Make Levees, Not War, part I...

Just back from a two-day pass to New Orleans.

I used to live there. It has been an integral part of my life ever since. It's where I got hooked on good art, good literature, strong coffee, and live music as a way of life. I still make po'boys. I cook lobsters with zatarain's pro boil, onions, corn, garlic and potatoes. I've only missed three jazzfests since 1991. I hadn't been back since Katrina.

Landed around 2:00 last friday, nerves jangling and brain humming. Had tried to keep expectations down but the weight of so many years just bubbled up as the plane vectored in down over lake ponchatrain. Although it's winter, and winter isn't the greenest season in new orleans, the first thing that struck me was the overal brown-ness of the land coming in. That, and all the leafless trees bent over at 45 degree angles. Greenest thing I saw other than the moss was the signage on I-10.

Coming down the escalators at the airport, a sign directing red cross volunteers to shuttle buses. FEMA presence everywhere. Abita and po'boys in the airport. That part's the same. But there is an eerie emptiness that is a new element of new orleans.

My friend Dave picked me up at the airport and took me to his music studio. We drove down airline highway to earhart expressway into town. The first thing you see is the forest of FEMA trailers on airline, waiting to get pushed out I suppose. As you drive into the city on the route you start to notice that every other house seems to have a blue tarp roof, all the same shade and all nailed down the same way. There are thousands of blue tarps, on houses grand and not so grand. Trash is everywhere in the streets. I can't imagine the fatigue of a resident here, trying to sift through and truly get the property clean.

The waterline was the second thing I noticed. It's an easy thing to miss. But once you see it, you see it everywhere.

Just like the ring around a dirty tub, but you see it on the outside of houses, in some places knee deep, in others above your head. There was one place that struck me most, as the water line was about neck high and all the windows in the area were broken there from floating garbage at the waterline. It finally hit me after a few hours that the water was that high for a very, very long time. Even the view from our hotel room saw destruction. I didn't go to the lower 9th ward or to lakeview. My friend Tim went to New Orleans East. It was much, much worse.

Everywhere you look, there is devastation and rebirth. New leaf buds on the trees arch over empty house lots and cypress stumps bigger than minivans. Vast swaths of the city lay dark at night. It's creepy. I just read the Third Man by Graham Greene a while back, and recently saw the movie. It's set in postwar Vienna and in the movie, the rubble is a part of the set. That's what New Orleans feels like. You start having fun and thinking, hey, the city's back! And then you turn a corner and someplace you used to know sits in front of you in ruins. Jarring.

Uptown survived the worst of the storm. Tulane took a lot of wind damage - but the fact that you don't see a waterline around there tells you everything you need to know. It looks a lot like it used to look, but with more trash. The trash is iconic. There's so much to truck in and out of the city, fresh bricks and old bricks, rotted wood and new wood, that the trash is of the least importance right now. You'll see boats beached in the neutral ground by the Superdome, and thousands of destroyed cars.

Spraypaint over the houses is a feature of mid city and other neighborhoods. There's typically a date that the house was searched. If the paint says "CF" that means a corpse was found there.

But at night, at the right time, it feels like it used to feel like. Free oysters, traditional new orleans jazz and funk at Le Bon Temps on Magazine. The Radiators with trombones at Tipitina's. Juice with Brint Anderson and friends at dba. Mother's serving debris breakfast with grits, huevos rancheros at the Bluebird.

Other signs of drastic change and recovery are everywhere. FEMA trailers blocking streets in Jefferson Parish. Burger King offering $250 a paycheck bonuses, Popeyes starting new employees at $9 an hour. Legendary bars and restaurants with limited menus and desperate pleas for experienced staff. You could come in from out of town, no contacts, and be a badass in six months.

Liminal is the only word for it. It's like noplace I've ever been. William Gibson fantasized about post-earthquake Tokyo and a San Francisco where the Golden Gate became a housing project. New Orleans is that post-apocalypse scenario. It's oddly normal, but completely abnormal, all at once.

Restaurant Review: Ashmont Grill

Just transferring a couple of things off the laptop.

Quick review: Ashmont Grill, right next to the Ashmost T station in Dorchester. Nice room - good design, lots of warm woods and exposed brick. Friendly, if more than a little slow, service. Trainwreck fries were tasty. My pork loin was perfectly cooked. Good crunchy brussel sprouts roasted with pine nuts. Friend's burger was overcooked but a good piece of ground beef. Everything comes a la carte so you order sides with entrees - the prices are a little high, given that, in my opinion. But overall a tasty restaurant and a welcome addition to the neighborhood. If you go, be aware that google maps isn't a good tool for finding it. Call and get directions from the restaurant. There's at least two Freeport Streets along the way.

Music review: David Bromberg, Rowan and Rice, King Wilkie

GREAT show.

King Wilkie was the first act. Name comes from Bill Monroe's horse, apparently. Very quiet, cool american acoustic music. Wrecking Ball is a great song. They took full advantage of the acoustics and sedate crowd to play songs that wouldn't have worked in a chatty club (props to Scott for that observation). The folks around us loved their set.

Rowan and Rice were great. Panama Red opener, and the other song that really stood out was the Walls of Time. Smoking hot female mandolin player and fairly hot female standup bass player, fwiw. Smoking players too. Tony Rice is insanely good. And Rowan is a living link to the old days - not too many folks get to tell stories about being on the road with Bill Monroe, playing the Opry and breaking down in Kentucky. What a high and lonesome voice...

I've wanted to see Bromberg for a long time. He looked good. Fit, with it. In fine voice. And plays these amazing little fills and runs in addition to his solos. I didn't know the name of many of his songs, but the six days on the road opener was hot. After about six songs he brought out Tony Rice and things began to really cook. Two songs later Rowan came out and from there on out it was unrehearsed acoustic jamming. The last song was a truly magnificent Wild Horses - not my favorite song, but some of the best music I've seen in a long time.

Sanders Theatre. Great acoustics. Crappy seats. As Jukin said, it's like watching a show from an airplane seat. At least there's some padding on the benches.

We ran into King Wilkie at closing time outside of Charlie's Kitchen. Two of them got thrown out for ordering whiskey and water, then asking if they'd used dishwater as a mixer. Funny guys.

Good times, good times...

Restaurant Review: The Independent

The Independent is in Union Square in Somerville. From the outside it looks like any number of Irish pubs, and from the inside it looks like your average Irish pub too.

But it's not.

Average Irish pubs don't have extensive cocktail lists, hot vegan waitresses, or osso bucco. I was with a largish birthday party and we were able to cover a lot of the menu. I ordered the duck liver pate app, served with ritz-y crackers and cornichons. The cornichons were a nice touch but it really needs to come with toast! Pate was perfect though. Table had calamari and moules as other appetizers and everyone seemed quite pleased. The frites with the mussels were crispy and salty, very good stuff.

Dinner was the pressed pork sandwich. I was expecting a glorified grilled cheese. Instead got a massive amount of tender roasted sliced pork on focaccia with cheese and a pickle relish. Kind of a foofy Cuban. But really good. The steak frites looked great - huge cut of steak for that dish - as did the veal shank. Clam chowder there is great, though the clams are in the shell in the chowder. I was too stuffed for dessert.

Stuck around the bar part for a while. Interesting scene. Two dudes with powerbooks dj'in, and a projection screen showing what appeared to be a greek film with subtitles, all black and white. Good mix of folks. The hipsters haven't totally taken over and the long line of ladies trying to get into Toast next door (hmmm, no guys in that line) sometimes spilled in. I'll be going back there, curious about their burger...they do $2 PBR and High Life for football on sundays.

Movie review: Syriana

Food: reese's bites, buttered popcorn. Reese's bites aren't as good as the cups.

Syriana...geez, if you liked Traffic, you'll like it. If you didn't, or you prefer linear film structure, you probably won't like it. If you like happy closure you'll hate it.

I loved it. Biggest complaint I've heard is that it's too complex. Wasn't a problem for me. There are four intertwined stories: a CIA agent, an energy trader, a DC lawyer, and a young Pakistani. All around the oil rights to a massive field in the middle east (country, unnamed, one can assume is the Syriana of the title).

Nobody is all good. Some have good intentions. Some don't. There's a guy who plays the mandatory evil oil executive (well, one of them) who looks an awful lot like Tom DeLay. He doesn't have good intentions.

More than anything, it felt like a morality play. This is where the gas that runs the SUVs comes from, and this is the real price. The young Pakistani loses his job due to a merger back in the states, gets savagely beaten in line by local military (non US) and becomes a radical Muslim. The imams give him food and brainwashing and a sense of self respect. The scene where he's shoveling food into his mouth with a broken face hit me hard. This was the storyline that really, really connected it all. The rest of the stories are well written and brilliantly acted for the most part. There's a hideous torture scene that I had some trouble watching (yes, I'm a wimp when it comes to ripping nails out). But it's that young guy in my head still, not Clooney or Damon.

Screenplay by the same guy who did Traffic, who added director this time. I didn't think it was quite as well cut and directed as Traffic but Soderbergh is a great, great director. I would have loved to have seen his take on this. The colors were not quite as bright as in other desert films like Three Kings, or the desert scenes in Traffic.

Still and all, one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Depressing as hell in many ways. Only a few bad guys go down and a hell of a lot of bad guys win. But it moved me and made me think. That's a good thing.

Boston hounding

Quick report on two good meals this weekend. Going to DC tomorrow, don't expect to do any great eating there, work work work. I caught a cold in London so I've mainly been eating soup. But Dax made sure I got at least two good anti-sickness meals of chinese food and pizza.

Taiwan Cafe in Chinatown yesterday - beef with longhorn peppers, spicy salt and pepper pork, xiao long bao. The beef with peppers is a standby, with mild green peppers and hot thai chiles mixed into the shredded beef. The pork dish is a new favorite - the meat is braised with scallions, then deep fried in the spicy salt and pepper batter. Xiao long bao, aka soup dumplings, are always a welcome saturday food curative. I need to get there with a dinner hunger to go after the oysters with black bean sauce.

This afternoon we were going to go to Pizzeria Regina in the north end (accept no substitute for the mother ship at 11 1/2 Thacher St - it's all in the original brick ovens) but remembered that the Rolling Stones play the Garden tonight. Therefore, Regina's would be a madhouse and parking would be outrageous. So instead we made the trek to Eastie for Santarpio's. I've been there once for takeout but didn't actually go inside. Two years ago or so.

Today we sat at the bar. They are also famous for "BBQ" - I am a southerner, and the improper use of "BBQ" bothers me; if it ain't slow smoked, it ain't BBQ - which in this case means homemade sausages and lamb tips roasted on skewers. Sausage was outstanding, peppery and crusty on the outside. I'm not a big fan of lamb other than braised shanks and such but it was very well cooked. Pizzas at Santarpio's come one size only and are very different from the classic new haven style pizza. We got a pepperoni sausage pie which must have had a pound of meat on it. Maybe more. I bit into a stack of pepperoni six deep at one point. Sauce was very, very peppery from the sausage in the pie. I have to vote with the Regina as my favorite pie in town but am going to reserve judgement til my next visit back to Santarpio's - now I know what to order. Cheese pie. Sausage "BBQ" plate. I have a feeling that's the way to go. Also, they gave us great, friendly service. It's about a thousand yards from Logan airport, just out the Callahan tunnel on the local exit option.

London Homesick Blues

Hello blogging world.

Three-night trip to London: redeye Monday night, meeting Tuesday afternoon, meeting Wednesday morning, fly home Thursday.

Books consumed: The Survival Game. Lamb. Krakatoa. Mental soundtrack: Jerry Jeff Walker, London Homesick Blues. I'll substantiate the rumor that the English sense of humor is drier than the Texas sand...also Lions by Dire Straits.

Virgin Atlantic is a great airline. Flight was packed going over - Monday night flights across the pond always seem to be crowded. Someone who is a better statistician than I am ought to calculate the odds that I'd get 42C on one leg of about half my overseas flights. "Dinner" was chicken tenders, corn, mash. Actually better than most airplane food.

90 minutes to clear immigration. At least they had the heat turned waaaay up and it was humid in there. Hell. 90 more minutes of train and tube and walking to get to my hotel, which turns out to be in the Chelsea FC football stadium complex. Clean, cheap, highspeed net, five minute walk to the tube. But a lousy bed and a lousy shower.

Fitful nap, good afternoon meeting, fitful nap.

Dinner with a colleague who is also a good friend. Brick Lane Road in the East End of London is just about heaven on earth if you like curry. I Love Curry. Forgot to take my camera on both my nights eating, which is a downer, but ooof, this was good. Light and airy papadums. Perfect hot pickle and condiments. Crispy, lemony fried onion balls. Lamb chili mossala. My friend had the veggie plate and the dal makhni was extraordinary. Washed down with two pints of Cobra, a truly perfect meal against a damp, dank London January night.

I tried out a new strategy for jetlag management - brewed a nalgene bottle's worth of sleepytime extra tea, triple strength, for drinking on the plane and after arrival. When the jetlag wakeup call came at 3AM, I had a third of the bottle left. Chugged it, did some breathing exercices, and though sleep didn't come for a while, I was very much aat peace and got rest. I'm going to keep experimenting with this one.

Morning meeting in north London. Normally I don't care for the Starbucks infestation across the world - the one in the Forbidden City really gets my goat (if they're gonna put it there, it should have wifi, dammit) - but London needed better coffee. At all the train stations now they have starbucks and krispy kreme. Weird. Small, black coffee and a cornish sausage roll for pre-meeting sustenance. Good meeting. Working lunch in a cafeteria.

Fitful sleep, conference call, then out to meet with an friend from the seriously old days. The 80s. He's lived in London for seven years and really knows his way around. Met up at an old, old pub in Clerkenwell for pints and conversation. St Peter's Cream Stout is insane, by the by. French dinner of potted duck rillettes and seven-hour braised lamb shank. Good, good stuff.

Slept right through the night. The sleepytime experiment worked pretty well. Flight home was a lot less crowded. Mental note: check in online and choose only aisle seats on the outer edges of the plane. Many of the aisle seats in the interior row have big chunky boxes that make it even harder to stretch legs.

Back to London in just eight days.