The Weekly Meat

Oh My, What I've Unearthed...

This morning, I found a cache of my old writing notebooks, from the earnest, unwittingly-dilettante college years. Primo stuff.

And so, in the spirit of Mortified — in which "people tell stories about their lives by sharing their most mortifying childhood artifacts (diaries, letters, lyrics, poems, home movies)... in front of total strangers" — I believe I'll have to fully curate these and send the choicest cuts out into the cyber-universe for the sake of public humiliation. Today, though, I offer the following morsel, from the summer of 1990. It sticks out because I distinctly remember a few facts about it.

One: I was quite drunk when I wrote it, lying half off my futon on the floor of a summer sublet. And two: I am to this day thankful I did not burn down that apartment — and myself — that night.

That summer, I lived solo in a garage apartment. The only light in my room was an overhead, which was too bright to use at night, and too far from bed to turn off. And so I used to light a bedside candle to read and write by before going to sleep. I have no memory whatsoever of where I might have been headed with what amounted to the final thought of this too-brief morsel — as it ended mid-sentence, when, apparently overwhelmed by my own brilliance — and drink — I passed out. When I awoke came to the next morning, I was surprised to find no candle by the bedside (if one doesn't blow out a candle, it tends to keep burning — in this case, thankfully, safely, to not even a nub), and the following cryptic note:

Drunk, & most definitely disorderly — long walk home after a night of good blues. Me don't care -- standing at home, in front of my toilet

uncouth, German, hard-edged

Stay tuned... Plenty more to come, folks!

TWM Book Club 2010

It's that shopping time of year, folks. So I am again doing my public service for the publishing industry, and running through some more of my top fives lists. No new releases here (call me crusty, but hey, I'm on Twitter), but plenty good reading — or re-reading, as the case may be.

Buy 'em where you buy books.

 

Category of Its Own

The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948–1985, by James Baldwin — If I could read only one book for the rest of my life, I would choose this. No question. An outstanding collection of essays so good and so smart it hardly seems fair. Endlessly thought-provoking. And yet even that absolute, yet seemingly glib, description can't help but undersell one of the best writers ever to touch a typewriter.

 

Top 5 Books for Required Reading  (think of it as one of those Facebook memes)

1984, by George Orwell — For several years, I taught this to college students. Some of them got it, some of them didn't. But I didn't really care, because I love this book, and I love it more each time I read it. And the world we live in causes me to recall it more often than perhaps any other book.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee — Ditto. 

Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky — I first read this the winter after graduating from college, and just flat out dug it. Cold, dark, claustrophobic, and the only thing close to its level of skill in this genre may be Capote's In Cold Blood.

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald — The end is fucking Shakespeare; gets me every time:

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

A Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger — I loved it from the moment I read it. And on that first reading, I glossed over the whole framing of the story, didn't get the whole cause for telling the story, anything. All I knew then was that Holden Caulfield was a fuck-up, and he was my hero.

 

Top 5 Books on The Nam  (a minor obsession of mine, this genre)

We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young: Ia Drang — The Battle That Changed The War In Vietnam, by Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway — Forget the movie; Mel Gibson is a racist, misogynist wanker. This look at the then-new "air cavalry" is one of the most in-depth battle books you'll find. And a completely engrossing read.

The 13th Valley, by John M. DelVecchio — A long book whose note-perfect world I missed immediately upon finishing. The feeling and language of Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.

Dispatches, by Michael Herr — The best straight-ahead reporting to come out of the war.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien — O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone... and Going After Cacciato are also well worth a read, but those earlier books seem like exercises to make sure that he got everything right when he finally wrote The Things They Carried. Needless to say, he did. Maybe my favorite book of all time.

A Rumor of War, by Philip Caputo — The classic firsthand account from several perspectives at once. In the early days of the war, the author served on the front lines as well as the rear; then returned in '75 as a journalist as Saigon fell. The book has all the immediacy of battle narrative, but with the benefit of introspection. Caputo asks difficult questions — of the reader, of himself, of the world.

 

Top 5 Road/Travel Narratives

On The Road, by Jack Kerouac — The end always echoed of Gatsby to me — in a good way; the best way:

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty, I think of Dean Moriarty.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, by Hunter S. Thompson — About the '72 race to the White House, this is still one of the best books ever written about the political process.

Blue Highways, by William Least Heat Moon — As a heavy user of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, I'm a big fan of this pretty much straight-ahead road narrative, which I'd rank atop US book-length travelogues (though dozens have done brilliant shorter-form essays).

In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson — I have read a half a dozen of Bryson's books, and find him hilarious (in this era of cheap "LOL" this book, along with being informative, literally does make me laugh out loud). This account of Australia is my favorite, his funniest, and his best.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll — The literary equivalent of The Simpsons. Or the bible. Readable on different levels by different audiences able to tease out disparate messages and meanings from the text. Parents reading to kids, students stoned to all hell, academics arguing methods of reasoning. So infinitely good.

Book Review: The Rhinestone Sisterhood

Disclaimer: Author David Valdes Greenwood is a good friend of mine and has been for some time. That said, we went to grad school together back in the day — MFAs in Creative Writing (fancy that) — and have long critiqued each other's work quite honestly. So the following review is not to blow smoke, but rather to highlight a very worthwhile book that I was lucky enough to read in advance of its publication.

Despite my having two young daughters who do, I don't go in much for princesses. Not princesses, not celebrities, not royalty, not queens.

And yet, I found myself wondering early on in The Rhinestone Sisterhood exactly which of the five local Louisiana contestants would be crowned Queen of the City of Rayne Frog Festival. I turned to the final page of chapter one and found myself doing something that seemed to me a bit, well, girlish. I covered the last line of the page, lest my wandering eyes sneak ahead to (what I presumed was) the reveal and betray the sense of building drama.

That author David Valdes Greenwood got me to care about a pageant — local or otherwise — is some feat. As I've noted before on these pages, I'm just not that guy.

As it was, I both smiled and cursed him that first night with this book — because it was late and I needed to sleep, and as any good playwright ends a first act, so the author ended his chapter one with a question.

It turns out that the Frog Queen is revealed in chapter two. And it turns out that these pageants, and the girls who compete in them, are far more human than one might expect. These are "not traditional beauty queens." Rather, they come in all shapes and sizes (as is explained), "the embodiment of local spirit, representing some town or county's greatest resource (from Smoked Meat to Petroleum)."

To win their titles, they must first prove their knowledge of decidedly unglamorous subjects from meat-packing to animal-skinning and convince the judges that they can spend a year sharing their knowledge. For some of the smallest towns, these queens might well be the lone ambassadors, the only kind of advertising that an out-of-the-way community can afford as a way of attracting visitors.

One of the first things you should know about this book is that it's not a send-up of these pageants or their queens. The author is himself from a small rural town, and because he treats his subject with respect, so does the reader.

That's not to say the book is short on subtle, observational humor:

Because it's a carnival, fried is its own food group . . . . A teenage carnie, whose paper cap hides her hair but not the supernova of acne swirling on her exposed forehead, dunks Oreos in a vat of pale, sweet batter, then tosses them one at a time into a trough of oil that sizzles when the cookies make contact . . . .

When the deep-fried delicacies are ready, she serves them in a paper cone, doused in confectioner's sugar and "delivers her handiwork with a grave warning: 'Wait three minutes or you'll lose all the skin off the roof of your mouth.'"

The second thing you should know is that this is not the story of creepy parents living vicariously through their JonBenét-aged offspring, nor their slightly older Little Miss Sunshines. The focus is entirely on the very real lives of the high-school and college-aged women, 17–23, who juggle school and part-time jobs with the never-ending civic responsibilities that come with their crowns.

The book is broken up into three parts. Part one deals with several specific local festivals/pageants, named for the local agricultural industries: Frog, Fur, Cattle, and Cotton. Part two then follows those four newly-crowned queens on their individual weekend journeys around the state (generally on their own dime) doing what amounts to PR work for their particular festival. And part three follows our four on their trip to attend Washington, D.C. Mardi Gras, a blowout ball/weekend put on by the Mystick Krewe of Louisianans — and their quest to win the ultimate prize and be crowned Queen of Queens, a statewide and less civic-minded pageant in which all of the local Louisiana queens compete.

The author has developed great journalistic chops and I know as a friend that his short-term recall is near total. His knack for detail — specifically for details that are quite telling — is excellent, and he paints each scene in confident strokes.

The six contestants smile bright smiles as the judges consider them, and their shared energy helps draw focus from the incongruous background: a faux brick storefront featuring an enormous glass window bearing the initially incomprehensible legend "stnalP skinhsuM" and "woR dikS." If it were possible to stand on the other side of the glass, you'd find yourself looking through the window of "Mushnik's Plants" on "Skid Row," which is to say that the pageant stage is doing double duty as the set of a high-school musical. The Cattle Queen will be crowned in the Little Shop of Horrors.

Occasionally though, I found myself thinking this was all too sweet — more Norman Rockwell than It's a Wonderful Life (which, after all, is a fairly dark story centered around suicide and death) — and there's hardly an earnest soul, festival, or small town the author doesn't root for. I wondered too what the book would be like had the author been from not Maine but Louisiana, where his local knowledge and bias might have stirred up more internal conflict.

I know that David became and remains friendly with most of his subjects, but it's difficult to tell sometimes if he's wearing kid gloves or simply giving us an honest treatment of good human beings dedicated to the areas or industries they represent. Admittedly, too, it's easy enough to feel real empathy for these women after reading what they are forced to deal with in the way of brutal, tabloid-style internet message boards on which catty teens and hopeless "mamarazzi" spend far too much time tearing down locals smart and personable enough to have won a pageant.

The book's subtitle is "A Journey Through Small Town America, One Tiara at a Time," and I wanted it to live up to that description a bit more than it did. I buy the conceit that these local pageants are a great prism through which to view what's happening in life outside of our cities, but I wish the book had the time and space to draw more conclusions about the current state of our towns, and our country, than it does. I hoped for another 50 pages, specifically in part three, where it rushed along to an end that felt (despite my initial interest in who would be crowned Frog Queen) a bit like a more traditional Hollywood plot (Who will win Queen of Queens? How will our fair maidens fare? Who will find redemption and who disappointment?) was being overlaid onto a character-driven cultural study.

At under 300 pages, it's a quick read, and certainly enjoyable. David Valdes Greenwood writes with a sure hand, and this sort of non-fiction is just the type of non-required reading I like. Would I have read this book if I wasn't friends with its author? No. Am I glad I did? Yes. It's a worthwhile, well-told story about a fascinating world into which I had previously had little knowledge of, interest in, nor access to. The Rhinestone Sisterhood gave me all three — and my bookshelf and I are richer for the experience.

TWM Book Club 2009

As the consumption marathon of the holidays roll around again, I thought I'd do my public service for the publishing industry, and run through some of my top fives lists. I'll forgo sliding into "Modern Jackass" territory (this week!) and stick to only the guilty pleasure genres that I actually read.

Buy them where you buy books.

Top 5 Sports Books (and I don't mean that in a betting sort of way)

The Game, by Ken Dryden — A classic, completely worthwhile read by a Hall of Fame goalie. Still the best (and smartest) hockey book out there.

Secretariat: The Making of a Champion, by William Nack — The Seabiscuit book is also excellent, nostalgic, and informative, but Bill Nack's book, thankfully, skips the early '70s history lesson, and instead focuses his glass on everything you need to know to love and respect the subject at hand as much as he clearly did. Read a chunk here.

Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby — The best look into the psychology of what it means to be a sports fan by someone who actually knows.

The Sweet Science, by A.J. Liebling — I have always loved boxing, and Liebling's book is the best of the boxing books. Culled from his New Yorker essays during the golden era (he wrote for the magazine from the mid '30s till the early '60s).

Ball Four, by Jim Bouton — Because you've gotta have a baseball book on the list. Maybe the first of the real behind-the-scenes tell-all books, but much more than that. It describes honestly the life of a major leaguer better than any other.

Top 5 Books for Non-Required Reading (think non-fiction as NPR story)

Take the Cannoli, by Sarah Vowell — Thoughtful, informative, witty; just excellent. I wish I wrote the title essay in particular. Her best in my book.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris — All of Sedaris's books are good, but this is his strongest, most mature, and evocative work. Also, it contains the essay "Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?" which made me nearly pee my pants laughing.

Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, by Peter Guralnick — Great look at Elvis's early years.

The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History, by Jonathan Franzen — Parts had me tittering to myself in bed while my wife looked at me like I was a crazy man. So well written, it even made Franzen's penchant for bird-watching seem fascinating.

And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, by Wayne Curtis — Exactly as the subtitle says; a well done, readable look at U.S. history through its most enduring booze. I'm thirsty just thinking about it.

Top 5 Disaster/Adventure Narratives (read in the warm, dry comfort of one's home)

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer — Before it was properly published as a book, this came out in large chunks in the Sunday Boston Globe. I read each section intently, and at the end of each, craved the next. An honest accounting of a wretched tragedy in which bad judgment and heroism played equal parts.

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick — Melville didn't exactly dream up Moby Dick, he lifted history, and this tale makes Ahab look like a sap. Death and survival at sea, replete with life boats and necessary cannibalism.

The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea, by Sebastian Junger — Before this book was made into a disappointingly mediocre flick starring George Clooney and Marky Mark, it was an excellent and fascinating book, in which I learned as much about meteorology, oceanography, and the commercial fishing industry as I did about simply they that go down to the sea in ships.

Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, by Mark Bowden — The story of the 1993 special ops tragedy in Mogadishu in amazingly–well-researched detail. Provides an interesting window into Clinton administration foreign policy, and an operational analysis of how terrorist groups can wreak havoc in urban settings.

The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition, by Caroline Alexander — You'd be hard-pressed to find a more epic disaster (besides, perhaps, the whaleship Essex) than Shackleton's expedition to the South Pole. Inspiring and awesome feats of seamanship and heroism.

Fishing

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. —Proverb

 

My dad taught me how to bait a hook, to cast, to take a fish off the line, but my Uncle Bob taught me how to fish. That is, the science — biology, ecology, meteorology, psychology — of catching fish that do not want to be caught. 

He had two kids of his own, but they were mostly grown and often justifiably tired of him when I came along. So, several times a year, I became known as "Rent-a-Kid," and the two of us went on an outing.

After a day of fishing, Uncle Bob smelled of cigarettes, aftershave, and acute alcohol sweat. I equated the smell with adulthood and didn't think much of him taking me in the local bar so he could have a sustaining beer for the ride home.

Drink or not, he showed fairly admirable patience by the time he taught this kid to fish. As I learned while taking 3-1/2 year old RK fishing recently, children are not generally suited to things like quietly waiting out hours for a single fish to strike, snagged line, tying intricate knots, etc. Even cutting up bait is a chore with an audience curious about when we're going to catch fish, why they're not biting, where they are, why the lake has weeds, and so forth.

But I digress. Suffice to say, time is scarce, and time away from work even more so, so when the questions start rolling in, it can seem a wonder that any of us survive family fishing expeditions at all.

My uncle and I did have fun though, and as my own kids do on these pages, my antics gave him plenty of fodder for storytelling.

Uncle Bob died a few years ago, after a several-years-long bout with prostate cancer. He didn't go out quite the way he'd have liked (I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty certain he'd have preferred a massive coronary while researching sexual mores with a brace of attractive Swedish nurses), but he had a good run.

Over the course of his life, he managed to reinvent himself several times. After an early start as an engineer (working on early microwaves, answering machines, and ATMs), he moved into banking and became City Treasurer in Philly under Frank Rizzo (yeah, that guy). Eight years and countless martinis later, he became an investment banker — a job in which he occasionally tolerated me as an assistant and editor of sorts.

Among other things, Uncle Bob wrote a weekly column for a local business journal. During college vacations, I became his de facto spellchecker and editor. His columns were ostensibly on finance, but they had far more to do with fishing, and life. He was, effectively, blogging before there was such a word or concept. He wrote to keep in touch with his client base in an age before the interwebs, and because he was a personality in a business in which those with personality, a mind for math, and good common sense could bring in deals.

He was both character and caricature. He wrote a certain way, dressed a certain way, ate at certain places, and conducted business a certain way. He created a personal brand before "branding" entered the corporate lexicon of our everyday lives.

He was a chain smoker — a guy who literally lit a new cigarette off the butt of the previous one, oblivious to the ashes dropping on his pant legs, the desk, the rug, his chair; a third cigarette still smoking in the overflowing ashtray. He smoked in such a way that at least three people quit smoking just from witnessing his addiction.

And yet when he himself finally gave up cigarettes, he did so cold turkey — in large part because he no longer had the stamina to land a Muskie while wading in the Schuylkill River. And in Uncle Bob's world, catching a Muskie was the equivalent of having a martini and a Swedish nurse at the same time.

He fished as often as 100 days a year — sometimes for as little as an hour or two. He fished anywhere he found himself and anywhere there were fish, and he did it as well as anyone. With him, I fished pristine streams and unswimmable city rivers alike. We waded through outlet tunnels; bushwacked through poison ivy and trash; and once, nearly lost a brand new fiberglass rowboat off the top of the car to violent updrafts on the Tacony-Palmyra bridge.

Through it all, a day fishing was a good day.

It still is.

When I fish, I commune not just with nature, but with Uncle Bob. I inherited pounds and pounds of the gear he bought compulsively over years and years — fly gear, spinning gear, surfcasting gear — yet not enough of his knowledge. And so when I find myself nearly skunked (as I was recently) on a weedy Wisconsin lake in which I can see huge northerns breaking the surface, or drifting flies into the perfect trout hole in Montana, or catching bass off a lakeside Vermont dock, or casting for stripers while four-foot-long sturgeon jump entirely out of the water in downeast Maine, I do so with the fishing spirit of Uncle Bob. And I am amazed and humbled that I am so much less able to catch fish that do not want to be caught than I feel I should be.

He did teach me that you have to make choices in life — not just in terms of work, but in terms of play as well — and that doing one thing often means giving up another. He made his leisure choice, and fishing was it. He did little else outside of work. (My aunt can certainly attest that he didn't cook, clean, or do yard work.) But fishing brought him peace — often in places where one could hear car traffic more than rapids.

I don't have the time in my life right now to fish nearly as regularly as I'd like. But I have made my choices, and I am present for my kids in ways that my uncle never was. There will be more time for leisure someday; I'll fish more then. And when I do, I hope to find in it as much peace as Uncle Bob did — and to become half the fisherman he was.

Shooting Pool

Epigram: Gwendolyn Brooks's great poem "The Pool Players"

With the Oscars fast approaching, this seems the right time for another hero appreciation post. The Academy is sure to genuflect at the altar of Paul Newman this Sunday; nothing wrong with that. He deserved it more than most. But I'd like to take an alternate approach to the months-late eulogy. This post is about what Paul Newman taught me about shooting pool, and about life.

I had always played pool when I could growing up, but I got really interested in being good at it because of Paul Newman. I was an impressionable kid early on in high school when I saw The Hustler, and all I can think now is thank god that movie is about pool, because if Newman had played a junkie, I might have tried my hand at that instead.

Before and after Marlon Brando and James Dean there was Paul Newman. There will always be Paul Newman. The guy was just plain cool; good looking in a way that didn't try to be; killer smile, eyes like a husky. He also happened to be a great actor, a generous soul, and a classy human being. I wanted to shoot pool like him, be laid back like him, be funny like him.

In the late '70s and early '80s, Newman, with his wife and kids, used to vacation at a modest, unassuming place on one of the Lake Champlain islands, where no one made a fuss about who guests were or what they did. I know this because as it happened, that was the same place my family often stayed. No, there's no brush with fame story here. Our visits always seemed to just miss overlapping, but it was good enough even to share the same general space he had.

Movie-wise, The Sting might have been my first Newman, followed by Butch Cassidy ("Who are those guys?"), Exodus, Cool Hand Luke, Slapshot, and then The Hustler. Of all his movies, I own only The Hustler. I have seen it countless times. But that first time I saw it was special. My family had just bought a pool table to put in our basement, and I was playing a lot. I fell in love with the film instantly, and fell further in love with pool. I started shooting straight pool and badgering my younger brother into playing games up to increasingly high numbers. I couldn't run rack after rack, like Newman and Jackie Gleason, but I had my runs.

I practiced. I had a few trick shots, but more often than not, I worked on the break, on caroms, on english, on leaves. I learned. I learned it's not easy to be great. It takes a lot of work.

I played even more in college. It was something I was good at at a time when I found it important to be good at something. To show off occasionally, to feel good about myself, to drink beer, to let off steam.

There were a few tables scattered around campus, but usually, I'd play at the local bars. As a sophomore, my friend Billy and I would head into town around 5:00 nearly every Friday to get in some early games before the night began in earnest. There was a dive called the Turf Bar that had two tables and a jukebox with "Mac the Knife" on it, and a guy — Walt, I think his name was — behind the bar who was the slowest, oldest, most inefficient goddamn bartender I've ever seen. In any case, games were cheap at the Turf, and the guys who showed up could generally play.

Bar pool is almost always 8-ball, with the winner staying on the table. Folks stack up their quarters and the next challenger buys the game. If you're good, you can stay on a table for game after game and play for free. At the more crowded bars, you team up, so four people can play at once.

Billy and I were a great team. If I missed a shot, he'd make the next one. If he missed, I'd cover for him. We were comfortable playing at the Turf, and comfort breeds confidence, which bodes well.

The best piece of advice I've heard about pool came via Mark Ruffalo's character in the movie You Can Count on Me, when he tells a young kid something along the lines of "Don't take the shot until you know you can make it."

Once you have down some degree of technique, pool becomes far more mental than physical. For me, it has always been a game of confidence. If I think I can beat you, I will find a way to do it. And I often found that I played better at bars, after some (but not too much) of the liquid courage. It gave me an outlet for teenage aggression and a bit of a short man's complex. The thinking was simple: I'm not a big guy, I'm not looking to start a fight, but if I think you're a lout, I'm gonna kick your ass on this pool table.

When I had the confidence of finding the groove and rhythm ("fast and loose") to my game, born of the right buzz and years of playing, I could just go and go. Once, at a bar outside Jackson, Wyoming, my brother-in-law and I got on a table and nearly stayed all night. We played some outstanding games against tough competition, and we beat them all. The bar didn't close till late, but by 2:00, I'd had my fill, and though the table was ours to lose, I told my brother-in-law I was done for the night. He was full of buzz and excitement and was ready to play a few more hours. He said, "It's our table." I said, "You don't understand. We are not going to lose tonight. We'll be here till morning. Let's just give the table to someone else and go crash."

Grudgingly, he agreed. I was tired and ready for sleep. And when you're just playing for fun and bragging rights — as opposed to being into Minnesota Fats for big money (Jackie Gleason's greatest role) — you can just pick up and leave.

Paul Newman usually played the alpha male in his movies, exuding a disturbingly quiet and occasionally even humble confidence that he arguably felt in real life, where he had little need for pretense or the trappings of fame. His genes made him good looking, but that confidence was the result of hard work. Whether it was acting, or race car driving, or running a successful charity, or being a good husband and father, the guy knew how to work at it.

Shooting pool taught me that much about him.

Paul, we'll miss you. Your movies and your charity will live on. But now that you're gone, we can say with even better certainty, "Nobody can eat 50 eggs."

Gone Fishin'

On vacation.

Back next week with more Meat.

Backyard Farming

When we refer to the "back 40," at our house, we mean our 40 feet of backyard. Still, it's an oasis in this here city outside of a big city, and we dig it — both figuratively, and literally. We garden, but for roughly half of the year, we also farm some.

We have two 3.5 x 8.5' raised beds that we built when we moved in, and in that meager 60 square feet of space, we manage to produce a startling amount of food. From early season leaf lettuce and radishes, to enough basil and herbs to keep us in pesto year-round; fresh beans, cukes, squash, and peppers; pounds and pounds of tomatoes; and late season carrots, beets, garlic, and chard. All organic, all as healthy and delicious as you can buy anywhere.

Not to get all Barbara Kingsolver on you, but it's pretty damn cool to be even a little self sufficient in the way of food. We're realistic, and not expecting to feed ourselves entirely on backyard produce and the occasional squirrel. We augment the ongoing harvest with the farmers' market down the street, for pastured beef and chicken, corn, peaches, berries, etc. once the season gets going.

We grow what we like, and we've discovered through trial and error what grows best and yields the most. We have some heirloom varieties from which we'll pull seeds for next year, but we start from seed only what can be sown directly in the early spring soil — no indoor seedlings, grow lamps, or cold frames (at least not yet, but I just found these plans while looking for a cold frame link, and well, I generally can't pass up any project involving my table saw and a mess of wood). Our yearly overhead is $30–40, and from that we save ourselves hundreds of dollars worth of produce.

It's no coincidence too that we eat healthier during the summer, and so do our kids. Young RK — despite all entreaties — is a bit of a fussy eater, but during July and August, she likes nothing more than picking and eating fresh cherry tomatoes right there in the garden. She spills seeds and juice from neck to feet, but you can't tell a kid to stop eating tomatoes.

In addition to our raised veggie beds, we inherited further sustenance (as well as a dog) when we bought our house, in the form of a mature Concord grape arbor, three apple trees, and a well-established bunch of rhubarb. All have taken some effort to keep in check, but all pay dividends. The rhubarb and grapes have been producing year after year since we moved in, and now the still young apple trees — after several seasons of producing small, tart, mealy, green apples — have finally begun cranking out totally edible fruit as well. We've added two blueberry bushes, which give us just enough to make weekly pancakes fun, and, just this year (via Freecycle even), two raspberry bushes as well.

Not so long ago, I used to daydream about quasi-rural subsistence farming: a few acres, a tractor, a couple of laying hens, some lambs, etc. But there's something to be said for our modest middle-urban oasis, where out our front door we can easily walk to dozens of outstanding restaurants — serving everything from Haitian Creole dishes to Salvadoran sandwiches, fresh baked scones, Peruvian pollos a la brasa, and pizza by the slice — and out our back door, we can feed ourselves.

It's not housing bliss, mind you. Most of our neighbors are nice, but we can hear their occasionally bad music, and they can all see into our backyard (which pretty much just means we don't get naked there — but still). That's the price we pay for being close to the culture that grows out of a densely populated city and all it provides.

For the moment at least, it's worth every penny.

P.S. The Man is all up in my business at work lately, so I don't have the energy or patience for no stinking recipes at the moment. So for more info on what to do with bountiful veggie harvests, whether urban or rural, see Rose's Lime. And as always, for the finest commentary on the state of food, god, and country, see the venerable Gurgling Cod.

How to Travel with Your Significant Other and Not Break Up

Editorial Note: This post was co-written with my wife, AKL.

 

Please — before it’s too late — reconsider that romantic getaway you’ve been planning.

Traveling is devastating for relationships. If you love each other, stay home. Even perfectly functional, happy relationships can be ruined by the wedge issues travel creates for couples. Long-festering personality quirks can suddenly look like deal-breaking character flaws in the bright light of the Caribbean. Or the dingy light of a hotel bar.

We assure you, you’ll be much happier just staying at home and watching other people break up on TV.

Now, if you absolutely must leave home, please take with you our five time-tested survival techniques:

 

Rule #1: Prepare.

Seasoned Euro-traveler Ben Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” So prepare. Know your itinerary, bring your passport, extra socks, Scooby Snacks with which you can bribe your significant other…. Every trip has its hassles, and the fewer hassles you have, the fewer passive-aggressive “discussions” you’ll have about those hassles.

Also, buy good maps. Nothing can create tension faster than a stupid argument over how to find some hard-to-find landmark.

 

Rule #2: Avoid landmarks.

Landmarks are public places where couples are meant to have “moments.” Do not underestimate the importance of these moments. Try to gauge — or even (gasp!) ask — what the expected highlights of the trip are for your partner. And then try very hard not to screw up those highlights.

There’s a time and a place for everything, and the time and place for a state of the union chat is not at the Louvre or on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower.

In fact, guys, do not under any circumstances go to Paris. Paris is like a wedding (or a funeral); you will never be forgiven for screwing up Paris.

 

Rule #3: Don’t go to bed angry.

This seems simple, but it’s not. Sort out little issues as they pop up during the day rather than giving them a chance to boil over when you’re tired and belligerent with mini-bar purchases.

We call this the “Brady Bunch rule.” No matter how bad things got for the Brady family — be it a surfing accident, a broken nose, or the everyday indignities of being the middle child (“Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!”) — by the end of the episode, all had been worked out and even Jan was happy again. Make bedtime the end of any “episodes.”

 

Rule #4: You’re not connected at the hip.

If you love art and are dying to see Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, but your partner can’t tell a Giotto from a grotto, ditch them for the day. You’ll see and do things on your own that you wouldn’t together (CAUTION! Skip this rule when in Vegas!) and even have something to talk about when you meet up later.

Being apart can also help you put your relationship in perspective. Are you enjoying yourself? Is this really a person with whom you could see yourself growing old? Living without? Is that hot bartender really giving you the eye?

 

Rule #5: The grass is never greener.

On every trip, you will meet exactly one person with whom you would fall madly in love, if not for your significant other. Do not fall in love with this new person.

It will be difficult. You will meet this person on a plane, or a bus, or a trek, or in a bar, or through a friend. The man or woman will come from Australia, or Iceland — an island country full of outgoing people with fabulous hair and supermodel cheekbones. They will be mysterious and have an interesting name and some odd talent. Their name will be Jada or Sven, and they’ll play bass for Bjork. You’ll have fantasies about living in their perfect world, and having transcendent sex and uncomplicated communication.

Remember, like internet Vi@gra! or 99-cent shrimp cocktail, if it looks too good to be true, it is.

Of course, if none of this helps and traveling does destroy your relationship and you ultimately find yourself single, well don’t just sit there and think, “They told me so,” get off your couch and see the world. You can start with Australia or Iceland.

To Begin

I’m at the ass-end of my thirties, and I’ve always approached blogs with a bit of trepidation. I read them, sure — some are brilliant — and part of me has always wanted to be a weekly columnist. So why not self-publish just such a column? Another part of me, though, sees blogging as an egocentric bourgeois endeavor. "Look at me!" And it most probably is. But to stop there may be missing the point. The internet, and one of its killer apps — blogging software — is just a conduit. Much of today’s best writing is now being published exclusively online.

Still, I hope my initial cynicism guides me well. The word “essay” itself is derived from the French essayer — to try or attempt. And that I will: to rise above the tossed-off email-style commentary on pop culture, and self-aggrandizing. Maybe my vision is something of a magazine in blog’s clothing. A less self-conscious McSweeney’s.

The point is to keep the cobwebs from my fingertips; work around the full-time job in the silicon mines; and post weekly essays and various viscera on life, language, sports, art, culture, leisure, pleasure, pain, and politics (What else is there, right?). Sure, I should have started five or ten years ago — when I had actual time on my hands — but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to start now.

It’s been a long time (since grad school, maybe) since excitement over an idea roused me enough at 3 a.m. to get out of bed, and write it down, as the idea for this blog did the other night. It was the name that finally got me up. It came without much struggle, and with the sort of clarity that I generally get only in the middle of the night. The name’s an allusion to E.B. White’s great collection of his Harper’s essays, One Man’s Meat, and I’m glad I wrote it down — not simply to log the thought, but to commit to it. As the great and sometimes obtuse Philadelphia Flyers' coach Fred Shero liked to say about commitment: “When you have bacon and eggs for breakfast, the chicken makes a contribution — but the pig makes a commitment.”

As they say when the gates open down in Opelousas: "Ils sont partis!"