We Get So Strange Across The Border

Watching the generally ridiculous Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony last night on HBO, I saw Chris Martin introuce the venerable Peter Gabriel into the hall.  Now in my long ago youth I was quite the Peter Gabriel fan, but it's been a long long year since I really listened to his work.  But then he came up and did a few songs--a duet with Martin on "Washing of The Water", a version of "In Your Eyes"-- and I thought to myself, watching: Jesus Christ.  Peter Gabriel is no joke.  (Meatwad: "Boxy don't play")  I mean, here he is, at what, 70, and he's still up there crushing these songs.  I thought I could never again hear "In Your Eyes" and get anything out of it, but there he was, up there on stage, bopping around and just...emoting.  He has a unique ability to be vulnerable without seeming naive or fatuous.  Which is...first of all, amost impossible, but also... deeply insprisng and moving. 

I've also now acquired a new respect for Chris Martin.  His intro speech was quite impressive.  (Contrast it to the indignant and idiotic intro that Michael Stipe delivered on behalf of Nirvana.  That speech I think made me like Nirvana LESS than I had before hearing it).

So now I'm on a Peter Gabrel jag.  I've been listening all day to Peter Gabriel III ("Melt"), an album I loved in high school but somehow lost track of.  Why did I lose track, I wonder?  Partially I think it's because I associate him with a really terible person I knew in high school, and partially I think it's just, I forgot about him.  He suffers, Gabriel, from the same ubiquity that makes, for example, the Beatles start to seem unexciting.  His songs are so familiar they come to seem contemptible.  

But in case anyone doesn't already know this: Peter Gabriel is amazing.  Even leaving aside how good his voice is--and honestly, you could listen to him sing "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star" and be perfectly happy--he's a top notch songwriter.  Especially powerful to me right now are the songs one rarely hears on the radio--the ones that haven't been repeated past the point of having any power.  So, for example, "Biko"; "I Don't Remember"; "Family Snapshot" (has there ever been a better song told from the vantage of an assassin?  I know--small category--but still). 
   

"Snapshot's" the one I'd urge you all to go revisit.  "Friends have all gone home. And there's my toy gun on the floor."  I actually started to tear up. Listening to that song. 

"I need some attention...I shoot into the light."

Poker Hands III

1) The KQ Off Hand

Recall the situation is as follows: you open for 8$ with KQo UTG (or Early Position).  Several players call and the button reraises to 22.  My play is a fold.

Gary, however, argues as follows:

The button re-raising to 22 strikes me as a pretty standard 1-3 buy-the-pot-because-no-one-has-shown-any-strength move. Even if the button gets a caller, they can shove a mountain of chips on the flop and rake the pot against anything shy of a set. And by calling the $22, we're pretty much guaranteeing at least one player behind us will call with a hand no stronger than ours. With no ace on the flop and position, I like my odds of winning the hand with a 3/4 pot sized bet.

This may just be an agree-to-disagree situation.  However, in case it's not, I would argue, against Gary's post

1) At 1-3, reraising on a bluff is rare.  Opening light is common--but reraising?  I don't see it very much.  Gary thinks it's more common, however, and so he doesn't want to fold.

Which is fine.  But if you think the button is on a steal, I think the wrong play is to call.  We're now going to be out of position on a flop that is likely not going to hit us.  Gary advocates a call followed by a lead bet into the rest of the players on any flop other than an A.  I am skeptical.  What hand can we represent, given this line?  99, maybe?  But we're basically putting our hand face-up on the table.  If the button player is savvy enough to have squeezed us pre flop why is s/he now going to fold to a donk?  I know I wouldn't: I'd call the flop and plan on betting the turn on any sign of weakness.

A better play--assuming we have the button read as being on a steal--is to 4-bet.  Making it something like 58$ here is, I think, a better tactic to use against someone we read as weak.

But, to make that play, I'd have to have a real read on the button.  Because 90% of the time, this reraise--at 1/3--is not a bluff.  It's a big hand.  And since we've only 8$ in the pot, at the time of the raise, I think it's better to save our bullets, give up the eight bucks, and live to fight another day.

2) The Pair of Fours

This came from an actual hand I played recently at 1-3.

The key to this hand is the UTG opening raise.   Betting tells are one of the more reliable ways, I've found, to put your players on hands.  At 1-3 the usual opening range is about 8$.  Someone opening for more than that usually has a big hand.  And when they open for a lot more than that--say 14$--they usually have a big hand that they're scared to see a flop with.  Meaning: QQ.  (Or JJ, sometimes).

The (meretricious) logic of these huge opening bets goes like this: I want to make a big enough bet pre flop to chase out any bad aces or junk hands.  I'm not getting called by A10 here!  I'd rather scare everyone away.

Which is stupid on any number of levels.

But let's not worry about those levels. Instead let's exploit this play!

If you see someone at low stakes make a huge opening raise, they will often have a hand like QQ/JJ/10 10.  Given that range, I will call any flop with an A or K on it, no matter my hand.  If they then check the turn, we can usually steal the pot with a moderate bet.

Which, on this end, is exactly what I did.  Dude checked the turn, I bet, he folded QQ face up, moaning about his bad luck.

Of course, if the guy bets the turn we have to fold.  If he check calls our turn bet, we have a decision on the river.  Depending on my history with the guy--how much (if at all) he's seen me bluff at the table so far, I may fire again, or I may check.

3) AA

This was the worst hand ever.  Also, as above, a hand I played.

I played the hand as noted.  On the river, I debated between checking and betting.  In the end I bet.  Why?

Because I've read several times--and generally find it useful advice--that when you're faced with this circumstance--not knowing whether or not to bet on a river where you may or may not be ahead--the play to make is 1) figure out the maximum amount you'd be willing to call, if you had checked and your opponent had bet 2) bet that amount (or less).

In this case, I decided I would be willing to call about 75$ on that river.  So, that's how much I bet.  The guy snap called, and turned over 3-6 clubs, for a turned straight.  In retrospect, I wish I'd bet less, but oh well.

Note by the way how bad the villain's play was on this hand.  He called with a massively speculative hand, hit his flush on the turn and then...just called both turn and river?  Madness.  If he raises the turn there I would have gotten all the chips in, and he wins a huge pot.  A lesson in why low suited cards are not that great; even having made the flush, villain was afraid to bet it (presumably b/c he thought he was beat by a better flush?)  If you're going to play those junk hands, you have to be willing to bet if you hit.  Otherwise you're getting zero value from them.

Poker Responses, Hold Steady, Knausgaard

Sorry for the delay: I've been working on the pilot.  But now that's done, and so we can talk about things that really matter.

1) The Hold Steady's New Album
It's grown on me with every listen.  I agree entirely about the production; it sounds like a bad Rush album (or is that a redundancy?).  Because I listen mostly in my car, however (where the sound is already bad) I'm less bothered by it than I would be otherwise.  I certainly don't think it's a masterpiece, but it's got at least three good-great songs on it--the first track, the one about the Ambassador, and the last track.  (I don't know the titles, sorry).

2) Knausgaard
I've read the first volume of My Struggle.  I recommend it--found it rich and thought-provoking; I've already ordered volume two.  I don't know that it quite lived up to all my expectations, but that's only because the praise I've read of it has been so high.  A lot of reviewers seemed to compare it to Proust. While there are obviously a lot of similarities between the two (length, autobiographical nature, obsession with time and memory) I found myself reminded most strongly of Sebald.  The tone is elegiac and flat in the way I associate with Sebald, and there are several references to shared intellectual interests.

On the other hand, I'm reading in translation.  Maybe the tonal resemblance diminishes, if it's read in the Norwegian.

3) Poker Hands

Hand One: KQ

I had a typo when writing this originally; I meant to write KQo but instead wrote KQh.

Given KQh, and assuming we have a deep stack, I would probably call.  However, this is marginal--we're possibly going to a dangerous place.  For our call to be right over the long run we need to be in a multiway pot; that means we have to hope, in calling, at least one of the people behind us calls.  In 1-3, that probably happens enough that we can justify chasing.

But my assumption here, if I call, is that one pair is not going to be a winning hand.  Even two pair can be dangerous.  If the board comes out (Ks Qc 4d) and all the money goes in, I'm probably in bad shape.

My assumptions here are based on the observation that most 1-3 players tend not to reraise pre flop with anything but monsters.  What is the worst hand that the average 1-3 player (i.e. our button) will raise here us with?  JJ?  In my experience most 1-3 players will call JJ here more than they'll raise.  That means that our enemies range is: (QQ, KK, AA and AK).  Even AK calls here much of the time.

What we're looking for if we call is a board with lots of draws.  Something like (10h 9d 2h) for example gives us straight and flush draws.  Even a board like that might be hard to play, however; a big check raise on the flop is probably going to get called by AA or KK in the button, which means we're playing from behind.  If we check and call we are chasing a hand out of position.  At 1-3 it's possible to make money doing this, but at higher levels, against medium to strong opponents, it's not.

KQo, in other words (to go back to what I originally intended to write) is a clear fold in this spot.  If we call, what are we hoping to hit?  Q 2 4?  How often are we good on that flop?  Even if we are, our position is going to make it difficult to make any money off the hand.  If our opponents has JJ, for example, or AK, we're getting at most one street of value out of him.  It's a win-a-little/lose-a-lot proposition, and one which I would avoid.

Hand Two: A6o.

Again, my original hand said AJ, I think.  But I changed it to A6o.  (Sorry about the typos: won't happen next time).

Winning at NLH means learning to exploit your opponents' weaknesses.  One of the most common weakness at low-stakes is that people will open raise way way too many hands.  Everyone wants to be aggressive; everyone's watched poker on TV and seen pros raising 46s and faking everybody out, and so they try to imitate.  The result is that people tend to play very loose pre flop.  (A complementary failure is that they mostly play too tight after the flop.  But that's a subject for another post).

Point is, our initial raiser is a loose donk.  His opening raise therefore means nothing.  The fact that everyone after him has only called (and not reraised) means that none of them have hands of any value.  People like to "splash around" and see flops, and for eight bucks, they're happy to take a flyer on a hand like 9j off.

Now, the obvious play here with A6 is just to fold.  However, the better play, given what we know about our opponents, is to reraise, representing a big hand.  (Or, in poker parlance, to make a 'squeeze play.')  We believe we're against weak hands and we have to punish them.  We have to exploit their failure to play well pre flop.

How much should we raise?  Well, we don't necessarily want to be called--we're happy to take it down now.  At the same time, we have to allow for the chance that our opening donk really does have a hand this time--in which case he's probably going to reraise and we're going to have fold.

He's made it eight and gotten three callers.  That means there's 32 in the pot.  I would reraise to 26ish.  That's enough of a bet to drive away bad hands, but it's not so large that we've committed ourselves if he reraises.

This play could theoretically work with any two cards in our hand.  However, the fact that we have A6 actually makes it more attractive.  We have one of the deck's four aces.  That makes it less likely our opponent has a big hand, and more likely he'll fold.  (Same logic holds true if we have a hand like K4).

If we had actually had held AJ here, I still like a reraise--only in this case it means our reraise is likely to be a value bet and not a bluff (i.e.: we are probably reraising with the best hand).

Odd though it may sound, if I had AJsuited here, I would lean towards a call and not a raise.  Why?

1) AJs is a hand that will play well in a multiway pot, and can win a lot of money against loose pre flop calls.  Specifically, I can make a bigger flush than someone else who's stuck around with, say, 56s.
2) Because I probably have the best hand, I have a chance to win some money if the flop comes ace-high, or jack-high (the latter more than the former).  JQ, for example, is probably going to pay off at least two streets of value on a jack-high board.  Now, this can be dangerous too--I could very easily be up against two pair and not know it.  It's a calculated risk.
3) AJs is a hand I really want to take to a flop.  Remember, there's always a chance that my opening raiser has a real hand.  If I reraise AJs, I'm going to be forced to fold when he 4-bets.  Calling gives me a chance to try and suck out on him.

A final note: what makes this play so attractive in this spot is the fact that our opening donk has been called in so many places: i.e. that there's a lot of money in the pot.  If the donk open raises and everyone folds to us, this play becomes a lot less attractive.  The more you exploit an opponent's weakness, the more likely he is to change his play.  If we reraise him TOO MUCH, in other words, he might start tightening his opening range.  We have to pick our spots.


SOME NEW POKER HANDS
Assume we're still playing 1-3 and that our average opponent is mediocre to bad.  Also, assume we have full stacks.  No special reads unless otherwise noted.

1) UTG opens to 14$.  One player calls in front of us.  We hold 44 and elect to call.  The flop comes A 8 2 rainbow.  UTG bets 22$.  The player in front of us folds.  It's to us.  The obvious play is to fold.   Instead, we call.  Why?


2) We hold AcAs UTG.  We raise to 10$ and get three callers.  The flop comes down Ah 4c 8c.  We bet 22$ and get one caller.  The turn is 9c.  We bet 40$ and get called.  The river is 2h.  What do we do?

"He looked a lot like Izzy Stradlin"

The problem is, even if I were to post, what would it obtain?  I've been thinking, in reference to my readers, about poker a lot.  And Roxy Music.  And The Hold Steady (to wit: their new album).

My wife has just put up a bunch of framed photos in our hallway.  So that, in exiting the bathroom, I'm inevitably confronted with an image of my wife's Grandfather, ca 1944, wearing full military regalia, and staring into the future with hope and joy.  It's not a little disconcerting.  I want to say to him...something.  Then I think how much I loathe the Tom Brokaw "Greatest Generation" thesis--even while I value and honor anyone who went over there, to shoot at other 20 year olds.  Now I think of Randall Jarrell--"it was not dying, everybody died...."  God, that's a good poem.

I haven't much enjoyed Roxy Music, is the thing.  The later stuff I like -- some.  It reminds me--a lot--of David Sylvian.  But in a diminished, unpowerful way.  I know I'm supposed to think otherwise.  But I don't.

I've been reading A LOT about Pale Fire.  And then I read some Knausgaard.  But who has not?

And for poker, I have rediscovered a love for the game, probably because I've been fortunate, recently, to play with beloved friends.  So I started to think about sending out emails with hypothetical situations, and we could talk about the details and I could propose my thoughts.  But then, I just come off as some kind of knowledgeable one.  As some kind of expert.  I mean, I don't want to lead or know things.  I don't.  I know nothing.  I can barely read.  Or function, as an adult.

But I can play poker.  The result of many wasted hours.  So here's a scenario, for all you would-bes to think on.

____

You hold KQh, UTG.  (We're playing 1-3.  Because we know how futile it all is).  You raise to 8.  You get three callers.  The button then re-raises, to 22.

What do you do?

You have no especial reads on any of the players.


* * * * Scenario Two * * * *


A loose, donk-ish player open raises UTG to eight.  Three players call.  You're in the button with A6o.  What do you do?

GOD I wish _I_ had a "porpoise grant"

I accept and acknowledge that I have posted little to not at all in the last few months.  I have been working on a TV pilot, one in which characters who have given up on meaning go forth in drunken confusion to comment with despairing erudition on a life they neither understand nor approve.  They strive only to despair elegantly.  To stuff their suffering into masks of beauty.

That said, I've also been reading more than I do usually.  Now is neither the time nor the place (well, actually it's both) for a recounting of titles, but let's say only that Moby Dick (by Edmund Welles) is one of them.

I last read the whale book in, like 2002, so I remember it only sparingly.  And I'll tell you what--which you may not believe--it's #@$#@ amazing.  I mean….it's like, this guy, Melville, he could write!  Cetology!

I'm also transcribing a lot of passages, nowadays, thanks to the Kindle, which makes transcribing so easy.  I'm coming more and more to believe that the rote copying of other people's words is the only way to learn to write.  In the past, in Austen's time, e.g, such rote copying was widely accepted as a valid learning method.  Nowadays, not so much.  But it should be.

Anyway, here's a passage I bring forth to you all.  It made me think vividly of Johannes, that criminal guitarist.  The bit at the end is the bit of note, obviously.

I mean, what crown gives a porpoise-grant?  God I want to know THAT story!

It is upon the record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large prices there.  Also, that in Henry VIIIth's time, a certain cook of the court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten with barbacqued porpoises, which, you remember, are a species of whale.  Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine eating.  The meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls, and being well seasoned and spiced might be take for turtle-ball or veal-balls.  The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them.  They had a great porpoise grant from the crown. 

"A Handful of Gems Slipping From Palm to Palm"

If you love have not yet had the opportunity to read the Patrick Melrose novels of Edward St. Aubyn, hie thee now away to some literary purveyor, acquire them, and begin at once to read.  You will thank me.

A few quotes to whet your appetite.

* * *

David’s methods of education rested on the claim that childhood was a romantic myth which he was too clear-sighted to encourage.  Children were weak and ignorant miniature adults who should be given every incentive to correct their weakness and their ignorance.  Like King Chaka, the great Zulu warrior, who made his troops stamp thorn bushes into the ground to harden their feet, a training some of them may well have resented at the time, he was determined to harden the calluses of disappointment and develop the skill of detachment in his son. 

….  It was no use expecting gratitude from [his son], although one day he might realize, like one of Chaka’s men running over flinty ground on indifferent feet, how much he owed to his father’s uncompromising principles.

* * *

He longed continually for an uncontaminated solitude, and when he got it he longed for it to stop.

* * *

  

[on an Professor]  Nevertheless, like a masterful broom, his new book had scattered the dust long settled on the subject of Identity, and swept it into exciting new piles.

* * * 

Heroin landed purring at the base of his skull, and wrapped itself darkly around his nervous system, like a black cat curling up on its favorite cushion.  It was as soft and rich as the throat of a wood pigeon, or the splash of ceiling wax onto a page, or a handful of gems slipping from palm to palm.

A Musical Interlude

The final part of the ANCIANT European Travel Divine Comedy will probably not arrive until after the holidays.  In the interim, I'd like to ask everybody to respond to this question:  what is the single worst lyric that occurs in a hit song of the 1980s? (The 1980s part is key: we have to limit our search, a little.  Plus, this way we have an excuse to think about songs from the 80s).

I think I already have the winner.  It occurs in an otherwise fantastic song--"Africa" by Toto.  (Please note, that we're using the word 'fantastic' in a very specific way when we talk about 1980s Pop.  Nevertheless, I will happily argue for hours with anyone mad enough to claim that "Africa" is NOT a great song.  Because it is.  GONNA TAKE A LOT TO DRAG ME AWAY FROM YOUUUUU)

Toto in the 80s.  How I Miss Them.  (The Band and the Decade)

This is not to say, however, that it doesn't contain an absolute disaster of a lyric.  I refer, of course to this little doozy:

I know that I must do what's right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti

I was sure, last time I heard this song that lyric was "as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a LEPRESS above the Serengeti."  I'm still not convinced that ISN'T the lyric, but I'm going to bow to the many sites on the Internet that claim it's Olympus.  It's still awful.  Way too many words have been crammed into the music, the simile is confusing, and the allusion to Olympus only confuses whatever is at stake in the song.

All right.  That's my submission.  The floor is open.  I await to hear from all my fellow 80s music loving fans.

Wait, first.  I can't help it--this lyric begs to be mentioned right away.  This way, we can get it out of the way.

He sees her, he starts to shake and to cough.
Just like the old man in that book by Nabokov.

This should be a reference point for would-be poets on what constitutes a forced rhyme.  To pick at just one of the lyric's many many problems--the protagonist of Lolita, Humbert Humbert, is not an old man; he's middle age, at the oldest.  Also (need to stop--don't go down the rabbit hole) he is NOT at all embarrassed or ashamed of his love for young women.  He revels in it; he would never start to 'shake and cough' on seeing a young girl; that suggest guilt.

Man.  I'm wondering if we should just limit this discussion to Sting lyrics.  Because that is a rich vein to mine.

Anyway, now the floor really is open.  Let's hear 'em!

European Vacation, Part II

After a week in Brussels we began the vacation portion of the trip.  First stop, Strasbourg.

  

Yesterday we took the train to Strasbourg, which has impressed us mightily.  We originally planned to go straight from Brussels to Dijon, but our guide book spoke so highly of Alsace we decided to stop en route.  We're glad we did.  So far, Strasbourg's been great.

The city is beautiful; all French cities are. There are no Liverpools or Daytons in France.  It's one charming panorama after another.  We're also ended up in a lovely hotel. (Le cour de courbeau--"the heart of the badger").  Strasbourg is in far Eastern France; we're literally walking distance from the German border.  As a result, half the guests in our hotel speak German.  (The other half speak Malagasy.)  The hotel staff seem to all speak French, English and German perfectly.  It's impressive.  And, slightly shaming.   (Recalls the old joke: What's the name for a person who speaks two language?  Bilingual.  What's the name for a person who speaks one language?  American.)

In planning this trip, one of our guiding concerns was where we would eat.  It's sort of one of our things--eating in 'destination', Michelin-star type restaurants.   Like a hobby?  No, that's way too yuppified and annoying to be a hobby.  It's an interest, let's say--and a way to organize and motivate travel.  For example: we're planning a trip to Chicago next year, in part because of all the supposedly great restaurants there.  Now, while I'm there, will I stop by the Bears Training facility and work with their O Line on how to implement a zone-blocking scheme?  Probably.  But that's not the impetus for the trip.  With Strasbourg, at least part of why we decided to stop here was because of the presence of highly-touted traditional Alsatian restaurant le Beureheisel (English: "the Beureheisel").  Last night we went there.  And the food, while good, probably doesn't qualify for our "great meals list."

In some ways, the whole thing of going to highly-regarded restaurants (for me at least) is a bit like how it used to be seeing live music. You go to see a band, because you hear that such and such a band MUST be seen live. OR, you just feel, as a music fan, that it's your duty to see Eric Clapton. You hope it will be a transcendent experience, one to tell your grandkids about (though why your Grandkids would want to hear about Eric Clapton is another story).  Usually it's not, but, regardless, you have a good time.  It's the same with the restaurants on the "Best Restaurants in the World" list, e.g.  (Which I admit to perusing frequently).  You hope, if you can make it to Alinea or the French Laundry, you'll have a sublime, live-on-in-memory type experience.  Usually you don't  (if the experience were common, it wouldn't be so exciting), but when you do, it's all the better.  I'd say only one of the restaurants we ate at on this trip reached that level.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

And now, having already started this hare, I feel motivated to think about "foodiesm."

The word, like 'hipster,' has acquired a lot of negative (even, overlappingly negative) stereotypes.  But in its best form, a foodie, is like a passionate 90s indie music fan.  The archetypal, ur-foodie experience, I would argue (and this was already covered in a recent Sunday times article, but reassert its truth) involves going on Chowhound (the website that's the hive brain for serious foodies), reading exhaustively about all the best places in your city to get, I don't know, beef pho, and then methodically and unswervingly trying them all.  Jonathan Gold, the LA food critic, is the model here.  (In fact, a credible argument could be made that he was the first foodie, that he invented the whole...thing).  But the point (or at least a point) is that Foodie-ism is NOT about fine dining, per se (though most foodies probably do also do a lot of 'star chef', fine dining too) but adventurous, encyclopedic dining.  It's about eating offal, or grasshopper, or sheep testicles.  It's about knowing (or believing you know) THE place to get Ramen on the south side of Chicago, or the difference between a true omakase and a westernized version.  Etc.  Anyway, according to this definition, the Wife and I are NOT foodies.  

To continue with the 90s indie music fan analogy... Foodies, like the people who worked at my college radio stations, tend to value "creators" (chefs or bands) who manifest the same traits.  1) They're spiritually pure.   Just as indie rock fans reserved their strongest disgust for bands that 'sold out' by signing with a big corporate label, so do hardcore foodies tend to sneer at chefs like Wolfgang Puck or Bobby Flay--people whose image adorn every type of sauce and refrozen burrito in creation.  (Emeril used to fall in this category, but he's rehabilitated his foodie-cred in recent years).  2) They're off the beaten path.  The 90s indie fans were almost most excited about being the first to recognize the greatness in a band that no one had heard of.  Same holds true for the real foodie; being the first to advocate for the greatness of an Albanian fried pork dish that can ONLY BE had from the back of a food truck which food truck ONLY CAN be found if you have a friendship with the driver...that's a big thing.  Hence the growing fad for pop-up restaurants and secret invitation-only supper clubs.  This overlaps with a larger desire that we may all have--to be 'inside' and not outside.  But that's not unique to foodieism, by a long shot.

I regret starting this hare.  

A final point--if true foodies resemble 90s indie rock fans, my wife and I come closer to the mainstream readers of Rolling Stone (or a less lame alternative).   We have the time or energy to see every concert or listen to every album, and so we're willing to pay to get good seats when to the few shows we do attend.  Except that that analogy doesn't give us quite enough credit, because the average middle-age Rolling Stone reader (at least in my stereotype) probably gets a lot less good information about music than does the average Chowhound reader about food.  I hope.

Let me also say, before turning back to France, that I often do feel an amount of weariness and self-disgust at all this fetishizing of food, and that the contradictions and maybe even immorality inherent in spending on a single meal what some people earn in a month is not lost on me.  And that while I may write about our 'concerts', 90% of the time we eat at home on food that I cook, and that said food is neither unhealthy nor expensive (roast vegetables and grilled chicken, sautéed greens and tri-tip, etc.) 

Let us, at last, abandon foodiesm.  The point is, we ate, on our trip, at a lot of 'good'  (well-reviewed, highly regarded, much recommended restaurants) in Europe.  And this place, the place in Strasbourg, le butter house, or whatever, was one of them.  And though it was "good" in all the expected ways, it won't live in memory.  Like seeing Clapton, or Sting, but not, I don't know, Bowie on the Earthling Tour, or U2 on Achtung.

Also (and here we can at last return to my telling dissections of foreign mores) a notable exchange occurred at end of our meal.   Our entrees finished, we decided not to order any coffee or dessert (in part because we were full, and in part because we'd already been given a plate dessert amuses, which featured what was for me the 'best bite' of the meal, a delectable mango fruit gelee on shortbread).  Ten minutes after our plates were cleared, we'd left the table and gone to wait in an anteroom off the dining area for a cab.  The sommelier, walking by, reacted to seeing us as if he'd stumbled on some teenager publically urinating on floor.  What were we doing?  Why had we left from our table?  Hadn't they offered us dessert?   Coffee?  Tea?   What about cheese?  Some more wine?  Over and over we assured him that, yes, they'd offered us everything, we had just wanted to go.  (We'd been there 2.5 hours at that point.)  He was dumbfounded.  It was almost as if, we'd insulted him.  

Because, of course, in Europe, when you book a table, you have that table for the night.  And what sane person wouldn't want to linger at said table, engaging in witty banter over the port and walnuts, as it were?  Whereas in America, of course, restaurants like nothing more than for a guest to leave immediately after dinner; it means they can seat another guest.  (This leads to interesting moments, at high-end American restaurants, where they really really really want you to leave, but don't at all want you to feel like they want you to leave.   At the better places, they solve this problem by offering to buy you a drink in the bar.  Meaning, essentially: get up from your table and I'll give you free booze.)  But, in Europe, not only can you stay at a table for at least an hour after the entree is done, you really SHOULD.  I guess.  To a certain extent, he might have just thought we didn't know that we were welcome to stay.  He was a nice guy.

Okay enough about food.  The next day in Strasbourg we went to the Strasbourg Cathedral.  Said Cathedral was fricking awesome.  I include photos, but they weren't taken by us.  I don't know why we didn't take pictures--because it was so phenomenal.  But, anyway.  Here are pictures.  The characteristic pinkish stone comes from the Vosges, a chain of cactus-laden mesas in Southern Australia (not really).

The Strasbourg Cathedral Astonomical Clock

Inside the Cathedral we got to see something my wife called "The Chicken Clock."  Basically, it's an elaborate clock that chimes once a day.  I recommend you read about said clock in more detail.  It has many many moving parts, and plays out a series of scenes involving Biblical stories every time it chimes.  There is also a chicken (well, a rooster) that crows, three times, as the disciples in the clock pass by Jesus.  We waited in the cathedral for 30 minutes, in a crowd of other expectant tourists, to watch it chime.  It was worth it.  I loved the chicken clock. 

Detail of the Clock

* *

The afternoon of the chicken clock viewing, we took a train to Colmar, to see the Isenheim Altarpiece.  Said Altarpiece is one of the three most important pieces of art done in the Middle Ages.  (Such a claim, of course, is well-nigh impossible to defend.  But nevertheless, I make it.  Undaunted.)  So, I decided we should go and see it.  (It came up a several times in my college and grad school art history classes).  After all, we were only an hour away, and Colmar is not a town one passes often.

Nothing stood out too much about the day in Colmar.  Except...given that the Isenheim Altarpiece is by far the most overriding reason anyone would visit Colmar, it was curiously difficult to figure out where it was located.  But we found it in the end (in part because I struck up a conversation with a French student, who then asked the natives, and guided us there).  Le retable (the French word for "altarpiece."  Also "canned tuna") didn't appear as impressive as it could have; it's kept in a monastery that's been repurposed as an art museum, and the museum’s keepers had been very sparing in their installation of electric lights.  The only way you could really see what was inside was through natural light, and since the day was overcast, the whole interior had a murky funereal vibe that made viewing difficult.

Still it was a worthwhile trip, although by this time, I'd become slightly disenchanted with train travel.  (I viewed it more romantically, I think, before the trip began).  It's not so much the train ride itself which I've grown to dislike, but all the before and after--the haul to the station, the arrival, the search for ticket booth, the line, the back and forth with the agent, the search for the platform, the buying of the snacks preparatory to the ride, etc.  

The Isenheim Altarpiece

Some interesting knowledge picked up in the Isenheim museum--St Anthony is frequently depicted in Medieval art with a pig nearby.  And, around the Antonine monastery where we visited (where the Isenheim altarpiece was stored) those pigs that monastery property were marked as such with a ring through their ears.  That ring meant those pigs could not be used by the villagers, those were allowed to roam free, and none of them could be killed by the villagers.

In our next episode: The Burgundy wine country and Paris.

European Vacation, Part I

As promised, here is the first of my (slightly edited) journal entires from our recent trip to Europe.

 *  *  * 

Below are excerpts from the journal I kept while the wife and I travelled in Europe.  We had gone because the Wife had a medical conference in Brussels.  From there, we went to Strasbourg, Dijon, and Paris.  I'll break my journal up into a few different posts.  Where necessary, I've gone back and filled in clarifying details.

Brussels

  

So here I am in Brussels, staying in what I think can safely be called the worst hotel in human history.  Let me amend that: worst luxury hotel; it's the luxury aspect that makes the place so irritating, because we (or, to be more accurate, my wife's employer) are shelling out 400 Euros a night for this place.  For that amount of argent you'd think we'd get a room where you could turn on the lights when you went to the bathroom.   But, hey, the breakfast room has four dozen books of fashion photography available for perusing while you drink your cafe!  And--as if that weren't enough (and it is)--a glassed-in dress from some recent avant-garde fashion collect awaits your approval in the area outside the breakfast room.  (The place bills itself as a 'fashion hotel' which is ridiculous on so many levels I can't even get into it.  Except, I will say that putting a hotel dedicated to fashion in the middle of Brussels feels like constructing a museum for temperance in the middle of Moscow).

Where was I?  Oh...the bathroom.  The bedroom has only two light panels--one by the bed and one by the door.  And the switches are...minute.  So going to the bathroom in the middle of the night means either stabbing hopefully at the panel until you hit the light for the bathroom (in which process you will inevitably turn on all the other lights in the room, thus waking your spouse)--or going in the dark.  And I mean the dark.  There is no ambient light at all.  Also, the "bathroom" is not a bathroom in the sense of "a separate room, closed off from the bedroom."  It is, rather, a disassociated set of functions--a toilet and a shower--both of which open directly into the bedroom.  (This lack of buffer zone between toilet and bedroom causes inconveniences of its own, which I won't get into).  Even worse, both toilet and shower use the same door.  Its pivot hinge lies directly between toilet and shower.  This one door must thus be toggled to close off EITHER the toilet or the shower--but never both.  This is very irritating.  And, often, discomfiting.

But no more about the hotel.  Except this--today I went to the front desk to ask if someone could help me book a train ticket.  I was told the concierge wasn't in till tomorrow.  What kind of "upscale" hotel, I wanted to ask, doesn't have a concierge on service during business hours?  Instead I asked when he'd be there.  "In the afternoon."  Did she know what time in the afternoon?  She shrugged.  And I cursed the hotel again in my mind. 

Anyway, I'm still feeling a bit tired, from the jetlag/time shift.  It's been overcast and rainy since we got here; without exposure to sunlight the human body struggles to adjust to new time zones.  Also, the dietary changes have been more difficult than expected.  I ate large salads every day during the weeks before we left, with copious vegetables for dinner.  Belgian food features lots of meat and butter, but salads and 'les legumes' (vegetables) feature less plentifully. 

What about the language?  I majored in French in college, but that meant only that I could read a Sartre play or a Mallarme poem and (probably) write a decent essay in response.  So I spent the months before we left working on my French (via a great app, recommended by my brother, called DuoLingo).  Since we arrived, I've been speaking with at-least moderate proficiency.

Brussels City Center

The difficult moments with a second language come in situations where there is no obvious context for the interaction.  After dinner tonight, for example (at "The Parakeet," an inexpensive cafe specializing in pitas), when the waitress came to clear our plates, she said (I thought)  "Votres choses?"  Our coats were nearby, on a chair, and so I thought she was asking if those coats, the ones right next to us at the table, belonged to us.  Which, admittedly, was an odd thing to ask.   ("Votres choses" for non-speakers, means "your things?")  So I said yes ("oui!")--these were our things.  And she looked confused.  Then, in English (always a dispiriting moment, when they switch to English) she said, "do you want anything else?"  And I realized she'd said not "votres choses" but "AUTRES choses?"  Which in a noisy restaurant, sound pretty similar.  But, had I'd fully understood the post-dinner ritual, the context for conversation after eating, I wouldn't have had to try and distinguish, in a crowded restaurant, between 'autres' and 'votres.'   Just one of many moments on this trip, speaking French, where I felt foolish. 

Not only am I continually reminded that I don't (and can't) fit in--the citizens seem pleased for me to be so reminded.  I can't know their rules and codes, they seem to say, and they don't wish me too.  Last night (at Lola, an upscale bistro) I asked (in French) for tap water.  That's a slightly unusual request; most people who eat out drink bottled water.   Sure enough, that's what we got--bottled water.  I thought at the time that I had made a mistake with my French, but today I learned that my French was fine, and that asking for tap water in Belgian restaurants is just "not done."  It was entirely likely, in other words, that I had asked for tap water (correctly), but just hadn't been given it.  More than that, by virtue of the incredible gaucherie I'd just inflicted upon this upscale restaurant, I'd marked myself as a tourist--a fool.   

And in doing so, I'd probably given my Belgian waiter a secret thrill.  I know: that sounds paranoid, but I often feel my Belgian interlocutors (good band name?) enjoy my repeated errors.  They want me/us (Americans?) to feel like outsiders, to sense our inability to belong.  Their codes, their behaviors, their comfort in navigating all the day-to-day rituals of European life...it's as if that knowledge is all that the Belgian people--inhabitants of a fraying, minor European power--have to feel good about.  Their country may be about to split in two, they may be an afterthought in world politics, but hey--at least they know not to order tap water in a restaurant.  At least they know not to try to eat dinner at 6:30!

What I find surprising in all this, though, is that instead of discounting these rituals and codes as foolish (what the hell is wrong with ordering tap water?) I respond by trying to go along.  I know I'll never NOT look like a tourist, but I still want to try.  At the same restaurant, we were shown, when we arrived, a terrible table--awkwardly positioned, right next to the kitchen, at the very back of the house.  In America, I would always ask to sit somewhere else.  But here, somehow, I didn't dare; I didn't want to stand out.  I wanted to be accepted.  Which is odd, because--and I say this only slightly in jest--I don't have any great for the Belgium people.  I find them dour, irritating, and close-minded. 

And yet, I do find them intimidating.  Their lifelong indoctrination into a complex code of behavior gives them power.  If, in any given situation, you know, with certainty, what should be done--that knowledge, though it may limit your freedom, also releases you from the anxiety of having to choose.  If there is always a correct response, a behavioral code to fall back on, there is no necessity to stake out your own personality, define your own character in choice.  The code is an armor and a protection, and that protection is, I imagine, tremendously liberating.  This is the source of our nostalgic obsession for Downton Abbey, I think; its great appeal is not of wealth or status, even, it's that we could imagine inhabiting a society in which it's possible to learn all the rules.  In which everything was ordered such that there was always a correct action.

But I've gone off a bit from ordering tap water.

The Delirium Cafe

A few days later

It's now Sunday night.  The last post was from Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.

What has happened since?

We got more comfortable in Brussels but never grew to love (or even strongly like) it.  We returned to Le Perroquet, and even once sent back a dish (a massive gaucherie, I know).  We made it to the old, medieval city center of Brussels; that lifted our opinions of the whole city (very lovely).  I made us go to the Delirium Cafe--a Mecca for beer enthusiasts around the world, with over 2000 bottles served.  I'm not a huge beer person, really, but it seemed silly to go to Belgium and drink no beer.  

At Delirium I had a delicious framboise, a fruity raspberry concoction which tasted not at all alcoholic but very strongly of raspberries.  We were there around 2 pm; at a table near us, sat a woman nursing a young baby.  She herself had the remnants of a black eye.  There were two other women sitting with her, all quite young, and several empty beer steins.  I wondered what their story was.

Besides beer and mussels (and enslaving half of Africa), Belgians are known for French fries.  Yesterday we went to a famous chip stand (a kiosk, that is, that sells only French fries.)  Maison Antoine, was its name.  It's been in operation for more than fifty years.  Because it's just a kiosk, if you want to sit indoors after you get your chips, you have to go to one of the nearby cafes.  Those that will allow you to bring in outside chips, have a little sign, resembling Frylock from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, on the windows.  That, we liked.

The fries, by the way, were not great.   

On Friday afternoon we took a day trip to Bruges.  It drizzled most of that day (indeed, has done so every day we've been here), but Bruges still had enough beauty to overcome it.  While I was there I kept quoting to myself one of the lines from In Bruges, a film that tries to generate comic energy by having a duo of sadistic gangsters juxtaposed against the city's quaint medieval loveliness.  (The line, like most of the movie, is R-rated, so I won't repeat it).

The Stadhuis, Bruges

Bruges felt to me a bit like Florence.  It's not actually a real place anymore; it's an exhibit, a staged experience for tourists (who thronged the place).  On the train ride back I tried to imagine what it'd be like to grow up in Bruges, a place so heavily impinged on by the past, a place where you are always being brought back to what has already happened a long long time ago.  (We did pass an enjoyable half hour in the Stadhuis museum.  Reminds me of an idea for a kind of esoteric humor joke, which is to do with the battle of the Golden Spurs, in Bruges history).  I think it would be incredibly claustrophobic--your sense of possibility and options, I imagine, would feel hugely circumscribed. 

A residential street in Bruges

I had some thoughts too about how European political parties frequently skew so much more radical than their American counterparts.  (There's no fascist party in America, whereas dozens of European country have viable, neo-fascist ones).  The weight of the past figures in.  There's so much more to want to be free from, in Europe--so much more to want to tear away.  To be a conservative, to want to limit change, means staying in the 15th century in somewhere like Florence.  It's not enough.  You want to destroy it all and start again, tear down all the museums and churches and have a blank slate to work with.  I don't know.  These are kind inchoate ideas, but...yeah.

Anyway.  Bruges felt like a place we had to go (being in Brussels); now, having seen it, we need never return.

"Celine Dion was Really Awesome to Him."

We got back from France on Tuesday in the early morning; I'm working up some entries on our adventures there, but they'll take a few days to assemble.

In the meantime, I recommend that anyone interested in Elliot Smith (and if you admire strong songwriting, you admire Elliot Smith) check out this oral history of his life and times.

One of the many interestings bits of info in it had to do with that icon of Portland indie songwriting, Celine Dion.  Smith, as you may remember, was nominated for a "Best Song" Oscar in the same year that Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" conquered the universe.  When he was invited to perform at the ceremony, there was something, let's say, of a disconnect between his world and that of Titanic-era Los Angeles.  But, it turns out that Dion went out of her way to make Smith feel at home during the Oscar ceremonies...

... the highlight of that event for Elliott was that Celine Dion made him feel comfortable, from backstage to onstage. It really was amazing. She made him really feel at home, like he was one of them.

ROB SCHNAPF: Celine Dion was really awesome to him. She really was.

For some reason, that made me happy.  Knowing Celine Dion, for all the terribleness her songs emit, is  a decent person.

He Can Read. And He Knows that Finishing the Whole Book doesn't Prove Anything

I recognize that I haven't posted in quite a while.  Quite a long while.  I feel guilt, concerning my long absence.  Why guilt?  Why would weep, should Marius fall?  I mean, I don't know why.  But I do.  Because if you're going to go to the trouble of saying I HAVE A BLOG, you have, I think we all agree, some obligation to post at least every week.  Right?  And I have let down my side.  I have not lived up to my responsibilities.  I have slept while Rome burned.

So.  I will say only that the last few months have been dark, dark and grim, dark and grim and bleak, and that, in that darkness (which I write of now with a mock ironic tone, I acknowledge that, and what could be worse than mock-irony? NOthing, that's what could be worse than that--nothing) I have felt a desire to shrink into myself, to communicate with no one, to say nothing. to be a faux-Beckett, with nothing to say and no way to say it.

Or to put it less pretentiously, why inflict my sorrow on readers?  Or to put it more honestly--it's not that I'm hesitant to inflict my sorrow on CERTAIN strangers.  But then again, who might read this?

Because a blog, is, in its way, a public forum.  Drake, Usher, LeBron--any one of them, on any given day, might be reading my blog.  And do I want LeBron to know I'm feeling down?  To let him know I've lost a step?  That I can't hit the long J like I once did?  I do not.  Of course, I do not.  It will only make it harder to D him up, come November.  And that, I do not need.

So I pass over all that.

And I talk about trivialities.  We are all comfortable locating ourselves in trivialities.

I'm reading...oh who cares?  Not me.  Some stuff.

Eating more salads.

Listening a lot to a band called Ultraista.  Almost got my daily run to three miles.  Well, at least eclipsed 2.5 miles.  Rewatching the entire Sopranos series.  Without italics.

I'll be in Belgium, then France, soon.  Belgium is, I believe, the capital of Mongolia.  So, that should be interesting.  To see how they live, the Mongolians.

My wife is pretty wonderful.  My dog is pretty cute.  I've almost recalled my semi-ability to semi-speak French.  That's about it.

That's about it.

I think we can all agree the punctation on this text was deplorable.

I would also say that if anyone has to face down anyone quoting Julius about Eliot's anti-semitism, James Wood has pretty much the definitive last word on it.  In The Broken Estate.

And, if you're not watching The History of Film on TMC you're some kind of lame-ass sucker.  That's right.  I said it.  A lame-ass sucker.

ANCIANT out.