→ October 5, 2013
→ By

Pandemic iOS app.

The biggest iOS boardgame app release since June’s appearance of Agricola came this past Thursday, as the leading cooperate boardgame Pandemic was released for the iPad, bringing the same tension as the boardgame to a pass-and-play app with a slick, intuitive interface. If you don’t mind failing to save humanity over and over around your occasional successes, this is the app for you.

If you haven’t the physical version of Pandemic (which I reviewed in December 2010), it’s a different kind of game than most boardgames you’ve ever played. Two to four players work together to try to win, rather than competing. The board is a map of the world with various cities on it, connected by lines that indicate travel routes. The ‘enemy’ here is disease – four of them, each affecting a different region of the world and threatening to spread out of control and wipe out the human race. Cubes represent diseased populations in various cities, with one to three per location; when a city with three cubes in it acquires another one through the draw of a card or a spreading infection, an “outbreak” occurs and new cubes go into each city that connects to the original one. Eight outbreaks means you’ve lost. You can also lose if you have to place all 24 cubes of any specific color (one color per disease), or if you exhaust the deck of city cards before curing all four diseases. It’s difficult and cerebral, requiring you to make numerous decisions, often balancing short-term needs against long-term goals.

There is a way to win Pandemic, however. Each player collects city cards, two per turn, that can be used to cure a disease – five city cards of the same color, sent en masse to the discard pile while the player in question is in a city with a research station, cures that disease. In the meantime, however, players can go from city to city, removing cubes to try to hold off outbreaks. Each player has a specific role that gives him/her a special ability, such as curing a disease with just four cards, building a research station in whatever city he’s on, or moving other players around the board. There are also four special cards that allow the player to skip new infections for a turn, build a research station, remove one city card from the infection deck, or move one player to any place on the board. And the players’ deck also includes Epidemic cards, each of which triggers a new three-cube infection in one city while also raising the infection rate on a sliding scale that starts out at two cities per turn and eventually reaches four. You can adjust the game’s level of difficulty, which affects the number of Epidemic cards in the deck – from four (easy) to six (heroic).

The iOS app is an outstanding, faithful adaptation of the game that plays quickly and easily with only one very minor technical glitch through over a dozen plays (with no crashes). The interface is very clear and crisp, although the city names might be a little tough for some players to read without zooming in. (It helps to know your world geography here.) The screen has to deliver a lot of information at once, but the division of information across four side menus is easy to follow once you know the rules – all players’ cards in the right-hand menu, card history on the left, the current player’s cards and potential actions on the bottom, and the overall stats up top. Moving around is easy, as the game highlights cities to which the current player can move and confirms any move that would require the disposal of a city card. You can also undo your last few moves with a click of the undo arrow symbol in the upper left.

The one technical glitch I mentioned was minor – I have had a few instances where the app wouldn’t allow me to open the right-hand menu showing which city cards the players held, but could exit to the main screen and resume the game to open the menu again. I have noticed an unusually high probability of an epidemic card appearing in the first first turn, which makes the game harder to win; I actually had a game end after only two of the four player-roles had a chance to go, because a series of outbreaks in the red (Asia) region used up all 24 cards, thanks to an epidemic on the first turn. Such unwinnable games are a part of Pandemic, although in my experience with the physical game, they’re pretty rare.

Pandemic is a game meant to be played in person, with lots of communication between players, so I didn’t mind the absence of online multiplayer; slowing this game down would also reduce the tension that’s a key part of why it’s fun. (Although my daughter might question that; after playing alongside me twice, she asked, “What’s the point of this game? Losing?”) The game also has no AI component; if you want to play solo, just choose the number of roles you wish to play and handle them yourself. That also means there’s no downtime: You are always in the process of doing something or deciding what to do, and never waiting on an AI player or an online opponent (or partner). For a competitive game, the lack of online multiplayer would be a drawback, but I don’t see it as one here.

The game doesn’t include either of the available expansions for the physical game, although I imagine those will eventually be available as in-app purchases. Its current price of $6.99 is about par for a high-end adaptation of a popular game, in line with the popular Ticket to Ride or Small World and with the more complex Agricola. If you’re into the physical version of Pandemic, or want a game for your iPad that is very challenging with high replay value, this is a must-have.

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→ October 3, 2013
→ By

Top Chef, S11E1.

I have a column up on the Royals’ success dilemma, plus postseason picks, and I chatted today as well.

Top Chef returns to New Orleans, great news because it’s a disadvantaged city still on its way back from the natural and human disasters of 2005, and because Louisiana is home of two of the only truly American cuisines – Cajun and Creole. Hugh Acheson does not appear on this week’s episode, but he did appear on my podcast and talked about the season. He also promised that we’ll get a Cochon challenge, which is huge news as that restaurant is insanely great.

So we meet the chefs, starting with the man voted sexiest chef in Lake Nobody Cares, Jason, who looks like a douchebag and admits it, but claims he can really cook. If you want to convince people you’re not a douchebag, losing the pink shorts would be a good start. Then we meet Janine, an Australian chef who refers to herself as “not so ugly,” a rather stunning contrast in ego to Jason, as she is rather better than not-so-ugly – but more on that later, once the boys start acting like boys around her. Also of interest is Stephanie from Boston’s No. 9 Park; she tried out with her roommate/colleague Kristen last year, but was bounced in the qualifying round while Kristen went on to win the top prize.

On to the cooking…

* No quickfire this week. Instead, we get a giant elimination challenge, where the chefs are randomly assigned one of three non-traditional proteins – gator, turtle, and frog – and must cook a dish featuring that item to be plated and served at a giant shindig in a Bayou swamp. To me that says they should be thinking more Cajun than Creole if they’re trying to play to the audience. The guests get bead necklaces and are asked to give one to the chef who created their favorite dish of the evening. The three chefs with the most necklaces end up in the top, and the three with the fewest go on the chopping block.

* Two of the 19 chefs begin with immunity because they won a mini-competition of ten New Orleans chefs to earn their spots on the main show. One is Justin, from La Petite Grocery, and the other, Michael, is from the French Quarter stalwart Galatoire’s, so we’re not screwing around here.

* The whining starts early as Michael drives one of the carloads of chefs on their shopping trip and points out some of the sights of the city, only to have Travis grumbling in the back that he just wants to think about cooking. You’re in one of the greatest food tourism cities in the country. Don’t be afraid to relax the sphincter and enjoy it, big guy.

* Bravo runs a live TV poll asking viewers which they would prefer to eat – gator, turtle, or neither, with gator winning in the last update. I’ve had gator and frog, but never turtle. The whole tastes-like-chicken thing gets old fast, because chicken itself has two tastes – dark meat, which usually offers flavor and texture, and white meat, which usually tastes like drywall. Saying “it tastes like chicken” is tantamount to saying “I’m not going to be bothered to think about what this should taste like.” If you cook gator, and it tastes like chicken, congratulations! You suck at this.

* One common thread as we continue to meet the chefs: The boys are cocky and the girls are self-effacing. Think that has a little to do with how we raise our children? The first female chef here to tell any of the men to go shit in his tocque will be my new favorite. I’m secretly hoping it’s Janine, though.

* I should point out that I’ve never cooked any of these proteins, so I have no idea what the challenges are beyond the tendency of such meats to dry out or toughen, but I was floored to see the raw turtle meat, which was the color of a burgundy wine. Michael is treating his like a cube steak to tenderize it.

* Another interesting background – Nina, the daughter of John Compton, the former Prime Minister of St. Lucia and one of the leaders of the country’s independence movement in the 1970s. She speaks of Top Chef as if it were the Olympics and she her country’s flag-bearer. She’s making a curry dish in a nod to her background and grinding the turtle meat into meatballs to mitigate its toughness.

* And then the testosterone kicks in, as we get comments on Janine wearing short shorts and sandals in the kitchen while we see a few of the straight male chefs trying (and largely failing) to flirt with her. I’m guessing that she’s immune to weak game having spent her professional life in male-dominated kitchens, but hey, stay classy, fellas.

* Chef Douchey-Douche, who slipped and wiped out on the floor earlier in the show, cuts his finger right as Tom enters the kitchen to do his walkaround.

* Sara works at Taste of Shoyu, a Japanese restaurant at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport (note to self for the 2014 Futures Game), bringing “real food” to the airport, after several yaers working for Wolfgang Puck as executive chef at two of his restaurants.

* Patty is running into trouble with her output, worrying that she may not have enough servings of her gator rillettes. She’s actually pretty good-looking herself, but all the talk is about Janine. I wonder why that is…

* Ramon is making turtle soup with a Thai dashi, but makes an obvious mistake when he tries to cool the dashi more quickly by dumping a bunch of ice in it, thus watering it down. Why not put it in a larger bowl or pot that is full of ice, so it cools (and maybe even reduces a little more with the last bit of evaporation) without dilution? Is it possible that a professional chef knows so little of basic chemistry that he gets this wrong?

* When Emeril walks into the house the next morning, did everyone clap for him or for the beignets? Because, really, while it would be fun to meet Emeril, I would absolutely trade that opportunity for two beignets. Well, maybe two beignets and a cup of coffee.

* The chefs arrive at the swamp to find they have to build their own cooking stations, including setting up the gas grills. I hate these physical-strength challenges, as they’re a pretty clear disadvantage for at least some of the women in every season. What are we accomplishing here? Is it just so we can watch Sara nearly blow herself and a few nearby chefs up as fire starts shooting out the Venturi tubes?

* Patty is scrambling, moving to a plan B – making a pan sauce with “a gumbo flavor profile.” I don’t see how that’s possible in this short a period of time, since the fundamental flavor of gumbo comes from the roux, which takes 30-60 minutes to make.

* Nina thinks her curry came out too spicy and makes a chutney to balance it, which just sounds like a strong way to show more of her range and increase the dish’s complexity anyway.

* Padma admits she’s never been to a swamp. Did they hire two people just to keep the mosquitos away from her?

* Steph notices Douchey-Douche’s “air about himself.” More like hydrogen sulfide, I’d guess. He’s acting pretty douchey about being done early.

* Tom is not a fan of okra. I love okra. Tom is wrong.

* To the dishes: Bene (who said he wanted to be the first “Top Gay Chef”) makes a turtle croquette with cauliflower puree. Nina’s finished dish is a curried turtle meatball with chayote slaw and chutney with raisins, earning huge praise even from the judges. Janine makes an “alligator BLT,” gator confit (in duck fat, dear God I love this woman) with a tomato jam on the side. Aaron does a duo of turtle, one confit with pickled eggplant, the other in a ragout served over tagliatelle.

* Shirley steals a recipe from her mother-in-law for “turtle tea,” a soup with goji berry and chinese slaw. Carrie does a cold dish, poached frog legs with an oyster emulsion and cold zucchini salad. I believe her dish was the only cold one, which could be an advantage since the air in the swamp was apparently so humid you could chew it. Carlos serves gator rilletes with fennel and pickled red onion relish.

* Note to guests: Giving Janine beads will not get her to flash you.

* Michael serves up fried gator, with sauce piquant, slaw, and basil. Sara goes for a “general Tso’s” gator, deep fried with smoked chilis, pea shoots and herbs, and pickled vegetables. Padma takes a bite and drops a “holy shit that’s hot.” If she says it’s spicy, you know it’s damn spicy. Ramon’s braised turtle with thai dashi and shaved radish is already getting panned for lack of flavor. Big shock there. Patty’s Cajun-style gator with yucca puree doesn’t look like much, and I don’t see how she could have developed those flavors in such a short time.

* Douchey-Douche does a frog’s leg croquette with roasted eggplant and a fennel salad. Steph confited her frog’s legs in butter and served with a spinach and watercress puree, which made me think of glasswort (a.k.a. sea beans) and how they’d be a perfect garnish for any of these dishes.

* Nina looks like she has a million beads, which is pretty telling. Ramon has almost none.

* The big twist this year: The chefs get to watch the judges deliberating, and it doesn’t seem like the judges hold back at all even though they’re being watched. I imagine that will be very, very awkward, but also potentially useful for chefs who take mental notes on their own dishes and what judges do and don’t favor in others’ dishes.

* The crowd loved Nina’s, Sara’s (despite the heat), Carrie’s, Shirley’s, and Janine’s. They didn’t favor Aaron (Tom said pasta suffered from sitting around too much), Patty (gator wasn’t treated as well), Carlos (toast was quite soggy), Ramon (dashi didn’t have flavor), or Bene (mushrooms weren’t cooked properly). Nothing terribly shocking on either side there, I think.

* Top three: Carrie, Nina, and Sara. Sara brought a lot of heat and cooked to the audience. If I had a surprise it was her making the top three despite a dish that had the Spice Queen dropping s-bombs on camera. Nina says she’d heard that turtle is tough, so she made a bite-sized dish that would become tender when cooked in the sauce. Carrie thought on a humid and hot evening, a cold dish would be refreshing, but she was the only chef who presented a cold dish and it may have helped her cause. Nina wins. That makes sense given what we were shown, but she’ll have to show she can cook outside of her genre as the show progresses.

* Bottom three: Patty, Aaron, and Ramon. Aaron said he ran with the pasta idea, but didn’t think of how the time and place would affect execution, earning him a scolding from Tom. Curtis said he wouldn’t try to do homemade pasta in a swamp for 150, period. Tom thinks it could have worked if done in small batches. No one mentions that he might have been better off doing one preparation well rather than two poorly.

* Ramon’s dashi was bland. Tom’s face when Ramon says he added ice was priceless, and I think his quote, “that’s just bizarre,” was just the best he could get out of his mouth while he was still in shock. At this point, I was certain Ramon was toast, and then Emeril said of the dashi, “it’s not a cocktail!” and I was sure.

* Patty says she changed concept midstream, broke up her rillettes, and at the end it was just pounded-out gator meat. Tom’s surprised she got a dish out the way she described her experience. I don’t know if this was poor planning or poor execution, but I can’t imagine she’s very long for the show either way.

* Ramon goes. Right call. Last Chance Kitchen is back, and maybe he’ll think more about cooling techniques before his first battle.

* One last note on this episode: The previews for the rest of the season focused mostly on positive moments, not behind-the-scenes drama; even the negative bits were more about dishes not working or chefs appearing stressed, rather than Project Runway-style sniping and bickering. Good for them. After all, I’m just here for the food.

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→ October 2, 2013
→ By

Polvo’s Siberia and a new music update.

Top Chef judge and acclaimed Georgia chef Hugh Acheson joined me on yesterday’s Behind the Dish podcast, talking about the show but also about growing up an Expos fan, the decline of the stolen base, and the rise of coffee culture in America. Acheson’s first cookbook, A New Turn in the South, came out in 2011, with more to come next year.

On to the music… The North Carolina-based band Polvo were part of the underground noise-rock scene in the 1990s, along with Helium, Steel Pole Bath Tub, Superchunk, and other similarly out-there groups that would likely have found wider commercial acceptance if they were recording today. Polvo’s music was intricate and layered, earning the label “math rock” according to the All Music Guide (although I don’t think I ever heard that term when it was current), with lengthy tracks, shifting time signatures, and songs that included different movements as you might find in classical compositions – different enough that you think you’re listening to a different song only to find you’re five and a half minutes into the last one.

After a long hiatus, Polvo reformed for a comeback album in 2008, took another long break, and released their sixth album, Siberia, this Tuesday. It’s more focused than 2008’s In Prism without losing the sprawling sensibility that has always marked their sound, a more mature approach that brings more melodic elements to the album’s best tracks without losing its experimental feel or the densely layered style that has always marked Polvo’s work.

* Full disclosure: I received a review copy of Siberia from Merge Records a few weeks ago.

Although regular readers among you know that I’m a little bit of a short-attention span listener, I found Siberia‘s longest tracks its most memorable, especially the 6:24 opener “Total Immersion” and the centerpiece, “The Water Wheel,” which might as well be two or three songs in one. “Total Immersion” marries a heavy guitar sound with low-register vocals to create an aural experience to match the song’s title, almost drowning the listener in a wall of noise that would make most thrash artists jealous. “The Water Wheel” manages to change direction at least twice within its eight minutes, while also making the best use of the two-pronged guitar attack that Polvo makes anywhere on the album – the two axes work together even when they seem to be the on verge of outright conflict. If Sonic Youth had morphed into a jam band, this is the kind of song they would have churned out.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/104273830″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

Those aren’t the only strong tracks on Siberia, although they’re my favorites. The album’s shortest track “Changed” still manages to pack in several tempos, from a dissonant, Sonic Youth-like (or early Weezer) jangly guitar riff giving way to a chunkier sound behind the song’s sort-of-chorus and an outro that sounds like later Led Zeppelin. “Light, Raking” winks back at the early-90s grunge period (more Mudhoney than Pearl Jam, though) before the surprise addition of a keyboard line behind the chorus, which is followed by a flat-out weird bridge where it sounds like someone is detuning the guitars as they’re being played. Polvo even seems to work in a slight shade of country-rock on the meandering “Blues is Loss,” where their past affection for Middle Eastern and South Asian sounds also makes a brief appearance.

Siberia still isn’t a commercial record, as that’s just not something you’re ever likely to find on a noise-rock record unless the band makes a wilful turn toward the mass market. It’s challenging music because it rewards your attention with its complexity and frequent changes of direction,

* I mentioned Superchunk, who are back with, I Hate Music ($5 there via amazon), just their second album since 2004, featuring what I think is their best single since 1995’s “Hyper Enough,” the musically upbeat “Me & You & Jackie Mittoo,” which opens with a much darker sentiment than the music would lead you to expect: “I hate music – what is it worth?/Can’t bring anyone back to this earth.”

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/99533641″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

* I don’t have much to say about Lorde’s hit “Royals” other than that it’s remarkable that a 16-year-old could write better lyrics, with more imagery, than nearly every adult songwriter working in American pop music today. I don’t even love the song for its music, but I love the creativity it shows – and after CHVRCHES this is my daughter’s favorite alternative/pop track right now.

* Wild Cub’s “Thunder Clatter” wins the award for “song I didn’t want to like, but can’t help myself.” It’s too damn catchy.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/44690361″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

* Heavy English’s “21 Flights” is a focus track right now on Sirius XM’s Alt Nation/XMU, which does trigger my inherent skepticism of anything the music industry wants to push on us … but it’s actually a pretty good song, the first single from a band that rose from the ashes of Envy on the Coast. Marrying the staccato guitar style of late-70s punk/art bands like Gang of Four with neo-soul choruses you might associate more with Fitz and the Tantrums, “21 Flights” is a rousing stomper that forges a different kind of indie-rock aesthetic.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/100112755″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

* Speedy Ortiz’s “Tiger Tank” (currently free to download from amazon) reminds me quite a bit of Helium, whom I mentioned earlier – Polvo’s lead guitarist eventually joined Helium while he was dating lead singer Mary Timony. Speedy Ortiz also has a female lead singer and intentionally dissonant guitar lines. I think Pavement comparisons are also inevitable, thanks to Sadie Dupuis’ off-kilter vocals style, where she sings the verses like she’s about to fall down a flight of stairs.

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* Washed Out’s “All I Know” is a major improvement over his first single, “It All Feels Right,” which felt like it went on for fifteen minutes with no purpose. It’s amazing what a faster tempo and a keyboard sample can do.

* Terraplane Sun’s “Get Me Golden” fell out of the 1960s into 2013 with its handclaps, rising vocal harmonies, and Hammond organ. I get a similar vibe from Temples’ music, especially their one minor hit, “Shelter Song,” but Terraplane Sun does that revivalist sound better.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/52428015″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

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* The band-of-brothers (three of them, to be precise) Ceremonies releases their debut EP next week, but lead single “Land of Gathering” has been out since the spring. It’s a curious mix of heartfelt, folkish verses with high-flying Beach Boys-style choruses, over a rapid two-step drumbeat that gives way to a slower, tribal percussion pattern that backs up those verses. It’s like a new, new New Wave.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/74190996″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

* Dirty Projectors – “Gun Has No Trigger.” So retro it should be played on an 8-track.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/64541245″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

* Regina Spektor – “You’ve Got Time.” I can’t be the only one who saw her name and assumed she was related to Crazy Phil, right? Anyway, the singer of the theme to the series Orange is the New Black is actually a Russian emigre, no relation to the Wall-of-Sound guy, and she’s been recording music for a decade but is just now breaking out on the strength of this stop-and-go energy rush of a single.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/99551997″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

* The Colourist’s “Little Games” reminds me a lot of another of my favorite alternative-pop tracks of the year, Smallpools’ “Dreaming,” pairing sunny vocals with tightly-produced guitar and keyboard lines. “Little Games” opens up its production behind the chorus with more reverb to the rhythm guitars to add texture to the overly-polished vocals.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/81933195″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

* I hated the Orwells’ “Mallrats,” but their newest song, “Who Needs You” (from the EP of the same title), puts their snotty-rock approach to better use, ditching the most annoying elements and allowing the inherent pop songcraft to make its mark.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/98741180″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

* I received a review copy of Panama’s three-song EP Always, which will be released later this week. The Australian quintet produces electronic-pop music that shows off lead singer Jarrah McCleary’s background in classical piano, with a sound similar to Yeasayer but a slower, more soulful vibe. The title track should show up quickly on alternative radio thanks to the catchy chorus and the little piano flourish that follows it.

* Wikipedia – which is never wrong – describes the Faeroese band Týr as “folk-metal,” although to my ears their sound is more melodic death metal (“melodeth”), sung without the silly screaming or growling that ruins a lot of extreme metal for my ears. I hear way more Iron Maiden, early Metallica, or thrash-era Testament here than any more modern influences, and while I might ordinarily scoff at these Viking-hero lyrics, when you’re from the Faeroe Islands you get a free pass. “Blood of Heroes” is the lead track from their latest album and would likely make Eddie the Head proud of what he’s wrought.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/101599180″ params=”auto_play=false&player_type=tiny&font=Arial&color=000000″ width=” 100%” height=”18″ iframe=”false” /]

* Havok’s “Give Me Liberty … Or Give Me Death” is such a close homage to early punk-thrash efforts like Agent Orange, Sacred Reich, or Corrosion of Conformity that when I first heard it I assumed it was some deep track from the mid-1980s I’d never heard before. I enjoy throwbacks like this, although they can get old quickly because the formula is too familiar.

* Stuff I already reviewed: CHVRCHES’ The Bones of What You Believe and Arctic Monkeys’ AM. Still to come: new Arcade Fire.

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→ September 24, 2013
→ By

The Bones of What You Believe.

The Bones Of What You Believe (iTunes link), the debut album from the Scottish electro-pop act CHVRCHES, dropped today, over a year after their first single came out and a good eight months after I first encountered them on a promotional sampler from a publicity firm the band no longer uses. Three of the album’s tracks have received heavy airplay this year on alternative radio, including Sirius XMU and Alt Nation, so much of what’s on the new album is familiar, but the deeper tracks show greater breadth than you’d get from just listening to the singles, with many harbingers of more promising material down the road.

CHVRCHES is, by and large, the Lauren Mayberry Project, as the 26-year-old singer and erstwhile music journalist dominates the record (and their live shows) with her piercing vocals and impassioned delivery. Singing largely in the first person – more on that in a moment – Mayberry projects a variety of personae across the ten tracks where she handles the lead vocals, occasionally coquettish but more often strong and fearsome, sometimes even stalkerish (“We Sink” has a chorus that starts with “I’ll be a thorn in your side/Till you die” … all righty then), in contrast to her diminutive stature and high register. She elevates some of the filler songs to a different level, and the half-dozen radio-worthy tracks all stand out in large part because of what her vocal style brings to the table.

The band’s music draws heavily from early 80s new-wave influences, particularly Yaz, the short-lived project involving Vince Clarke between his tenures in Depeche Mode and Erasure, but drawing from other sources as diverse as Kate Bush and Prince (whose “I Would Die for U” they used to cover during live shows). CHVRCHES love their synths and they’re not ashamed to put the keyboards front and center of nearly every song, without filling the space between the melodic synth lines and the drum/bass with layers of added noise, meaning that Mayberry’s vocals and the lead keyboard lines are the stars of every track where she sings. That’s most pronounced in “Gun,” the most recently released single from the album, where the counterpoint between Mayberry’s top-register vocals and the descending keyboard lines underpins the conflict she’s describing in the song’s lyrics (where the gun is, fortunately, of the metaphorical variety). When they try a little more layering, like adding reverb to Mayberry’s vocal lines on “Lungs,” the melody remains strong but her voice and charisma are blunted, to the detriment of the overall track.

The album’s lyrics lean heavily toward first-person narratives, which Mayberry makes more powerful with a style that makes it sound like she’s singing directly to the listener, whether she’s threatening you as she does on “We Sink” or is proclaiming herself to be the “Night Sky.” The strongest track lyrically, as well as musically, is the single “The Mother We Share,” which careens to and fro with tempo and volume changes to match the chaotic anti-romance of the lyrics, where Mayberry describes being “in misery/where you can seem/as old as your omens.” Several songs here are built around a single compelling image or metaphor, like “Gun” or “We Sink.” Others run too short and lack that tangible center, such as the catchy “Recover” or the lesser track “Tether,” where the lyrics don’t stand up as well – although Mayberry’s Scottish pronunciation of “don’t” in the chorus of “Recover” is incredibly endearing.

Mayberry cedes vocal duties on two tracks, which robs them of the urgency she brings to the other ten, and was made worse in concert when Martin Doherty took over lead vocals for a song and was off key (as he was when providing backing vocals behind Mayberry). The show I saw, at Union Transfer in Philadelphia, was otherwise outstanding, although it was odd to hear Mayberry’s chatter between songs, almost sounding nervous and dropping f-bombs as if she was trying to show the crowd that, despite her pixie-like appearance, she was fierce. When you sing with a passion that could damascene steel, you don’t need to act fierce. Fierce will list you as a reference.

The Bones of What You Believe is a deep, intense pop experience that doesn’t demean its audience, but at the end of its twelve tracks, I was also left with the feeling that this was more of a coming out party for Mayberry than for the band as a whole. Her presence overwhelms sections where the music feels unfinished or even amateurish, a contrast that was even more stark when I saw them live. Whether the music catches up to the force of her character or she leaves the group for greener pastures, she’s destined for bigger things than this otherwise very solid debut album.

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→ September 23, 2013
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Hanns and Rudolf.

I only became aware of Thomas Harding’s new book, Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz, because of Harding’s recent piece in the Washington Post about the Kommandant’s daughter, Brigitte, who still lives in northern Virginia. The book’s publisher reached out to me after I tweeted the link to the article and sent me a review copy, which I tore through this weekend because I couldn’t bear to put the book down.

The subtitle is a little misleading, as this book isn’t so much the story of a chase as it is a pair of contemporary portraits of two German men whose lives headed in opposite directions with the rise of the Third Reich, setting them on courses that end in one hunting down and capturing the other after the war’s conclusion. The chase itself isn’t long, so most of the book is spent getting us up to that point. Harding’s achievement here is making both biographies interesting enough that the reader is compelled to keep turning the pages – and in presenting Rudolf in a neutral fashion even though he’s one of the worst monsters in our species’ history.

That Rudolf is Rudolf Höss, the man who oversaw the construction of the concentration camp at Auschwitz and devised the scheme where the pesticide Zyklon-B was used to exterminate Jews and other prisoners in huge numbers, with well over a million killed at the camp. Höss’ eventual devolution into a calm, apathetic architect of history’s most efficient mass producer of death starts from early childhood – including a fanatical father who died young and a lack of any close ties to family members – but also reveals a tremendous amount about the “just following orders” mentality of so many members of the SS, the Nazi Party, and of the German population as a whole. While running Auschwitz, Höss would return home each night to his villa just beyond the camp’s walls, where he lived with his wife and five children in a luxurious house staffed with slaves drawn from the prison.

Hanns, the hero of the story and the author’s great-uncle, is Hanns Alexander, a German Jew born into fortunate circumstances that would largely disappear before he fled to the UK with his family in 1936. Left without a state after the Nazi regime revoked their citizenship, Hanns chose to join the British army, which set up a separate unit for refugees seeking to fight their former countries that allowed them to serve in non-combat roles (because, you know, can’t trust ’em). After the war ended, Hanns became a private hunter of war criminals in his spare time, eventually parlaying that into a formal role that led him to recapture the puppet ruler of Luxembourg, Gustav Simon, and to earn a command to track down Höss himself. Hanns’ own drive to fight against Germany – more than fighting for Britain or the allies – derived from the personal injustice that he underwent when he and his family had to flee from the Nazis, as well as the more general sense of outrage from the massive crimes the German state and its people had committed against the Jews and other so-called enemies of the state.

Höss’ testimony played a pivotal role in the Nuremberg trials because of his willingness to admit his own role in the Holocaust and in the chain of command that made the mass murders possible, which means Hanns himself contributed to the convictions and executions of many of the surviving leaders of the Third Reich. Höss comes across as a weirdly complex character, a loving father and family man who beat down his rare compunctions over gassing hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children because he refused to show weakness to his superiors or to those under his command. Did he do this for fear for his own safety in a regime where guards who showed mercy to prisoners would be beaten or killed? Or was he simply nursing his own desire for success and praise by trying to set an example of fanaticism that others would revere?

The conflict between Höss’ work and family selves, his apparent apathy toward his victims, and his unclear motivation for his actions at Auschwitz make him the far more compelling character than Alexander, whose life is much easier to understand. Hanns watched fellow Germans pull the rug out from under his comfortable life, and his personal fury combined with that from his moral compass to turn him into a rabid Nazi hunter, yet one who declined to discuss his role in capturing these criminals for most of the rest of his life. It’s a simple narrative for a man’s life, one that’s easy to fathom. Turning into a cockroach the way Höss did is a lot harder to understand, and it’s part of why I couldn’t avert my eyes from Hanns and Rudolf until he’d been hanged.

–

I’ve been busy plowing through more titles from the Bloomsbury 100 as well, but nothing that merited a long post here. Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March, which draws parallels between the swift decline of a noble Austrian family and that of the Hapsburgs’ reign, heading into the disaster of World War I that led to the breakup of their sprawling, unwieldy empire. It dragged horribly, however, with Dickensian descriptions and an absurd amount of moralizing over peccadilloes that barely merit mention today.

Theodor Fontaine’s Effi Briest, named by Thomas Mann as one of the six most essential novels ever written, was a stronger read, even though the morality play also fails to resonate today. Based on a true story from the late 1800s, Effi Briest tells the title character’s tragic history from her arranged marriage to a man much her senior through her extramarital affair with the lothario Crampas to her divorce and fall from grace. It’s far more believable than the similar Madame Bovary and less prolix than Anna Karenina, two similarly-themed novels, working more along the lines of The Awakening, another novel of adultery where the plight of the woman in a male-dominated, moralistic society takes center stage.

Eugenie Grandet is the second Balzac novel I’ve read, along with Old Goriot, both part of his Human Comedy novel sequence. It’s another tragedy, this one the story of Eugenie’s miserly father and how his parsimony destroys his wife, himself, and, even after his death, his daughter, when even a small count of generosity would have saved them all. I’ve found Balzac’s prose to be his great strength – I enjoy his phrasing and descriptions yet never find them slow or monotonous – but the story in Eugenie Grandet had less of the dark comedy that made Old Goriot a better read.

Next up: Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native.

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→ September 18, 2013
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Delaware eats.

My column today is about players I missed on, starting with Paul Goldschmidt. I was solo on today’s Behind the Dish podcast and talked about the column, Todd Helton’s Hall of Fame chances, and what Andrew Cashner’s ceiling is.

We’ve lived in northern Delaware for three months now, enough time to explore the local food scene, and been pleasantly surprised at what’s nearby, without requiring a trip into Philadelphia. We’re in “north Wilmington,” which means outside the city limits and north of I-95, so not technically in Wilmington at all – but if you say “north Wilmington” people at least have an idea of what you mean. Here are our top local spots, plus notes on a few others that might be worth checking out if you’re passing through Delaware or, although I can’t imagine why, are actually stopping here.

La Fia Market and Bistro is easily the best restaurant we’ve come across in the state, and if there’s a better place that doesn’t require crossing a border or a bridge I’ll be shocked. Opened by Chef Brian Sikora, formerly of Talula’s Table in Kennett Square, La Fia is three entities in one: a sit-down restaurant, a market serving salads and sandwiches to go, and a bakery with fresh breads, pastries, and charcuterie. I’ve been for lunch twice, once there and once via takeout, and was blown away both times by the quality of the ingredients and the precise execution. When you eat at the bistro, the bread before the meal isn’t just any bread, but gougères, choux pastries with gruyère cheese baked into them, light, airy, just faintly sweet, and absolutely perfect. At the bistro, I tried the tuna confit sandwich – tuna salad with olive oil rather than mayo, served on a fresh English muffin-style bread, along with a small mixed greens salad and a small order of house-cut French fries. My wife ordered the meatball hoagie, with homemade meatballs in tomato sauce with one slice of sharp Provolone melted on top. On the day we got takeout, I ordered the lump crab salad, which comes with large lumps of crab meat in a warm potato salad with whole-grain mustard and small sliced pickles, along with some mixed greens and two slices of a toasted baguette. I can’t say a single negative word about any of the food – everything was outstanding from ingredients to flavors to execution. Even the giant chocolate chip cookie with mixed nuts was excellent, and they serve and sell coffee from Philly roaster La Colombe. La Fia is so new it doesn’t show up on many online maps, but it’s at 421 N. Market Street in downtown Wilmington, at the corner of N. Market and 5th Street. I’ll report back when we try it for dinner.

The only other place we’ve tried in or near downtown is the Iron Hill Brewery, a brewpub on the Riverfront that is just across Justison Street (plus a parking lot) from the Wilmington Blue Rocks’ stadium. I like the food at Iron Hill (one of their ten locations) but the beer is the clear attraction here, with a handful of standard offerings and a rotating mix of other styles. The pulled smoked pork sandwich is solid, and the crab cake is probably the best option I’ve had there; my wife is partial to the Jaegerschnitzel, pan-fried pork scallopine served with mushrooms, egg noodles, and haricots verts, a very generous serving of everything for $18.50.

Back in North Wilmington, the best restaurant we’ve found, second only to La Fia in the state, is Two Stones, a gastropub with two locations, one on Foulk Rd close to the state line and another in Newark (that’s NEW-ark) near the University of Delaware. Serving easily 30-plus microbrews from the region and from across the country, Two Stones is heaven for fans of small breweries and of less common beer styles, almost all of which are available in 9-ounce and 16-ounce portions if you want to try several different beers in one sitting without getting hammered. Two Stones has the best crab cake in the area, with so little breading that it nearly falls apart, although at $25 for two cakes it’s a little pricey for dinner (although fair value for what you’re getting – crab meat shouldn’t be cheap). They grind their own meat for their burgers, including a foie gras burger that comes with a few strips of seared duck foie from nearby Hudson Valley Farms, all very good although it’s a little hard to get everything into one bite, and I wasn’t sure the beef really needed all the extra flavor and fat from the liver anyway. The menu always includes three taco plates, but on Tuesdays they offer a whole menu of additional options built around a single theme – the last time we went it was based on The Big Lebowski, and the chefs were pretty damn creative – with the fried fish option my favorite and the pulled pork (smoked in-house) my wife’s. There’s a heavy emphasis here on local purveyors, and the menu isn’t actually that extensive, fitting on one page with a lot of repeated ingredients used in different ways. If you just want a good burger and fries with your beer(s), it’s a great spot, and if you want more upscale or even more healthful food, you can do that too, and still have beer.

Our favorite spot for a family meal is Lucky’s, an updated diner on Concord Pike’s northbound side. Like La Fia and Two Stones, Lucky’s uses a lot of local ingredients, including coffee from Pike Creek roasters, and the quality across the board is strong, along with one of the sassiest menus I’ve ever come across. They’re strongest at breakfast, which a diner should be, including a very strong biscuit topped with a little cinnamon sugar. On the lunch/dinner side, the meatloaf sandwich on ciabatta is kind of a once-in-a-while meal, but it’s flavorful and has just the right texture, neither too soft nor too tough. It’s worth asking for the specials if you’re there for dinner – one night they did a shrimp taco dish that, while a little sloppy to eat, was a winner.

For coffee hounds, the best option we’ve found is Brew HaHa!, a local chain that uses estate-grown coffees from a roaster in Oregon, as well as serving pastries from a Philadelphia baker and sandwiches made to order at breakfast or lunch. The roasts are medium-dark, not the third-wave style of Stumptown or Intelligentsia, and in addition to offering the normal Charbucks-inspired list of coffee-flavored beverages, they’ll do a macchiatto or a true cappuccino (two shots with foamed milk only). The pastries are all solid, but I’m particularly partial to the chocolate chip cookies, which they bake on site after receiving the dough from their supplier.

In Dover, we found fantastic southern Italian food in an almost-hidden strip mall restaurant called Franco’s, the kind of Italian restaurant I grew up going to as a kid on Long Island. Their pasta all’amatriciana – a red sauce with pancetta and black pepper – was the best I’ve had in ages, maybe the best outside of Italy, and it’s not an easy dish to find in the U.S. Franco is Italian-born as are a number of the servers.

And finally, one from just across the state line: Harvest Seasonal Grill, which has a menu based entirely around local and seasonal fare, with most entrees clocking in at under 500 calories. Harvest has three locations, including one in Philly and one in Glen Mills. I visited the latter location and ordered the cornmeal-dusted grouper with Maryland crab and corn salsa, coconut jasmine rice, and seasonal vegetables. The fish was fresh and was perfectly cooked, with a crisp crust on the outside, and it paired well with the savory, almost sweet salsa on top; the rice was kind of a waste because the portion was tiny and it couldn’t stand up to all the flavors in the fish. Their desserts all come in giant shot glasses and are also under 500 calories apiece, with options like a peanut butter cup parfait and a chocolate mocha cake. It’s pricier than any of the places I’ve mentioned here except La Fia’s dinner menu, but you very much get what you pay for here.

Other quick hits in the area:

* Fresh Thymes is a corner cafe on Lovering near the Delaware Art Museum and Brandywine Park, offering breakfast and lunch, very simple items done well with a lot of fresh and/or organic ingredients. It’s cash only and a good option for vegetarians and folks who avoid gluten, although they do offer meatatarian options and regular bread. We’d go more often given how good the food was, but it’s just not convenient to where we live.

* Kid Shelleen’s is solid, better for dinner than their brunch, with very good burgers and seafood, although service has been spotty both times I’ve eaten there.

* Soffritto in Newark won some strange award as the best Italian restaurant in the United States, which … well, I’m sure a few places in New York and LA would have something to say about that. The décor is a little dated but the food is above-average, including a large and authentic antipasto plate and a similarly authentic tomato/vodka sauce. They also offer a lot of non-authentic things, like an option to add chicken or shrimp to pasta with Alfredo sauce, which would get you the death penalty in Italy.

* Also in Newark, Mad Mac’s right by the University has a fun and wide selection of mac-and-cheese plates, as well as some pub food under the Matilda’s banner, including a kangaroo burger that was too lean for me, even starting to dry out when cooked barely to medium.

* A few readers suggested Pizza by Elizabeth, and it does rate highly if you look online, but this is very ordinary pizza in perhaps the ugliest “nice” restaurant I’ve ever been in, a horrific mashup of country kitsch, art deco, and Victorian receiving room.

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→ September 12, 2013
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AM.

Today’s Klawchat is starting as I post this, so the transcript will be at that link once it’s over.

Arctic Monkeys have been superstars in the UK since prior to the release of their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, but have seen little breakthrough here in the U.S. other than having HGTV rip off their song “Fluorescent Adolescent” for the theme music to the show “Income Property.” Their first album was smart, often obnoxious, and punchy, a nod to old-fashioned rock-and-roll values but with more thoughtful and clever lyrics than their influences could ever deliver. Lead singer Alex Turner showed an innate sense for melody and drama, which he developed further over the Monkeys’ next three albums as well as with the baroque-pop side project The Last Shadow Puppets, but the band’s overall sound seemed directionless as they moved further from what made them instant stars in the first place.

Their fifth album, AM, released earlier this week, represents the band’s first clear, deliberate step forward since their debut, an evolutionary shift that regains the immediacy of Whatever People Say I Am… while introducing heavier elements, larger influences from the soul and funk genres, and ever-sharper lyrics. It’s their best album yet and worthy of the Mercury Prize nomination it earned the day after its release.

AM begins with the seductive “Do I Wanna Know?,” the first single released in advance of the album, with a Bonhamesque percussion line mimicking a heartbeat beneath Turner’s trademark wit and wordplay, even messing with meter on couplets like “So have you got the guts?/Been wondering if your heart’s still open and if so I wanna know what time it shuts.” That slower yet more intense drum-and-bass aesthetic permeates the entire album, with greatest effect on the mid-tempo tracks like the opener and “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?”

Track two, the 2012 one-off single “R U Mine?” (which made my top 40 songs of 2012), fits remarkably well into the new sound of this album, pairing a vintage Turner guitar riff – tuned down and turned up for 2013 – with a heavier but slower drum line, backing up vocals where Turner again plays with rhythm and meter in slightly unusual ways. That heavy feeling hits hardest on my favorite song from the disc, “Arabella,” which borrows the signature two-note guitar riff from Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” for its chorus even though the song is an ode to a woman with “a ’70s head” whose “lips are like the galaxy’s edge,” picking up the pace for the dramatic rush to the coda. Turner’s natural feel for irony and contrast works best on this track, where it falls short on songs like the morose “No. 1 Party Anthem” or the just slightly more upbeat “Mad Sounds.”

AM‘s back half, after that two-song lull, brings in different influences from the first half, starting with the Last Shadow Puppets-esque “Fireside” as well as the rousing call-and-response “Snap Out of It,” both of which wink at the earliest decades of rock music, where the genre was almost synonymous with pop. That latter track highlights Turner’s obsession with creating contrast between his music – here a mostly sunny jangle-pop track – and his lyrics, here telling an ex-lover to snap out of her delusions before life passes her by. I’ve also long admired Turner’s use of imagery where most pop lyricists rely on the same trite phrases and references to intangible feelings, from rhyming Tabasco with rascal on “Fluorescent Adolescent” to pairing “sky blue Lacoste” with “knee socks” on AM‘s penultimate track. Turner refuses to talk down to the listener regardless of the theme, an incredibly welcome attitude when so few bands, even alternative ones, seem to put the same effort into their words as they do into their sounds.

The influence of Turner’s friendship with Josh Homme – Turner appeared on Queens of the Stone Age’s 2013 album …Like Clockwork, and Homme appears on two tracks here – is evident throughout the album, as the Monkeys have borrowed a bit of QotSA’s blend of melodic sludge rock on tracks like “Arabella,” “Do I Wanna Know?,” and “One for the Road,” with Homme singing background vocals on the last one of those. The key to QotSA’s popularity has always been that Homme has the heart of a pop songwriter, and has the ability to translate that sensibility into other genres, like the stoner metal of Kyuss or the bar-blues of Eagles of Death Metal. Turner showed he could branch out with The Last Shadow Puppets, whose underappreciated album was like a lost 12-inch from the age of mono, but now he’s bringing that broader songcraft back home with an album that is heavy and slow, sinuous, and eloquent. It’s his best work yet, more mature and confident without ever seeming cocky, functioning as a complete work as well as a collection of great singles. If America doesn’t catch on to the Arctic Monkeys now, they likely never will.

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→ September 8, 2013
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Kipps and Dangerous Liaisons.

Last week’s ESPN content included a look at a few top prospects who were called up and a Klawchat. I also contributed to the new Future Power Rankings by naming a “new #GUY” prospect for each system, ignoring players who were just drafted in June or who were previously on my top 50/100.

—

I’d only read one H.G. Wells novel, his sci-fi/social commentary classic The Time Machine, before encountering Kipps The Story of a Simple Soul on the Bloomsbury 100. Another novel of deep social criticism, Kipps represents Wells’ attack on the gulf between haves and have-nots in late 19th century England while simultaneously rejecting socialism as a solution, wrapped in the envelope of a rags-to-riches-to-rags romance that works effectively on its own and as a delivery mechanism for Wells’ polemics.

Kipps himself is Arthur “Artie” Kipps, who has been shipped off by his mother (with his father unknown) to be raised by his Puritanical and simple-minded aunt and uncle. While attending a useless primary school, he falls in love with Ann, the sister of his best friend Sid, only to lose track of her when he begins his apprenticeship as a draper at age 14. The drudgery and limited outlook for working-class children sent into this sort of indentured servitude comes under Wells’ fire, as does the factory system’s wide latitude for employers to cheat their helpless employees. Kipps ends up the recipient of a windfall inheritance, seeking then to raise himself up above his lower-class upbringing, yet also struggling with questions of moral responsibility associated with his newfound wealth, many raised by the minor character Masterman – an ardent socialist dying of tuberculosis. Kipps’ fortune disappears almost as quickly as he obtained it, and it is in his response to this turn of events that his inner character emerges from the facade of the semi-polished and utterly superficial Kipps of the book’s middle section.

Wells wrote Kipps with a satirist’s pen, mocking people with wealth and power at every turn yet never sparing those poor in all but ideas. Masterman’s polemics on capitalism are somewhat undercut by Wells’ decision to make the novel’s one socialist – or its only real philosopher of any sort – terminally ill with a disease known at the time as “consumption.” Kipps’ sudden acquisition of wealth changes the way nearly everyone in his life treats him, turning many supporting characters into comic relief, while also throwing him into many situations he finds embarrassing that are also send-ups of the circumstances that created them, such as a scene in the fine restaurant of the hotel he’s inhabiting, where walking in with the wrong shoes is just the first of his problems. The reader can only feel badly for Kipps, who is a stranger in the strange land of privilege, while scorning the various aristocrats who’d look down on him for his naivete.

The romance plot is the overarching storyline in the book, covering Kipps from childhood till the point when he loses his fortune (in predictable, but yet somewhat amusing fashion), even though it functions as a subplot under the more academic themes relating to Kipps’ career and time as one of the idle rich. Kipps’ childhood romance with Ann lasts until he turns 14 and leaves for a career in fabric, after which he ends up with a crush on the more sophisticated Helen Walsingham, who views him sympathetically but without much interest until his inheritance turns up. The way in which Kipps acquires that money doesn’t fit neatly into either plot line, but also provides one of the book’s most entertaining passages, particularly because the non-drinker Kipps goes on a lengthy bender that leads to an improbable connection to the lost money, while leading into a lengthy fish-out-of-water passage where Kipps flops and flounders his way through upper-class society.

Wells mimics lower-class speech in Kipps’ dialogue, with liaisons like “a nactor” for “an actor” and elisions like “mis’bel” for “miserable,” which can make reading the text a little slower, but he more than makes up for it with direct, modern prose that avoids the sluggishness that I’ve encountered in some of the other Bloomsbury 100 novels, even contemporaries of Kipps. It’s funny, cutting, sweet, and still quite relevant in a time of rising income inequality in capitalist societies yet in a world where socialist economies have failed.

–

I also knocked out Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 epistolary novel Dangerous Liaisons*, which appears on both the Bloomsbury and Guardian lists, although it took a solid week to get through the tedious prose and absurdly long letters between the main characters. Focusing on a romantic rivalry between the rake the Viscomte de Valmont and his quondam paramour the Marquise de Merteuil, both gleefully free of morals and engaged in multiple intrigues simultaneously. Their rivalry leads Valmont to “seduce” (rape, in modern terms) the 15-year-old ingenue Cécile de Volanges, which in turns sets their mutual downfall in motion.

*Not to be confused with “Dangeresque Liaisons.”

For a work involving sex (most of it of the consensual variety) and betrayal, Dangerous Liaisons is a plodding read, as the entire book comprises letters between the various characters floridly describing what they just did, or what they might do next, or (in Cécile’s case) what they would just like to do. I assume Laclos was moralizing in two ways, over promiscuity/infidelity but also over those who treat others as mere pawns for their own gains or pleasures, as both Valmont and Merteuil treat multiple lovers (or victims) in this way over the course of the novel. Yet Laclos makes the novel so one-sided that it fast becomes boring, in the way that Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward wears out its welcome with sermonizing on how the world should be.

I haven’t seen the Academy Award-nominated adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons (a film adapted from a play adapted from a novel) starring John Malkovich (really?) as the roué Valmont, but I did watch the 1989 adaptation Valmont, with the far more believable Colin Firth in the role of the cad. That version altered the ending far too much to be considered a reasonable adaptation, crafting happy-ish endings for several characters and avoiding the more serious aspects of the novel’s depictions of Valmont and Merteuil (played by Annette Bening, also a solid casting choice).

Next up: Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March, another selection from the Bloomsbury 100, and a novel that has appeared on at least two lists of the most important novels in the German canon.

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→ September 6, 2013
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Keste and more NYC eats.

I’m chatting today at 1 pm ET.

In the last three weeks, I’ve hit three more places from Food and Wine‘s list of the 48 best pizzerias in the country (I don’t know why they chose 48, and it’s 47 now anyway with one closed), and I’ve at least found one rival to Pizzeria Bianco for the best pizzeria in the country, as well as hitting the first of the four spots from the list located in Brooklyn.

Keste, located on Bleecker in Greenwich Village, is run by an Italian pizzaiolo who was born and raised outside of Naples and learned the craft of pizza-making in that city, the capital of pizza in Italy. The style is true Neapolitan, with a thin crust and a soft center so that the crust struggles to support the toppings, and Keste does it correctly, something few places that boast of serving “authentic” Neapolitan pizzas manage to do. The menu is quite large, with a huge selection of pizzas with tomato sauce, a small selection of “white” pizzas, and a number of gluten-free options. My friend Toby and I ordered two pizzas and split them – the margherita with buffalo mozzarella and the daily special with burrata, prosciutto, and truffle oil.

The crusts on both were spectacular, exactly as promised, with a little char on the exterior, good tooth on the exterior crust, and just enough underneath to keep the toppings off the plate and give some texture contrast. The special was among the best pizzas I’ve ever had thanks to the creaminess and bright flavor of the burrata, and the salty-but-not-too-salty prosciutto, as well as the hint of truffle flavor that didn’t overwhelm any of the other ingredients. The margherita was notable more for the brightness of the tomatoes than anything else, with good balance between that and the mozzarella di bufala. The flavors on both pizzas were loud, in a good way, and everything was balanced and fresh and just incredible.

A few weeks ago, I managed to sneak into Co., the pizzeria founded by Jim Lahey of no-knead bread fame, for dinner with my family on a trip to Boston. The crust was outstanding, as you’d expect, but the rest of the experience fell very short for us. For one thing, the pizzas were small and sparsely topped, skimping especially on cheese, which is kind of the essential ingredient when pizza is the entree because it’s the only real protein source on any pizza without meat. For another, I am not sure when I have ever been in a colder restaurant than Co. was on that night – it could not have been over 65 degrees in there – and it was incredibly loud. I was more impressed with the bread and olive oil starter, which does a better job of showing off Lahey’s technique, than I was with either of the pizzas we ordered. I’ll tolerate atmosphere issues if the food is amazing, but the crust was just good, not enough to make me want to deal with the conditions there.

Franny’s in Brooklyn was an outright disappointment, however – so sparsely topped that it was more like having bread for lunch than pizza, with almost nothing beyond a thin layer of tomato sauce on top. The crust was gorgeous, with some blistering on the exterior, great tooth to the exterior, and a good contrast between the edge and the interior. But man, you need to put something on top of the pizza to get me to fight my way down Flatbush to come eat at your place.

Moving on from pizza … After Keste, Toby dragged me kicking and screaming to Grom, a gelateria (one of two Groms in the city, plus a summer location in Central Park) that imports the product from Italy. Their commitment to product quality is insane, with organic eggs, spring water for their sorbets, and fruit from their own farm in Costigliole d’Asti. And the gelato is amazing – the dark chocolate “sorbet,” made with egg yolks and Colombian chocolate but no dairy, is as intense as eating a bar of very dark chocolate but with the creamy texture of actual gelato; the caffè flavor uses Guatemalan coffee beans to create a dark coffee flavor that doesn’t hide the coffee behind sugar and cream. It’s a hell of an experience even when you’re already overstuffed with pizza. (I also love that their URL is grom.it; too bad walla.ce isn’t available.)

Culture Espresso on 38th Street doesn’t roast its own coffee, but buys from some of the best roasters in the country – currently using coffees from Heart roasters in Portland, Oregon, a micro-roaster that specializes in very light roasts of single-estate coffees. Culture is currently using a blend of two coffees, an Ethiopian and a Central American (I think the barista said Colombian), which produced a medium-bodied shot that still had the bright strawberry notes of the east African half of the blend.

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→ August 30, 2013
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Glossary of inside jokes.

When we start in with inside jokes on Twitter or in chats, I’m often asked by newer readers what some of the hashtags and terms mean, but it’s hard to stop everything else to explain myself – especially in 140 characters. So with that in mind, here’s a far-from-complete list of those various jokes

#andrelted: When Andrelton Simmons does something amazing in the field, which is pretty much every night. See also #belted.

#arbitraryendpoints: Also known as cherry-picking, this means choosing one or both endpoints on a series of games to try to analyze a player. I’ve argued that it’s not arbitrary if the endpoint is tied to something specific, like a change in mechanics, an injury, or a recall from the minors, but even so, it’s always dangerous to throw out any data when you want to draw a conclusion.

#belted: When Brandon Belt homers. Actually originated with #poseyed the year before, but Posey hit too many homers and it got old fast. Even the #belted thing is probably nearing the end of its useful life.

#bowlofjello: That would be Clint Hurdle, who is probably the worst thing going for the Pirates right now, and whom I referred to by this moniker in a July 2012 tweet.

#classy (with or without the #): Refers to Michael Young, and the seeming blindness of some local writers in Dallas to the erosion of his on-field value, after which they would defend him by referring to him as “classy.” Classy is great but it doesn’t turn all those outs into hits. I should point out that use of the term isn’t actually a shot at Young, but how members of the media treat him.

#GUY: From my April 2013 podcast with Chris Sprow, where he brought up the difference between calling a player a “guy” (as in, “he’s just a guy”) and calling him a “GUY” (e.g., Byron Buxton). It turns out that football and baseball people both use the word in the same way.

#heathbellexperience: Possibly invented by Steve Berthiaume, now used to describe Heath Bell doing Heath Bell things, mostly giving up massive home runs. Antecedent of the less-common #jimjohnsonexperience.

#holtzmansfolly: The save rule, which has done more damage to the game on the field and to roster construction than any other statistic in the history of the game. Of course, the BBWAA gave the nitwit who invented this stat the Spink Award, because if that organization is good at one thing, it’s self-congratulation.

#idito: From an angry and not very bright Cardinals fan in 2009 who was mad that I didn’t include Chris Carpenter on my NL Cy Young ballot that year. Related to the now obsolete term #obsurd, from another equally angry and equally not very bright Cardinals fan that same day.

#meow: Every time a reader accuses me of bias, God kills a kitten. From the defunct Baseball Today podcast. RIP Bias Cat.

Moran: If you’re going to insult someone, especially by calling them stupid, you probably should look in the mirror first. Not my joke.

More-singles defense: The no-doubles defense.

#preeminent: I appeared on ESPN’s Philadelphia affiliate right after Ryan Howard signed his five-year extension, only to be ambushed by the host of the show in question, who kept referring to Howard as the “preeminent” power hitter in the game. So, whenever it pays to point out that the contract is as awful today as it appeared to be when the Phillies gave it to him, we trot out this tag.

#robotumpsnow: Creation obscure – seemed like a bunch of us started using it around the same time so I won’t take any credit. Refers mostly to awful ball/strike calls by home plate umps, and the fact that replacing that with currently available technology would be an immediate improvement.

SHANF: I think Crashburn Alley started this one – at least, that’s how I first saw it – which originally referred to Shane Victorino doing something a little dim on the field. Given his 2013 season, and how much I ragged on that contract last offseason, if I drop a “SHANF” now, I’m making fun of myself and my very wrong analysis about him.

#smrtbaseball: A little bit of The Simpsons applied to baseball, this refers to tactical moves that are anything but smart, especially ill-advised bunts or intentional walks, as well as batting a low-OBP guy in the two hole. It appears to have started here:

#shrimp/#shrimpalert: Refers to a walk-off walk (walking in the winning run because the bases were loaded). Not mine – originated on the walkoffwalk blog here.

should of: That’s all Fan Since 09, a brilliant parody of a Phillies fan who hopped on the bandwagon right after they won the World Series.

#SSS: Small Sample Size. In other words, I’m saying the performance in question is more a function of the randomness inherent in small samples of plate appearances or innings pitched than a change in skill or outlook. Fangraphs has a few pieces on when samples aren’t small any more. It’s worth bearing in mind, however, that if we look at 100 players who’ve reached that threshold, we’re still likely to see one or two players whose stats haven’t stabilized or regressed – it would be more surprising if we didn’t see any outliers at all.

#tehfear: As in, The Fear, the thing that Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy said Jim Rice provoked in opposing pitchers, and that thus made Rice worthy of Hall of Fame induction. It’s just the kind of unverifiable, unfalsifiable nonsense that people use when defeated by rational arguments.

TOOTBLAN: Thrown Out On the Bases Like a Nincompoop. Invented by Cubs blogger Tony Jewell for Ryan Theriot. I’m blocked from the original site due to Google saying it’s infected with malware, but you can see the relevant part of the initial post here.

#umpshow: Any time an umpire decides that he wants to make himself the center of attention, especially by attempting to provoke a conflict with a player or coach, it’s an umpshow. Fans don’t watch games to see the umpires ump. We watch to see the players. It would be great if the minority of umpires who think all eyes should be on them could understand that. Not to be confused with basic incompetence, where #robotumpsnow or #thehumanelement might be more accurate.

#veteranpresents: Started in this chat, regarding Garret Anderson, when the Dodgers signed him to provide veteran presence in their lineup. I decided it was more likely he was a veteran who handed out presents to other players and coaches in the locker room, since that seemed like the only way he’d provide any value. It is a mortal lock that any time I drop this hashtag, at least three people will claim I misspelled “presence,” because they were both without a sense of humor.

#weirdbaseball: Refers to any game that goes past midnight local time (that is, where the game is being played), at which point, everyone is supposed to eat ice cream. Invented by my former colleague Kevin Goldstein (RIP).

#YCPB: You Can’t Predict Baseball, so you should follow this Twitter account.

#your: I don’t play grammar police very often, but it is amazing how often people who send me insults on Twitter can’t get “your” and “you’re” straight. I believe it was @ceeangi who first pointed out this phenomenon.

Omissions? Corrections? Fire ’em in the comments. This list really isn’t mine, but ours as a community, so I’ll update accordingly.

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