceful when I was a kid- and looking at the wild, empty land in Patagonia, you can understand why the Gauchos down there are fighting against the dams they're planning on the rivers down there and you can understand why Chouinard and Tompkins have dedicated a large portion of their lives to preserving it. How could you possibly want to let humanity touch land as beautiful as that any more than is absolutely necessary?

OVERALL: As advertised, both fascinating documentaries lurking on Netflix for those that are bored or find themselves with the time on their hands. Both are worth watching but it's 180 Degrees South that will suck you in and make you itch for the freedom of the open road or just an adventure, however big or small- and deserves praise for bringing the cause of land conservation life in such a vivid, beautiful and subtle way.

Here We Go Again...

God damn it. Forgive my profanity but I seriously thought we were done with this conference re-alignment merry-go-round and then the Big Ten has to go and open up the whole can of worms all over again. Ever since I heard this rumor yesterday, I really, really hoped that the old Terps on the Maryland Board of Regents would put the kybosh on this but apparently, the lure of the Big Ten's money was just too good to pass up. They were invited to join the Big Ten and have voted to do so- unanimously. Rutgers is expected to follow suit tomorrow bringing the Big Ten up to 14 schools and making our conference name even more completely ridiculous than it already is. (No, we shouldn't change it. Screw that.)

I've got nothing against Maryland and Rutgers but I don't get it. I mean I get it (money talks), but I don't get it at the same time. There's not a lot of tradition, football wise there (though adding Maryland hoops is a good move for the B1G, football pays the bills) though I suppose the allure of having 'the birthplace of college football' in your conference (Rutgers) might look good on some flyer somewhere other than that, I fail to see what these two schools bring to the overall B1G Ten brand.

I liked the Nebraska add. Notre Dame wasn't ready to come in from the cold yet (and won't be for at least a decade, given the year they're having) so it made sense. It was a small, conservative move that brought an established college football name with decades of tradition into the B1G Ten fold. Made perfect sense. Small moves and we up our game a bit.

Maryland... had to cut seven sports earlier this year, their athletic department was that strapped for cash. They may have access to sometimes hideous Under Armor swag but they haven't been a football powerhouse, even within their conference.

Rutgers (and let's leave aside the frankly delusional idea that NYC will start caring about college football when you've got the Jets, Giants, Knicks, Nets, Rangers and hell even the Islanders- even when those last two aren't even playing- that would probably matter before college football. Sorry) brings... nothing much of anything to the table from what I can see. (Well, Ohio State will no longer have the most pretentious name in the conference. Yes, THE Ohio State University will be eclipsed nicely by Rutgers: The State University of New Jersey) Yes, they're a solid Big East team this year and I suppose, as an Iowa fan, it'd be nice to see Coach Stringer bring her team back to Carver Hawkeye to play a basketball game or two.

We have become the Big United Conference of Media Markets and these moves are about money, pure and simple and while I'm cynical enough to understand that more things that I'd like are motivated by money, I still find it distasteful.

But are there upsides? Well, I'm assuming we'll have to re-jigger our divisional boundaries again. Maybe we get Wisconsin back? Though I'm betting most everything will stay the same and we'll get either Rutgers or Maryland instead. Penn State should be happy- they've got neighbors!

Maryland, Rutgers (I'm assuming I'm not jumping the gun on this one)- welcome aboard!

All right, leaving all that aside, what do I think happens now? Well, it's going to be a bumpy road for the ACC I think. If the Big 12 is smart (and I think they are) they invite Clemson and Florida State and if they're feeling ambitious, Louisville and Cincy too. The Pac 12 is going to be interesting to watch what they do... the television deal for the Big 12 means that Larry Scott's secret plan to blow everything to shit by grabbing Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State seems less likely now- but not entirely impossible and I'm betting they'd be looking to match the Big Ten's move to 14 by adding two. (Some combination of BYU, Air Force, Boise State or San Diego State... Nevada, UNLV, Fresno State or Colorado State are lesser possibilities.)

So bumpy road ahead... right now, it's easy for the ACC. Maryland goes, UCONN leaves the Big East and comes aboard. That pretty much means that the Big East is done as a major football conference, to me. But if the Big 12 snatches Clemson and Florida State then things get a little weird. They get weirder if the Big 12 goes for the brass ring and snatches Louisville and Cincy to get some friends for West Virginia. Then the ACC is at 12 members while the Big 10, Big 12 and SEC are at 14 (I'm betting the Pac-12 gets in on this action quick, too.) If the Big 12 just wants to be the Big 12 again and are satisfied with Florida State and Clemson then Louisville and Cincy are prime candidates for moves to the ACC. (And that's assuming the ACC doesn't pre-empt any shenanigans by inviting them both anyway.)

But we'll see... here we go again.

A Fictional Plan For Peace (2 Of Them)

As Israel and the Palestinians gear up for another bloody conflict (rockets were launched towards Jerusalem today, no word that I've seen on whether or not they hit and last I saw, Israel was calling up 75k IDF reserves) I've seen a couple of interesting things floating around out there. One was this Foreign Policy article assuring everyone that the Peace Process wasn't in fact dead. Another was an interesting question posed on Facebook: why not a one state solution?

To me a large part of this question is purely speculative. Both sides are going to have to make painful, painful sacrifices they don't want to make in order secure a deal and neither side has leaders with the stature enough nor the political will to do so. Unfortunately that means an endless cycle of conflicts such as these which will only serve to deepen the hatreds, the mistrust and makes a just and lasting peace more impossible with every passing day.

They say there's no such thing a dumb idea, so given that, I'm going to jump over a one state solution, even a two state solution and propose two completely fictional solutions instead... because with the peace process flatlined, you have to start somewhere, right?

The first comes to us from Tom Clancy and his tome The Sum of All Fears (much better than the movie though the 50-75 page chapter describing in molecular, nano-second type of detail exactly how a nuke explodes is a little overkill.) Basically, you get this:

In Clancy`s scenario, which bears an uncanny resemblance to recent news from the Moscow summit, Ryan has engineered a peace plan for the Middle East. Assuming the world community`s impatience with Israel as the putative stumbling block toward ending the region`s discord, Ryan`s plan calls for Israel to give up the West Bank to the Palestinians in return for a U.S. military peacekeeping force on Israel soil. They also must accept a Vatican-run religious government of Jerusalem that includes Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox participation. Accept it they do, we are told, and the arrangement actually works.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm... while I can't imagine Americans being crazy about another peace keeping mission in the Middle East, realistically, that's probably what it's going to take to make a peace last- but after Iraq and with us still bogged down in Afghanistan, I think that'll be a tough sell to the American people. Tough but not impossible.

The interesting element of Clancy's plan is Jerusalem. Sacred to three religions it seems also genius to put the Christians back in charge of it- especially since they haven't had any geo-political skin in the region since the Crusades. Whether Israel would realistically accept that is an open question. Probably not, I'm guessing.

The second one comes to us from The West Wing- also contigent upon American peacekeeprs on the ground (a storyline that provides a beautiful boost out of TWW sclerotic 5th Season and into their excellent 6th and 7th seasons). Palestinians accept a limited right of return- to the new Palestinian State only while Israel gives up 95% of the West Bank while allowing for a mechanism for them to intervene in 'emergencies.'

But it's TWW's Jerusalem solution that I think should get serious policy considerations. TWW essentially creates a diplomatic enclave in the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Palestinians can claim it as their capitol and gain custodial rites over the Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount, Israel can claim an undivided Jerusalem as their capitol. Everybody wins...

Obviously, these fictional plans work because, well, they're fictional. And Clancy is more interested in blowing up the Super Bowl as it turns out. But they're well thought out, they're serious and in the absence of anything resembling new ideas at all, what do we have to lose?

This Week In Vexillology #4

Craving Hu-Hot? I thought so... well, get your endless bowl of noodles and meat ready because this week's flag is the home of the man of himself, Genghis Khan: Mongolia.

Mongolia has one of the coolest capitol cities in the world: Ulan Bator. No idea what there is to do there, except maybe making long distance phone calls to people just to say: 'Hey man, I'm in Ullllllllaaaaan Bator...' (Winner of the 'coolest capitols' award goes to Burkina Faso and it's capitol Ouagadougou. Say that three times fast.)

Anyway, to business:

The red was originally the color of communism (wedged between China and Soviet Russia, the Mongols hopped on board in 1924. The Communist Party was democratically re-elected in 1997) but today it represents progress. Like neighboring Kazakhstan, sky blue shows up in this flag- representing the national color of Mongolia.

The device near the hoist is where things get interesting since Mongolia's officially atheist and the device is called a soyonbo, a 17th century Buddhist emblem. Top to bottom (I guess it'd be right to left on the picture.)

The very top isn't a flower or a crown, it's actually three tongues of flame- standing for the past, present and the future. The sun and the moon below that represent the ancestors of the Mongols. The vertical columns on either side represent the Mongolian proverb, 'Two friends are stronger than stone' while the horizontal bars in the center indicated that vigilance is required from the highest and the lowest in society. What looks to be a ying-yang is in fact, two fish wrapped around each other standing for vigilance again because well, fish never sleep.

Got all that? Good, because there's going to be a test later.

(Heavy emphasis on vigilance. Hmmmm... wonder if being stuck between the Soviets and the PRC had something to do with that.)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, these people conquered half the world in the 12th Century. So don't piss them off, they might do it again. Tip your furry hats and wave your swords around your heads for Mongolia!

And until next time, keep your flags flying- freak or otherwise!

Snackopalypse Now

Hostess, the maker of Twinkies, Ding-Dongs, Zingers and assorted other delectable goodies is closing down, shutting its doors and getting ready to sell off it's biggest brand names. It's shutting everything down and laying off 18,000 employees just in time for the holiday season.

Now, I was never big on Hostess stuff. Wonderbread was OK. My Uncle has a long standing love affair with Raspberry Zingers (the ones covered with Coconut) but a Twinkie? A Ding-Dong? Didn't really inspire in me the passionate devotion that some people feel for the Hostess brand. On a whim, I swung into Hy-Vee to see if I could grab some final boxes of Zingers and maybe some Twinkies (never having experienced a deep-fried Twinkie, I thought it would be a shame if I never tried one before Hostess sailed into the history books.) Panic buying had already ensued so I came away a box of Zingers and a box of Ding-Dongs.

On the face of it, Hostess isn't really that big of a loss. It was, as a good friend pointed out on Facebook, just another way for kids to get fat and I think that's part of what did the company in, really. People wanted healthier things to eat. Twinkies, however delicious, could hardly be called healthy.

But what bugged me was how Hostess went down. It was already in Chapter 11, already on life support, trying to cut costs where it could and their union rejected such cost-cutting measures and went on strike, Hostess was blunt. They didn't have the cash to sustain operations during a nationwide strike, set a deadline and when the union didn't come back in from the cold, it was game over.

Now, I think there's a lot of blame to go around on this one. Hostess management has undoubtedly been flogging some kind of brand nostalgia to get by for years now instead of trying to change and grow the company again. But the union's behavior strikes me as particularly self-defeating and only underlines my personal ambivalence about unions in general. I'll agree that in certain work environments that could be especially toxic/unfriendly to workers, unions can do and have done good work. Lord knows Target and Wal-Mart workers getting hosed by their management this Thanksgiving probably could use someone in their corner.

But when unions fail to see the big picture like this, it makes me wonder. I mean, talk about cutting off your nose just to spite your face. I remember Ron Gettelfinger, head of the UAW telling people that they would fight for every inch of their contract when faced with 2008 Financial Crisis that lead to the auto bailouts. My thought then was that he was gonna look pretty damn stupid if the companies went under.

That's my thought now. Trying to fight for the best deal for your members is all well and good but when jobs are at stake, especially in this economy, you need to pull your heads out of your asses and see the big picture. I'd imagine that 18,000 of these workers might not be crazy about getting their wages and benefits cut yet again and understandably so- but at least they have jobs. I can imagine they're probably not all that tickled to be looking at unemployment in a bad economy just in time for Christmas today. A nice win for organized labor indeed.

Ironically, on one of it's final days, Hostess may some decent sales numbers if the bare shelves in the local supermarket were anything to go by and all the employees will have left is a bunch of old Twinkie wrappers and unemployment checks to look forward too.

Albums2010 #58: Some Nights

I went with the Missus and the now ex-Roomie to see Fun. down at the Blue Moose Tap House in oh, I want to say it was April now and it ranks as one of the most amazing concert experiences of my life so far. The place was packed and lead singer Nate Reuss was playing for his Grandma (he revealed to the crowd he's actually from Iowa City- so he had family to play for) and I'd like to think he brought a little extra oomph to the stage that night because the atmosphere was so electric, you could practically feel it crackle in the air.

The sister-in-law has had a long standing love affair with Reuss' former band The Format, so I was familiar with some of his work and you can taste The Format in Fun.- especially in the lyrics I think. In the wake of the dissolution of The Format, Reuss teamed up with Andrew Dost and Jack Antonoff of Anathallo and Steel Train to form Fun. After a promising debut album, Aim and Ignite (personal faves from that one: The Gambler, At Least I'm Not As Sad As I Used To Be, Barlights, All The Pretty Girls, Benson and Hedges... amongst others) they seriously broke through with their sophomore album Some Nights.

I'm going to be slightly daring here and say that the breakout single from this album, 'We Are Young' is in fact, not the best part of this album. That honor, I think goes to the titular single 'Some Nights' but the rest of the album is another remarkably complete package of songs that, if the mood strikes you, you can hit play on and just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

The comparisons to Queen are almost immediately obvious. The harmonization blends perfectly and elements recall Freddie Mercury and company at their hey day but what really I think makes Fun. more than average pop music is their lyrics. Melancholy and self-mocking, self-depricating without plunging into hipster irony, they make listening to Fun's music enjoyable and the quality is evident.

Leaving aside 'We Are Young' and 'Some Nights' the album has some gems buried in it that are worth checking out. 'All Alone', 'It Gets Better' and 'One Foot' are all excellent as is most of the rest of the album. Personally, I think we can expect more great things from this band in the future. They can't be pigeon-holed as top 40 radio pop anymore that they can be labelled as indy or alternative- the lack of a definition might be seen as a negative to a lot of people but I think it enables Fun. to have the freedom to develop their sound more. It's bombastic in parts, melancholy and introspective in others and hopefully here to stay for a long time to come.

Overall: This is an excellent album. I can't really say much more than that... if you like good lyrics, good music and a good time, check Fun. out. You won't regret it.

Skyfall-- A Review

Picked up the Missus from work Sunday and met the parents over at Sycamore to go see the latest Bond movie, Skyfall. Daniel Craig's third outing as 007 more than redeems the perceived letdown that was Quantam of Solace (I really need to watch that again. I remember it being sort of OK but not much else.) and lives up to the hype and then some.

It's interesting because since the end of the Cold War, James Bond has been struggling with a sort of existential crisis that floats around the franchise- with the Soviets swept into the history books, Bond's been looking for an enemy and in the modern workplace, his innuendos and sexually harassing behavior didn't really work as well as they once did. In her debut in Goldeneye, Judi Dench's M makes it clear she considers Bond to be 'a misogynist dinosaur' and a 'relic of the Cold War.' And all the movie since then seem to be hellbent on proving that assessment wrong. In that respect, I think the Bond franchise mirrors a debate that's going on in the world of intelligence itself- do we need spies anymore?

Skyfall is the first Bond movie that takes the question head on and answers it decisively- all of which opens up interesting possibilities for future Bond movies that follow it. Skyfall opens with thrilling white-knuckle chase through Istanbul, with Bond and his partner Eve (Naomi Harris) in pursuit of a list of deep cover MI-6 agents that they can't let out into the open. They aren't successful and Bond gets shot and plunges into a river, presumed dead.

He enjoys himself for awhile, drinking and popping pain meds on a beach somewhere. (I love the beachside bar he parties in. Would love to have a bar like that someday. Maybe.) But the list is out in the open and after someone targets M (Judi Dench) by attacking MI-6, Bond comes back from the dead and is soon back in the action.

With MI-6's intelligence compromised, M finds herself under pressure as political enemies circle and Gareth Mallory (the always excellent Ralph Fiennes) is preparing to force her into retirement but M is determined the finish the job before retiring and figure out who is attacking them- and with Bond on the case, they quickly make headway as Bond finds himself in Shanghai and then in Macau (at another fabulous casino that would be fun to visit/own) and eventually on a deserted island facing down the cyber-terrorist, rogue agent, blond haired villain Silva (Javier Bardem.)

With his performance, Bardem elevates Silva (with his blonde hair and exposure of secrets, there's a strange parallel to Wikileaks' Julian Assange) to the rank of iconic Bond villains and after a climactic showdown in London, he's lured north by Bond and M for one, final showdown that proves to be the most satisfying and intense conclusion to a Bond film in years.

Sam Mendes was a brilliant choice to direct this movie... the cinematography stands out, especially when Bond is in China- the brilliant colors of the brightly lit Shanghai form an eerie dreamscape and Macau springs to life just as vividly. He also manages to pay homage to the past history of the franchise while bringing some familiar figures (such as the new young computer hacker Q played wonderfully by Ben Whishaw.) He's created a back-to-basics type of Bond but one (as the symbolism of the final showdown makes clear) won't be tied down by the past either. Daniel Craig's performance as Bond brings the best of Roger Moore's wry humor and Sean Connery's grittiness to make his interpretation of the role unique, iconic and entirely his own- and as the movie points out, it's getting harder and harder to figure out who the bad guys are these days and when one man can do so much damage with such relative ease, sometimes, as a character says, a trigger has to be pulled- so as the closing credits promise, James Bond Will Return.

Overall: **** out of **** James Bond is back, baby and the future is brighter than it's been in a long time for 007. Never mind four more years- 50 MORE YEARS!

P.S. Father Cigar raised an interesting point over post-movie martinis last night. With both Bond and Doctor Who turning 50 has our creativity stagnated and become so moribund that we have to keep franchises like Bond and Who going so long? I'd give that a cautious maybe- after all, to go so long, you'd have to be able to produce material to keep people watching. But it's an interesting question to ponder.

Instagram Food Wars: Burrito Bowls

For months now, I've been seeing commercials on television for Taco Bell's new Cantina Bell menu spearheaded by noted Chef Lorena Garcia. I was curious, nay even a little intrigued. This was the fast-food chain that had not so very long ago given birth to the insanity that is the Doritos Locos Tacos. (Seriously: taking one of my all time guilty pleasures, the Dorito and turning it into a TACO SHELL? I am still in awe of the creativity and culinary panache that went into such a move. It also helps that the damn things are delicious.) What could possibly go wrong with this notion?

So, randomly, after a morning riding around in the back of the brother-in-laws minivan, the Missus and my two nieces in tow, we found ourselves going to Taco Bell for lunch and on a whim, I decided to try the new Cantina Bell Bowl:

As you can see, it was delicious. (And it comes with a spork. Cool.) It was, dare I say even fresh, possibly even appetizing and was a pleasant surprise given the usual unhealthy delights I indulge in when I get Taco Bell. (More intriguing news: they're expanding their dessert menu and a breakfast menu is reportedly being tested here and there...) The chicken was tender and moist, the rice and beans delicious, the lettuce you got the sensation might not be the freshest of fresh but it tasted fresh enough. All in all it was a nice, moderately healthy alternative to the usual fare of Taco Bell. I approve and give my requisite two thumbs up.

But, the rumor was that Taco Bell was trying to challenge the mighty Chipotle... so naturally, you know what that meant:

BARBACOA BOWL!

What's not to like about this? It's essentially a Chipotle Burrito sans tortilla in a bowl. Which is good because personally, Panchero's tortillas are better- perhaps a matter to be debated in a future edition of IFW- but Chipotle might just have the edge with the barbacoa thing. And alas, it's on the strength of the barbacoa that we have to give the edge to...

CHIPOTLE: Sorry, Taco Bell... while you've created a worthy competitor to perhaps, the SW Chicken Salad of McDonald's, you have yet to dethrone the Kings of Fast Casual dining. There was more in it for a start but you should be proud of your accomplishment. The Cantina Bell thing- it actually tastes good and you can taste the quality as well. That's no mean feat in the fast food business.

This Week In Vexillology #3

This week... one of my all time favorite flags: Kazakhstan.

Borat aside, Kazakhstan is an interesting country. The largest of the ex-Soviet Republics, it's the ninth largest country in the world and the largest landlocked country in the world. It also irritated me greatly a few years back when they moved their capitol from Almaty to Astana (because then I have to memorize a new capitol!)- an authoritarian upgrade to get their government out of the mountains and I'm assuming a little further away from the Chinese border, for comfort's sake.

The Russian space program still makes its home in central Kazakhstan. (Seriously: I've said it before I'll say it again. Nothing quite as hardcore as the Russian space program. Our capsules splashed down. Theirs land.)

Anyway, to business:

The flag was adopted June 4th, 1992 for National and Civil usage. The sky-blue background recalls the endless skies over the Kazakh people as well as well-being, tranquility, peace and unity. The bird below the sun is a steppe eagle or a Berkut. Together with the sun (that has 32 rays) they represent love, freedom and the aspirations of the Kazakh people. The pattern near the hoist that forms a vertical stripe is described as 'national ornamentation.'

Ladies and gentlemen, wax your Borat-moustaches for the great nation of Kazakhstan...

And until next time, keep your flags flying- freak or otherwise!

Albums2010 #57: Torches

Foster The People is one of those awesome bands that showed up on my radio with Pumped Up Kicks a couple of years back. It was one of those songs you always turned up when it came on the radio dial and attempted (in my case usually badly) to whistle along too. But thanks to the magic of Spotify, a listen to their debut album, Torches shows that they're pretty damn bad-ass to be totally frank about it. There's a lot of "Wow, this is really good. Like REALLY good...' when you listen to it.

But how to describe them? Wikipedia (the font of all knowledge) describes them thusly:

Indie pop, alternative rock, indietronica, alternative dance, neo-psychedelia

I'd say this is a pretty fair description- though I have no idea what neo-psychedelia sounds is. (You read the term and you think bath salts might possibly be involved somehow, which makes you slightly uncomfortable. Am I right?) Broadly speaking, I'd say FTP is solidly alternative with dollops of electronica thrown in for good measure.

My personal knowledge of this band was limited to the radio play of Pumped Up Kicks until I came across the video for Helena Beat which was being shown on some 'all music, all the time' channel that isn't MTV' and was basically a version of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with a bunch of post-apocalyptic kids running around the joint. It got my attention right away, needless to say. I dug a little more. Don't Stop (Color On The Walls) started getting radio airplay and that was awesome and then Spotify came along and I got to listen to the whole album.

A cursory glance of FTP's Wikipedia page shows that they were careful not to rush with the rest of this album just to cash in on the success of Pumped Up Kicks and I think that decision was the right one to make. This is probably one of the most complete albums I've listened too in quite awhile. Every song is good. It's one of those albums you can start and just let go all the way through without having to skip any songs and I don't know about you, kids, but that's my definition of 'AWESOME' and 'EXCELLENT.'

Overall: Call It What You Want, Helena Beat and Warrant are probably the best songs you haven't heard on this album. But the rest are pretty damn good too. A short, compact little album at 10 songs, it's a perfect package of alternative bon-bons for your ear. I'd say **** out of ****.

Late Night Chronicles 91: The Hangover, Part II

All right. So President Obama was re-elected, the Democrats kept the Senate and the Republicans kept the House. If you're a Democrat/of the liberal persuasion, then you're probably still recovering from the hangover today and will be washing the champagne out of your clothes for a good week or so yet. If you're a Republicans/of the Conservative persuasion, well, there's still no joy in Mudville today and probably won't be for awhile now. All of which begs the question: what happens now?

In the short term, my gut says they work out a deal to avoid fiscal catastrophe. Republicans were dealt a severe setback in Congress yesterday. They might still control the House but they lost two Senate seats that they had genuine shots at in Missouri and Indiana and the world looks a lot colder and crueler than it did on Monday morning. It's advantage: Democrats/President Obama right now and everybody knows it. I don't know if I'd go so far as to embrace Vice President Biden's proclamations of a mandate for higher taxes but if the Republicans insist on holding the line against any new tax increases, it's going to rebound on them badly. All the Democrats/President Obama have to do is sit on their hands: all the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. The Republicans know this, which is why you've seen Boehner offering a deal already and I'd imagine they'd give more ground in the coming weeks as well.

And therein lies the first big opportunity of President Obama's second term: will he take firm control of his agenda or will he lead from behind on a lot of as he has in the last four years? One my strong objections to the President was that on the big things, like health care, he essentially let Congress co-opt his biggest domestic achievement and turn it into a bloated, special interest goody packed Christmas tree of a bill- something you never would have seen Bill Clinton do. (That man had his faults, but he's been the best politician of the past twenty years hands down. He would have been all over that- his ego would have demanded nothing less.) President Obama promised leadership. He's got a tailor-made opportunity to go out there and be magnanimous in victory and provide some. Whether he will or not or if it's just business as usual is still an open question. I'm cautiously optimistic that freed from the shackles of running for re-election, the President might be different. Stay tuned.

The long term picture gets a little murkier. I'll take it one party/side at a time... Republicans/conservatives/righties: Enough already. Put the canned SPAM down, take off your tin foil hats, fix your mascara and get up off the mat. One day of mournful posts about the death of America, the triumph of the weed smoking Sodomites or complaining about having to go down to the Marxist Re-Education Gulag to get measured for your Mao suit is all you get. Time to get back to work, because guess what? The news wasn't all bad Tuesday.

While they were popping champagne in Chicago, you grabbed a couple of Governorships in North Carolina and Indiana, bring your total to 30- the highest level for either party in over a decade. Four states (Alabama, Florida and a couple of others who escape me at the moment) voted to opt out of Obamacare and in deep blue Michigan, birthplace of the United Auto Workers Union, voters struck down a measure that would have enshrined union rights in the State Constitution and struck it down big. You may have lost a battle on Tuesday but that doesn't mean you've lost the war- the battle lines have just shifted a bit and with state budgets feeling the pinch and fiscal strain, the next two to four years means that there are hugely important battles to be fought on the state level. The fight over the size and scope of government in American life continues and there's an important place for Republicans in that argument.

That's not say that there aren't problems either. The GOP is facing two major problems in the wake of Tuesday's electoral drubbing. First is generational, second is demographical. The first one is probably going to be the hardest one for the GOP to deal with: America is changing. While people dismissed the 'youth' turnout in 2008 as a fluke, expecting it to crater or drop significantly this year, it didn't. Ignoring the 'youth' vote as much as ignoring/pissing off the Hispanic vote was a disastrously bad idea for the GOP this year. If 2008 was the Millennials stretching their electoral legs, 2012 was them starting to flex their political muscles and as they're (we're, I guess) the largest generation in American history, we can't be ignored anymore. The GOP needs to start targeting this demographic and do so now.

And I'm sorry, but if Tuesday killed anything it was the Reagan Coalition. A blend of social and fiscal conservatives that were eventually run off the cliff by Gingrich's insistence on hyper-partisan insanity, it just isn't selling anymore. While I'm not a fan of Democratic nostalgia for the New Deal* and preaching about how awesome government can be, what President Obama has done hasn't been to resurrect the New Deal Coalition but rather stitch together a coalition of his own. Whether it lasts remains to be seen- but the GOP needs to get out the surgical tools and start stichin' because if they want any hope of electoral success, things have gotta change.

I remain convinced that the winning formula is 'socially liberal, fiscally conservative.' To me, the most tolerable Republicans are the fiscal Conservatives. When they start talking social issues, it's a complete and utter turn off. One of the founding principles of this country was the idea that there's room enough for everyone to believe how and what they will and when a political party starts preaching otherwise, it may win them votes on a narrow, albeit significant level but there's something that strikes me as fundamentally un-American about it. We can respect all beliefs, all lifestyle choices and all opinions. We don't do that enough anymore.

Now, I'm not saying you throw out the baby with bathwater and drop all social issues altogether. But leave contraception alone. Abortion is still distasteful enough to many people and enough people believe in sensible limits on it that it'll still bring in votes. And I'm calling it right now: the next GOP Presidential Candidate will be in favor of marriage equality. (Because marriage is good. We should have more of it.)

There's a reason that Ron Paul was so popular with the younger ground. Social conservatism just doesn't fly with most people under 30. I've been waiting for the promised social apocalypse for a couple of years now since the Varnum Decision here in Iowa. Gays keep getting married and I still love and am still married to my wife. Once people rationally accept that other people getting married has no effect on them, the whole argument against gay marriage collapses. Go libertarian on social issues, stick to your guns on fiscal conservatism and you'll be back.

The demographical problem is tougher. If I'm a betting man, I'm betting not only will the GOP have a 'come to Jesus' moment on marriage equality but I'd also bet the next GOP Presidential Candidate won't be a middle-aged white guy. I'm sorry, no more white guys, GOP. And if you're going to run for President, then you gotta put your starters in. You can't run Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 2016 and expect to win. No offense to Mittens but amongst his many handicaps was having to fight through the bloodletting of the GOP primaries and still emerge as the best of the GOP B Team.

You need, NEED answers on immigration. That's another thing that killed the GOP... comprehensive immigration reform can't wait and while blanket amnesty might not be popular with elements of your base you need a better answer than 'self deportation' or 'sending them all back.' Right now the truth of that matter is legal immigration needs to incentivized more. It needs to be easy and free and that's not just an issue with Hispanic voters: as China and India rise, we're losing out on the race for talent and human capitol. That's not an issue we can ignore anymore and we need leadership on it. Might as well be from the GOP.

It's going to be a bumpy ride, GOPers. But one I think you'll come roaring back from, no problems.

As for Democrats/lefties: Stop gloating. It's unbecoming of you and you should be magnanimous in victory and not, well, dicks about it. Plus, you're the Democratic Party. Your capacity for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is not to be underestimated. So, celebrate, but don't get cocky.

*One of the interesting aspects of this election is the Democratic lovefest about the cleansing power of government and the Green New Deal that Jill Stein pushed is the type of government that people get misty-eyed about. I think people like government that works directly for them. The New Deal brought jobs to the people, electrified the Tennessee Valley, championed rural electrification, it literally let people turn the lights on. People like that. Big bureaucracies full of unaccountable technocrats? Not so much. If Democrats are smart, they're going to design a government that benefits not unions, not special interests, not corporations but individual people. And if Republicans are smart about it, they'll make sure that government is lean, efficient and fiscally responsible with the people's money. Nothing seems to induce rage faster than stories of the Federal Government taking obscenely expensive vacations or trying to fund ridiculous pork.

Overall, I'm cautiously optimistic about all of this. Whether that optimism holds up remains to be seen. In meantime, (drops mic) I'm out kids. Peace, love and all that jazz.

Late Night Chronicles 90: The Hangover, Part I

It's over. Finally. Thank God. No more pesky people knocking on my door asking me if I know where I vote (right across the street, thanks. I can see my polling place from my house!) No more robo-calls, no more ads on television... our long, national root canal has finally come to an end.

In that spirit, I'm going to write two of these things- one examining how President Obama won last night and two pondering what it all might mean in the big picture. After I'm done I am taking the rest of the month off from politics of all kinds to focus on my novel and you know, other stuff.

So, how do I think this happened? Well, after the first debate, the first thought that ran through my head was that this was going to be exactly like 2004. In 2004, Bush underperformed at the first debate and people got very, very excited. Bush salvaged enough in the 2nd and 3rd debates to keep the race close going in to the final weekend but in the end, it didn't matter. Less-than-popular incumbent with a mess on his hands won re-election.

Now, President Obama's margins were quite a bit wider than that- but I looked askance at the fact that after spending all summer complaining that the polls were skewed or wrong, as soon as numbers started trending towards Mittens, Conservatives immediately insisted that these numbers were significant and indicated a trend and blah blah blah... if Mittens was going to become President last night, we would have seen indications early on. Pennsylvania would have been too close to call. New Hampshire would have been too close to call. Florida would have flipped early for Mittens and by a decent margin. When none of that broke his way, the writing was more or less on the wall.

But in another parallel to 2004, I think the real deciding factors in the race came months ago. In '04, whether we want to admit it or not, the Massachusetts Gay Marriage Decision combined with then San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome deciding to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples in direct contravention of California state law proved to be significant motivating factors for getting evangelical and social conservative voters to the polls. I remember pulling into the Hy-Vee parking lot around 2PM that Election Day and NPR was saying that early exit polls were showing that values voters/social issues were high priorities for the electorate. I called it for Dubya right then and there (nobody heard me, because I was alone in the car) and I was right.

When you analyze 2008, I think a couple of things are going to stand out. First is the immigration issue. The Republican Party now has a huge problem with immigration- I can't state this enough. While people may not favor a blanket amnesty*, people do favor a path to citizenship of some kind and with the Arizona Immigration law being such a nationally polarizing issue, the Republican position (either the laughable self-deportation or rounding 'em up and throwing 'em back across the border) just didn't fly with Latino voters or voters in general for that matter.

The other big issue was contraception. I glanced at a right-wing post-mortem last night that proclaimed that 'Obama's campaign to scare women worked.' Well, it wasn't just his campaign and it wasn't about scaring women. While as right-wing commentators were quick to point out on the radio this morning the pro-life/pro-choice split is about 50-50 now, abortion is one thing, contraception is quite another. In a very real sense, I think Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh might have lost Mittens this election. By going after birth control, Santorum pushed the pro-life/pro-choice debate away from just abortion where the Republicans have some somewhat reasonable ground to stand on (parental notification and partial birth) to an extremist position where people were suddenly worried that they wouldn't be able to get birth control or IVF. That proved to be a bridge to far for voters, I think.

Limbaugh didn't help matters with the Sandra Fluke thing. While his point may have been valid (Feminists can't spend two decades asking the government to get out of their vaginas and then expect the government to pay for their birth control- don't argue, it's technically true even if he was a giant toolbag about it.) It only served to paint the Republicans as being scary extremists on social issues and Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock and the whole dust up over the word 'vagina' in the Michigan state legislature probably didn't help either.

Ultimately, I think those two issues helped stitch President Obama's 2008 coalition together enough to preserve his firewall in the Midwest and win re-election. While Republicans might be crying foul about how the President went hard negative in an attempt to demonize Mittens, the fact the race was as close as it was indicates to me that a lot of those attacks didn't stick. What probably did cost Mittens was his views on the auto bailout in Ohio and GOP pushes for restrictive voter IDs laws undoubtedly pushed turnout- especially in the African-American community higher where the President needed it most.

While you have to laugh that we've just been through the most expensive election in our history only to end up with the status quo we started with, I think Conservative hopes in the wake of the Citizens United decision took a big hit, as right wing super PACs spent obscene amounts of money only to come up very, very short. That in and of itself is a victory for the American people and I'm now confirmed in my belief that the American people are basically centrist but the right formula of 'socially liberal, fiscally conservative' will get you success more often than not electorally. More on what that means in Part II.

*In general, I don't favor amnesty. My family went through the long, painful proctological painful process of wrestling with the INS to do it the right way- nobody gave us amnesty. But getting citizenship legally? It should be FREE and EASY. Right now it's anything but.