All Praise To Ye, Mighty Moules

Apologies to those who live far from our salt water coasts and to those of the vegetarian persuasion, but I need to offer up some praise, admiration and love to the lowly bivalve known as the mussel. We first attempted preparing mussels back in our New York days, when fresh seafood entered our lives, and we quickly became hooked - on the taste, the presentation, the sheer versatility. What proved most delightful was how mussels responded effortlessly to whatever preparation one decided to use. As long as the mussels themselves were fresh, the rest was up to the cook.

One could argue that the French eat escargot not because they love the flavor of snails, but because it is such a fantastic excuse to enjoy potent spoonfuls of garlicky butter. In much the same way, one doesn't necessarily serve mussels only for the taste of the sea critter itself, but also for the wonderful broth that comes as a result of the steaming process. In fact, whenever I serve mussels, I always make sure we have a large serving of crusty bread to serve alongside - the dunking of warm bread into rich moules broth is a pleasure I'm sure will one day be taxed.

This is not to deny the flavor of the mussel itself, which is a truly lovely mixture of brine and richness. And the quality of the moules dish is often wholly dependent on the mussels. But let's not kid ourselves. What distinguishes a superior dish of mussels from its lesser neighbors are the ingredients used to flavor and steam them with. And it seems that the possibilities are nearly endless. This brings up the other fascinating thing about mussels, which is that it would be difficult to think of other dishes that have such slight differences in presentation between "pub grub" and haute cuisine. That is, a bowl of mussels steamed in a rich white wine and parsley-based broth is pretty much going to taste as good coming out of the most humble French seaside bistro as it will during a seven course tasting meal (provided the mussels were properly scrubbed free of grit, of course). A bowl of moules can be both the food of the people and the dinner of kings.

Anthony Bourdain (who somewhat famously frightened many readers away from ordering mussels in restaurants after revealing the often-sloppy attitude taken by many back kitchen employees) has it right when he characteristically insists that mussels are excellent "bang for your buck" food - "dump stuff in a pot, cook for a few seconds, and drop into a bowl". They go very well with french fries. They pair excellently with both beer and wine. They fill you up slowly, have very little fat, and lots of selenium and Vitamin B12. They look pretty in the bowl. They are the rare aphrodisiac that would be consumed without the sexual side effect promise.

Bourdain's enjoyable Les Halles Cookbook has several pages of competing moules recipes, all of them sounding mouth-wateringly good - moules normandes (with bacon, mushrooms, apple and Calvados), moules a la portugaise (chorizo and lots of white wine), moules marinieres (utterly basic, with only butter, shallotts, white wine and parsley), moules a la basquaise (roasted bell peppers), moules a la grecque (secret ingredients fennel, lemon and coriander). I've enjoyed a Greek preparation from the Attica region called midia saganaki, or "mussels au gratin," which involved first steaming the mussels open, then removing the meat from their shells and baking in the oven over a thick tomato/feta sauce. And let us not forget Asian approaches to the mighty mussel - the intense flavors of geng hoi malaeng puu mangkrut (or "mangosteen and mussel curry) come from the fiery blend of red chilies, shrimp paste and galangal. I'm sure we could go on and on.

But my moules gift to you will be from the wintry lands of Norway, in a preparation utilized just last night. It's a rather straightforward approach, but with a surprising addition of cinnamon sticks (or bark). Let me assure you - it's utterly lovely.

Finally, I can neither confirm nor deny that I suspect the dire warnings made by each and every food handler in these united states regarding unopened individual mussels - namely, that way there be danger - is poppycock. The reason I'm remaining mum on this point is that I'd hate to be responsible for something as dreadful as food poisoning. But read these words of wisdom from the good folks at San Diego's own Sea Rocket Bistro on the matter, and ponder the adventures of David Dale. Then make your own decision. If you're still too skittish to consume the stray unopened mussel, do as I do and order slightly more than required when next at the fishmongers (or, ok, the grocery store). And happy steaming.

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Moules a la Cannelle

2 pounds fresh mussels, scrubbed & debearded
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
1/4 cinnamon stick
fresh or dried thyme
1 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
grated orange zest

Heat oil in a pot just large enough to hold all the mussels. Saute the garlic briefly. Add the cinnamon stick, thyme and mussels. Pour in the wine.

Cover and let steam for 6-8 minutes, until the shells have opened. Transfer to a serving bowl.

Bring the cooking juices quickly to a boil. Cook for several minutes until thickened. Stir in butter and mix. Pour broth over the mussels. Sprinkle with parsley and orange zest. Serve immediately.

Eric Rohmer, 1920 - 2010

If the passing of a young talent comes as a shock to admirers and followers, the passing of an aged master may be less surprising but no less disheartening. When word of filmmaker Eric Rohmer's death this week at age 89 became known, one could only respond with a bitter smile. The smile recognized his accomplished and thankfully healthy long life, which allowed him to spend nearly the past sixty years crafting personal cinema. The bitterness acknowledged that he may well have spent yet another decade adding to his work if given the chance. Prolific and profound until the end, he leaves us with an amazing contribution of twenty-seven full-length works, plus television and shorter films, all stamped with his individuality and none marked by compromise or overtures to marketplace trends. To work successfully and prolifically in one's chosen medium for sixty years would be a triumph for any artist - to do so in the cutthroat world of the cinema is nearly miraculous.

I have special feelings for Rohmer's cinema because it was through him, and specifically through his 1970 film Le genou de Claire / Claire's Knee, that I first discovered and fell in love with a certain type of arthouse cinema. It was college, sometime in my sophomore year, during a period in which I began scouring our university library's media collection for video cassettes (yep, that long ago) of intriguing movies. I had long been interested in what I had thought was serious cinema, which at that time primarily meant violent and morally ambiguous crime narratives and the like. Scorsese was a favorite, as was Michael Mann. Tarantino was a god. Kevin Smith seemed audacious. With the exception of Smith, who I now find unbearably smug and completely tone-deaf in his camera work, the above filmmakers are all serious, committed individuals working creatively, intelligently and doggedly in their line of work. But Claire's Knee was something else entirely. I'm not sure why I picked it up or what I thought it might offer - it could be (no, it was almost certainly) that the cover, with its perfectly framed bare leg of a coltish young woman on a ladder, and the older protagonist gazing up towards her bent knee, gave a hint of some decidedly continental eroticism that might become more pronounced in the final act. In fact, the eroticism was palpable throughout the entire film. Yet, it was eroticism of a type I'd never before witnessed or thought possible - an eroticism of glances and conversation.

Claire's Knee was dialogue-driven, yet not merely wordy. It was calm, but not complacent. It was complex, but not pretentiously so. To offer a brief synopsis is to risk making the film sound foolish or simply banal - an aging ladies' man on the brink of marriage travels to the Swiss border and Lake Annecy for a July vacation, in which his eye falls upon the charms of two tempting and ripe teenagers, the younger of whom is intrigued by this bearded rogue, the older of whom barely notices him. While the younger girl, Laura, is by far the more interesting and delightful of the two, our protagonist finds himself drawn to the slightly more sullen and traditionally beautiful (although slightly boring) Claire. Unwilling to derail his approaching marriage or perhaps simply fearful of rejection, he sets his sights on something more easily achieved than the girl's affections - her knee.

This type of storyline could easily lend itself to either broad comedy or pathetic tragedy. If left up to some Hollywood hack, no doubt the film might turn into a hysterical indictment of predatory lust or some kind of romantic comedy mush in which his fiancée shows up at the end and they fall back into each other's arms while the teenage temptresses grin knowingly. Rohmer chooses neither comedy nor tragedy. We may smirk at the deluded and foolish behavior of our unlikely protagonist, but most viewers would never think to condemn his actions. Indeed, he barely commits any action at all, and certainly doesn't wallow in crassness or mere leering. We simply watch with interest as he talks his way around his desires, while the women remain above it all, wise, insightful, toying and clever.

This film, like all of Rohmer's many films, revolve around what David Thompson has dubbed "modest action" - no sudden moves, no quick resolutions, just ideas, emotions, challenges and subtle thought patterns that unfold as gently as they do in real life. And yet there is tension in these films, even gripping tension, at times. We find ourselves caring deeply about these intelligent, flawed, unapologetically normal characters. At the same time, we gaze at the beauty on the screen, usually of young women but often the beauty of men as well. We wait for action, which rarely arrives. We find ourselves relieved that it does not.

This is a literary cinema. The majority of Rohmer's films were divided into structured tellings, such as "The Six Moral Tales," "Comedies and Proverbs" and "Tales of the Four Seasons". The moral tales were even written and released by Rohmer as a collection of short stories, and they are wonderful examples of short fiction. Yet Rohmer was not merely a novelist working in cinematic form or a great artist who chanced upon film and decided to use it as his medium. These are not filmed plays. Despite all the dialogue and the relative lack of action, Rohmer's films boast stunning settings and lush framing, and an often remarkable sense of place. The shimmering waters of Annecy, the brooding mountain ranges and the hazy July air are nearly characters in their own right throughout Claire's Knee (this, of course, has something to do with the wonderful cinematography of Nestor Almendros). Rohmer never settled for the lazy reliance on close-up face framing between speaking characters the way TV movies so often do. This may be a cinema of ideas, but to call it static is to miss a massive part of Rohmer's considerable appeal.

Perhaps my admiration for Rohmer stems from the fact that he always trusts us to watch, to ponder and to observe. Some of his films are long, many are intellectually taxing. But in response to our trust, he gives us images of utter loveliness, gentle humor, remarkable dialogue and a long career of remarkable consistency. Like Yasujiro Ozu, Rohmer offered film lovers his own world - Rohmer Land - a world instantly recognizable, that one can enter and re-enter any time one chooses. We should be grateful that he was given the opportunity to offer these cinematic gifts for as long as he did. I hesitate to say "Rest In Peace," because he seemed so at peace on this earth already.

Say It Ain't So: Notes On The Perennially Disillusioned Sports Fan

Mark McGuire's recent mea culpa had all the trappings of a media event, as sapped of spontaneity as an evening at The Oscars and so carefully rehearsed as to suggest pre-performance blocking and lighting cues. With his statement to the media, a series of interviews culminating with a live sit-down across from the ever-accommodating Bob Costas, and the dripping of a few salty tears, ten years of clandestine juicing was simultaneously revealed to the world and swept back under the carpet, with reputation and future Hall of Fame hopes possibly still written into the contract. It's little wonder that McGwire's daylong sackcloth and ashes routine came across as stilted and lifeless - the plan, we now know, had been formulated over the past month by none other than Ari Fleischer and McGwire's new boss, the St. Louis Cardinals. Fleischer's "crisis communications company" - creatively dubbed "Ari Fleischer Sports Communications" - had been crunching the numbers, typing up scripts, compiling contact sheets, and perhaps even conducting simulation exercises in order to present the worst-kept secret in Major League Baseball as a breaking story.

The entire concept of framing a steroid abuse confession as an exercise in "Crisis Communication Strategy" is, of course, disgusting. But one should not be surprised that more public figures turn to such approaches to handle the messier details of their private and professional lives. After all, so many celebrity athletes and entertainers have ceased to exist as human beings and must be more properly viewed as brands, corporate entities and intellectual property held under copyright. Viewed through this frame of reference, fallen heroes like Mark McGwire and Tiger Woods resemble a flooded warehouse or a buckled high-rise more than a sex addict or a substance abuser. And no doubt McGwire has learned from his fellow transgressors, such as A-Rod's earlier sold-out tour of confession and shame, sprung into action after lying bald-faced to Katie Couric.

Yet we may be forgiven if we ask what took the slugger so long to come forward and discuss what everybody already knew. After all, anybody unfortunate enough to witness McGwire's oafish performance five years back at the televised Congressional hearings knew firsthand the record-holder had something to hide - something that he was incapable of hiding. His stammering, shifty-eyed, "plead the fifth" appearance, in which the legal ramifications of his words led him to choose them carefully and refuse to discuss simple yes and no questions regarding personal steroid use, was a textbook example of a guilty man drowning in full view. His performance that day made Alberto Gonzalez look like a witness stand pro. This past week, declaring the time for storytelling to be over, McGwire produced the surest sign of authentic male remorse possible and shed some tears. One might be forgiven for suspecting Mr. Costas was holding up a sliced onion, just off-camera.

For how spontaneous can a bawl-session be that had been one month in the works? Had McGwire been coached by fellow crybaby Glenn Beck, or was he simply taking a cue from big baby Kanye West, who sunk as low as would be thought humanly possible when he allowed the likes of Jay Leno to induce a sobbing fit in front of a late night studio audience. I haven't surveyed all the sports writers and bloggers of note to see if others were swayed by McGwire's act of emotion, although the New York Times apparently thought the story was a big deal, even going so far as to suggest that the live interview "justifies what (the MLB Network) is paying" Costas. But I would hope that journalists and fans would see through McGwire's stunt for what it is - as ludicrous and as ineffectual a dog and pony show as airport security.

Poor Roger Maris. And poor Bud Selig, who must be wishing he had access to some good anti-depressants these days. Mr. Selig released a nearly incoherent statement that both referenced this latest admission and sort of made the announcement that the "use of steroids" has "greatly subsided," adding that "Marks' admission today is another step in the right direction". I'm not interested in reading it again, but Selig's statement would seem to suggest that the Age of Steroids is now over.

Even before this story made its way to the front pages, I had been thinking about making some kind of post exploring the multiple examples this past year of severe fan disillusionment in athletic icons. If McGwire had been a beacon of hope among steroid monsters to a small and retreating group of believers, what to make of the sudden plunge of former "Athlete of the Century" Tiger Woods? If anything, Woods was even more of a brand than McGwire, equipped with even fewer recognizable human qualities, less a flesh and blood athlete and really just a walking corporate logo. When a roguish red-blooded male with a taste for tail was inadvertently revealed beneath the soul-crushing banality of his false media personality, one logical response would have been for his enormous fan base to give a collective sigh of relief at proof that a beating heart lay beneath all that placidity. Yet jaws dropped almost as fast and as brutally as the endorsements. While it comes as no surprise that the likes of GM, Nike and American Express would prove to be as skittish as colts at any hint of controversy, one really must ask if what basically amounted to a fight between cheating husband and outraged wife really justified such public recoiling, or if it was the mere fact that Tiger Woods possessed a sexual identity which led to the quick disassociation.

And while it wasn't nearly as much of a fall from grace as the above examples, tongues were also set wagging last year when Michael Jordan ascended the stage to accept his no-brainer acceptance into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Even the most distanced observer of Jordan's career had to note that the greatest basketball player of all time was nearly (stay with me here) Warren Buffet-like in his mastery of skill and unwavering devotion to success twinned with a seeming inability to enjoy the results of said success. Any doubts as to Jordan's joylessness and petty nature were cleared up during his graceless, catty, accusatory and bitter score-settling farce of an acceptance speech last September. Sneering at a high school teammate by name who had been chosen for the varsity team over Jordan himself, swiping at college roommates, taking potshots at old coaches, and griping about that perennial villain The Media, he could have been described as the epitome of a poor loser, except that he hadn't lost a thing. Rather than acting like a figurehead, he came across as little more than some small-town high school quarterback who sprained his knee during Freshman year and spent the rest of his days gaining weight, brooding and taking out his anger on Pop Warner youth. Except he wasn't any of those things. He was Michael Jordan. Apologists and "I Wanna Be Like Mike"adherents insist it was all in fun, a locker room sparring session brought into the black tie arena by a driven competitor. I say, the ego has landed.

I won't even discuss the ignoble return to the professional stage of Michael Vick, whose actions were boneheadedly defended by some clueless fans who view any and all forms of criticism as "hating," while also attacked by others as a villain on the scale of Hitler and Pol Pot. Given the media hysterics and protests at play, one might have suspected Vick had flayed young orphans and impaled their bodies on stakes in his front yard in the Atlanta suburbs. No denying Vick's dog-fighting operation was loathsome. Yet I really must wonder at the universal condemnation when many of these same scandalized individuals raise nary an eyebrow when some other professional football player beats his wife or girlfriend to a pulp.

Why waste breath and ink on such a rogue's gallery? My interest is less in rehashing the sordid details or passing judgment on behavior (although that can be fun) and more in questioning why there is so much dithering and disappointment - even shock - when professional athletes behave badly? Why would anybody expect moral guidance and philosophical insight from bulked-up individuals who are paid millions of dollars to physically compete with other millionaires in front of millions of strangers? Without getting too relativist about it, morality has absolutely nothing to do with the cultivation of physical and athletic skill. It would be nice if it did, but it doesn't. Touchdowns and home runs are executed by individuals who have remained committed to a punishing and wearying routine of physical endurance, who have devoted hours towards practice and discipline, and have attempted to approach realization of their body's full potential. These are admirable goals. They are not moral choices. One need not examine one's soul or question how one's behavior may be impacting others to excel at competition. In fact, one might even argue that kind of stuff simply gets in the way.

My interest in sports has never been very strong, and what little existed has faded ever since I left central Wisconsin, where an addiction to football so permeated the air that even non-enthusiasts had to take part or at least have an opinion on the matter. I often wonder why I can't be bothered to care about something that so many millions of my fellow citizens care deeply about. I suspect it has something to do with the transitory and fleeting nature of professional sports, a disdain for macho behavior, my disbelief at the inarticulateness of post-game interviews and an avoidance of cheap beer. There's enough of a Green Bay Packer fan left in me, however, to understand how and why enthusiasts place great hope in a favorite player or a loved team. I need only think of the sagging shoulders of my family when such exemplars of the athletic code as Mark Chmura and Eugene Robinson met their sexual come-uppance to recall how easily one can feel real betrayal when a player lets you down. But it has been quite some time since an athlete wielded enough influence in my life to let me down, and at this cynical stage of the game, I wonder why anybody would place their moral and behavioral hopes in a famous athlete. And while McGwire's admission certainly stings because it negates his previous accomplishments (he cheated, no question), the same can't be said of Tiger Woods' latest adventure. His accomplishments stand no matter how many times he lies dazed on the pavement in front of his driveway. To be utterly crude about it, when it comes to ability and skill, a golf ball is the only item belonging to Tiger that we should care about going into a hole.

Kids need role models, sure. I wish they had better ones. We shouldn't be surprised that in a nation nearly driven to apoplexy when the president hinted at making an address to schoolchildren, people would strain to locate less controversial figures for inspiration. Why people think professional athletes fill this supposed moral vacuum is beyond me. I can't help but think of a crack Bill Maher once made when a guest grew hot and bothered about the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" that supposedly scarred the nation by revealing Janet Jackson's nipple shield, unforgivably televised. "It was the Super Bowl," the guest insisted. "Oh, right," Maher sneered. "Church".

15 Notable Musical Releases of 2009

Summing up the year in popular music is a fool's errand, especially if said fool is not a gainfully employed critic on the receiving end of record company promo shipments. While some may argue that the age of the download has allowed any discernible music fan to stay abreast of developing trends and hot new acts, I find the shift from album format to compressed file a bit dispiriting. So, what follows is not in any way a definite list of "the best" music of 2009 - I imagine I'll be catching up on last year's various artists and (I'll say it) albums for quite some time. Such are the benefits of moving beyond the world of the eternal hipster and into the more comfortable realm of the skeptical yet enthusiastic pop culture consumer. Below, find 15 aural artifacts of the decade's final year, arranged alphabetically. All should be played loud on free-standing stereo systems.

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1) Mulatu Astatke / The Heliocentrics - Inspiration Information Vol. 3

Astatke is an Ethiopian musician who's been exploring what he dubbed "Ethio-Jazz" since the early 1960s, both in his native Addis Ababa and in London. The Heliocentrics are a UK-based groove collective. Together, they've released a true collaboration of pan-Arab freak jazz that's tough enough to function as dance music and smart enough to reward close attention. Complex, yet never simply complicated, these artists understand that explorations in modality and scales needn't disregard paying homage to The One (we're talking beats rather than gods here). For once, a collective that proves to be more than the sum of their influences, which is to say I thought about James Brown, Sun Ra, Fela Kuti, Charles Mingus and DJ Shadow while listening but was rarely reminded of them. Guitar distortion and vibes paired alongside masengo, washit and begena -this must be what the proponents of globalization have been talking about all these years.

2) Cold Cave - Love Comes Close

Matador stepped in to reissue this blink-and-miss-it pressing of tunes from ex-hardcore and art-slop aficionados from Philly, and lucky for us (well, some of us). The chilliest of icy electronics dominate half-familiar melodies buried beneath layers of gauze that both shimmer and smother, and if several tracks shuffle awfully close to Bauhaus or Sisters of Mercy mope, Wesley Eisold at other times achieves some kind of genius mashup of bouncy hooks plus noise blasts - a mashup not without its own perverse and unsettling brand of pleasure. The title track boasts a life-affirming jangle that betrays this supposed misanthropic outfit's warmly beating human heart. Like Goth kids congregating for Bats Day at Disneyland, they welcome both sunshine and gloom.

3) Edan - Echo Party

Edan's been keeping the old-school hip hop flame burning in his native Maryland since his days at Berklee, and after a period of inactivity, the good folks at Traffic Entertainment Group set him loose on their hallowed vaults. Two years later, what he offers up isn't exactly what the South Bronx sounded like in the late 70s, but it might resemble how it felt. That is, there's plenty of vinyl crackle and pop, and the classic jams do ebb and flow. But Edan's more concerned with taking a decidedly bent take on block party rhymes - weirder, more chopped up, with added moog and guitar blasts punctuating the mic battles. Like an AM station going in and out of service with each passing bridge and tunnel, let the static drift by and you just might see the big picture. The single track ends after 29 minutes because any more would simply be pretentious.

4) Girls - Album

San Francisco duo, equal parts bohemian fog and afternoon sunshine, whose idea of a profound lyric goes something like, "I wish I had a suntan/ I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine". But if you've heard this line sung within the album's opening minutes, it won't soon leave your head. No denying that bands sporting such generic names or having the audacity to title a song "Lust For Life" rarely prove to be a band of ideas. Unless your concept of ideas includes collecting all of indie rock's better practices into one Elvis Costello / Paul Westerberg cocktail. If this sounds appealing (or if you like the idea that they've named the loveliest song on the CD "Hellhole Ratrace") you may be ready for Girls' charms. In which case, may I recommend playing them with the windows open? Not simply to share the melodies, but to feel the breeze.

5) Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

The usual gripes remain - overly fussy arrangements, opaque lyrics, singer Edward Droste sounding like he's carefully balancing a saucer of milk on his head throughout. Yet why snidely deny pleasures and complexities when they strike home so successfully? Even if they have memorized all their connecting instrumental parts, they rarely sound over rehearsed, and they valiantly fend off the prog beast while never coming across as anything less than progressive. A little mud on their shoes would certainly improve their music. But all gripes aside, a single like "Two Weeks" is the "Penny Lane" for our decade - baroque, poppy, upbeat, melancholy, melodic, choir-boy vocals and all. And, yes, a bit fussy.

6) Mos Def - The Ecstatic

"We live in an age of extremism," intones the Malcolm X soundbite before opening track "Supermagic" slams into a deeply satisfying Bollywood groove. This isn't reactionary or lazy hectoring - it's a deliberate attempt to frame Mos Def's explorations of rhythms and melodies beyond black America into explicitly political terms. His dizzying yet firm grasp of the disparate strands of recorded sound is even more impressive when distilled to 16 short tracks, with only two passing the 3.45 mark. At the end of a decade which saw commercial hip hop sink ever-deeper into the synth-bloated morass of Dirty South imitators, he gives hope to crate diggers and quick rhymers everywhere. What would you expect but historical perspective from a rapper humble enough to use a frame from Charles Burnett's 1977 film Killer of Sheep as the album cover? And what can anybody expect but surprises from this Black Muslim who makes sure the above-cited Malcolm X clip includes the statement, "I, for one, will join in with anyone, I don't care what color you are"?

7) Nigeria 70: The Definitive Story of 1970s Funky Lagos

A welcome reissue of Strut's out-of-print 2001 compilation of funk from the greater Lagos area, this 2 cd companion to last year's Lagos Jump may have some tracks familiar to Afropop aficionados young and old, and may include some tracks of little interest to us non-fanatics. And what is there to say about Bongos Ikwue's "Woman Made the Devil" aside from the fact that it's worth hearing once, if only to witness the dumbest kind of woman hate wedded to what can best be described as Nigerian country and western? But only the most jaded of listeners will be bored by the 22 offerings of fresh beats, deep bass lines, spacey production and knowing voices within this jewel case. William Onyeabor's decidedly odd basement-production funk lecture on the crimes of the world may well be worth the price of admission alone. The last few years have been good ones for Afropop reissues and compilations. We can only hope the current generation of music consumers continue to listen with open and curious ears.

8) A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head

More than a few pretenders to the shoegaze-revival throne have emerged recently, but while worthy outfits like The Big Pink make the mistake of placing their wispy voices upfront, masters like these New York soundwreckers knowingly bury their croons beneath layers of well-crafted noise. In doing so, they're the only (forgive me) Nu Gazers who suggest what My Bloody Valentine really sounded like to virgin ears back in the late 80s. But don't mistake this for merely academic exercises. "Deadbeat" opens with a perfect circa-1966 fuzz riff before leaping headfirst into syncopated sludge-thrash of the grain-silo acoustical variety, while Oliver Ackermann lazily and defensively mutters "what the fuck" over the din. This isn't just good shoegazing. It's good rock and roll.

9) Eliane Radigue - Vice Versa, Etc....

This French composer has been releasing electronic drone pieces, feedback loops and synthesizer works since the early 1960s, with an emphasis on Tibetan Buddhism since 1975. This 2 CD set is something else - preceding her discovery of the ARP 2500 synthesizer, it is a magnetic tape recording from 1970 of nothing more nor less than pulsing feedback drones. Ten copies were made, signed, distributed, urged to be played both forwards and backwards. Forty years on, those of us not Radigue's close friends can experience her project, with a bonus disc featuring the piece(s) played at differing speeds and both forwards and backwards. "Lazier listeners," according to the liner notes, can simply plow through. This one-time fetish item suggests there's plenty of unheard music waiting to find its way to the marketplace, and reminds us yet again that the mp3 file does not represent the most advanced format of audio communication innovation.

10) Real Estate - Real Estate

Stylistically and lyrically, breaks little new ground.These charmingly low key and echo-swathed Garden State boys dig surf guitar reverb, country rock, old REM, probably Modest Mouse, and did I mention echo already? So let those morbid hipster types squeeze into their skinny jeans and stand motionless at Lady Gaga record parties. These fellas think you should swing your arms while you sing along. So, hold on - relaxed country-surf dream pop from Jersey? Maybe they're breaking some new ground after all.

11) Sonic Youth - The Eternal

With one-time Pavement bassist Mark Ibold aboard and Kim Gordon assuming a larger role, this proudly New York band is now nearly one-half Californian. And this West Coast lineage shows in their increasing devotion to songcraft, trippy skronk, interlocking guitar figures, bong-soaked riffing. They give hope to greying bohemians and the rock faithful everywhere. May they continue to rumble and plink their way well into this century. 

12) Kurt Vile - Childish Prodigy

Funny guy, this Vile character. "Childish Prodigy" - oh, how witty. Except give the disc a spin, and you'll be struck by his encapsulation of Lower East Side grime welded to 3-chord proto punk, with more slap-back vocal echo than anything this side of Sun Records' mid-1950s heyday. And then he calms down and inserts devastatingly pretty acoustic guitar parts into the hazy mix. What is his deal? While indie types have long embraced lo-fi aesthetics for reasons ranging from the purely economical to the willfully perverse, Vile would seem to be the first one to go lo-fi because he's always wanted to hear Lou Reed take Dylan's place in The Basement Tapes. Call it moonshine - home-brewed, dodgy, even secondhand, but not without a bitter charm.

13) Where The Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968

Rhino's second scene-specific Nuggets collection of mid-to-late 60s garage and jangle casts its eye and deep multi-label licensing powers to that other great California city that boasted a multitude of recording studios and lousy public transportation. Only the first two discs devote themselves to fuzz 'n stomp, and the entire project achieves balance by contrasting such pros as Love and The Doors with one-shots as varied as Fapardokly and Peter Fonda. The result is a 4-disc simulation of a slightly groovy, slightly square regional radio station, wheat and chaff in equal measure. And it's effortlessly enjoyable. For the past one hundred years, L.A. has been synonymous with hype, crassness, materialism and phoniness. There's plenty of that here. But there's also craft, enthusiasm, charming naivete, sophistication, intellect, experimentation and energy. How very Hollywood.

14) Peanut Butter Wolf - 45 Live

Bay Area b-boy and scratcher extraordinaire PB Wolf offers up an easy-flowing yet never easy-listening 18-track survey of the 7 inch era of hip hop. The sounds of The Treacherous Three, Fearless Four and Tricky Tee may seem archaic as rap enters its third decade, yet these stripped-down drum machine and simplistic keyboard dominated party jams in a way seem less dated nowadays than tracks from the sample-heavy late 80s and early 90s. Bottom line, it's all good. While rap fans and performers alike have proven remarkably fickle even by pop culture standards, believers like Wolf insist that older voices needn't be relegated to archaeological sites. All respect should be paid to his successful reminder that the old school managed to miraculously produce world-class dance tracks and avant-garde beat worship simultaneously.

15) The xx - xx

Sparse, spare, even haunting, a London quartet (now trio) makes music that is remarkable for being so seemingly tossed-off yet carefully arranged. Rare indeed to find a new group so sure-footed in their approach, so calmly unique. Even rarer to find an indie band with members whose knowledge of black music extends beyond dub and ESG - they're not kidding about those Rihanna and Aaliyah influences. With their gentle guitar strum, charmingly low-rent Casio drones, boy-girl vocal trade offs, apparently satisfactory sex lives, and lyrics like, "can I make it better/with the lights turned on," I suspect all those x's have nothing to do with mystery, death or obfuscation. They're kisses.

Chewing Our Way Through The Big Apple: A Diner's Progress

It's been quite some time since I last set type to blog, but the month of December has been a dizzying rush of events both large and small, with a semester drawing to a welcome close, new puzzling developments at the medical library where I spend parts of the week, and a quick trip to the East Coast for a stay in New York, a city the two of us know well and think often about. With plenty of free time on our hands, we nevertheless spent a good portion of our several days in New York visiting with old friends, some for the first time in over a decade. We caught a few Broadway shows, checked out some museums, got some walking in. But we spent a large amount of our time inside the restaurants, bars, diners, and watering holes that make this city hum all hours of the day and night. In a metropolis as vast as New York, one can no more hope to adequately sample the culinary scene than one can hope to sample the entirety of a National Park by driving the main loop (and forget the fact that we didn't even make it to the outer boroughs - someday, Queens, someday). But I'll do my best, through photos, links and descriptions, to at least offer a hint of what we managed to uncover, taste, sip, enjoy.

Day One (evening) :

A late-night arrival into JFK and a sluggishly-advancing shuttle van meant we didn't settle into our midtown hotel until past 11 PM. The bitter winds blowing in from upstate and the East River didn't help matters any. But a brisk walk around our block reminded us that we were once again in the city that never sleeps - meaning, the city where it is always possible to find a plethora of open restaurants, no matter the hour. "How civilized," I muttered into my scarf. In the end, we passed up the welcoming (and warming) interiors for a curbside hot dog and bag of roasted chestnuts. We're easy to please.

Day Two :

The ubiquitous coffee and roll from the ubiquitous sidewalk vendor. Would New York be able to start its day without these carts?

With a cold wind barely edging past the mid-20s whistling through the cavernous blocks, I took evasive action and warmed myself as best I know how - two cups of espresso and a fast walk from The Bowery to Lincoln Center in just over an hour. To say I warmed myself up is to damn my accomplishments with faint praise. The espresso(s) were purchased and consumed at the charming Ballaro / Caffe Prosciutteria, a newish East Village Italian-themed coffee shop and food purveyor (77 Second Avenue and E. Fourth). My prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich + green salad was delightful. Did I mention the two espressos?

That evening, we managed to meet up with two distinct sets of friends, from opposite sections of the country and opposite moments of our lives, and two different restaurants our friends had independently chosen - restaurants that were literally across the street from one another. The Indian food at Basera smelled so wonderful that I felt bad at having to duck out to make our other engagement. The purposefully-tacky decor and rock album-illustrated menus at Vynl meant I didn't mourn my loss too much. The fried chicken and mashed potatoes were pretty great. Don't let any talk of fusion or gourmet trendsetters confuse you - New York is an awesome comfort food town.

Day Three:

Coffee and a roll. Are you sensing a pattern yet?

Slice of pizza. Pepperoni. Folded in half for consumption. I regret to announce that I did not adequately fix my pizza jones on this NYC trip. After all, I have to catch up on almost five years of eating West Coast pies.

As snow flakes from an approaching East Coast storm started making their way across Soho, I literally stumbled across a place I'd long been aware of - Once Upon A Tart, home to finely crafted tarts, cookies, sandwiches, soups. I even own the cookbook.

I managed to snag a seat in the impossibly cramped interior, and ordered myself some herbal tea and their famed tuna salad sandwich on a poppy seed roll. Heavenly. When I offered my seat to the New Yawk matron and her impossibly beautiful young daughter, I was told I was "very kinnnnnd".

Speaking of cookbooks - Chef Marcus Samuelsson taught me how to cook like (something approaching a) gourmet. Whatever meagre skills I had picked up during our first year or so in upstate New York, it was discovering Samuelsson's Aquavit cookbook - a (sorry, can't help it) smorgasbord of Scandinavian haute cuisine - that first suggested I might be able to attempt complex and fancy-schmancy concoctions. My wife still gets misty-eyed remembering the lobster soup. The crab risotto graced many a dinner table. The coffee-roasted duck breasts served as one of our final meals together before 2007's deployment. And so on.

While living in New York state, we never managed to scrape together enough cash to afford a full dinner at Aquavit, but had managed to sample some of their lunchtime offerings in their cafe. For this trip, we had planned ahead. Chef's Tasting Menu, we await you.

New location (East 55th)....

....lovely interior decor......

....and an eight course tasting menu that offered pleasant variations on traditional Scandinavian cuisine and tiny tastes that simply begged to be captured on film. The fabled Foie Gras Ganache, with pickled apples and port wine......

....served alongside paired wines (in this instance, the 2007 Auslese from Kracher (Burgenland, Austria)...

....and the Cured NY Strip, with Västerbotten cheese crisp, butternut squash and pumpkin seed.

Hot-Smoked Arctic Char! Venison Loin! TÊTE DE MOINE (uh, riesling jelly, grapes, marcona almonds)!

But the somewhat horrified look in our server's eyes when we mentioned we had tickets for an 8 o'clock show should have tipped us off that we hadn't planned the evening out as carefully as one should. The plates began to come and go at a rapid clip, watches were anxiously studied, and before we knew it, we were attempting to tackle the grand finale of Arctic Circle - goat cheese parfait, blueberry sorbet, passion fruit curd. With no time for even a celebratory glass of the restaurant's namesake liquor, we scurried out the door. Maybe next time?

Day Four :

The coffee / roll streak ends abruptly. Enter the proverbial NYC diner. Decent omelet under a heat-spewing wall unit.

Another evening, another theater date. This time, we gave ourselves a bit more time. Our friend led us into Koreatown for what he promised would be excellent mandu, or dumplings. His predictions were accurate. Trust a dumpling shop that prepares their dumplings practically streetside to know what they are doing.

Mandoo Bar (2 West 32nd Street) - what lovely seating arrangements! What friendly waiters! What colorful bundles of goodness!

Following the evening's performance (Fela!- check it out), I suggested we take advantage of the post-production hour and check out what had been advertised as New York's only casual 24-hour brasserie - Pigalle Brasserie. Casual, yeah - I could have done without the flat screen over the bar tuned to ESPN. But keep your back to the TV, and a surprisingly warm interior takes over.

Plenty of seasonal holiday brews (don't you just love ale with hints of pine needles?), an excellent charcuterie plate (with pickles and brined lentils), and an after-dinner sampling of a now-deemed-safe-and-legal glass of absinthe (much tsk-tsking from the wife). Vive le France!

Day Five:

Back streetside. Coffee and a (wait for it) cruller.

Friends from L.A. had also left the sunshine behind for a week under the cruel East Coast winter light, so we met up at the 2nd Avenue location of one of the many restaurants under the Momofuku banner. Chef David Chang has been setting the NY culinary scene on fire for several years now with his rapidly expanding locations of Momofuku (literal translation - "lucky peach" in Korean, yet also the inventor of instant noodles). His East Village Noodle Bar has been packing them in since 2003, whereas our location, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, opened in 2006. It was last year's Momofuku Ko restaurant that really turned heads, however - only twelve seats, reservations taken on a first-come first-served basis only six days in advance, three-hour lunch tasting session for only $175. This was not where we had lunch.

However, the Ssäm Bar proved a favorite - for us, our L.A. friends, and a good friend from upstate who made the long journey from Albany to meet us there. Asian-themed appetizers and east/west fusion without a hint of condescension or compromise. Shigoku oysters with kimchee. Newman's Farm bbq rib sandwich. Pork scrapple (yum). Fried brussels sprouts with fish sauce vinaigrette, mint and delfino. Plus, tender and amazing steamed pork buns with slow-cooked brisket - Asian tacos!

Plus, spicy rice cakes with chinese broccoli and shallots!

Plus, assorted root beers and dandelion soda!

You think we're done with Day Five? Hell, that only takes us past lunch. Yet another friend showed us around the downtown pub scene by first taking us into The Blind Tiger, where I was delighted to find several dusty chalkboards displaying rapidly changing menus of draft beer, many of the East Coast variety (who knew there were so many excellent Pennsylvania microbrew offerings? Not this Californian)......

....and then marching over to the unfortunately named Spitzer's, a gastropub that served amazingly flavorful duck confit, wondrous house-cut french fries, and an appetizer dish of Gus's Pickles, a Lower East Side tradition of sorts I had long wished to sample.

Plus, another wall of beer choices. Long live the gastropub tradition.

What better way to wash the taste of finely crafted New York microbrew out of one's mouth than sampling New York's other great culinary tradition - the rapidly expanding world of cult cupcakes. I see you over there, Magnolia Bakery (and so do all the teeming hordes with their "Sex And The City" location maps). And nice meeting you, Crumbs (plenty of you back in Los Angeleeeze). But how about investigating something new - Sugar Sweet Sunshine.

The pumpkin cupcake I devoured was all one hopes for in such matters - soft, bouyant, excellent frosting. The confused Brazilian boy next to us who kept asking his increasingly bemused companion questions about American culture probably enjoyed his cupcake, too - but I suspect the disillusionment of realizing that there is more to American culture than was dreamt of in the American Pie movie franchise was probably a bitter pill. No, not all of us received swirlies in high school, my friend. Nice try.

Day Six :

Both of us had discovered the pleasures of Cafe Angelique during earlier times, and it was pleasant to return and tuck ourselves discretely into the back to sip our dark coffees. Jane's bowl of fruit was better than one should expect in the Northeast this time of year. My panini was beyond reproach.

An old childhood friend from Jane's Walla Walla days is currently serving as a Presbyterian minister at a lovely Upper East Side congregation, and we enjoyed both her company and the views from her 27th floor apartment. That evening, she took us and yet another friend (a fellow childhood friend from Walla Walla - how many of them are there in this city?) into the busy streets below, first to Libertador, an Argentine-themed restauarant that we visited solely for their attractive bar....

....and then down the street a bit to see if we could weasel our way into Sfoglia, the Nantucket- and-Manhattan Italian ristorante that informs website visitors that reservations should be made weeks in advance. We somehow managed to score an 8 o'clock table. How civilized.

This place was wonderful. Snug and warm, with a small yet world-class wine list, a tiny bathroom tucked alongside the kitchen, and ingredient-driven dishes that reflected both old world traditions and contemporary flash. The sauces were to die for - rich and oily, yet smooth and intensely flavorful. The gnocchi were lighter than air (no easy feat - I've made 'em myself). The chicken al mattone, my wife tells me, was fantastic. The brined Berkshire pork chop with melted gorgonzola and celery mostarda was even better. The fish of the day was no doubt the best of all - they had sold out earlier in the evening. Rumor has it Sfoglia has a cookbook out. Watch this page for updates....

Day Seven :

Travel day, back to the land of sunshine, gentle breezes and good tacos. Breakfast at the Midnight Express Diner, solid Greek fare served up with playful attitude (if you ask for butter on your toast instead of on the side, you're told to be a keeper. If you're not yet ready to order when the guy comes around the first time, you're informed they're open 24 hours). Bottomless cups of coffee.

Quick trip to one of the many Dean and deLuca locations in Manhattan to ward off starvation at the airport and on the five hour flight back to San Diego. Overpriced? Oh yeah. But excellent people watching. And a Cuban Sandwich that can't be beat.

And that's the menu. Seconds, anybody?

Thoroughly Cooking One's Goose: Of Giblets and Dark Broth

When I made the rather arbitrary decision to serve stuffed goose instead of the traditional turkey at this year's Thanksgiving table, I can't say I was making any knowledgeable or informed choice based on years of experience sampling the world's poultry. I've had duck on numerous occasions, and even tossed together a duck-and-roasted-coffee-bean Scandinavian recipe on the eve of Jane's 2007 deployment for a get-together with friends. And I suspect I've tasted goose at some fancy meal or other. But an expert on waterfowl? Not me. Rather, the idea of using one of the world's other noble birds for a holiday meal simply - can I say this without sounding excruciatingly posh? - touched my fancy. Plus, the notion of serving goose has always struck me as being uncommonly festive, a holiday tradition, perhaps more common around Christmas time, but perfect for any season of cold amid the cheer of company.

But while it was all well and good to announce goose on the Thanksgiving menu, it was quite another to actually set about acquiring the bird in question, finding a suitable recipe, convincing my guests on the appropriateness of my choice, and taking a crash course in goose preparation. I handled the problems one at a time.

First, finding the goose. I turned to the good folks over at Iowa Meat Farms, some kind of San Diego institution and vegetarian house of horrors tucked back among the loathsome sprawl of Mission Gorge Road. They boast a wide array of meats of both the farm and game variety (note to self: this is the place to head for when I get the hankering to try some of the many preparations for wild boar lurking in my cookbooks), and while they may not be the place to seek out when looking for bargains, their quality is impeccable. I'm still a bit shocked that my handsome 9.5 lb. goose rang up somewhere in the ballpark of $72. But I'm also shocked that a co-worker of mine served a $4 turkey to a family of six. Somewhere between the $4 turkey and the $72 goose must lie some kind of reasonable compromise. Our goose was frozen and as sturdy as a brick. We planned our thawing process out far in advance, and still needed the give the rigid fellow a bit of a warm water bath on the big day.

Next up was locating a suitable recipe. For that, I consulted my large array of European cookbooks. As the dinner's Mediterranean theme had already been decided, I quickly came across an Italian preparation that seemed perfect - Lombardy's oca farcita, or stuffed goose. The stuffed bit was essential - I may be a bit iconoclastic, but a Thanksgiving without stuffing strikes even me as anathema. This recipe called for a stuffing made out of roasted chestnuts, toasted filberts, prunes and salsicce sausage. It also called for the goose itself to be draped in bacon. Who was I to resist such a call?

My wife handled the delicate process of contacting our guests to inquire about their feelings concerning goose vs. turkey. All were amenable to the experiment, and my heart was warmed when one of our friends gave her official blessing with the words, "Whatever he wants to do will be great, I'm sure". I believe in the restaurant business, this is called 'throwing yourself at the mercy of the chef'. Game on.

Finally, I needed to familiarize myself a bit with this unfamiliar fowl. The oca farcita recipe itself gave very little advice. The goose packaging offered a little more in the way of concrete details. Word of mouth, on both the streets and the blogs, could be summed up in one sentence: "goose is a very oily bird". The oil mantra, as a matter of fact, was so all-encompassing that I soon had a notion of my goose as being little more than a dozing grease monster, an oozing mass of oil so dangerous that I would need to elevate it from my roasting pan and drain off the accumulating crude throughout the three hours of cooking time. Had I cursed myself? By opting out of the stereotypically dry turkey, was I about to subject my guests to a plate of OPEC?

In the end, I relied on a simple poultry-cooking rule of thumb: prick the bird all over with the spines of a fork to allow the juices and oil to run more freely. Midway through the roasting process, I poured out a large portion of the accumulated oil and fat, some of which was mingling with the bacon fat coursing down the sides of the goose. Healthy? Nope. But rather than pouring the fat down the drain (a major no-no at any rate), I collected the stuff in a large container to keep for future use. More on that later. As it turned out, the goose was perfectly moist and rich, and no excess of oil was noted by any of our discerning guests. In summation, at least on the matter of oil, I'd argue there's no need to fear the goose or the gander - just prick and drain (a lovely kitchen mantra).

In the preparation of the goose, I was aided by our guests, three of whom were physicians and one of whom spends his days in surgery. Sewing up the holiday bird after filling it with stuffing is a Thanksgiving tradition, but I doubt many have had the pleasure of witnessing as professional a suturing job go down in their kitchen as we did last Thursday. I may have been the chef, but Brian was the doctor (see below for the surgical footage).

I won't go into the entire process, but allow me to pat myself on the back and say that the goose was an unequivocal success, triumph, discovery. Like the kids say today, it was a"hit". The outer skin had crackled into a sweet richness that was only aided by the nearly candied-like fusion of the bacon strips into the sides. Everyone agreed that these bacon-fused skin chunks were like ice cream treats - tasty and utterly decadent. The goose meat itself was a pleasant surprise - certainly not oily but plenty moist, with an abundance of flavor that was simultaneously gamey yet smooth. It proved a far more substantial offering than the overly-familiar dry white meat of the turkey. It was indeed a noble bird and a noble dish.

And, much like the American Bison in the days before its near-extinction, our goose continued, and has continued, to offer up additional riches. I must admit to feeling a brief rush of that old pioneer spirit when I contemplate exactly how much we managed to wring out of our fairly pricey purchase. In addition to several full meals worth of bird (with leftovers), I was able to concoct a rich, yummy gravy from the enclosed giblets. I placed the liver, neck and other items on a baking sheet and roasted them with celery and onions, tossed with a bit of tomato paste and seasonings, and simmered on the stove top until dinner was ready, at which point the ingredients had thickened into a delightfully fragrant gravy. I'll admit it - I have always found the creation of authentic gravy to be one of the great magical processes of the kitchen. As a child, I adored the stuff poured over mashed potatoes and found it to be a lifesaver for turning dry turkey meat into something capable of being swallowed, but I had absolutely no idea how it came about. No doubt I suspected a can yielded up the stuff. I understand for many people, cans still supply the majority of holiday gravy. At the risk of offending any well-meaning reader out there, I would like to make a passionate plea for the criminalization of using canned gravy instead of the real thing. Don't get squeamish about handling the giblets - it's no less graphic than anything else you'll be handling when preparing a bird. And don't fret about the time required, either - gravy requires very little preparation and lots of non-supervised stove top simmering. The transformation from giblets, vegetables and water to a glistening saucer of rich gravy is a treat no cook should deny themselves. And anyway, the pre-made crap has tons of unnecessary added sodium inside. You'll be getting enough sodium as it is.

In addition to the gravy, I still had all that goose fat. I've left it to sit for a few days, and it has taken on the consistency of soft candle wax. We haven't yet reached the point where we're capable of making our own soap or candles from the rendered goose fat, but perhaps that day will soon come. At any rate, my wife and I both made remarks about our desire to jump into the wonderful world of soap making. Maybe another time. For now, I'll keep the goose fat for more basic pleasures. Besides being healthier than butter (less cholesterol, less saturated fats, higher in heart healthy mono- and polyunsaturated fats), goose fat is known as an intensely flavorful cooking agent. The French have been relying on goose fat instead of other oils or butter for quite some time and seem to be doing rather well. I hope to flavor soups and broths with my goose fat in the days to come, and especially look forward to roasting or baking sliced potatoes with the goose fat. I have a potato recipe in my favorite Scandinavian cookbook that calls for lemon and goose fat that I've been dying to try for years now.

Finally, when we had finished picking the goose free of any stray bits of meat in the days following Thanksgiving, I set about the process of cleaning and chopping the bones for the preparation of goose stock. This, too, was something I'd eagerly been awaiting. A gloriously colorful photo in the opening pages of the above-referenced cookbook has teased me for some time - beet soup with goose stock. I now have nearly four cups of thick goose stock to play with. I vary my stock recipes each time out, but I tend to always roast the bones first in the oven, sweat the celery, carrots and onions alongside, add a bit of tomato paste, then simmer with water on the stove for a few hours with peppercorns and bay leaves. The stock is strained twice, allowed to cool, then frozen. In addition to the beet soup, the flavorful stock will no doubt be called into duty for soups, broths, basting sauces and risotto dishes. We'll be enjoying various parts of our goose through the winter.

Looking back on the immense effort required to locate, prepare, consume and preserve our holiday goose, I can start to recognize why the purchase or slaughter of such a fine animal instilled a sense of respect and awe in our ancestors. This was no quickly-prepared and just-as-quickly-forgotten meal. This was an offering that will continue to appear in our kitchen for months to come. I understand why families in Europe saved up for their Christmas goose and why they humbly gave thanks for the bounty on their tables. We all agreed it was a noble bird that had found its way to our celebration. One needn't be accused of being maudlin for suggesting that we had a duty to honor it as best we could.