BRIAN LIBBY

Culinary Colonialism

I'm writing this from Amsterdam, where Valarie and I just ate at a fabulous Indonesian restaurant. I'd never had Indonesian food before, as it's not at all prevalent in the US. But it's so good! It must be because American culture was influenced more by Britain and France than Holland, who was the country that colonized Indonesia. Plus there haven't been too many Indonesian immigrants in the US. So maybe the reason we have certain restaurants in a city is not just a matter of local tastes, but whether or not there is impetus to start them. What really interested me though, beyond the India-meets-China blend of spicy and sweet, was how Holland's prevalence of Indonesian restaurants follows a similar pattern in three of the four countries we've been to: Britain has India as its former colonial holding whose cuisine has to a degree usurped the indigenous cuisine. [Recently chicken Tikka Masala was named England's national dish.] In France, at least in the central core, the county's ethnically diverse population is not followed by a prevalence of Vietnamese, Algerian or Senagalese food per se -- the overwhelming majority of the cuisine is still French. But again here in Amsterdam, Dutch cuisine certainly does not take center stage. But it's always interesting to me the relationship that develops between one country with another's food, both the reasons it came to be and the allure of the flavors to those tasting them.

Stubbed Toe or Suicide?

The long-awaited season opener for the Oregon Ducks football team was an unmitigated catastrophe. Playing at home, where they had not lost a non-conference game Mike Bellotti’s previous nine years as head coach, the Ducks lost 30-24 to Indiana, a team that finished last in the Big Ten last year. It wasn’t that Oregon was outplayed. The Ducks had over 500 yards of total offense, and the Hoosiers had less than 2000. But Oregon committed seven turnovers—that’s right, seven!

I was prepared for the likelihood of losing on the road next week against #2 Oklahoma. But Indiana was essentially the second-weakest opponent on our schedule after Idaho. I and everybody else expected an easy victory. So losing to them is much harder to take, especially when we beat ourselves.

Who has ever even heard of a team committing seven turnovers? I can see two, maybe even three or four. But seven? I know better than to get superstitious, but it’d be easy to think fate was against you with such a screwy outcome.

I know it’s just one game – and only a game at that. After all, it was played on September 11, a reminder that there are far worse things than a football team losing its game. But as a fan I approach each season with optimism, and anticipation. There are games you are sure you’ll win, games you know you’ll have a chance, games that will be difficult to win, and games that seem impossible. An outcome like Oregon’s isn’t just disappointing—it’s humiliating. Silly as it sounds, I feel shamed by how the Ducks did. I had really intended not to let myself get so emotionally caught up this year by Oregon football games. And I had even been proud of myself last weekend when, for the first time in my life, I actually felt sorry for our arch rivals, the Oregon State Beavers, when they choked against defending co-national champion LSU in overtime. But there's no way I could ever keep from getting upset at a game like Oregon-Indiana.

Maybe Oregon will still have a great season. Maybe the bitter memory of this game will ignite a passion and proficiency in the team that might not have existed otherwise. But it’s once again abundantly clear that the joyous high of every big win is paid for with frustration and disappointment of losses like this. Thank goodness the Oregon program is, for the time being at least, at a point where the victories still outnumber the defeats. But, then again, it’s because the Ducks are good and have high expectations placed upon them that upsets like this make success always feel like a house of cards.

Al Gore and "What If"

Long before the presidential race began heating up earlier this year, it already seemed the world had forgotten about Al Gore, the man I and millions of others continue to believe is the democratically elected president of the US. A long but exceptional New Yorker profile this week by editor David Denby reminded me of the these buried (because of the countless Bush-related atrocities since the 2000 election/coup) but never forgotten memories. Ironically, Al Gore seems almost happier today than at any point in his life. Perhaps for the first time, he's free of the burden of aspiring to become president. He's also getting rich, although not in the value-compromising way Dick Cheney and others have done.

There's a passage in Denby's article when Gore, queried about the media and the public sphere, in one 28-minute talk at his kitchen table references the following:

"German philosopher Jurgen Habermas...the brain imaging center at New York University; 'The Alphabet Versus the Goddess' by Leonard Schlain; 'Broca's Brain' by Carl Sagan, an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times about the decline of reading in America; the lack of research on the relation between the brain and television--'There is just nothing on the dendrite level about watching televison'; Gutenbertg and the rise of print; the sovereign rule of reason in the Enlightenment; individualsim--'a term first used by de Tocqueville to describe America in the eighteen-thirties'; Thomas Paine; Benjamin Franklin...Samuel Morse...the sinking of the Titanic; David Sarnoff; the agricultural origin of the term 'broadcast'; 'the nineteen visual centers of the brain'; an article on 'flow' in Scientific American; the 'orienting reflex' in vertebrates; the poignancy and 'ultimate failure' of political demonstrations as a means of engaging the aforementioned public sphere...and, finally, Gore's own 1969 Harvard thesis on the effect of television on the Presidency and the rise, at about that time, of image over print as a means of transmitting news."

And roughly half (or slightly less than that) of the American voters picked...who? At a certain point I feel that my indignation and disappointment about the 2000 election is directed not at George W. Bush, Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, or Ralph Nader. It's at the people with "W 2004" stickers on their SUVs. I can even understand voting for Bush four years ago. He sounded a lot more moderate than he turned out to be; Gore correctly argues, I think, that Bush is not unintelligent but on the other hand not strong enough to stand up to the right-wingers who have hijacked his presidency and left sane people in the administration like Colin Powell mere figureheads at best. But what it's hard to come to terms with is those middle-class Americans who look at the last four years and say to themselves, "Okay, foreign policy: check. Economy: great. Environment: uh-huh. Relationship with the rich and big-business: right-on." It must come down to the fact that there have so far not been any successful major terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda on American soil since September 11.

We are clearly living in an age and culture of fear, and it's sad to see people succumb to it. To be fair, I've been guilty of that myself sometimes. I really thought the Apocalypse was just around the corner after the Trade Center attack. But at a certain point in politics I think you just have to force yourself to be optimistic. Unless you're rich with a lot of potential tax payments to protect from the government or religious and moralistic enough to believe that things like gay marriage and abortion should be banned, what is there to give Bush your vote?

Despite that impressive intellectual display (something I'm admittedly almost always a sucker for), Al Gore certainly has his faults. The entertaining personality he shows offstage and off camera transforms into a wooden public figure. I also really think he made a mistake distancing himself from Clinton in the campaign four years ago. Gore actually took Clinton's infidelity seriously enough that he couldn't see clearly what a partisan witch hunt the impeachment was. But for me and so many people in light of these last 4 years (or more specifically the three years since 9/11 as of the day after tomorrow), Gore represents, and probably always will, the what-if of all what-ifs.

American Music Club

When I was in college about ten years ago, American Music Club was pretty much my favorite band in the world. Not long after the release of their 1994 album San Francisco, though, the band broke up. In the ensuing years, I’d come to enjoy songwriter/lead singer Mark Eitzel’s solo career, but some of his albums were better than others. (The Chet Baker-esque 60 Watt Silver Lining: bravo; the Peter Buck-produced West: a real disappointment.) Eitzel is as poetic and heart-rending a songwriter as I’ve ever come across. And he was ideally accompanied by AMC’s blend of gritty and velvety sound textures, courtesy of Vudi’s guitar, Bruce Kaplan’s pedal steel, Tim Mooney’s drums, and Dan Pearson’s bass. American Music Club (their name was inspired by three words they believed never should be part of a band’s moniker) really created a sound that was greater than the sum of its parts. I guess you today you’d call it alt-country, but AMC transcended definition.

When I heard the band had re-assembled this year, it felt too late. I’d moved on. Not only were Eitzel and company ten years older—never a good sign for a rock band—but the melancholy lyrics also weren’t something I identified with quite so strongly as I had in my twenties. Still, when I heard yesterday morning that AMC was playing here in Portland later that night, I didn’t hesitate to head for Berbati’s to check them out. And it’s a good thing, because AMC played a great show.

The band began with three old favorites: "Johnny Mathis's Shoes" from the album Mercury, an absolute masterpiece produced by the great Mitchell Froom; "Why Won't You Stay" from Everclear, the 1991 album that, after much critical praise, put the band on the map; and "If I Had a Hammer", also from Mercury. Later they played "Western Sky" from the venerable early album California to conclude the first of two encores. Standing there blissfully in a rock club for the first time in seemingly years, I was taken back to the days when I used to memorize Eitzel’s lyrics.

One of my favorite passages from Mercury, for example, goes: “Well I’ve been praying a lot lately/It’s because I no longer have a TV/Just a fluorescent hangover to light the way/Between the things you say and the things I see.” On the AIDS benefit compilation album No Alternative, Eitzel begins the song “All Your Jeans Were Too Tight” by singing simply and with his unmistakable wit, “Everything I say/Sounds clumsy and dumb/But tryin’ to make you feel better/Is like tryin’ to trick St. Peter”. I could go on and on.

By now American Music Club may never fully rekindle the sublime sounds created together in the early 1990s. And Eitzel in particular has had a rough time over the years, with alcoholism, romantic heartache, and the irony of being called a genius but being more marginalized each year. But I hope he and the rest of the band will always take pride in having produced something exceptionally satisfying and gorgeous and haunting and gripping. They don’t have to trick St. Peter to make me feel good.