I work for a chef. He's a good man. He has broad arms that can easily carry 20 pounds of boiling water in each, without a drop falling. He has a belly, perfectly round, that, when he carries a glass of wine and a piece of bread around with him in the kitchen, makes him look perfectly at home; as though he is the lord of all that encompasses his vision and he will slowly consume it all. He is the kind of man, as a cook, I hope to be. He is hard and difficult, never easy to approach. His knowledge is apparent in his face and it's at once encouraging and terrifying to me. He is a good cook. That, to me, is all I hope to hear in return.
I recently took a trip to Chicago, a city I'd never been to before. I'd read a magazine given to me by a friend showing all the restaurants that were run by decorated chefs and the restaurants themselves looked more like temples than they looked like places to find food. They are the kinds of fashionable and hip places, with their slightly seventies-looking decor that your parents would take their friends to, if they happened to belong to that particular sect of the upper-classes that used adjectives to describe themselves like "worldly" and "cultured".
The other places they showed; the dingy soul food restaurants, the ones that are eerily reminiscent of my high school cafeteria and the barbeque joints, whose pit masters harbored their recipes to them like you would imagine Ahab would hold a spear. These are the places I wanted to visit. This is how I would judge the city, a city I have been considering moving to in the near future.
The city itself was cold, it being December. The lake was frozen at parts and its bank was covered by more bird shit than I can lay claim to seeing in quite some time. For most of my stay I walked uncomfortably in poorly constructed tennis shoes that had little traction on the slowly melting snow that covered the sidewalks. And I walked a lot. Miles, in fact. Everyday. I would walk from a friends' house to breakfast at Lula Cafe, which was perhaps only a quarter mile away. I would then walk to the polish neighborhood to buy homemade sausages for me and my friend, the one whose magazine had gotten me here in the first place. Then, it's another walk to try caramel corn that has purported to be the best in the country and finally, with what little effort my legs had left to give me, I would walk to dinner; wherever that might be depending on my schedule.
Every day was just like this one, but with different neighborhoods, restaurants and faces filling the same schedule. In that time alone during the days, when I would walk and think about the food I had eaten and all the food I had seen others eating I felt the urge to just keep going. It was no great epiphany that made this feeling creep up in me, it was the simple fact that my own culinary skills are so dreadfully meager, but my desire to become better had grown and there seemed, in those three and a half days, no end to what I could learn or experience: the short ribs, the sausages, the korean kitchens, the hot dogs, pizza, beef, pork, vegetables. I wanted everything out of the city. I wanted to turn it upside down and shake it by the ankles to take what I could from its pockets.
More than that though, I want to hear that I'm a good cook. Hopefully I will hear it from the chef I work for now in Richmond, but I doubt it. I'm not there yet. By my estimation, I probably still have a good 5 years to wade through before I can look at an acorn squash without tensing up with fear. That's okay. I have no plans of quitting anytime soon. It's possible I'll move to Chicago to learn more there. A bigger city. More restaurants. Who knows. Either way, I here that there's an amazing sandwich shop in Seattle.

Another Portuguese Ronaldo & C. Tevez

There's a lot of catching up to do before the start of the new season in Europe this year and unfortunately, that means some stale news. The first is the Manchester United purchase of Nani, the brilliant midfielder from Sporting Lisbon. Nani was stunning over the summer in the U-21 World Cup for Portugal, despite their failure to reach the final.

Below is his goal in the World Cup against Israel.


After his 3 goals scored in the U-21 World Cup Nani began to make a deal with Manchester United and I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Ferguson made his mind up on the spot after seeing this singular effort. Whether or not Man. U. needed another strong, flare-centric midfielder was something of a question. They already have Ronaldo. Not only Ronaldo, but also the likes of Giggs, Scholes, Carrick, O'Shea, and Ji-Sing Park holding the midfield tightly in Manchester's favor. Now, with the addition of Nani, Mr. Ferguson has added another strong, influential player to their line-up in the mold of Ronaldo. He has also found someone who can move in the same way as Ronaldo; helping to alleviate the gap between his first Portuguese acquisition's flavorful passes and jukes that have sometimes left his teammates guessing--causing constant misques and turnovers.

Below are the goals that Nani scored in Manchester's pre-season travels in Asia. The first is an example of Nani's vision and deftness at positioning the ball exactly where he chooses. The other, based on a pass from Ronaldo, is what has begun to convince me that these two talented Portuguese players will prove to be an effective combination.





As for the debate about Carlos Tevez, he has shown he can deal with the physical play of the Premiership and single-handedly saved West Ham from relegation in the final game of the season...away from home...at Manchester United. Of course the fight over who exactly owns the rights to Carlos Tevez have mucked up the process of his move to Old Trafford. This past week he was allowed to move to Manchester and he's just had his first trainging session with the Red Devils. On the whole I'm impressed with what he's capable of, but I'm not sure he has the ability to impress on that scale. This being said, I'm not Alex Ferguson and I don't have 12 million Euros laying around. Kudos.

Here's the goal Tevez scored against Manchester United, handing them only their third loss of the season.

A New Face For Arsenal

There has been much debate about the potential of Arsenal now that Thierry Henry has signed to Barcelona. Sceptics point to the assured 20 goals Henry scored a season and optomists show the 06/07 season--largely played without their guiding light--as the beginning of a great new squad. Players such as Fabregas, Adebayor, Hleb, Rosicky, Kolo Toure, Gilberto, and a blossoming Clichy all showed their willingness to improve while Henry was on the bench with injury for most of the season.

In this video, look for a brilliant run and goal by Alexander Hleb at the 2:10 mark and a beautiful shot and goal by Van Persie at the 4 minute mark. That goal in particaulr is worth checking out in the reverse angle just to watch the movement of his feet around the ball.

It is, of course, to early to speculate on the possibilties for the Arsenal campaign, but with a renewed Van Persie, a more confident Fabregas and a young squad that improves every day, this team is showing that they may be putting up a fight for the title this year.

Lionel Messi in 2007

As a warm-up to the new soccer season, I've decided to begin posting short videos of those players and goals that make this new season something to look forward to.

Today is a video of Lionel Messi and his goal again Getafe in La Liga last year that made him the leading heir to replace Maradona in the minds of Argentines.

Also posted is the 1986 goal by Diego Maradona (below) that is considered legendary. Watch them back to back and you see why Lionel Messi has so many people behind him even though he's only 20 years old.

Maradona in the 1986 World Cup

Uh-Oh

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Don't Fashion

There is a great argument in my mind the past few days about fashion. I've never considered myself fashionable, but I would say that there are a few trends I've followed in my life. It started with Hypercolors in the seventh grade and has continued on through messenger bags and adopting some of the more typical Richmond, Va. summer trends. That is to say, I've never been very fashionable, but I've always seen those things that I like and adopted them.

The problem with this thought is that it isn't my own and will never be mine since I got it from 10,000 people. So, this thinking has cast a shadow over my attempt to "get into" fashion.

It all started when I wanted to change my summer style. That's what I kept calling it; my "Summer Style." I looked into getting new shorts--with nothing greater than a 7" inseam--and I had picked out several pairs of shoes I wanted. That was easy. I pride myself on my shoe whoring and a good pair of shorts are a fairly simple find. The problem lay with shirts. Do I go with V-neck shirts, a tidbit several of my friends were picking up? Do I go with thrift store finds? Or do I go with those perfectly faded Urban Outfitter shirts? Not to build it up too much, but I chose none of the above. I chose hawaiian. Yes, those great shirts that no one other than 55 year old, upper-class assholes still wear. I figured I can't go wrong. I am not only going in my own direction for once, but I have something that when matched with my 5" inseam shorts and my burly mustache, it gives me a certain Tom Selleck meets Richard Dreyfuss look. Sold!

So, I finally got my toes wet. I may have had a few friends laugh at me, but hey, it was worth it. I felt like the very embodiment of summer. It was a mental vacation. The kind I didn't even know I needed until it was already here. Everyday affairs like riding my bike became miniature holidays. My walk slowed. My mind seemed to empty a little more often, not filling with the same tired ideas and worries. I spent time just thinking about how nice Tahiti must be and what a great day for porching it was. I was in no rush and there was nothing on this earth to change that. Great. Good. I want more.

Fall and winter fashion is a a phrase that two years ago I would have looked down on ANYONE for writing as an opening to a paragraph. Now, it has become a bit of a quandary to me. It still makes me recoil a little, but now I'm also curious about it; circling it and sniffing at it like a cat who has seen its first real mouse. Now I'm interested. This all started with my roommate and fellow poster telling me about another blog that posted about fashion and they had a whole argument on the proper lengths of shorts for men. Needless to say, I was intruigued. I looked up the blog and it was filled with people who either had designer label fashion down to a science or people who were far more interesting. They had their very own fashion; different from other people on the page and much different from people I had seen. It was amazing to me. It was like discovering a new artist or a new genre of music that had somehow never reached my ears. Granted, it was something that I had never gone looking for before now. Fashion had always seemed almost like a surface level explosion of self-importance and/or self-conscienceness to me. It had taken new shape in my mind though these last few months as not a mental deformity turned physical, but rather as a way for a person to assert themselves and, in a way, to create their own form of art.

As of now, I've been looking at everything from Calvin Klein to J. Crew to Brooks Brothers--all three of which I would rather have been beaten by a mob of perturbed stock brokers two years ago rather than wear their clothes. I still see all these individual companies and the style they sell to be nothing spectacular, but there are bits and pieces scattered here and there that are worth trying out.

I can't say that I'm still that comfortable with the idea of spending a lot of my money on fashion. But you know what? A J. Crew washed-out white button up still looks good with a Uniqlo cashmere sweater and a Ben Sherman blazer.

Kitten and his box.

Weakness #1

United 93 Passengers.

Now, the following is not a joke. I know it probably won't come across as being very polite, but whatever. I've done worse and spoken ten times worse. I also feel that I should preemptively state that I'm not religious and thus don't believe any of this. I was just curious.

So, you know how all those planes crashed that day? You know, the two in New York, the one in Washington and the one in Pennsylvania. My friend watched the film "United 93" about the passengers on that particular flight that took the plane back and crashed it in Pennsylvania (in case you didn't already know all this). Well, I can only imagine (and I'm taking the point of view of a religious right Christian here) that when they all gathered at the Gates of Heaven (which they would, because all martyred Americans go to heaven, no matter what) everyone from the other three flights just stared down everyone from Flight 93? 'Cause, you know, they made everyone else look bad. They re-took the plane! Everyone else was laid back and chillin' when their planes were taken by the terrorists/muslism/heathens/buttholes. Okay, maybe not that, but they sure as shit didn't take the plane back all "Air Force One" like. And you know there was no one as bad ass as Gary Oldman doing that shit. It was probably some scared as shit, skinny as hell (because they don't have food. Get it?!?) dudes who were starting to seriously questions how there friends had ever talked them into this Allah thing.

I'm aware that this is a trivial thought, but I didn't see ANYONE from the major networks ask about this in the aftermath; which I think is just sloppy.