Monday, June 30, 2008
Professionalism
Person A asks for a modification to be made to a piece of software. Person B expresses some reservations. Person A says to me that Person B is, and I quote, full of shit. Never mind that Person B's concerns were most likely unfounded. How do you begin to take seriously someone who is capable of such utter lack of respect for their colleagues?
Sunday, June 29, 2008
National Symphony
Saturday night J. and I went to the last National Symphony concert of the season. On the program was Shostakovich's Second Cello Concerto and Copland's Third Symphony, with an appetizer of Beethoven's Leonore overture. The most remarkable thing about the concert, though, was the audience's reaction the music director Leonard Slatkin, who conducted the performance. Slatkin is leaving the NSO at the end of this season after a long tenure. In fact, there was only one more concert for him to conduct after the one we heard. He literally got a standing ovation when he first came out on stage. The entire hall was up on its feet. I have never seen anything like that. From what I hear he was not universally liked by the orchestra members. I guess his fans feel differently. If that wasn't enough, at the end of the show, the audience called him back for no fewer than five curtain calls. Enough already, I was thinking. Anyway, the music...
Leonore was, well, Leonore. Very light by Beethoven standards. Apparently, Beethoven wrote four versions of the overture for his one opera that he eventually renamed Fidelio. No. 3 is considered to be the best, and became the "standard," but it is also thought to be out of character with the opening scene of the opera itself, so it is never performed as the actual overture, and has taken on an independent life. I've heard it before, and it didn't do any more for me on Saturday than it has in the past. I am still convinced that orchestras program short pieces at the beginning of their concerts to allow the late-comers to be seated without missing the good stuff.
Shostakovich was a treat. I did not realize that he had written two cello concertos. They were composed only a few years apart, in the 1960s, both for the legendary Russian cellist and Shostakovich's friend (and, not insignificantly, much later the music director of the NSO) Mstislav Rostropovich. The Second is apparently much less well known. I had not heard it before. It proved to be a challenge in spots, but ultimately very rewarding. It is cast, conventionally, in three movements, but the first one is slow while the other two are both marked moderato. There are no truly fast sections, which is just as well - the tempos he used are probably the two in which Shostakovich is the most expressive. Unlike his symphonies, at least the ones I am familiar with, where he creates tension by moving harmonies gradually away from the tonal center, in the first movement of the concerto he achieves a similar effect with orchestration, layering individual instruments and then entire sections. The music simmers throughout the entire work, but doesn't boil over until the very end, keeping the listener from feeling calm and relaxed - a Shostakovich trademark. One of the more unusual features of the work are the fact that unlike a typical Romantic concerto, the cello plays almost constantly, sometimes alone, or nearly so, other times almost drowned out by the tutti of the orchestra. There are two sections where the soloist is accompanied by only a single percussion instrument - a violently shaken tambourine in the first, a snare drum in the second, both making for an unusual combination of sounds, grating at times, but to good effect nevertheless.
The soloist on Saturday was one Sol Gabetta, a young Argentine with Russian roots whom I had not heard of. Since I have no reference point, I can't really comment on her interpretation. Her tone was very nice and she sounded confident, but beyond that, I don't really know. I do wonder sometimes whether a young Westerner, even one with Russian roots like Gabetta, can really feel the music of Shostakovich from the inside. Do you need a similar kind of experience to play it as Shostakovich himself apparently needed to write it? The only way to find out is to get a recording of Rostropovich himself playing it, I guess.
Copland's Third Symphony occupied the second half of the program. It was actually the last one he had written, fifth in absolute sequence, but he didn't bother to number to of them. It is famous for a section in the last movement that has taken on a life of its own as Fanfare for a Common Man. I must say it didn't do a whole lot for me. There just wasn't enough thematic material to keep me interested. The Symphony is very complex rhythmically, and from what I gather that is its chief accomplishment, but evidently rhythmic variety alone just doesn't do it for me, especially when it is as jittery and angular as it is here. That said, the third movement is beautiful, with lovely, dark and ambiguous melodies in the strings and, after two movements of tuttis or, at most, sections, some real solos. The Symphony is also an excellent opportunity to hear the sheer energy of an orchestra cooking at full steam. Copland does not keep you waiting - a few bars into the opening there is a wall of sound before you. When the orchestra is on, as the NSO was on Saturday, it sends chills down your spine.
It's worth mentioning that we had "real" seats - rear orchestra (we usually sit in the chorister), and I must say it made a difference. On the Shostakovich, especially, the cello was crystal-clear. Last year, we heard Schumann's cello concerto from the chorister, and I had to strain to hear some passages. The overall sound balance is much better as well, but at more than twice the price of the chorister seats, I don't think we'll be returning too soon.
It's also worth mentioning the dinner we had at Circle Bistro before the show. One of Kennedy Center's evils is that there are no restaurants that are truly convenient to it, and its own is overpriced and lousy by all accounts. Notti Bianche on New Hampshire Ave. is the next closest, but the one meal we had there was so disappointing that we vowed never to return. Circle Bistro, on the North side of Washington Circle, is the next closest, and well worth the walk. They feature a fixed price pre-theatre menu, which we had in the interest of time, and though there are only two choices for each of the three courses, they proved to be excellent. J. and I both started with the salad, it being a stiflingly hot evening, and though it was just a pile of greens, they were absolutely delicious. Many varieties, including some I have never seen before, all full of strong, grassy flavor that you can never get in supermarket salad greens. They were the closest to the stuff I get at the farmer's market I've ever had at a restaurant. Bucking the weather, I ordered the hanger steak for my entrée. The other choice was trout, which I had had before and which J. chose on Saturday. Both were fantastic. The steak was very flavorful, chewy but not tough, and cooked to a perfect degree of doneness. It was served with spinach and just a tiny but of mashed potato, all over delicious red wine sauce. Not having time for a lot of wine, I ordered a glass of Pavilion Merlot from California. J. went with a Prosecco. The Pavilion was good, but really soft. Goose-down pillow soft. Not tannins anywhere in sight. The steak kind of killed it, actually. But it would have been delicious on its own. Our dessert, which I never order but here it was part of the deal, were profiteroles filled with strawberry ice cream. I normally don't like strawberry ice cream, but these were actually quite good.
This was our second visit to Circle Bistro, and a second bull's eye. I must go back one of these days for a dinner where I am not restricted to a pre-concert fast track, and can try some of the other things on the menu.
Leonore was, well, Leonore. Very light by Beethoven standards. Apparently, Beethoven wrote four versions of the overture for his one opera that he eventually renamed Fidelio. No. 3 is considered to be the best, and became the "standard," but it is also thought to be out of character with the opening scene of the opera itself, so it is never performed as the actual overture, and has taken on an independent life. I've heard it before, and it didn't do any more for me on Saturday than it has in the past. I am still convinced that orchestras program short pieces at the beginning of their concerts to allow the late-comers to be seated without missing the good stuff.
Shostakovich was a treat. I did not realize that he had written two cello concertos. They were composed only a few years apart, in the 1960s, both for the legendary Russian cellist and Shostakovich's friend (and, not insignificantly, much later the music director of the NSO) Mstislav Rostropovich. The Second is apparently much less well known. I had not heard it before. It proved to be a challenge in spots, but ultimately very rewarding. It is cast, conventionally, in three movements, but the first one is slow while the other two are both marked moderato. There are no truly fast sections, which is just as well - the tempos he used are probably the two in which Shostakovich is the most expressive. Unlike his symphonies, at least the ones I am familiar with, where he creates tension by moving harmonies gradually away from the tonal center, in the first movement of the concerto he achieves a similar effect with orchestration, layering individual instruments and then entire sections. The music simmers throughout the entire work, but doesn't boil over until the very end, keeping the listener from feeling calm and relaxed - a Shostakovich trademark. One of the more unusual features of the work are the fact that unlike a typical Romantic concerto, the cello plays almost constantly, sometimes alone, or nearly so, other times almost drowned out by the tutti of the orchestra. There are two sections where the soloist is accompanied by only a single percussion instrument - a violently shaken tambourine in the first, a snare drum in the second, both making for an unusual combination of sounds, grating at times, but to good effect nevertheless.
The soloist on Saturday was one Sol Gabetta, a young Argentine with Russian roots whom I had not heard of. Since I have no reference point, I can't really comment on her interpretation. Her tone was very nice and she sounded confident, but beyond that, I don't really know. I do wonder sometimes whether a young Westerner, even one with Russian roots like Gabetta, can really feel the music of Shostakovich from the inside. Do you need a similar kind of experience to play it as Shostakovich himself apparently needed to write it? The only way to find out is to get a recording of Rostropovich himself playing it, I guess.
Copland's Third Symphony occupied the second half of the program. It was actually the last one he had written, fifth in absolute sequence, but he didn't bother to number to of them. It is famous for a section in the last movement that has taken on a life of its own as Fanfare for a Common Man. I must say it didn't do a whole lot for me. There just wasn't enough thematic material to keep me interested. The Symphony is very complex rhythmically, and from what I gather that is its chief accomplishment, but evidently rhythmic variety alone just doesn't do it for me, especially when it is as jittery and angular as it is here. That said, the third movement is beautiful, with lovely, dark and ambiguous melodies in the strings and, after two movements of tuttis or, at most, sections, some real solos. The Symphony is also an excellent opportunity to hear the sheer energy of an orchestra cooking at full steam. Copland does not keep you waiting - a few bars into the opening there is a wall of sound before you. When the orchestra is on, as the NSO was on Saturday, it sends chills down your spine.
It's worth mentioning that we had "real" seats - rear orchestra (we usually sit in the chorister), and I must say it made a difference. On the Shostakovich, especially, the cello was crystal-clear. Last year, we heard Schumann's cello concerto from the chorister, and I had to strain to hear some passages. The overall sound balance is much better as well, but at more than twice the price of the chorister seats, I don't think we'll be returning too soon.
It's also worth mentioning the dinner we had at Circle Bistro before the show. One of Kennedy Center's evils is that there are no restaurants that are truly convenient to it, and its own is overpriced and lousy by all accounts. Notti Bianche on New Hampshire Ave. is the next closest, but the one meal we had there was so disappointing that we vowed never to return. Circle Bistro, on the North side of Washington Circle, is the next closest, and well worth the walk. They feature a fixed price pre-theatre menu, which we had in the interest of time, and though there are only two choices for each of the three courses, they proved to be excellent. J. and I both started with the salad, it being a stiflingly hot evening, and though it was just a pile of greens, they were absolutely delicious. Many varieties, including some I have never seen before, all full of strong, grassy flavor that you can never get in supermarket salad greens. They were the closest to the stuff I get at the farmer's market I've ever had at a restaurant. Bucking the weather, I ordered the hanger steak for my entrée. The other choice was trout, which I had had before and which J. chose on Saturday. Both were fantastic. The steak was very flavorful, chewy but not tough, and cooked to a perfect degree of doneness. It was served with spinach and just a tiny but of mashed potato, all over delicious red wine sauce. Not having time for a lot of wine, I ordered a glass of Pavilion Merlot from California. J. went with a Prosecco. The Pavilion was good, but really soft. Goose-down pillow soft. Not tannins anywhere in sight. The steak kind of killed it, actually. But it would have been delicious on its own. Our dessert, which I never order but here it was part of the deal, were profiteroles filled with strawberry ice cream. I normally don't like strawberry ice cream, but these were actually quite good.
This was our second visit to Circle Bistro, and a second bull's eye. I must go back one of these days for a dinner where I am not restricted to a pre-concert fast track, and can try some of the other things on the menu.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Céline
Finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of Night last night. I first became aware of this book, and its quasi-sequel, Death on the Installment Plan, many years ago in college. I don't remember how I first learned about them, but I was reading a lot of existentialism then, and someone claimed at some point that Celine would fit into that mold.
The books are widely available, and had I really wanted to read them then, I could have simply bought copies or, failing that, some library somewhere would have had them. But for some reason, I decided to find them used. They just seemed to be the sort of books that you buy in a dusty used bookshop in a dying downtown of a small city. They defied me for over fifteen years, but last year I finally found both in rapid succession. Going in chronological order, I started with Journey.
Whoever pegged Céline as an existentialist didn't know what he was talking about. Existentialist literature, at its best, is about the necessity of making tough decisions and the consequences of not facing up to those decisions. Though frequently dark in tone, I find that it is ultimately uplifting, or at least educational. Journey was neither, at least not directly. I suppose someone could try to interpret the protagonist Bardamu's lack of ambition and failure to see the good in anyone as one giant case of existential paralysis, but for me it didn't work that way. It is also true that existential fiction deals with the lack of inherent meaning in the world, but inseparable from that is the necessity to create our own meaning. For Bradamu, the world is full of meaning, clear and unambiguous, and that meaning is misery and spite. Journey oozes nihilism. The closest equivalent I could think of in terms of overall emotional exoskeleton was Henry Miller, but the similarity only goes so far. Miller writes with anger, Céline – with resignation.
The story has four identifiable sections – World War I, colonial Africa, U.S. and the slums of Parisian suburbs. The last is the longest, and also the lightest on conventional adventure. In fact, I briefly doubted my ability to get through the rest of the book when I started on it. “Can I really handle two hundred more pages of such relentless negativity?” I asked myself. But I am glad I persevered. As events in Bardamu's life become more mundane in terms of what actually happens on a daily basis, the emotional content becomes richer and more nuanced. I didn't learn certain things about Bardamu until well into the second half of the book, and it is there that I found the greatest variety of characters.
Robinson, in particular, really comes alive towards the end. I was puzzled by Robinson through a big chunk of the book, and to some extent I still am. There must be some symbolism to him that I am missing. In the early sections, he appears, unexpectedly, at key moments to help Bardamu along his steady slide into irrelevance, only to disappear just as unexpectedly. For a moment, I pegged him as a Mephistopheles. But he ends, improbably, by succeeding at doing the one noble deed that Bardamu knows he could never do.
Céline's descriptions, too, become a little more subtle, and that makes them more powerful to me. Part of this is cultural, I think. Bardamu's experience of the war, and colonial Africa, wallop you straight in the face with their graphic intensity, but I had little but Céline's own imagination and language to go on. The working-class outskirts of Paris, on the other hand, are familiar enough from countless books and movies that I didn't have to focus on their novelty and could see below the surface a bit better. The carnival scene at the end, in particular, is chilling in its detail, and, stoked by the simmering conflict of the main characters that is about to explode in the novel's denouement, infinitely absorbing. Carnivals in general, especially mid-century ones (this part of the story is set roughly in the early 1930s) are fascinatingly creepy, and Céline captures it, and Bardamu's helplessness in its face, perfectly.
I am glad I read Joruney now, and not fifteen years ago. I know I didn't have the maturity then to see Bardamu pitiful existence for what it was. Even today, though he is the quintessential anti-hero, I did not see him as a villain. He frustrates, and sometimes disgusts, but occasionaly, for me at least, he also endears, and makes you think. Fifteen years ago, I would have run the risk of embracing the book in earnest. Today, I can usually muster some much-needed detachment, though I must admit that even now, or perhaps especially now, I find a dangerous amount of appeal in passages like this:
The books are widely available, and had I really wanted to read them then, I could have simply bought copies or, failing that, some library somewhere would have had them. But for some reason, I decided to find them used. They just seemed to be the sort of books that you buy in a dusty used bookshop in a dying downtown of a small city. They defied me for over fifteen years, but last year I finally found both in rapid succession. Going in chronological order, I started with Journey.
Whoever pegged Céline as an existentialist didn't know what he was talking about. Existentialist literature, at its best, is about the necessity of making tough decisions and the consequences of not facing up to those decisions. Though frequently dark in tone, I find that it is ultimately uplifting, or at least educational. Journey was neither, at least not directly. I suppose someone could try to interpret the protagonist Bardamu's lack of ambition and failure to see the good in anyone as one giant case of existential paralysis, but for me it didn't work that way. It is also true that existential fiction deals with the lack of inherent meaning in the world, but inseparable from that is the necessity to create our own meaning. For Bradamu, the world is full of meaning, clear and unambiguous, and that meaning is misery and spite. Journey oozes nihilism. The closest equivalent I could think of in terms of overall emotional exoskeleton was Henry Miller, but the similarity only goes so far. Miller writes with anger, Céline – with resignation.
The story has four identifiable sections – World War I, colonial Africa, U.S. and the slums of Parisian suburbs. The last is the longest, and also the lightest on conventional adventure. In fact, I briefly doubted my ability to get through the rest of the book when I started on it. “Can I really handle two hundred more pages of such relentless negativity?” I asked myself. But I am glad I persevered. As events in Bardamu's life become more mundane in terms of what actually happens on a daily basis, the emotional content becomes richer and more nuanced. I didn't learn certain things about Bardamu until well into the second half of the book, and it is there that I found the greatest variety of characters.
Robinson, in particular, really comes alive towards the end. I was puzzled by Robinson through a big chunk of the book, and to some extent I still am. There must be some symbolism to him that I am missing. In the early sections, he appears, unexpectedly, at key moments to help Bardamu along his steady slide into irrelevance, only to disappear just as unexpectedly. For a moment, I pegged him as a Mephistopheles. But he ends, improbably, by succeeding at doing the one noble deed that Bardamu knows he could never do.
Céline's descriptions, too, become a little more subtle, and that makes them more powerful to me. Part of this is cultural, I think. Bardamu's experience of the war, and colonial Africa, wallop you straight in the face with their graphic intensity, but I had little but Céline's own imagination and language to go on. The working-class outskirts of Paris, on the other hand, are familiar enough from countless books and movies that I didn't have to focus on their novelty and could see below the surface a bit better. The carnival scene at the end, in particular, is chilling in its detail, and, stoked by the simmering conflict of the main characters that is about to explode in the novel's denouement, infinitely absorbing. Carnivals in general, especially mid-century ones (this part of the story is set roughly in the early 1930s) are fascinatingly creepy, and Céline captures it, and Bardamu's helplessness in its face, perfectly.
I am glad I read Joruney now, and not fifteen years ago. I know I didn't have the maturity then to see Bardamu pitiful existence for what it was. Even today, though he is the quintessential anti-hero, I did not see him as a villain. He frustrates, and sometimes disgusts, but occasionaly, for me at least, he also endears, and makes you think. Fifteen years ago, I would have run the risk of embracing the book in earnest. Today, I can usually muster some much-needed detachment, though I must admit that even now, or perhaps especially now, I find a dangerous amount of appeal in passages like this:
But it was too late to start being young again. I didn't believe in it anymore. We grow old so quickly and, what's more, irremediably. You can tell by the way you start loving your misery in spite of yourself. (p. 197)
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Stumped: Cell Phones
No, I am not going to rant about people having private conversations on their cell phones in public places, even though that drives me crazy. What I want to know is, whom are all these people talking to, and do they really have that much to talk about?
Everyone seems to have a cell phone glued to their ear all the time nowadays. If a vehicle is loafing in the passing lane, five miles per hour slower than the flow of traffic, these days it's usually not a burgundy Crown Vic driven by a near-blind octogenarian three inches away from the steering wheel. It's a stylish forty-something Beverly Hillsian (or, around here, Bethesdian), in her Land Rover, yapping away on her cell phone, oblivious to cars high-beaming her and passing her, unsafely, on the right. Kids are even worse – cooking at eighty in their Scions and talking or, worse, twittering. Just the other day, I saw a well-dressed couple, out for a night on the town, and the woman had a cell phone at her ear. And her boyfriend seemed to have no problem with this. Every time I go to Target and see husbands and wives buying laundry detergent, there is at least one pair in which both are talking on their cell phones. Presumably not to each other. Never mind that I find it impossible to talk and do something else, even if it's just buying laundry detergent, at the same time – I am notoriously terrible at multi-tasking. Who is on the other end of all those lines? And what could they possibly have to say that requires constant communication?
Am I being hopelessly lame and asocial merely by asking these questions? I hope not -- I have friends, enough that I don't see some of them as often as I would like to. When J. is busy or indisposed, there are people I can call to go have a drink or a bite to eat. It takes two minutes to set a date, and then I can talk to a friend for two hours face to face. And I can't be the only one doing that – bars and restaurants are more jam-packed than ever around here, and everyone is talking talking talking. I have family, too -- not a lot, but some. We talk once every week or two. So who are those cell phone people? And what are they talking about on those phones all day? What could they possibly have to say? I welcome any and all theories.
Everyone seems to have a cell phone glued to their ear all the time nowadays. If a vehicle is loafing in the passing lane, five miles per hour slower than the flow of traffic, these days it's usually not a burgundy Crown Vic driven by a near-blind octogenarian three inches away from the steering wheel. It's a stylish forty-something Beverly Hillsian (or, around here, Bethesdian), in her Land Rover, yapping away on her cell phone, oblivious to cars high-beaming her and passing her, unsafely, on the right. Kids are even worse – cooking at eighty in their Scions and talking or, worse, twittering. Just the other day, I saw a well-dressed couple, out for a night on the town, and the woman had a cell phone at her ear. And her boyfriend seemed to have no problem with this. Every time I go to Target and see husbands and wives buying laundry detergent, there is at least one pair in which both are talking on their cell phones. Presumably not to each other. Never mind that I find it impossible to talk and do something else, even if it's just buying laundry detergent, at the same time – I am notoriously terrible at multi-tasking. Who is on the other end of all those lines? And what could they possibly have to say that requires constant communication?
Am I being hopelessly lame and asocial merely by asking these questions? I hope not -- I have friends, enough that I don't see some of them as often as I would like to. When J. is busy or indisposed, there are people I can call to go have a drink or a bite to eat. It takes two minutes to set a date, and then I can talk to a friend for two hours face to face. And I can't be the only one doing that – bars and restaurants are more jam-packed than ever around here, and everyone is talking talking talking. I have family, too -- not a lot, but some. We talk once every week or two. So who are those cell phone people? And what are they talking about on those phones all day? What could they possibly have to say? I welcome any and all theories.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Brad Mehldau
A while ago, I struggled with, but eventually embraced, Brad Mehldau's new trio set. It made me want to check out his Live in Tokyo, which got rave reviews when it first came out almost four years ago. I recently did, and the verdict is that you can have my copy. No, it's not that bad. In fact, it's quite good in spots. As a whole, however, it's disappointing, and the reason for the disappointment can be summed up in one word: bombast. Mehldau plays unaccompanied, and really stretches out here, but one can stretch out in many directions, and Mehldau has chosen one I rarely, if ever, want to go in. I know he is perfectly capable of understatement, a masterful use of space, and a good balance between intensity and subtlety. One needs to go no further than his other unaccompanied disc, Elegiac Cycle, for proof. Tokyo, however, leans heavily in the direction of loudness, density and busyness.
Things start out well enough with a cover of Nick Drake's "Things Behind the Sun." I am not familiar with the original, but Mehldau's version makes clear that there is a finely crafted pop song in there – something he is quite good at. He embellishes just enough to make things interesting and stops before he runs away from himself. The Gershwins' "Someone to Watch Over Me" continues more or less in the same vein. It's more vampy, but the lovely theme of the original remains lovely, and the droning chords in the left hand support the solo without getting in the way too much. But I probably wouldn't want to listen much past this point on a regular basis. "From This Moment On," another standard, also preserves its theme, but the middle section is far too hectic for my taste. Assuming the CD was sequenced in the same order as the concert it documents, Mehldau has clearly warmed up, and the portents are not good. "Monk's Dream" completely steamrolled me. Mehldau was pounding on the keyboard so hard that I had to turn down the volume. It does have one saving grace – a wry quote from "Linus and Lucy" – but a three-second joke does not save an eight-minute train wreck.
What follows is supposed to be the pièce de resistance of the record – a twenty-minute version of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android," which he has recorded before, but never, as far as I know, unaccompanied. Think what you will of a jazz pianist covering Radiohead – I happen to think that Mehldau, who is reportedly a big fan of the band, usually makes his renditions work. But twenty minutes?! Give me a break. Even Keith Jarrett, who built a career on that sort of self-indulgence, rarely gets away with it as far as I am concerned, but when he does, it's only because he is able to put listeners into a sort of trance where they listen sub-rationally, to coin a term. Jarrett can shut your left brain off completely. Mehldau can't, and ends up coming off as a pianistic loudmouth. I firmly believe in the economy of means, in music as in conversation. Mehldau's "Android" is the musical equivalent of the annoying guy or gal at a party that monopolizes the conversation but does not say much of substance.
There are two more tracks on the disc – the Gershwins' "How Long Has This Been Going On," and "River Man," another Drake cover. Both are fine, but I was tired by this point. Mehldau's incessant pounding on the keyboard has worn me out.
Would my experience have been different if I heard the show live? Probably. Would I have “got” it on a deeper level? I don't know. It's possible. But I wasn't in Tokyo that night, and whatever I would have got there I did not get from the recording.
A curious thing, extra-musical but significant, is the audience reaction (Nonesuch left the applause in). Japanese audiences are infamously conservative. The applause is always so polite and so uniform that you would think these people were attending a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, not a jazz concert. When there is a discernible variation in the reaction, it is always proportional to the “weirdness” of a number. To use the aforementioned Jarrett as an example, his recent Radiance was also recorded in Tokyo. The slower, more lyrical pieces elicit something approaching enthusiasm, whereas the applause after the more dissonant, wild improvisations is strictly pro-forma. Not so with Mehldau. It is the crazy, bombastic stuff that elicits the most heartfelt response from the audience, and by Japanese standards, it is wild, complete with (occasional) whistling, hooting and feet stomping. Maybe things really are changing in Japan, and Mehldau (born 1970) is attracting fans of his own generation, while Jarrett (born 1945) – of his.
Things start out well enough with a cover of Nick Drake's "Things Behind the Sun." I am not familiar with the original, but Mehldau's version makes clear that there is a finely crafted pop song in there – something he is quite good at. He embellishes just enough to make things interesting and stops before he runs away from himself. The Gershwins' "Someone to Watch Over Me" continues more or less in the same vein. It's more vampy, but the lovely theme of the original remains lovely, and the droning chords in the left hand support the solo without getting in the way too much. But I probably wouldn't want to listen much past this point on a regular basis. "From This Moment On," another standard, also preserves its theme, but the middle section is far too hectic for my taste. Assuming the CD was sequenced in the same order as the concert it documents, Mehldau has clearly warmed up, and the portents are not good. "Monk's Dream" completely steamrolled me. Mehldau was pounding on the keyboard so hard that I had to turn down the volume. It does have one saving grace – a wry quote from "Linus and Lucy" – but a three-second joke does not save an eight-minute train wreck.
What follows is supposed to be the pièce de resistance of the record – a twenty-minute version of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android," which he has recorded before, but never, as far as I know, unaccompanied. Think what you will of a jazz pianist covering Radiohead – I happen to think that Mehldau, who is reportedly a big fan of the band, usually makes his renditions work. But twenty minutes?! Give me a break. Even Keith Jarrett, who built a career on that sort of self-indulgence, rarely gets away with it as far as I am concerned, but when he does, it's only because he is able to put listeners into a sort of trance where they listen sub-rationally, to coin a term. Jarrett can shut your left brain off completely. Mehldau can't, and ends up coming off as a pianistic loudmouth. I firmly believe in the economy of means, in music as in conversation. Mehldau's "Android" is the musical equivalent of the annoying guy or gal at a party that monopolizes the conversation but does not say much of substance.
There are two more tracks on the disc – the Gershwins' "How Long Has This Been Going On," and "River Man," another Drake cover. Both are fine, but I was tired by this point. Mehldau's incessant pounding on the keyboard has worn me out.
Would my experience have been different if I heard the show live? Probably. Would I have “got” it on a deeper level? I don't know. It's possible. But I wasn't in Tokyo that night, and whatever I would have got there I did not get from the recording.
A curious thing, extra-musical but significant, is the audience reaction (Nonesuch left the applause in). Japanese audiences are infamously conservative. The applause is always so polite and so uniform that you would think these people were attending a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, not a jazz concert. When there is a discernible variation in the reaction, it is always proportional to the “weirdness” of a number. To use the aforementioned Jarrett as an example, his recent Radiance was also recorded in Tokyo. The slower, more lyrical pieces elicit something approaching enthusiasm, whereas the applause after the more dissonant, wild improvisations is strictly pro-forma. Not so with Mehldau. It is the crazy, bombastic stuff that elicits the most heartfelt response from the audience, and by Japanese standards, it is wild, complete with (occasional) whistling, hooting and feet stomping. Maybe things really are changing in Japan, and Mehldau (born 1970) is attracting fans of his own generation, while Jarrett (born 1945) – of his.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Gentrification run amok
For many years, there was bar near my old office in DC called Lulu's. It was a cavernous New Orleans-themed place a few blocks from the GW University campus that sold Miller Lite in plastic cups to crowds of drunk students. We Americans have a genius for turning insignificant events in other countries' histories into excuses to get plastered – Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick's Day. I'm surprised that Victoria Day isn't an excuse for excessive embibement. Lulu's catered exactly to the kind of crowd that made these “holidays” what they are. On St. Patrick's Day, they had an infamous tradition of opening at 9:00 a.m. to serve breakfast and beer. People would form a line several blocks long; I remember seeing them on my way to work in the morning. I have never actually patronized the place, but my good friend C.M. had been a few times many years ago while in graduate school at GW. He did not have kind things to say about it, and neither did anyone else I know who has been to it. About a year and a half ago, it finally closed, with quite a bit of noise (literally – the going-out-of-business party lasted three days) and an auction of every item and fixture in the place. I could have bought my very own piece of wrought-iron balcony railing, had I had a balcony. The space, along with a section of the adjacent hotel, was gutted, and a fence went up around it with a local construction company's logos on it. Good riddance, many people thought. It was a local institution, to be sure, and a successful business, but one that was difficult for the neighborhood to respect.
The other day, by happenstance I found myself in the neighborhood. The construction has been completed. The space is now occupied by a Walgreen's and a Starbucks, and all of I sudden I found myself really missing Lulu's. There is already a CVS directly across the street, a Starbucks on the same street two blocks away, and another three blocks in the other direction, not to mention miniature ones hiding in nearby hotels. And these are short city blocks, not mile-long suburban ones. How many chain establishments can we sustain? I know they are necessary, offering predictability to their customers and steady growth to their stockholders. But wouldn't you think that the cost of opening an operating new locations would eventually negate the additional revenue they generate? Surely there is a saturation point somewhere, and it's got to be somewhere well before we have one of everything on every block. I can only hope that as companies overextend themselves and have to close superfluous branches, independent businesses like Lulu's can sweep in and snap up the vacated space for cheap, but given the way commercial real estate market operates, that's highly unlikely. The landlord will simply find another gullible chain, one that has not learned its lesson yet, to open a new location.
The other day, by happenstance I found myself in the neighborhood. The construction has been completed. The space is now occupied by a Walgreen's and a Starbucks, and all of I sudden I found myself really missing Lulu's. There is already a CVS directly across the street, a Starbucks on the same street two blocks away, and another three blocks in the other direction, not to mention miniature ones hiding in nearby hotels. And these are short city blocks, not mile-long suburban ones. How many chain establishments can we sustain? I know they are necessary, offering predictability to their customers and steady growth to their stockholders. But wouldn't you think that the cost of opening an operating new locations would eventually negate the additional revenue they generate? Surely there is a saturation point somewhere, and it's got to be somewhere well before we have one of everything on every block. I can only hope that as companies overextend themselves and have to close superfluous branches, independent businesses like Lulu's can sweep in and snap up the vacated space for cheap, but given the way commercial real estate market operates, that's highly unlikely. The landlord will simply find another gullible chain, one that has not learned its lesson yet, to open a new location.
The curse of being read
I started this blog because I wanted to capture my impressions of a trip to Canada last year. But I continued it because I saw it as an opportunity to jot down some mundane thoughts, observations on daily life, and reactions to things I read and listen to. I have never been any good at keeping a journal, though gawd knows I've tried many times, and once or twice have been able to keep it up for months at a time. On average, though, I'm terrible. I write for a couple of weeks, then abandon it for a year or more, so there is no coherent narrative, even after years of doing that. Not sure why this is, beyond my basic laziness and lack of discipline, but I suspect it's because knowing that a journal will not be read by anyone other than me, or at least knowing that it's not supposed to be, and thinking that it won't, causes me to pour out all the negativity and frustration onto the page, all the bile and bitterness. It has got so bad at times that even the author himself has no interest in going back and re-reading old entries. Even Céline has nothing on me in that department, but that's a topic for another post. Bottom line, I can only do so much of that before I disgust myself so much that I have to put the pen down.
The blog, on the other hand, offers at least a possibility that it will be read. Most likely by someone I don't know stumbling upon it, but still. I certainly didn't intend it to be read, but the mere possibility is enough. I have to keep it family-friendly, as it were. There is a problem, however. Possibility turned into actuality, and from what I gather, some people do actually read it. Nothing major, just a couple of friends here and there (bored at work, I suspect), but still. So now there are things I can't write about even though in the abstract they would be perfectly family-friendly, and even fun and enjoyable both to write and read about. A measly half-dozen readers (if that), and I'm already up against a conflict of interest. Judges recuse themselves from cases regularly. Evidently, bloggers have to as well. Maybe it's time for another burst of journal-writing.
The blog, on the other hand, offers at least a possibility that it will be read. Most likely by someone I don't know stumbling upon it, but still. I certainly didn't intend it to be read, but the mere possibility is enough. I have to keep it family-friendly, as it were. There is a problem, however. Possibility turned into actuality, and from what I gather, some people do actually read it. Nothing major, just a couple of friends here and there (bored at work, I suspect), but still. So now there are things I can't write about even though in the abstract they would be perfectly family-friendly, and even fun and enjoyable both to write and read about. A measly half-dozen readers (if that), and I'm already up against a conflict of interest. Judges recuse themselves from cases regularly. Evidently, bloggers have to as well. Maybe it's time for another burst of journal-writing.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
S.G.'s wget mix
My friend S.G. uses a program called wget to scrape the Internet for music. Periodically, he burns a bunch of his finds onto a CD and sends it around to friends. At his request, what follows are my knee-jerk reactions to his latest compilation.
Basia Bulat: Before I Knew
Apparently this woman is quite a phenom in Canada, but you wouldn't know it by this song. At a hair over a minute long, her decent but derivative voice accompanied by nothing but a ukulele and hand clapping, it sounds like Tiny Tim meets Sarah McLaughlan. Totally and completely forgettable.
The National: Fake Empire
Decent, piano-heavy, lightly artsy modern pop. The middle piano/drum section is a dead ringer for early U2, but on the whole, reasonably distinctive. The biggest surprise was the lead singer's voice -- it reminded me a lot of the guy from Tindersticks. A quick check on the 'net turned up the fact that apparently Sufjan Stevens played piano on the album from which this song was snarfed.
Cary Brothers: Ride
Just in case you're wondering, this song was not recorded by siblings whose last name is Cary. It was recorded by a guy whose last name is Brothers. This is actually an excellent song, though the Cure influence is pretty blatant. Brothers' voice would normally be way too whiny for my taste, and I would consider a tune like this showing up on anything other than my friends' G&N annual mix to be out of place, but I'm digging it despite myself.
Shannon Wright: Everybody's Got Their Own Part to Play
The blatantly beatlesque opening almost turned me off, and Wright's vocals sound vaguely drunk, but the song is actually pretty decent.
Meg Baird: Do What You Gotta Do
Baird appears to be a local Philly act. Straight, sixties-style acoustic folk, though recorded in 2007. Her voice reminds me of Jacqui McShee of Pentangle. Not really my thing, and the songwriting here is merely ok, but it's also inoffensive and could have been a lot worse.
Elizabeth Cotten: Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie
Talk about out of the left field: Cotten was born in 1895 in the deep South, initially recorded by Folkways in the 1950s, but did not achieve real prominence until the last years of her life in the 1980s. The song is about what you'd expect, but the fingerpicked guitar is classic.
Deer Tick: Diamond Rings
If the guy's voice and singing style didn't sound so much like Mick Jagger, I might be willing to listen a little more carefully.
The Limes: Les Indes Noires
More whiny vocals, this time without good songwriting or a good arrangement.
Dntel: The Distance
This guy is in the Postal Service?!?! I guess he needs to record the bad songs, too.
Lindstrom: A Blast Of Loser
This guy is huge in Norway, apparently. Sounds like generic Euro-electronica to me. Vaguely industrial in spots, which is good. Wins the best song title award hands down.
Ulrich Schnauss: Stars
Now we're talking. Atmospheric, but just poppy enough not to get boring. Very Euro, and vaguely retro without being reactionary. I'll be listening to this one again, no doubt.
Asobi Seksu: Red Sea
Another pleasant surprise. A Japanese band based in New York, these guys (and gals) mix a heavy dose of Elizabeth Frazer and Cocteau Twins with early-90s atmospheric rock. They definitely have the sound, though the detached, heavily reverbed vocals give away their knowledge of unfortunate Asian pop.
Koop: Koop Island Blues
An entirely different kind of retro. A little French chanson, a little lounge, a little modern electronica with sound effects, and a surprisingly good song -- melancholy and wistful. Killer arrangement, too -- accordion, vibes, clarinet and trombone, among other things. All synthesized, no doubt, but it still works like a charm. Definitely my favorite on the entire disc.
Johnny Halliday: Hey Joe
The less is said about Johnny Halliday, the better.
Mark David Ashworth: ???
The song title came up as "Granma2 Begin Begin 2" -- can't really be called that, can it? Anyway, this guy is obscure -- no record contract, one self-released CD and a disgustingly pretentious and self-absorbed web site. The song actually works, though, mostly because of the orchestration -- a small brass choir and a classical guitar. The vocals are a little overwrought and melodramatic, but not too bad in the grand scheme of things.
Beirut: Elephant Gun
If you thought you've heard annoying voices before, wait 'til you hear this guy. And the songwriting does not do him any favors either. At least the vaguely Mexican horns in the arrangement kept me listening a smidge longer.
Charlie Perfume: Charlie's Tune
I admit defeat at trying to find any information whatsoever about this person/people/band. I now know, however, that Charlie was an actual perfume sold by Revlon in the seventies. The song is a generic, emasculated bossa-nova that might have worked in a film soundtrack, but not many other places.
Basia Bulat: Before I Knew
Apparently this woman is quite a phenom in Canada, but you wouldn't know it by this song. At a hair over a minute long, her decent but derivative voice accompanied by nothing but a ukulele and hand clapping, it sounds like Tiny Tim meets Sarah McLaughlan. Totally and completely forgettable.
The National: Fake Empire
Decent, piano-heavy, lightly artsy modern pop. The middle piano/drum section is a dead ringer for early U2, but on the whole, reasonably distinctive. The biggest surprise was the lead singer's voice -- it reminded me a lot of the guy from Tindersticks. A quick check on the 'net turned up the fact that apparently Sufjan Stevens played piano on the album from which this song was snarfed.
Cary Brothers: Ride
Just in case you're wondering, this song was not recorded by siblings whose last name is Cary. It was recorded by a guy whose last name is Brothers. This is actually an excellent song, though the Cure influence is pretty blatant. Brothers' voice would normally be way too whiny for my taste, and I would consider a tune like this showing up on anything other than my friends' G&N annual mix to be out of place, but I'm digging it despite myself.
Shannon Wright: Everybody's Got Their Own Part to Play
The blatantly beatlesque opening almost turned me off, and Wright's vocals sound vaguely drunk, but the song is actually pretty decent.
Meg Baird: Do What You Gotta Do
Baird appears to be a local Philly act. Straight, sixties-style acoustic folk, though recorded in 2007. Her voice reminds me of Jacqui McShee of Pentangle. Not really my thing, and the songwriting here is merely ok, but it's also inoffensive and could have been a lot worse.
Elizabeth Cotten: Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie
Talk about out of the left field: Cotten was born in 1895 in the deep South, initially recorded by Folkways in the 1950s, but did not achieve real prominence until the last years of her life in the 1980s. The song is about what you'd expect, but the fingerpicked guitar is classic.
Deer Tick: Diamond Rings
If the guy's voice and singing style didn't sound so much like Mick Jagger, I might be willing to listen a little more carefully.
The Limes: Les Indes Noires
More whiny vocals, this time without good songwriting or a good arrangement.
Dntel: The Distance
This guy is in the Postal Service?!?! I guess he needs to record the bad songs, too.
Lindstrom: A Blast Of Loser
This guy is huge in Norway, apparently. Sounds like generic Euro-electronica to me. Vaguely industrial in spots, which is good. Wins the best song title award hands down.
Ulrich Schnauss: Stars
Now we're talking. Atmospheric, but just poppy enough not to get boring. Very Euro, and vaguely retro without being reactionary. I'll be listening to this one again, no doubt.
Asobi Seksu: Red Sea
Another pleasant surprise. A Japanese band based in New York, these guys (and gals) mix a heavy dose of Elizabeth Frazer and Cocteau Twins with early-90s atmospheric rock. They definitely have the sound, though the detached, heavily reverbed vocals give away their knowledge of unfortunate Asian pop.
Koop: Koop Island Blues
An entirely different kind of retro. A little French chanson, a little lounge, a little modern electronica with sound effects, and a surprisingly good song -- melancholy and wistful. Killer arrangement, too -- accordion, vibes, clarinet and trombone, among other things. All synthesized, no doubt, but it still works like a charm. Definitely my favorite on the entire disc.
Johnny Halliday: Hey Joe
The less is said about Johnny Halliday, the better.
Mark David Ashworth: ???
The song title came up as "Granma2 Begin Begin 2" -- can't really be called that, can it? Anyway, this guy is obscure -- no record contract, one self-released CD and a disgustingly pretentious and self-absorbed web site. The song actually works, though, mostly because of the orchestration -- a small brass choir and a classical guitar. The vocals are a little overwrought and melodramatic, but not too bad in the grand scheme of things.
Beirut: Elephant Gun
If you thought you've heard annoying voices before, wait 'til you hear this guy. And the songwriting does not do him any favors either. At least the vaguely Mexican horns in the arrangement kept me listening a smidge longer.
Charlie Perfume: Charlie's Tune
I admit defeat at trying to find any information whatsoever about this person/people/band. I now know, however, that Charlie was an actual perfume sold by Revlon in the seventies. The song is a generic, emasculated bossa-nova that might have worked in a film soundtrack, but not many other places.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Gas prices
Charles Krauthammer's column in today's WaPo is worth reading, I think, primarily because in the first half he offers an exceptionally simple explanation and justification for an already simple concept that governments, and even individuals, refuse to accept year after year and decade after decade, namely that the most effective way to accomplish something is to hit people on the wallet. He then describes an apparently long standing proposal of his that I was not familiar with until now but, upon reflection, one I agree with. In general, it is highly unusual for me to support any proposal that advocates a new tax, but his actually makes logical and economic sense and, due to the fact that it includes a tax reduction elsewhere in the system, would do more good than harm.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
George Javori
I recently picked up a copy of Shivaree's Who's Got Trouble? album. Shivaree has no full-time drummer, apparently, and makes do with hired guns. Reading through the list of guest musicians in the liner notes, I came across the name George Javori. I went to high school with a guy by that name, and even back then he played incredible drums. He was the go-to guy for anything in the entire school that required a drummer. I jammed with him once or twice back in my guitar days, but frankly, my playing was a complete embarrassment to his. Not very many Javoris running around, even in New York (the name is Hungarian in origin). “Got to be the same guy,” I thought, did a little poking around on the internet, and turned up a few photos. Lo and behold, it was the same guy. He went pro, evidently, and in addition to studio work with the likes of Shivaree, eventually landed a gig as a touring drummer with Joan Baez. He also, it turned out, died in 2005. The information on him is scant, and I was not able to find the cause. The best I could do was this page on Joan Baez's site, as well as this bit on a tribute show to him done at a club in New York in early '06 by what I assume were mostly New York-based musicians who knew him. Kind of odd to contemplate all this. The world really is a small place, and maybe there really is something to the whole six degrees thing.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Asheville, Day Four
Monday was the day we would finally head home. We finally tried our B&B's breakfast, and I must say it was quite good. David the innkeeper served what he rather preposterously called “French toast crème brûlée.” There was no trace of either French toast or crème brûlée, but it was delicious nonetheless. It was sort of an egg soufflee, baked until puffy, with a layer of something made of apples in the middle. The coffee was excellent as well.
I had a full-blown cold by Monday morning, and was feeling moderately miserable, but it was another beautiful day. After checking out, we spent an hour or so at the Asheville Botanical Garden, a peaceful little park adjacent to the UNC Asheville campus. It was beautifully quiet, and the wildflowers were beautiful. Afterwards, we stopped in at a store J. wanted to go to; by the time we were done it was lunchtime, and I was determined to visit one more local institution before leaving – the Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company. The pizza was generic, but wasn't bad when hot and fresh from the oven. Despite my cold an an impending eight-hour drive, I allowed myself a beer, and asked our waitress, amazingly with-it by Asheville standards, to recommend one. I was glad I did – though it was merely their red ale, usually a boring style, it was hoppy and refreshing, with a floral aroma that I could detect even with my malfunctioning sinuses. J. opted for the IPA, which was even better. The space was full of character (and characters, I am sure, come nighttime) and featured a movie theatre in the back.
From then on, it was driving and more driving. We got home close to midnight, sick, exhausted, dreading work the next day, but delighted with the trip.
I had a full-blown cold by Monday morning, and was feeling moderately miserable, but it was another beautiful day. After checking out, we spent an hour or so at the Asheville Botanical Garden, a peaceful little park adjacent to the UNC Asheville campus. It was beautifully quiet, and the wildflowers were beautiful. Afterwards, we stopped in at a store J. wanted to go to; by the time we were done it was lunchtime, and I was determined to visit one more local institution before leaving – the Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company. The pizza was generic, but wasn't bad when hot and fresh from the oven. Despite my cold an an impending eight-hour drive, I allowed myself a beer, and asked our waitress, amazingly with-it by Asheville standards, to recommend one. I was glad I did – though it was merely their red ale, usually a boring style, it was hoppy and refreshing, with a floral aroma that I could detect even with my malfunctioning sinuses. J. opted for the IPA, which was even better. The space was full of character (and characters, I am sure, come nighttime) and featured a movie theatre in the back.
From then on, it was driving and more driving. We got home close to midnight, sick, exhausted, dreading work the next day, but delighted with the trip.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Asheville, Day Three
On Sunday, we missed our B&B's breakfast again to leave early for a whitewater rafting trip on the French Broad river. The French Broad is generally believed to be one of the three oldest rivers in the world and is one of the few in the Northern hemisphere that flows North.
This was my first time rafting, and J.'s first as an adult (she had done some decades ago as a Girl Scout). On J.'s cousin's recommendation, we booked a trip with the Nantahala Outdoor Center. One of the larger outfits in the area, they offer trips around the entire Western North Carolina and Tennessee. We were the first to arrive, but by the time everyone gathered our group was sizeable. A church group of teenagers from Alabama with their two chaperoning adults, another couple a few years older than ourselves, and two twenty-something women in high-tech REI gear. The morning was cool, and most people, including J., availed themselves of wetsuits. Citing my heritage, I passed. Wisely, it turned out – the day grew very warm quite quickly and J. had to peel hers off on our first stop. The water was very low, about 40% below its average level for the season, so the lead guide offered people an option of what he called duckies – one-person inflatable kayaks that are more maneuverable in shallow water. A few of the teens, one of their chaperons, and one REI woman took him up. After a not particularly confidence-inspiring safety video, we piled into an old school bus and headed for the put-in. Once assembled, we ended up with a half-dozen duckies, two guides in kayaks, and three rafts. The raft J. and I were in brought up the rear, and we were the only ones with two guides on board, Brandon and Spitzer (got to be a nickname). Both college-age, they were unfailingly nice and friendly. Spitzer was the more experienced one and quieter, while Brandon was still learning the more advanced skills, called out the paddling commands, and narrated the river lore as we floated down the slow sections between rapids.
Rafters and kayakers classify the rapids' difficulty using numbers from one to six, but the procedure for assigning a class to a rapid is a bit of a black science. It seems to have less to do with the height, width or the speed of the current and more with how many people got killed trying to paddle it. A class six rapid is one that has never been successfully negotiated, successful in this case meaning alive and still in the boat. Once a rapid is successfully negotiated, it is downgraded to a five-point-something. According to our guides, we were going to go through several class two rapids and two class-threes. I am not sure I was ever able to tell the difference. Some of the class-twos sure seemed more exciting. Overall, the experience was fun. The water was indeed low, and we scraped a lot of rocks. Several times, Brandon had to get out of the raft (the river was shallow enough in most places) and push us off. On the bigger rapids, however, it was quite a bit of fun. The excitement lasts only a second or two, but it's intense while it's there. Towards the end, a couple of times our guides would purposely point the raft into the rapid backwards and we would not only tumble but also spin through the roaring water. The biggest challenge in terms of technique was having to paddle as fast and furiously as we could manage. Most of the time, we floated along with only an occasional paddle to keep the raft on course, but once we reached a rapid, there was usually several in succession, and we had to steer the raft quickly from one to the other and keep it pointed in exactly the right direction to avoid allowing the current to drive us onto a rock. We did ok for the most part, no doubt due to the fact that the professional-to-amateur ration in our raft was the highest of our entire expedition. Brandon mentioned at one point that the worst kind of customer is a raft full of guys. Apparently, as a species we tend to convince ourselves quickly that we know what we're doing and stop following commands. “I'll take a raft full of Girl Scouts over a raft of grown men any day” were his exact words.
After the trip was over I contemplated a bit the extreme nature of the sport, and how much further I would be willing to go, if at all, before I decided that the risk was too high. Having an admittedly low tolerance for risk (hence my fascination-trepidation relationship with motorcycles), I decided that I would not want to go much further than what we did on Sunday. Class two and three were fun, but anything much past that, I think I my mind would go into a survival mode and I would miss out on the fun. But you never know.
We had only one truly hair-raising moment during the trip. At one point, we switched positions with the lead raft and propped ourselves up against a big rock so we could spot the duckies coming through a series of rapids and help them stay on course by pushing them – the turn was too sharp for beginner paddlers to negotiate on their own. Spitzer got out of the raft, and while bracing himself against the rock in about four feet of water, got pulled under. He was under for a good three or four seconds, and the rest of us, including Brandon, were completely petrified. The safety video must not have been for naught, however, since following instruction both J. and I extended our paddles for him to grab onto. He managed to pull himself up just as we did that.
The views along the river were breathtaking. On the section we paddled both banks were high, another unusual feature of the French Broad, and covered with vibrant early-summer greenery. There was no evidence of civilization on the banks until at one point we rounded a turn and saw a clear-cut patch on top of a mountain with a mansion at the very summit. The land is private in that section, and open to development. There were other similar houses in the vicinity, according to our guides, but this one was the only one visible from the river. Needless to say, the universal feeling among river people was to lament any evidence of human activity and to badmouth the owners if the house. I certainly understood the sentiment and wanted to agree, but to be perfectly honest I failed to be deeply offended by the house. The house, while probably large, at least made an effort at not being vulgar. It was no Frank Lloyd Wright, but being low to the ground and built of unpainted wood, it seemed somehow appropriate for its site. It could have been much worse. Besides, even without the house, there was plenty of evidence of human presence just then – twenty people in a bunch of rubber boats floating down the river. I suppose that if I was there completely alone, I would have probably felt differently.
We stopped along the way a couple of time, once to go swimming (lovely water, invigorating but not at all cold), and once to have lunch. Having covered five miles of river, we were back at NOC's post by early afternoon, where we changed into dry clothes, tipped our guides and headed to Hendersonville to pay a visit to J.'s elderly aunt. We spent about an hour at the aunt's house, she and J. catching up on family gossip, me not doing much of anything other than petting the extremely friendly and boisterous dog, then drove back to Asheville for dinner.
We had planned to eat dinner at Tupelo Honey where we had breakfast the previous day, but as luck would have it they were not open for dinner on Sundays. Ravenous and out of research, we defaulted to a New Orleans-themed place next door called Mayfel's. For a shot in the dark, it proved to be quite good. I had local trout, or at least it claimed to be local, with a maple-butter sauce. The fish was excellent – fresh, tender, and seared with a nice crust. The sauce was cloyingly sweet, but most of it was pooled in a corner of the plate away from the trout. The fish came with the dreaded vegetable and starch of the day, but on this occasion they turned out to be roasted sweet potatoes and grilled asparagus, both delicious and the asparagus even somewhat seasonal. J. went with jumbalaya, which she was less excited about, but I didn't think it was bad. Excellent beer selection, too. Still in a local mood, I had the Kashmir IPA from Highland Brewing, the only local brewery that bottles, from what I understand. Good stuff, hoppy but balanced and an excellent food beer. The service left a lot to be desired – our waitress had a deer-in-the-headlights look about her, kept trying to give us other people's food while taking ours to someone else, and everything took forever to show up, but for once we didn't mind. Mellowed out on the patio and tired after the river trip, we were happy to order another beer and chill. Thankfully, the kitchen was apparently lagging behind to match the servers, so when our food did eventually show up, it was reasonably warm and tasted very fresh.
Unfortunately, I felt that I was coming down with a cold by this time, and we were exhausted after the long day of adventure anyway, so after a short stroll through downtown, we walked back to the inn and collapsed into bed.
This was my first time rafting, and J.'s first as an adult (she had done some decades ago as a Girl Scout). On J.'s cousin's recommendation, we booked a trip with the Nantahala Outdoor Center. One of the larger outfits in the area, they offer trips around the entire Western North Carolina and Tennessee. We were the first to arrive, but by the time everyone gathered our group was sizeable. A church group of teenagers from Alabama with their two chaperoning adults, another couple a few years older than ourselves, and two twenty-something women in high-tech REI gear. The morning was cool, and most people, including J., availed themselves of wetsuits. Citing my heritage, I passed. Wisely, it turned out – the day grew very warm quite quickly and J. had to peel hers off on our first stop. The water was very low, about 40% below its average level for the season, so the lead guide offered people an option of what he called duckies – one-person inflatable kayaks that are more maneuverable in shallow water. A few of the teens, one of their chaperons, and one REI woman took him up. After a not particularly confidence-inspiring safety video, we piled into an old school bus and headed for the put-in. Once assembled, we ended up with a half-dozen duckies, two guides in kayaks, and three rafts. The raft J. and I were in brought up the rear, and we were the only ones with two guides on board, Brandon and Spitzer (got to be a nickname). Both college-age, they were unfailingly nice and friendly. Spitzer was the more experienced one and quieter, while Brandon was still learning the more advanced skills, called out the paddling commands, and narrated the river lore as we floated down the slow sections between rapids.
Rafters and kayakers classify the rapids' difficulty using numbers from one to six, but the procedure for assigning a class to a rapid is a bit of a black science. It seems to have less to do with the height, width or the speed of the current and more with how many people got killed trying to paddle it. A class six rapid is one that has never been successfully negotiated, successful in this case meaning alive and still in the boat. Once a rapid is successfully negotiated, it is downgraded to a five-point-something. According to our guides, we were going to go through several class two rapids and two class-threes. I am not sure I was ever able to tell the difference. Some of the class-twos sure seemed more exciting. Overall, the experience was fun. The water was indeed low, and we scraped a lot of rocks. Several times, Brandon had to get out of the raft (the river was shallow enough in most places) and push us off. On the bigger rapids, however, it was quite a bit of fun. The excitement lasts only a second or two, but it's intense while it's there. Towards the end, a couple of times our guides would purposely point the raft into the rapid backwards and we would not only tumble but also spin through the roaring water. The biggest challenge in terms of technique was having to paddle as fast and furiously as we could manage. Most of the time, we floated along with only an occasional paddle to keep the raft on course, but once we reached a rapid, there was usually several in succession, and we had to steer the raft quickly from one to the other and keep it pointed in exactly the right direction to avoid allowing the current to drive us onto a rock. We did ok for the most part, no doubt due to the fact that the professional-to-amateur ration in our raft was the highest of our entire expedition. Brandon mentioned at one point that the worst kind of customer is a raft full of guys. Apparently, as a species we tend to convince ourselves quickly that we know what we're doing and stop following commands. “I'll take a raft full of Girl Scouts over a raft of grown men any day” were his exact words.
After the trip was over I contemplated a bit the extreme nature of the sport, and how much further I would be willing to go, if at all, before I decided that the risk was too high. Having an admittedly low tolerance for risk (hence my fascination-trepidation relationship with motorcycles), I decided that I would not want to go much further than what we did on Sunday. Class two and three were fun, but anything much past that, I think I my mind would go into a survival mode and I would miss out on the fun. But you never know.
We had only one truly hair-raising moment during the trip. At one point, we switched positions with the lead raft and propped ourselves up against a big rock so we could spot the duckies coming through a series of rapids and help them stay on course by pushing them – the turn was too sharp for beginner paddlers to negotiate on their own. Spitzer got out of the raft, and while bracing himself against the rock in about four feet of water, got pulled under. He was under for a good three or four seconds, and the rest of us, including Brandon, were completely petrified. The safety video must not have been for naught, however, since following instruction both J. and I extended our paddles for him to grab onto. He managed to pull himself up just as we did that.
The views along the river were breathtaking. On the section we paddled both banks were high, another unusual feature of the French Broad, and covered with vibrant early-summer greenery. There was no evidence of civilization on the banks until at one point we rounded a turn and saw a clear-cut patch on top of a mountain with a mansion at the very summit. The land is private in that section, and open to development. There were other similar houses in the vicinity, according to our guides, but this one was the only one visible from the river. Needless to say, the universal feeling among river people was to lament any evidence of human activity and to badmouth the owners if the house. I certainly understood the sentiment and wanted to agree, but to be perfectly honest I failed to be deeply offended by the house. The house, while probably large, at least made an effort at not being vulgar. It was no Frank Lloyd Wright, but being low to the ground and built of unpainted wood, it seemed somehow appropriate for its site. It could have been much worse. Besides, even without the house, there was plenty of evidence of human presence just then – twenty people in a bunch of rubber boats floating down the river. I suppose that if I was there completely alone, I would have probably felt differently.
We stopped along the way a couple of time, once to go swimming (lovely water, invigorating but not at all cold), and once to have lunch. Having covered five miles of river, we were back at NOC's post by early afternoon, where we changed into dry clothes, tipped our guides and headed to Hendersonville to pay a visit to J.'s elderly aunt. We spent about an hour at the aunt's house, she and J. catching up on family gossip, me not doing much of anything other than petting the extremely friendly and boisterous dog, then drove back to Asheville for dinner.
We had planned to eat dinner at Tupelo Honey where we had breakfast the previous day, but as luck would have it they were not open for dinner on Sundays. Ravenous and out of research, we defaulted to a New Orleans-themed place next door called Mayfel's. For a shot in the dark, it proved to be quite good. I had local trout, or at least it claimed to be local, with a maple-butter sauce. The fish was excellent – fresh, tender, and seared with a nice crust. The sauce was cloyingly sweet, but most of it was pooled in a corner of the plate away from the trout. The fish came with the dreaded vegetable and starch of the day, but on this occasion they turned out to be roasted sweet potatoes and grilled asparagus, both delicious and the asparagus even somewhat seasonal. J. went with jumbalaya, which she was less excited about, but I didn't think it was bad. Excellent beer selection, too. Still in a local mood, I had the Kashmir IPA from Highland Brewing, the only local brewery that bottles, from what I understand. Good stuff, hoppy but balanced and an excellent food beer. The service left a lot to be desired – our waitress had a deer-in-the-headlights look about her, kept trying to give us other people's food while taking ours to someone else, and everything took forever to show up, but for once we didn't mind. Mellowed out on the patio and tired after the river trip, we were happy to order another beer and chill. Thankfully, the kitchen was apparently lagging behind to match the servers, so when our food did eventually show up, it was reasonably warm and tasted very fresh.
Unfortunately, I felt that I was coming down with a cold by this time, and we were exhausted after the long day of adventure anyway, so after a short stroll through downtown, we walked back to the inn and collapsed into bed.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Asheville, Day Two (Part II: Savoy)
We had made dinner reservations at Savoy for Saturday night. We discovered Savoy on our last visit and loved it so much that we had to go back. If anything, our latest meal there proved to be even better. Savoy's regular menu is very appealing, but to us the chief attraction was their chef's tasting menu. They offer a three-course and a five-course version, with optional wine pairings. According to the staff, both amount to about the same amount of food, though I find that difficult to believe, the chief difference is the relative presence or absence of dessert (not sure what the remaining course is). You have absolutely no say over what comes out of the kitchen. A nightmare scenario in a lot of places, but in the right hands, like those at Savoy, it could be one of the best meals of your life. We opted for the three-course version.
First up was a salad of spring pea shoots and duck confit with goat cheese, roasted beets and toasted pumpkin seeds. I had had duck confit -- made by braising duck legs in nothing but their own fat for many hours -- only once before, and I was not wild about it. On that occasion it was gloppy and gelatinous, large globules of the cold, aspic-like fat still clinging to the meat. Savoy's could not have been more different. Made right in their own kitchen, it was rich and full of flavor but with a surprisingly dry texture, almost jerky-like, without a trace of external fat. It was pleasantly salty, and there was just enough on the plate to get a good idea of the flavor without having the rest of the ingredients overwhelmed. The pea shoots -- another green I didn't know could be eaten -- were fairly bland but worked great as a base for everything else. I wondered if the leaves of all plants from which we normally consume other parts are actually edible. I discovered beet greens the same way just last year and now love them. I suspect we'll see more of these kinds of greens in restaurants in the near future as the chefs look for ways to cut costs while continuing to be innovative in a craft fundamentally limited by the selection of raw materials. Speaking of beets, they were very good, though possibly not the best ever, but again, it was the function they served that made them shine. The whole salad was an exercise in making a harmonious whole out of contrasting parts. The beets provided the much-needed sweetness, again in perfect balance. The tangy goat cheese and the smoky, crunchy pumpkin seeds completed the picture in the same way. The salad wasn't dressed so much as garnished with a few drops of a thick balsamic reduction, for appearance more than anything else. There was enough flavor and variety in the ingredients to make dressing superfluous.
The wine we ended up with -- the pairings are done by the individual servers at Savoy, so two tables having the same tasting menu are likely to end up with different wines -- was a Cava from Castelblanco. It was very good, far better than the budget Cavas we drink at home (most often the dirt-cheap Cristalino and occasionally a marginally better 1+1=3). It tasted more like a decent Champagne (based on my extremely limited experience of it, anyhow), without the thin sourness common in inexpensive sparklers.
Next up was the fish course -- seared ahi tuna with panzanella salad, garnished with flash-fried calamari. The tuna was very good, completely raw in the middle, with about a quarter-inch cooked layer around the outside, just enough to provide some contrast. It tasted milder than what I'm used to getting at sushi restaurants, probably because this was ahi tuna as opposed to whatever variety the sushi shops normally use, and noticeably less salty. A piece of really good tuna is one of those basic flavors that I don't think I could ever tire of, and the fewer other ingredients there are to interfere with it the better. Savoy's chef, however, took some bold steps, and quite risky if you ask me, by combining things the way he did, and he pulled it off.
Panzanella sounds bizarre on the surface. It's one of those old-world dishes (if you can even call it that) born out of necessity and gourmetified by contemporary chefs, mostly because it has an exotic-sounding name that looks good on fancy restaurant menus. It is essentially cubes of stale bread mixed with olive oil, chopped garlic and salt. It was used to make day-old bread palatable. Most Mediterranean countries have a version. If you were lucky enough to have other things available, you could throw them in. Bits of bell pepper maybe, or some fresh herbs, to attempt to lift the thing out of its humblest-of-the-humble essence. But at bottom, it's just chunks of stale bread. If that wasn't enough, bread with rare tuna would seem like an odd combination, too. Most of us think of tuna in Asian contexts, and Asian cuisines use virtually no bread. Tuna fillet sandwiches in upscale sandwich shops rarely work, in my opinion, and in any case, the tuna is usually far more cooked, which gives it a completely different flavor and texture. At Savoy, however, the combination worked, probably because of the good olive oil the bread was soaked in, the herbs, and the perfectly balanced seasonings. The calamari -- little baby ones; I picked out a few tentacles, always the most delicious part -- added that little bit of extra something that made it memorable. They were exceptionally tender, perhaps the best squid I've ever had, certainly in the top three.
Wine number two was a California rosé from Lys. I have a vague recollection of having had a Lys on our first visit to Savoy, a red of some kind. The rosé was good -- dry, fairly big on the palate, with some berries on the nose and a slightly chalky mouthfeel. It went well with the tuna. I neglected to ask what grape varieties were in it.
We finished with the meat course of Wagyu flatiron steak (Kobe grown outside of Japan; our example came from Texas). Seared to medium-rare, with a delicious crust around the outside, it was well marbled, tender but not flabby, and exceptionally flavorful. There wasn't much of it, and thank goodness for that -- a little went a long way, and we had had two sizable courses already. The beef was served over potato "risotto" -- another recent trend, a good one unlike some others, I think. A dice of vegetables -- potatoes in this case -- is cooked the way a risotto would be, by making it gradually absorb liquid in a pan. It did taste more similar to risotto that I expected, though there was also a pronounced potato flavor and a starchy texture. There was also some locally grown swiss chard, simply sauteed, and the whole thing was finished with what our server described as a crème fraîche-peppercorn sauce. Much like the salad dressing, there wasn't much of it, but there didn't need to be. There was a ton of flavor in the dish already, and everything was perfectly moist.
.
The wine was a a Spanish old-wine Grenache from Alteca. The server did let it slip that it was only about $12 a bottle retail, which sounded like a disappointment initially as I was hoping for a glass (and a scant one at that -- the wine pairings are not full glasses) of something I couldn't afford to drink in any other context. It proved to be delicious, however -- big and fruity, with solid but not overwhelming tannins. Sturdy, but approachable. An example of European wine makers catering to American tastes, some might complain, but I loved every sip.
The service throughout the meal was exceptional. Our server, whose name is escaping me for some reason, explained every course including the parts of the country the non-local ingredients came from, clearly answered the one or two questions we had, and was authoritative without being condescending. Once each course was served and described, he disappeared, and magically reappeared exactly when we needed him. Sounds easy, but so many restaurants can't get that part right that it can ruin an otherwise excellent meal. Savoy definitely got it right.
We took a glance at the dessert menu, out of curiosity more than anything else. I was amused to find a fancy dessert based on zeppole -- Italian fried dough balls I used to get at local pizzerias in Queens when I was a kid. They were five for a buck in those days. We lingered over coffee, surprisingly good and fresh -- another thing that most otherwise excellent restaurants usually neglect -- then headed back to the inn, the most memorable meal in recent memory sadly, but also very pleasantly, over.
First up was a salad of spring pea shoots and duck confit with goat cheese, roasted beets and toasted pumpkin seeds. I had had duck confit -- made by braising duck legs in nothing but their own fat for many hours -- only once before, and I was not wild about it. On that occasion it was gloppy and gelatinous, large globules of the cold, aspic-like fat still clinging to the meat. Savoy's could not have been more different. Made right in their own kitchen, it was rich and full of flavor but with a surprisingly dry texture, almost jerky-like, without a trace of external fat. It was pleasantly salty, and there was just enough on the plate to get a good idea of the flavor without having the rest of the ingredients overwhelmed. The pea shoots -- another green I didn't know could be eaten -- were fairly bland but worked great as a base for everything else. I wondered if the leaves of all plants from which we normally consume other parts are actually edible. I discovered beet greens the same way just last year and now love them. I suspect we'll see more of these kinds of greens in restaurants in the near future as the chefs look for ways to cut costs while continuing to be innovative in a craft fundamentally limited by the selection of raw materials. Speaking of beets, they were very good, though possibly not the best ever, but again, it was the function they served that made them shine. The whole salad was an exercise in making a harmonious whole out of contrasting parts. The beets provided the much-needed sweetness, again in perfect balance. The tangy goat cheese and the smoky, crunchy pumpkin seeds completed the picture in the same way. The salad wasn't dressed so much as garnished with a few drops of a thick balsamic reduction, for appearance more than anything else. There was enough flavor and variety in the ingredients to make dressing superfluous.
The wine we ended up with -- the pairings are done by the individual servers at Savoy, so two tables having the same tasting menu are likely to end up with different wines -- was a Cava from Castelblanco. It was very good, far better than the budget Cavas we drink at home (most often the dirt-cheap Cristalino and occasionally a marginally better 1+1=3). It tasted more like a decent Champagne (based on my extremely limited experience of it, anyhow), without the thin sourness common in inexpensive sparklers.
Next up was the fish course -- seared ahi tuna with panzanella salad, garnished with flash-fried calamari. The tuna was very good, completely raw in the middle, with about a quarter-inch cooked layer around the outside, just enough to provide some contrast. It tasted milder than what I'm used to getting at sushi restaurants, probably because this was ahi tuna as opposed to whatever variety the sushi shops normally use, and noticeably less salty. A piece of really good tuna is one of those basic flavors that I don't think I could ever tire of, and the fewer other ingredients there are to interfere with it the better. Savoy's chef, however, took some bold steps, and quite risky if you ask me, by combining things the way he did, and he pulled it off.
Panzanella sounds bizarre on the surface. It's one of those old-world dishes (if you can even call it that) born out of necessity and gourmetified by contemporary chefs, mostly because it has an exotic-sounding name that looks good on fancy restaurant menus. It is essentially cubes of stale bread mixed with olive oil, chopped garlic and salt. It was used to make day-old bread palatable. Most Mediterranean countries have a version. If you were lucky enough to have other things available, you could throw them in. Bits of bell pepper maybe, or some fresh herbs, to attempt to lift the thing out of its humblest-of-the-humble essence. But at bottom, it's just chunks of stale bread. If that wasn't enough, bread with rare tuna would seem like an odd combination, too. Most of us think of tuna in Asian contexts, and Asian cuisines use virtually no bread. Tuna fillet sandwiches in upscale sandwich shops rarely work, in my opinion, and in any case, the tuna is usually far more cooked, which gives it a completely different flavor and texture. At Savoy, however, the combination worked, probably because of the good olive oil the bread was soaked in, the herbs, and the perfectly balanced seasonings. The calamari -- little baby ones; I picked out a few tentacles, always the most delicious part -- added that little bit of extra something that made it memorable. They were exceptionally tender, perhaps the best squid I've ever had, certainly in the top three.
Wine number two was a California rosé from Lys. I have a vague recollection of having had a Lys on our first visit to Savoy, a red of some kind. The rosé was good -- dry, fairly big on the palate, with some berries on the nose and a slightly chalky mouthfeel. It went well with the tuna. I neglected to ask what grape varieties were in it.
We finished with the meat course of Wagyu flatiron steak (Kobe grown outside of Japan; our example came from Texas). Seared to medium-rare, with a delicious crust around the outside, it was well marbled, tender but not flabby, and exceptionally flavorful. There wasn't much of it, and thank goodness for that -- a little went a long way, and we had had two sizable courses already. The beef was served over potato "risotto" -- another recent trend, a good one unlike some others, I think. A dice of vegetables -- potatoes in this case -- is cooked the way a risotto would be, by making it gradually absorb liquid in a pan. It did taste more similar to risotto that I expected, though there was also a pronounced potato flavor and a starchy texture. There was also some locally grown swiss chard, simply sauteed, and the whole thing was finished with what our server described as a crème fraîche-peppercorn sauce. Much like the salad dressing, there wasn't much of it, but there didn't need to be. There was a ton of flavor in the dish already, and everything was perfectly moist.
.
The wine was a a Spanish old-wine Grenache from Alteca. The server did let it slip that it was only about $12 a bottle retail, which sounded like a disappointment initially as I was hoping for a glass (and a scant one at that -- the wine pairings are not full glasses) of something I couldn't afford to drink in any other context. It proved to be delicious, however -- big and fruity, with solid but not overwhelming tannins. Sturdy, but approachable. An example of European wine makers catering to American tastes, some might complain, but I loved every sip.
The service throughout the meal was exceptional. Our server, whose name is escaping me for some reason, explained every course including the parts of the country the non-local ingredients came from, clearly answered the one or two questions we had, and was authoritative without being condescending. Once each course was served and described, he disappeared, and magically reappeared exactly when we needed him. Sounds easy, but so many restaurants can't get that part right that it can ruin an otherwise excellent meal. Savoy definitely got it right.
We took a glance at the dessert menu, out of curiosity more than anything else. I was amused to find a fancy dessert based on zeppole -- Italian fried dough balls I used to get at local pizzerias in Queens when I was a kid. They were five for a buck in those days. We lingered over coffee, surprisingly good and fresh -- another thing that most otherwise excellent restaurants usually neglect -- then headed back to the inn, the most memorable meal in recent memory sadly, but also very pleasantly, over.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Asheville, Day Two (Part I)
Saturday morning found us being bad B&B guests once again – we skipped David's breakfast. We told him after we checked in that we would be doing that, so he wouldn't have to waste ingredients, and he seemed disappointed and kept trying to figure out a way to accommodate us. All I wanted was for him to let us do our own thing. Anyway, we headed instead to a local institution -- Tupelo Honey Cafe downtown. We had first eaten there on our first visit and have been wanting to go back ever since. I even remember what I had on that occasion – sweet-potato pancakes, which were amazingly delicious.
We arrived about twenty minutes before the 9:00 a.m. opening time, and there were already a few people milling about. Soon, a line formed. “The world starts at nine o'clock” a passerby mumbled as she elbowed her way past us. Our breakfast ended up being as delicious as we remembered. J. went for the sweet-potato pancakes this time, while I opted for French toast, served with skillet-cooked blackberries. Both were excellent, but it was the pancakes that once again took the cake, pardon the pun. Moist, fluffy, and brimming with the slightly starchy flavor of sweet potatoes, they were quite possibly the best pancakes either J. or I have ever had. The coffee was excellent, and the service very good as well – far from a guarantee in Asheville.
Sated, we headed out of town toward Dupont State Forest. Dupont is the newest state forest in North Carolina. The land was formerly owned by the DuPont corporation. A factory was located on a small portion of it, but most of it was a private hunting preserve for the company's executives and their guests. The factory site is still closed to the public as DuPont is finishing up some toxic waste cleanup there, but the rest of the land has been sold to the state and turned into a public forest. There is apparently some talk of turning it into a state park (this would presumably disallow hunting and allow an admission fee to be charged).
Dupont's chief attraction is its waterfalls. There are several, and the trail we had planned to hike would allow us to see three of them. The morning was overcast and it started to rain right as we pulled into the parking area, but luckily the rain was short-lived and the rest of the morning and afternoon proved to be gorgeous. The early part of the trail, as far as Triple Falls, was quite crowded, but worth it. Triple Falls were spectacular – falling more than 120 feet in three sections, they were apparently used to film The Last of the Mohicans. Once we made it to the top and crossed the covered bridge, the crowds disappeared as if by magic, and we were left to hike the rest of the way to High Falls and Lake Dense in glorious solitude.
We covered about six miles in all, not an enormous distance, but by the end were were ready for a refreshment. We headed into town and stopped at Jack of the Wood Pub. It was a pleasant place to chill out on a hot afternoon -- dark, cool and cave-like. They brew their own beer under the Green Man label, in addition to serving some other locals. I tried the Porter. Pleasantly dry and slightly smoky, it was good but not particularly memorable. J. opted for the ESB, which was also a solid but not really distinctive brew. By this time, it was time to head back and get ready for dinner at Savoy, which really deserves its own post.
We arrived about twenty minutes before the 9:00 a.m. opening time, and there were already a few people milling about. Soon, a line formed. “The world starts at nine o'clock” a passerby mumbled as she elbowed her way past us. Our breakfast ended up being as delicious as we remembered. J. went for the sweet-potato pancakes this time, while I opted for French toast, served with skillet-cooked blackberries. Both were excellent, but it was the pancakes that once again took the cake, pardon the pun. Moist, fluffy, and brimming with the slightly starchy flavor of sweet potatoes, they were quite possibly the best pancakes either J. or I have ever had. The coffee was excellent, and the service very good as well – far from a guarantee in Asheville.
Sated, we headed out of town toward Dupont State Forest. Dupont is the newest state forest in North Carolina. The land was formerly owned by the DuPont corporation. A factory was located on a small portion of it, but most of it was a private hunting preserve for the company's executives and their guests. The factory site is still closed to the public as DuPont is finishing up some toxic waste cleanup there, but the rest of the land has been sold to the state and turned into a public forest. There is apparently some talk of turning it into a state park (this would presumably disallow hunting and allow an admission fee to be charged).
Dupont's chief attraction is its waterfalls. There are several, and the trail we had planned to hike would allow us to see three of them. The morning was overcast and it started to rain right as we pulled into the parking area, but luckily the rain was short-lived and the rest of the morning and afternoon proved to be gorgeous. The early part of the trail, as far as Triple Falls, was quite crowded, but worth it. Triple Falls were spectacular – falling more than 120 feet in three sections, they were apparently used to film The Last of the Mohicans. Once we made it to the top and crossed the covered bridge, the crowds disappeared as if by magic, and we were left to hike the rest of the way to High Falls and Lake Dense in glorious solitude.We covered about six miles in all, not an enormous distance, but by the end were were ready for a refreshment. We headed into town and stopped at Jack of the Wood Pub. It was a pleasant place to chill out on a hot afternoon -- dark, cool and cave-like. They brew their own beer under the Green Man label, in addition to serving some other locals. I tried the Porter. Pleasantly dry and slightly smoky, it was good but not particularly memorable. J. opted for the ESB, which was also a solid but not really distinctive brew. By this time, it was time to head back and get ready for dinner at Savoy, which really deserves its own post.
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