Man Alone

Okay, so I haven't started my "media fast" just yet. I am, however, thinking of booking a cell at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery located near Bardstown, Kentucky, not too far from where yours truly is currently sitting...in his underwear. Thomas Merton, a man I have long admired, entered the Abbey in December, 1941 and made it his home for the next 27 years. The monks also make a mean fudge...with bourbon.

Anyway, for those who like a good book, here are two that I quite enjoyed:

I don't--or, more accurately, can't--cook at all. I'm really not even that interested in food, but lately I have been reading a great deal about good food, chefs, and the cooking subculture. My interest has led me to Bill Buford's new book, Heat. In it, Buford (not to be confused with Yes and King Crimson drummer Bill BRuford) a professional writer and amateur cook, somehow finagles a position as "kitchen bitch" at Babbo, celebrity chef Mario Batali's three-star Manhattan restaurant. This is another great one from Buford, and a real classic in the field of participatory journalism. Buford's Among The Thugs, where the author essentially becomes an English football hooligan for several months, is one of my all-time favorite works of non-fiction. I recommend them both.

Another book I recently devoured is Gore Vidal's second memoir, Point to Point Navigation. This volume deals with the second half of his life and is more entertaining than Palimpsest, his first memoir. It's very dishy but also quite touching, as it deals with Vidal's thoughts on death, having lost Howard, his "longtime companion", while also contemplating his own inevitable demise. I don't know about his novels, but I've always admired Vidal's essays, and this work doesn't disappoint.

New Reads And This Sopranos Nonsense

Finally got a hold of Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour. I read Kitchen Confidential when it came out years ago and really enjoyed it, but why they tried to turn it into a sit-com...I dunno. His show on the Travel Channel, however, is very good. The Food Network is awful anymore and I can't watch it, so No Reservations gives me my exotic food and travel fix. I wanna read The Nasty Bits and Typhoid Mary, but I'll prolly stay away from Bourdain's novels, despite my admiration for his writing style. I can't seem to get into fiction anymore. I may re-read an old favorite, such as Fred Exley's brilliant A Fan's Notes, or Donleavy's The Ginger Man, two books that are never far from my nightstand...uh, I mean milk crate, but fiction doesn't do anything for me lately. There's so much to learn out there and so little time. Certainly, fiction can often get closer to the truth of something like human emotion, but I'm a frickin' robot, so...And I like history.

Which brings me to America's Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon, by Mark Hamilton Lytle. "The Sixties" have always been grist for my mill, so I'm really lookin' forward to this one. Also in my bailiwick is Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950's and 1960's. (I seem to favor books with subtitles). Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, Dick Gregory, my man Lenny Bruce, and many others, analyzed and put into historical perspective.

I've always been a fan of The Sopranos, but I'm not gonna pollute the InterWeb with a tiresome assessment of the series finale. I enjoyed it and thought it was fitting. To those idiots who insist on speculating beyond the ending and the dimensions of the fictional world that is The Sopranos I say, "Get over it!" Did you see Tony get whacked? No! Then he didn't get whacked. Case closed. Yes, it's fun to use one's imagination, but television is not a highly participatory form of entertainment. Your input doesn't matter. We weren't voting on Idol. Ya' wanna participate, get a box of crayons!

You may notice that I have finally terminated my boycott of YouTube. I mean, fuck, I"m BLOGGING fer chrissakes, so what the hell.

My computer seems to be limping along okay so hopefully I'll be able to post more and more often...like anybody gives a shit. HULLO? Hullo? hullo? Dig that echo.

Read Much?

Like most voracious readers, I'm always working on 2 or 3 books simultaneously, with a smattering of magazines and cereal boxes thrown in as well. Here's a handful of recent reads worth looking at:

The Tummy Trilogy - Calvin Trillin. The common man's gourmand originally published these three volumes between 1974 and 1983, helping to popularize unpretentious American eats and eateries. Cincinnati-style chili, however, remains an enigma to the rest of the world.

Queenan Country - Joe Queenan. Subtitled A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country, the brilliantly funny Queenan crisscrosses Great Britain in hopes of defining the country's unique character. I've always been a great admirer of Queenan's work, this being the 5th book of his that I've read.

Sunday Money - Jeff MacGregor. MacGregor and wife spend 40 weeks in an RV following the insane grind of a season of NASCAR. Never being one of the reported 75 million fans of stock car racing, I still found this book highly entertaining and informative. MacGregor is a talented writer, reminding me of Tom Wolfe and George Plimpton.

Eichmann In Jerusalem - Hannah Arendt. This is political theorist Arendt's controversial first-hand account of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann's 1961 trial. With this work, Arendt explored her notion of the "banality of evil", an often misunderstood idea that is still debated today. Light reading this ain't, but Arendt's prose is brisk and direct, making this work accessible to most anyone.

In the same vein, I've just started The Coming of the Third Reich by historian Richard J. Evans. The first volume of a proposed three-volume study, Evans looks at the radical changes that turned, in less than a generation, the progressive and vital Germany of 1900 into the aggressive and murderously racist predator nation of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.

I'm also planning on rereading Neil Postman's media study Amusing Ourselves to Death. First published in 1985, I first read this critical attack of television (among other ideas) about ten years ago. It was reissued with a new introduction in 2005. I happened to look at it again recently and found it still quite relevant. I've been slowly killing myself by means of amusement for years!

Lastly, I've been glancing at my copy of issue #17 of The Baffler, the (very) sporadically published periodical out of Chicago that examines modern consumer culture. Heady stuff sometimes, but fun.

Okay, youngsters! Got your library card?