Doug LeMoine · Poetic pragmatism, royal crown chinpoko mastery.

Beefsteak!

19 January 2010 in food, new york | 1 comment

Even though I’m generally a West Coast kind of guy, I devour books about New York — its chaotic beginnings as a lawless, crazy quilt of neighborhoods and gangs; its transformation into a massive modern city; the peculiar dynamics of its organic growth. If New York didn’t destroy me everytime I visit, I think I’d probably live there.

A few weeks ago, the New Yorker’s Twitter stream pointed me to an excellent Joseph Mitchell essay about a (mostly) vanished New York tradition, the beefsteak. Mitchell laid out the basics in his classic 1939 essay, “All You Can Hold For Five Bucks:”

The foundation of a good beefsteak is an overflowing amount of meat and beer. The tickets usually cost five bucks, and the rule is “All you can hold for five bucks.” If you’re able to hold a little more when you start home, you haven’t been to a beefsteak, you’ve been to a banquet that they called a beefsteak. From Up in the Old Hotel, an amazing collection of Mitchell’s New Yorker essays

We’ve missed out on the beefsteak’s prime, so to speak, but the Beacon Restaurant started a new tradition 10 years ago. The New York Sun’s account of the 2004 edition includes courses very much like those Mitchell describes — tiny hamburgers, bacon-wrapped lamb kidneys, double-thick lamb chops, and of course steak — “huge roasted Certified Angus shell loins that had been cut into thick slabs and doused with melted butter.”

This year’s beefsteak is in February. I’m intrigued, though I’m sure it will destroy me.

Transbay bird swirl

4 November 2009 in flickr, photo, san francisco | 1 comment

Perched among the tall buildings in downtown San Francisco, my office can feel like a nest in a tall tree. Yesterday evening, the birds that live atop the Transbay terminal swirled up to, and around, the windows of our conference room, and the aerie-like feeling was stronger than ever. One bird even landed, briefly, on the ledge of the window. I have no idea what kind of birds they are, what brought them to us, or what they hope to achieve. But I am in awe of them.

Mommy, where does Capilene come from?

26 September 2009 in california, ecology, outdoors | No comments

I tend to obsess over outdoors gear. The pinnacle (or nadir, as the case may be) of this obsession was the spring/summer of 2001, when I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. Over four months, I sampled a ton of gear — six pairs of shoes, a few different shirts, jackets, socks, shelters, cookware. I had dozens (maybe hundreds) of conversations about this stuff, spent hours discussing the various qualities that distinguished some little piece of backpacking equipment or apparel as the lightest, strongest, driest, most comfortable, most long-lasting, most whatever.

What did I take away from these discussions? Two things: (1) At some point, rational evaluation becomes religious debate. Gear nerds have deep, complicated relationships with their hardware, and we have a hard time remaining level-headed about the stuff saves our butt during a thunderstorm, or keeps us consistently comfortable as temperatures change. And, (2), for me, Patagonia apparel lasted longer, bounced back better, fit better, dealt with rain better, and just generally worked better than the other stuff I tried. Others poo-poo-ed it as “Pata-gucci.” Froofy, high-end couture posing as outdoor gear, i.e. stuff that “real thru-hikers” wouldn’t be caught dead in.

All of this is good and well, but I recently came across another excellent aspect of it. (And I still wear it).

Patagonia - Footprint Chronicles - Nano Puff - Overview

Called the Footprint Chronicles, they’re a series of detailed accounts of how individual pieces of their gear are made — where the material is sourced, how fair labor practices are ensured, how the garment is assembled.

Patagonia - Footprint Chronicles - Nano Puff

This example takes you through the design and construction of the Nano Puff Pullover, made from recycled polyester.

This is a different kind of marketing, clearly: Documentary accounts that highlight the qualities of the company, rather than the performance of the gear. I’d be interested to know how (or if) they measure the return on investment of this kind of thing.

Absolutely undeniable proof that you belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame

28 August 2009 in baseball, photo | No comments

You autograph photos of yourself using Robin Ventura’s head as a speedbag. And, they sell for $100 each on ebay.

Morning Harrison

27 August 2009 in music | No comments

Jim James of My Morning Jacket has recorded some pared-down, reverbed-up covers of George Harrison songs under the name Yim Yames. I’ve included one here: “Long, Long, Long” from the White Album, and I appreciate the quiet, deferential treatment that Jim James gives his songs. Good stuff, “Yim.”

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Here’s a good story in the engineer’s notes from the original recording of “Long, Long, Long” on Monday, October 6, 1968:

There’s a sound near the end of the song [best heard on the right channel] which is a bottle of Blue Nun wine rattling away on the top of a Leslie speaker cabinet. It just happened. Paul hit a certain organ note and the bottle started vibrating. We thought it was so good that we set the mikes up and did it again. The Beatles always took advantage of accidents.

From the indispensable Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn.

Extremely bloody, extremely funny

26 August 2009 in cinema, visual | No comments

Ever since I heard about Battle Royale, I’ve wanted to see the film ... Quentin Tarantino has called it “the best movie since 1992,” so it’s probably not surprising that it’s both extremely bloody and very darkly funny. The premise: Adults fear the rise of youth, and each year they put the most badly behaved kids on an island and force them to battle each other to the death.

Like Tarantino’s movies, the setup is quick and effective.

The humor darkens: A baby-voiced Japanese teen explains the rules of the game, including the fact that the collar worn by contestants goes “boom” under certain circumstances.

Each “player” gets their own weapon. As the plot unfolds, the “players” learn who has what, and figure out how to work with what they have.

Finally, there are liberal amounts of blood, and much killing. Mixed with the sardonic dialogue, it’s easy to see why Tarantino loves it so much.

Despite the nihilistic milieu, the story focused on traditional stuff — loyalty, trust and friendship; and in the end, it was actually sort of sweet, much sweeter than bleak 60’s and 70’s films like McCabe & Mrs. Miller or The Wild Bunch. Worth seeing, just for that weird juxtaposition.

Journalist Mikal Gilmore discusses the research of his Rolling Stone cover article, “Why the Beatles Broke Up.”

What I found most troubling, most tragic, in all of this was two things: Both Lennon and Harrison (Lennon, clearly, in particular) did their best to sabotage the Beatles from mid-1968 onward, and when it all came irrevocably apart, I believe that both men regretted what they had wrought. I don’t think that John Lennon and George Harrison (but Lennon, again, in particular) truly meant the Beatles to end, even though they might not have known it in the moment. I think they meant to shift the balance of power, I think they meant for the Beatles to become, in a sense, a more casual form of collaboration, and I think they clearly intended to rein in Paul McCartney. But they overplayed their hand and — there’s no way around it — they treated McCartney shamefully during 1969, and unforgivably in the early months of 1970.

26 August 2009 | No comments

Excellent Deadspin post about the undisciplined and occasionally crooked world of NBA scorekeeping. It’s based on the story of a guy named Alex who once kept score for the Grizzlies, and it includes this gem about how Nick Van Exel (who wasn’t known for his passing, let’s say) racked up 23 assists one night:

A little more than a year later, with Nick Van Exel and the Lakers in town, Alex decided to act out. “I was sort of disgruntled,” he says. “I loved the game. I don’t want the numbers to be meaningless, and I felt they were becoming meaningless because of how stats were kept. So I decided, I’m gonna do this totally immature thing and see what happens. It was childish. The Lakers are in town. We’re gonna lose. Fuck it. He’s getting a shitload of assists.” If you were to watch the game today, you’d see some “comically bad assists.” Alex’s fingerprints are all over the box score. He gave Van Exel everything. “Van Exel would pass from the top of the three-point line to someone on the wing who’d hold the ball for five seconds, dribble, then make a move to the basket. Assist, Van Exel.”

26 August 2009 | No comments

No amount of modification can substitute the man-made piano for the real thing

26 August 2009 in lit, outdoors | No comments

Thomas McGuane takes a shot at describing what it’s like to land a tarpon:

The closest thing to a tarpon in the material world is the Steinway piano. The tarpon, of course, is a game fish that runs to extreme sizes, while the Steinway piano is merely an enormous musical instrument, largely wooden and manipulated by a series of keys. However, the tarpon when hooked and running reminds the angler of a piano sliding down a precipitous incline and while jumping makes cavities and explosions in the water not unlike a series of pianos falling from a great height. If the reader, then, can speculate in terms of pianos that herd and pursue mullet and are themselves shaped like exaggerated herrings, he will be a very long way toward seeing what kind of thing a tarpon is. Those who appreciate nature as we find her may rest in the knowledge that no amount of modification can substitute the man-made piano for the real thing — the tarpon. Where was I?

I came across this in The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, an absolutely killer collection edited by David Halberstam, but you can check it out in the SI Vault: “The Longest Silence,” by Thomas McGuane.

Learning how not to think

31 July 2009 in lit, the ancient past | 1 comment

If you haven’t read David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement address at Kenyon, you should. It’s humble and real and warm, and truly great. It’s also very difficult to read. After his suicide, it’s impossible not to hear the echoes of Wallace’s internal conversation, the darkness and doubt and obsessive thoughts that he clearly struggled to get a handle on.

As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

It’s not technically available online, but you might be able to stumble across it in the depths of the Internet archives. Thanks, Dave.

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