The Dilettante's Dilemma

From kottke.org, via jonahkeri.com, the list of all the cities I visited (i.e. spent the night, or a full day, in) this year. A year of business trips and hotels near the airport, plus two Harrisburg-to-Evanston drives, means lots of suburban stops. Also, it looks like I didn’t leave the country this year, for the first time in a long time:

Harrisburg, PA
Baltimore, MD
Indianapolis, IN
Chelmsford, MA
Hillsborough, NH
South Portland, ME
Canton, CT
Streetsboro, OH
Downers Grove, IL
Lewes, DE
Evanston, IL
Irving, TX
Costa Mesa, CA
Denver, CO
Sacramento, CA
Salt Lake City, UT
New York, NY (Manhattan and Queens)
Northbrook, IL
Revere, MA
San Francisco, CA
Chicago, IL

I have the full list of all the places I’ve been on my Facebook profile; 214 cities and counting, many of them much more exciting than Chelmsford and Streetsboro.

“Harold Pinter, the British playwright whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation, died on Wednesday.”

One of the all-time greats.

This instantly moves to the top of our to-try list:

“Lahmim features finely ground, charcoal-roasted beef blanketed in a rusty rich tomato sauce studded with tomato, onion, parsley and aromatic sweet and hot spices like cumin and allspice nestled inside a buttery pastry crust sprinkled with a little lemon.”

Sounds awesome, and the Yelpers agree. We’ll be checking it out this weekend.

Sahara Kabob
6649 North Clark Street, Chicago IL 60626
773-262-2000

Sso here’s my 2008 top ten. I felt like music, or at least my music listening, this year was more splintered than ever before. Looking at this list I find very few common threads; combine that with the fact that most of my big-time favorite artists either didn’t release anything this year (Wilco, Spoon), or released stuff that disappointed me (Elvis Costello, Mike Doughty, The Hold Steady) and the list ends up feeling pretty scattered.

* Jenny Lewis, Acid Tongue: this is my album of the year (the rest are simply listed alphabetically). Lewis synthesized her past work with Rilo Kiley and The Watson Twins into a confident, forceful album that evokes the California sound of the ’70s (especially Fleetwood Mac) in the best way possible.

* Foxboro Hot Tubs, Stop Drop and Roll!!!: a great way for Green Day to follow up the un-follow-upable American Idiot, by releasing a tossed off-sounding pop-punk disc that sounds like it was recorded in a few days, and sounds great blasting out of car speakers.

* Gary Louris, Vagabonds: an introspective gem from one of the creative forces behind the Jayhawks. It does rock, albeit mildly, but the overall tone seems to be one of wistfulness. I still miss the way he sounds when he sings with Mark Olson, but there is apparently a Louris/Olson record on its way early in ‘09.

* Gaslight Anthem, The ‘59 Sound: Springsteen meets late-era Replacements; or, Against Me! without quite so much anger. However you characterize them, the album is a fantastic piece of rock music, dancing along the edge of emo without giving in to that genre’s worst aspects.

* Girl Talk, Feed the Animals: gimmicky? Yes. Actionable? Possibly. Insanely catchy? Definitely.

* Old 97s, Blame It on Gravity: ho hum, another incredible collection of songs from Rhett and the boys. The last album (‘Drag It Up’) is my least favorite of the 97s canon, and I spent the last four years worrying whether it was an aberration or a trend. Happily, it appears to have been the former.

* Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely: not everything Jack White touches turns to gold — ask the producers of ‘Quantum of Solace’ — but the catchy, hooky, blues-influenced rock thing sure seems to come easily to him. Brendan Benson sweetens the deal on this solid sophomore effort.

* Sigur Ros, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust: no idea what they’re saying; don’t care. It’s moody and atmospheric and nicely textured and totally cool.

* TV on the Radio, Dear Science: makes the list after only 2 or 3 listens, like I was pretty sure it would. I can’t think of a band that combines arty and funky like these guys since Talking Heads. Not that TVotR are anything like Talking Heads, mind you. I can’t tell you exactly who they’re like, which is one of the things I like about them.

* Whigs, Mission Control: in other years this wouldn’t have made the list, but it sneaks in for 2008. It’s a nice, solid alt-rock album: energetic, Replacements-y, and a good listen. Nothing earthshattering, but always worth a listen. If I had bought Ray Lamontagne’s latest record sooner, it probably would have knocked this one out of the top ten.

So I joined a wine club a few months back — they send emails listing various wines they have for sale, and ship them to you in batches every few months. We’re still waiting for our first shipment but my parents have been members for a few years and have bought some really good wine at reasonable prices. Even when I don’t buy anything, though, (and I don’t buy much because a lot of it is really pricy), I enjoy reading the emails that get sent. The guy who sources the wines loooves wine, and gets really excited about describing the various wines he’s offering for sale. He tends to talk about crushed rock and slate a lot, which doesn’t actually seem like it would be that appealing, but whatever. Last night’s email was one of the best ever. He described one of the wines thusly:

If Christmas cake could melt into a soil infested mold of living bacteria swimming in a murky mess of orange essence and sappy, cloudy, tobacco-tinged sarsaparilla, it would be this delicious treat.