We'll be off until the year turns over. Until then - may the New Year bring you joy, comfort, and one more thing than you ever thought of wishing for.

Pray for peace.

Well it can't be all work and no play - I mean a person can't go around eating in restaurants the whole time and not do anything else. Everybody needs a break from the grind. Besides... this could qualify for the "Hack Philosophy While U Wait" part.

What do I do to relax when I'm not going out to movies and such, you may ask? Easy... I run my own country...

And in my case that means The Grand Duchy of Squabash.

The Duchy is located on The Lost Continent in the world of Max Barry's NationStates, and you can follow our progress as we face issue after issue at the Grand Duchy's url.

Every day when you check in there is an issue to decide on. A list of options from your advisors are drawn up and you can even "dismiss" an issue entirely if you deem it unworthy of your attention. As issue after issue are dealt with your decisions begin to have effects on the condition of the country. Here is where you can fulfill your philosophical ideals or - as in my case - experiment with the lives of my people and the devil take the chances (mwa ha ha).

If you want to join (it is totally free and has been going for years now) go to the NationStates link above and see what you think. You can even move your country over to the lost Continent (And, no, I have no idea who that other guy is - I'm an isolationist don't you know?)

In the set up you answer a few basic questions and can even pick a flag - or upload your own creation (in the case of the Grand Duchy, our flag is that handsome profile of the Grand Duke himself... and yes that's the Grand Duke, it only looks like Napoleon).

As you progress more and more options become available to you. You can change the nature of your government, elect delegates to an international "United Nations", and participate in the discussion forums (though I stay away from that - I'm over 50).

All in all a relatively satisfying daily visit that only takes a few minutes and starts to look like an ongoing meme if you're not careful.

I have to go now - the damn Door-to-door salesmen are on strike!

THE GRAND DUCHY OF SQUABASH

National Motto: "Be sure to read this statement carefully."
UN Category: Father-Knows-Best State
Civil Rights: Excellent
Economy: Very Strong
Political Freedoms: Few
Location: the lost Continent

The Grand Duchy of Squabash is a tiny, economically powerful nation, remarkable for its absence of drug laws and for its barren, inhospitable landscape. Its compassionate, hard-working, cynical population of 6 million are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

The small government concentrates mainly on Religion & Spirituality, although Commerce and Education are secondary priorities. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 8%. A substantial private sector is dominated by the Door-to-door Insurance Sales industry.

Elections have been outlawed. Crime is a problem, and the police force struggles against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Squabash's national animal is the edsel and its currency is the raspberry sour.

Squabash is ranked 2nd in the region and 60,745th in the world for Largest Soda Pop Sector.

This is my wife's "Hairshirt Horoscope: 2006 Zodiac Forecast" provided by the ever-miserable Joe Wack, who has been helping readers get the most out of their misery since July of 2004.

This is in continuation of our "Cooking The (blog)Rolls" series wherein I - for some reason - send my readers away from my own efforts and into the clutches of other blogs. Other than the fact that it qualifies as Recommended Reading it is probably also a touch of masochism - which makes me a perfect profile to be a reader of Hairshirt.

I can't say I am always in tune with Joe's political sentiments but I also am fairly certain there isn't a requirement that that be the case. Joe Wack's observations on the meandering cowpath of life, replete with mentions of noticed elastic principles from soggy leaders and pithy moanings flung to the sky with no particular rhyme or reason, never fail to drip with...

... sarcasm and wit. And on most Wednesdays we get the by now world famous "Hairshirt Horoscope." This week's entry, for example, forecasts the new year for the various and sundry signs of the sky; hence my wife's fate used as the title of this entry.

As a person generally skeptical of the Zodiac and its prediction via the alignment of the stars, I am at the same time constantly amazed by how close Joe gets to the nature of my character in these entries. I suspect he suffers from the same malady as I do - being born on a day no one can agree which sign belongs to. I.E., the Dreaded Cusp.

I can assure you that it is a painful thing being born on a cusp. Not only does it pinch, but in my single days it led to my appearing to be even more of an uber-bore than my own natural talents allowed; for to the invariable 70's question in all those bars when the lady asked "What's your sign" I would always begin by saying "well I'm not so sure, I seem to have been born on a date the experts can't agree on and so I am always torn between two readings." And then after we pick her snoring head off the bar I usually leave, alone. Stuff like that.

I am either a Scorpio or a Libra, depending on which newspaper you pick up that day. And so I have always read both and took the best one. But in Joe's case I have noticed this uncanny knack of finding two parts of my nature and exposing them to the world. In the case of my 2006 forecast he writes;

Libra: This year, Librans will discover why it's not a good idea to breastfeed the lion cub you found on your African safari.

Scorpio: You will spend most of 2006 eating jalapeño poppers.

What can I say? He has me to a 'T'.

So, again, AFTER you are finished reading every post on this blog, please scroll back up to the top of this post and visit Hairshirt - and do it regularly. You won't be disappointed.

Here is further proof that my digital picture-taking and subsequent posting skills are in need of an overhaul. But I present to you, with great pride, my membership card in that august body of high-minded music-loving stalwarts of the deep dark morning..... the 5:58 Club.

This is no ordinary card, nor is it an ordinary club. The requirements for joining are...

...somewhat liberal, but it helps to actually be listening to WFMT at 5:58 AM (that means in the morning) when Peter Van De Graaff says "now here's Carl and Lisa with the Morning Program" and the warm and agreeable voice of Carl Grapentine responds "Thank you Peter...its 5:58..."

I am there for "Monday Morning Mozart" and I am there for "Its Friday hooray." We prayed for Carl when his ticker acted up, we suffer with him when he tries to press on like a good soldier while in the clutches of those evil throat demons his dulcet chords seem heir to, and we were thrilled when Lisa Flynn - FMT's consummate professional - teamed up in the morning to act as co-President. And what a welcome addition she was.

(Urban legend has it that Lisa was one who aced the world famous "WFMT Announcer Challenge" in one take and that after doing it she was hired on the spot. And I can just imagine her negotiating in rapid fire and flawless the part that goes "The WFMT announcer's lot is not a happy one. In addition to uttering the sibilant, mellifluous cadences of such cacophonous sounds as Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Carl Schuricht, Nicanor Zabaleta, Hans Knappertsbusch and the Hammerklavier Sonata, he must thread his vocal way through the complications of L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and other complicated nomenclature...")

>sigh< If ever I am laid-up in hospital, will someone please have Lisa read the Announcer Challenge to me?

But I digress... I need to say there is a catch to obtaining the card. I mean, you can be a member just by showing up. But to carry the CARD - well - that's far different.

The best way to do it is to wait for the periodic pledge drives, call between the hours of 6 and 7 (AM), make a nominal $100 promise, and tell the operator you WANT THAT CARD!

None of that, of course, should stop you from supporting fine music any time of the year. And you can do that here.

In fact, you should do it - whether they are having a pledge drive or not if only to save Mozart on Monday morning for me, and keep Carl and Lisa going on as Chicago's best "morning drive" team ever.

But listen... in an ocean of noise where it seems all the worst virtues of real life are both exposed and championed; when it is assumed by those who say they know better that we don't have the attention span to linger at the shore of something beautiful; amidst the demands and strivings of the work day world; and in the living that seems to justify impatience with all others around you; WFMT in general, and the Morning Program in particular, are savor to the mis-spent day.

I meant to do this a lot sooner but Vincenzo's is still a new project and I am just having a blast formulating this blog's direction and evolving this idea day by day. Time just ran away from me, and as it did I discovered my blogroll has expanded far faster than my ability to address it to the readers. So I better get started.

Rule 1 is and has always been, "Never put blogs on the roll you don't actually read." Linking a bunch of other blogs and sites for the sake of presenting the appearance of belonging to some great network or something is a lot of jive...

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From my experience in this (Ok I admit it - I am an escapee from a... shudder... political blog - cue scary music) I have learned that just posting a lot of links to other blogs and going and telling the owners you've done that is just a bit transparent. So my blogrolls tend to gather quickly but then plateau, and I mean level off hard. So this is a circuitous way of telling you that if it is on my roll I read it, and I'm not just doing this to get a return link from these folks.

All that out of the way I want to start regularly talking about who and what is there and the first one I want to point out is called Almost Vegan. And I can hear you now: "Uh... Bob... you're not a vegetarian. Remember? You just got done telling us about the quail you slathered down. Hello?"

Yes yes yes. But if I said to you that I never thought about the health aspects of what I was eating I'd be lying. And my closest friends know that if it had all the nutrients you needed to survive I'd happily just eat salads, bread and wine and live happily ever after.

I love salads. I love veggies. I think you should trust these things more than we do and center whole dishes on them instead of meat meat meat all the time. I've made entire lunches out of eight different cut veggies with a low-cal dip, felt right satisfied and lived to tell the tale when it was over. I didn't have to scramble for the salami. I've thrown together beans and spuds and salad and corn and a good Riseling and called it a quick fix dinner dozens of times. Now don't get me wrong - I can inhale a steak with the best of them, but if steak ceased to exist then a bucketful of mescal, tomatoes, carrot slices, a good vinaigrette and a glass or two of wine will do me just fine. Two buckets in fact. And I contend that wine is the single most important aspect of maintaining a healthy diet simply because it makes the bland palatable.

And therein lies the problem I have always had with all my abortive attempts to include a more vegan-style approach to meals. Sometimes including a substantial vegan component to ones meals is just a frustrating experiment with dull, brown-tasting, meal-pounded blandness overt enough to put a Visigoth to sleep face down in his cabbage soup. You know the soup - the kind that, because you're a Vegan, you have to make three times a week. Over. And over. And over. Day. After. Day.

Then spake Denise!

Since May of 2004 Denise has gently led her readers (many of whom - it seems by the comments and letters - are wanting to take a stab at the cuisine and subsequent lifestyle but have qualms) to flavor and convenience - what a concept eh?

And what a light touch doing it. Denise talks about everything from stuff you see every day that you can expand upon as well as little known products that will brighten a dish so that it isn't all nibble and nosh - but a meal. Products you can find in a mainstream grocery to (hmmmm...) a repeating theme of cookies and more cookies and oh did I say cookies...?

This is just the kind of collection of information I wish I had when I seriously looked into the vegetarian approach but was just overwhelmed by things I thought I needed to know and didn't know, and all the seemingly endless preparation labor that had to go on to do it right.

But as for now it offers vegans a terrific resource for collecting all their best treat-secrets. What's more Denise's easy and open style is a refreshingly non-preachy and calmly under-the-top approach that is tremendously accessible to non-vegetarians who would like to know how to turn a bit more to the Light side of the Force but are sometimes a bit intimidated by the more hardcore and vocal minions of that milieu.

So while I hate to see traffic just walk out of here, finish reading EVERY LAST ENTRY I have written here and then go over to Almost Vegan and get some terrific ideas. Denise doesn't make as many entries as I wish she would, but over time the collection of resources has become substantial and what's there is choice.

Here's a new restaurant in Chicago that may turn into something special. Meztiso is so named, says Chef Jona Silva, because it is an attempt to bring about a "confluence of Mexican and Spanish cultures." And so we have a kind of fusion going on of tapas presentations with the spices of Mexico taking the wheel. The result is a venue that may deserve watching.

You can try a range of tastes you construct yourself or let the chef make your tapas selections for you. The latter seems the best choice, as who else would know what looks good on that particular day but the person whose name is on the knife handles...

I opted for an entree on this particularly cold winter's night. The crowd was thin mostly because of the weather but if I'm not mistaken Meztiso is also a baby restaurant, being only a few months old.

The staff was energetic and friendly - which is a hit with me right off the bat. There's nothing worse than an eclectic bistros staffed by "Sad boy with a lip ring" and "vampire girl in dyed black hair who forgot where she lives" trying to explain the esoteric menu and then morosely bringing out the plates. O happy time... (pleh). So score a big one for the staff, who are comfortable enough with themselves to treat you like they're actually glad to see you.

The second point gained was the presence of Rioja by the glass. This is a huge pet peeve of mine relative to tapas and its presentation. You are experiencing a bit of Spanish culture. If done well you get a taste of Spain and get to partake in a time-honored manner of feasting - so why, for God's sake, are so many Tapas restaurants lax on allowing people to have the one signature wine of Spain beyond the same old predictable and tired sangrias by the glass? God I hate that. So here's another point made for Meztiso. You can currently get a nice Rioja Crianza "Lorinon" (Bodegas Breton) for $8 a glass. Ok.

I took the quail (which I notice is not on the most recent menus) and, happily, I couldn't get over the idea that I was having some good old-fashioned buffalo wings that just so happened to simply melt away in your mouth without a hint of the greasiness or the dryness I have sometimes experienced at other restaurants trying to accomplish certain fowl. I was a bit disappointed in the cooked potato slices that came as a side. I was served up a mountain of them (which was a plus to an old Polish kid from Bucktown) and they had a kind of promising baked red crust, but ended up a bit on the bland side. Maybe I was expecting to be assaulted by some serious caliente because of the color. I don't know. They were a bit uninspired. I almost wanted to put some salt on them. But also remember - this is tapas and I had an entree. So we can put a little of the benefit to the doubt.

I get the feeling this menu and this venue are evolving. I see enough energy and enough intent going on, and I'd like to see what comes of Meztiso in another four months or so. When the crew has had a chance to sort out the dishes they are champions at and crank up the volume on what they know they're best at, we could all be in for a treat.

There's more that goes on here, by the way. You may want to try "Toothpick Tuesday" where tapas is done Basque-style; which sounds like a holiday party where people get to drink and pick from what seems to be an endless rotation of appetizer trays... and drink. Then there's the Day of the Dead menus served between October 28 and November 5th (I keep looking at this oyster and jalepeno-salsa masa turnovers!!). Hmmm...

Meztiso is a place to watch. And you can even watch the lady in the back making the hand-crafted tortillas.

We're hoping Chef Silva and crew can put it all together. This is a place with some promise.

Meztiso is at 710 N. Wells in Chicago. 312-274-9500. Open until midnight on Friday and Saturday and 9 PM on Sunday.

Labels: restaurant reviews

Thou foul ball...

Besides Benito Perez Galdos I can think of one other thing Spain has given the world that the world has not fully appreciated. I can actually think of a bunch of things but I'm sure I'll talk about La Rioja another time so that doesn't count. The first - a writer - is so overshadowed by Cervantes it is truly sad. Everyone knows Don Quixote - even if they don't - but until you expose yourself to things like Fortunata Y Jacinta you really don't have all that the genius of Spain has given the written word. And yet - none of this is what I intended to talk about here...

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I suppose this entry can qualify for what Bloggers like to call "live blogging." Where they position themselves at an event of some sort and blog away, real-time, almost stream-of-conscious, reflecting back on what is happening. The reason I say that is that I am drinking some of Spain's other secret even as I speak... er... type.

According to legend, Licor 43 is an ancient blend of 43 specific ingredients that come together to form a honey-amber liquid of some mesmerizing quality. My first encounter with Cuarenta Y Tres was at a Tapas bistro here in suburban Chicago. It is my understanding that you wouldn't actually find this served Tapas-style in its authentic locale, but the American twist on this liqueur has it showing up with dessert. And that works in an odd way because the over-riding essence of Licor 43 is the vanilla.

The liquid itself never seems to lose its somewhat heavy alcohol scent. You may notice sometimes with wine that the first scent or taste of some wines can often produce a kind of alcohol tinge that the pallet adjusts to and then moves on with the second taste. This doesn't actually happen with Licor 43 - and so it can easily be imagined that folks might consider this liqueur over-powerful. But at 31% (62 Proof) it is substantially less heady than bourbon or single malts. Plus this isn't to say that the nose of this concoctive is wholly unpleasant. The vanilla is in there, moderating it.

I am drinking it without mix or ice at the moment, though true devotees of the brand insist this is made for mixing. Personally I can take it this way right nicely. This is the way I was introduced to it, with a Pastel Con Frutas (a cake with caramel sauce, apricots, figs and raisins served with raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream) after a fair round of cold and hot plates beforehand. It should be understandable that I would go for it this way, to anyone whom I've given forth a lecture on why a good California Zin can be matched with any number of dark berry sherbets after dinner. I do tend to go over board about this sort of thing most times. You can take the boy away from the barbarians... etc.

The Diego Zamora company recommends a few mixes I am certain to try. The "Sparkle" is

3/4 oz. Licor 43
5 oz. Champagne
Splash of Rose's sweetened lime juice.

You can top it with whipped cream and call it a "Mini Beer" or make a Dreamsicle at;

1 part Licor 43
2 parts milk
2 parts orange juice
mixed and served wit ice.

But in my efforts to get you to try it, I would recommend getting a good English translation of Fortunata Y Jacinta, taking full advantage of the cold winter nights ahead, and curl up with a glass and a book.

There are reminders of Mead in this drink, but it isn't the heavy tone of Irish Mist. Its the vanilla, or any number of its 42 other secret ingredients. It retains a push into the back of the nose - remember its a liqueur not a wine - and coats the mouth as most drinks of this class will do. And though the stalwarts will practically demand a mix, I see nothing wrong with it as a night-time snack or to be paired with desserts. Bread puddings. Vanilla ice cream on a devil's food cake. Things of that nature.

And so by now I have finished two thirds of the glass and it is coming to bed time. These gentle reminders of sweet white honey put me in mind of a good book before I turn in. I wonder if there is any Miguel de Unamuno in the house...

Once, the office manager had us sit down at the computer to take an internet test. She was pretty adamant about it so nobody could escape. She gets like that. At first it looked like one of these ten question catch-alls that tell you what kind of character in a romance novel you are supposed to be, and this would have been typical for our office manager. Not that she was a fan of romance novels (she wasn't), but trash actually was her preferred style. Mary makes sure she watches one "Cheezy Movie" each weekend and I think she collects shards of broken glass because they're so pretty on the windowsill when the light hits them.

But this time her test surprised me. It was something like one hundred and three questions and went on and on, click-continue next after click-continue next. Instead of some catchy little meme with a pop-up ad waiting for you at the end, promising that you will find someone to sleep with in your town tonight, it ended up as one of those "What Your Perfect Job And Life Situation Was Really Meant To Be Per Your Temperament, Your Interests, And The True Human Being Nestled Deep Inside You That You Never Had The Guts To Actually Be" tests...
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As it turns out I was supposed to be an economics professor at some small elite school with ivy growing up the walls, wearing one of those sweaters with the brown suede patches on the elbows and smoking a pipe. I would wake up to Berlioz every morning and probably go to sleep with a small glass of black currant wine, the only person in the world who ever actually read Durant's Story of Civilization. This is me in the library. This is me with an umbrella. This is me with no one to talk to.

The weird thing about the test's results was that, to be honest, I would have really enjoyed being an economic professor at some small elite school with ivy growing up the walls. I can't vouch for the patch-sleeve sweaters and the umbrella and the falling leaves of autumn (cue the sentimental music), but I am kind of partial to three-piece suits when I have to dress up. Oh - and it would have been cigars, not pipes.

I suppose an economics professor at a small, elite school with ivy growing up the walls who wears three-piece suits and smokes cigars would be an Austrian-school economist, don't you think? A libertarian free-marketer with a belly. I mean, the patch-sleeve professor would have to be a New Deal Apologist wouldn't he? I can't imagine an economics professor in a three-piece suit making the case for the New Deal. Something would just seem not-right about that. Patches = New deal. Three Piece = Austrian-school.

Truth to tell I could easily visualize myself in that setting whatever the wardrobe, and the fact of the matter would be that I know I would have thrived in that rarefied environment. Theory. College-town bistros. Concept. Dishes of Quail and Rabbit. Abstract notions. Single Malt Scotch on a cold winter's night. Watching the progress of students. I happen to like ivy. Autumn colors. The school's football team. Christmas lights in the small snowy town. Books.

Our office manager is convinced I am the dullest person whoever walked the Earth. I suppose with these test results it is pretty understandable.

Instead of this I am a salesman, and altogether flat out bored with foreign taxi drivers who don't know where they're going, blowzy saleswomen who talk a good cheat, and guys who can't stop blathering about the curses of the job - especially after their fourth whiskey and soda.

What astounded me was the depth of this meme. Astonishing. I am looking for it again to share with all here... if anyone knows what this was please email us. We seem to have misplaced it - and it was a few years back.

One night my wife and I noticed a little Italian restaurant had opened up in a strip mall very near our house called, oddly enough, Vincenzo's. We cleared a Saturday night and slid into the place. White table cloths, some pricey stuff on the menu, waiters in bow ties, Frank Sinatra soundtrack in the background. How can you beat this...
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Our waiter was Italian. He was bald. He was very tall. The other waiter had an accent too. I don't know from where. When our entrees arrived they were huge. This was good, if thick, Italian cooking. Human-sized portions. The display could be better, the wine selection lacked a bit. The service was a little slow. But the food... which went on forever in those bowl-like plates... the food was wonderful. If heavy. This was Italian peasant cooking in a nice suit.

We returned several times. On one visit when I returned from... washing my hands... my wife had a special little plate next to her entree. Something red and saucy and cheese and something else or other. I can't recall. She explained that the chef (whose name was oddly enough Vincenzo) had come out and prepared a small special request of hers, off the menu. And by all reports it was very nice, too.

A few weeks later we were shocked to see that the place was closed. Lights out. Locked. "Closed for Business" sign in the door. Not only that, but someone had pitched a very big rock at the sign above the door making a gaping hole so that it read, as you might imagine, VIN____ZO'S.

We had no idea what happened. A month or so later it reopened under a different name. We returned, but the chef (named Vincenzo) no longer worked there.

Lo and behold someone told my wife that Vincenzo was working at another Italian place somewhere out towards the end of suburbia. Probably near soy fields. And so one winter's night we dutifully trekked - or shlepped, depending on how you view it - down a cold snowy road to this new venue where Vincenzo worked.

It wasn't called Vincenzo's but there was a huge banner out front blowing in the wind saying VINCENZO IS HERE!, and sure enough... the food was loaded onto the plates so that you had to take three boxes home with you and have some for lunch and beyond later.

My wife asked the waitress to ask Vincenzo if he would prepare something in an unrecognizable Italian word that was not on the menu. The waitress said she didn't think that was possible but returned with it anyway. She said "you must know Vincenzo!" O happy day... etc.

But there it was again - weeks later and the banner was gone. Was it because now that everyone knew Vincenzo had found this home there wasn't any further need to advertise it? No. Was it because the winter wind blew the sign down? No. It was because Vincenzo didn't work there anymore. And you could tell - the spaghetti had a certain Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee quality to it. I kept thinking I saw bagel-dogs somewhere.

Oh well.

Fast forward three years. Vincenzo long forgotten. We go into an Italian restaurant that had been in the same place forever though we never tried it out.... you guessed it.... I come back from washing my hands and my wife said; "Vincenzo is the chef here!!" Apparently he saw her through the swinging door and came out to pay his respects. The man has always taken care of his following, I'll say that much for him.

Except that on our next visit he was gone again.

This has left me wondering a few things. First, why does this keep happening to Vincenzo? Second, what is that plate of small whatever he makes for my wife? And third - how come it is I have still never met this guy, but my wife just loves the fellow?

I guess I'm just not lucky at all.

And now I am doomed to spend the rest of my life chasing Vincenzo. And we will track him down unto the ends of the Earth. Or die of linguini trying.

Are there any independent local TV stations left that are not part of a national syndicate feeding various markets? Are there any local network affiliates that still have some say in what they run in off hours? I realize that even local network affiliates have given up on most programs that originate locally in favor of a general overnight news feed or even the infamous "Paid Programming", but it wasn't all that long ago when those same local partners of ABC, NBC and CBS (which used to be the only games in town before cable) had - or seemed to have had - more discretionary time slots to fill with local choices. The only thing being done locally is news...
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And when that was the case here in Chicago the post New Year's Eve programming on the ABC affiliate (WLS) would run old flicks of Fred Astaire and/or the Marx Brothers, that would go deep into the morning and serve as a nightcap after a long night of amateurish drinking.

And many a New Year's night was spent prior to being legally allowed to drink doing what we could do while staring up at Astaire and Ginger Rogers, thirty years plus after The Gay Divorcee was made, soaking in the art-deco sets and the tuxedos and the people drinking Sidecars and Manhattans in an unbelievable setting not all that far removed from the Kingdom of Oz; or being unable to quit laughing when the Marx Brothers stuffed a stateroom in a transatlantic ship voyage in A Night At The Opera.

I'm not altogether sure if those standards were created by the Chicago affiliate or if such a thing occurred in other markets as well, but I can tell you even when the refreshment was smoked rather than drunk we made a point of tuning it in after the noisemakers and the fireworks.

Of course in the late 60s/early 70s of which I am speaking there was no place to rent the tapes, and there was no cable that played them a hundred times a year. This would be the only time we would have been able to see these gems, and so it made it that much more special. Funny how having everything available to us now sort of devalues things, don't you think? I suppose that's not a new or grand observation.

But what it was, as simple as it was, was a measuring rod going from one part of our culture to another. This is what we looked like 30 years ago. This is us, looking like we do now, watching that. The way it was / the way it is. It isn't a matter of "it was better then..." because that isn't the point.

Is it a cultural problem when your symbols don't have the reference and patina they once held? Are we what we were, when what we knew, becomes unknown?

We should take care of our cultural legacies before we end up forgetting them altogether. It isn't just a matter of calling it a Christmas Tree as opposed to a Holiday Tree. It is bigger than that.

I think - little by little - we wake up and - more and more - have no idea who we are at all.

Breakfast under the tree in the Walnut Room of Marshall Field's is an old Chicago tradition that has spanned several generations. Every year the center of the dining room is taken over by a 45-foot high creation of varying themes and effect. To those of us who were born and raised in this city there is a deeper, more nostalgic feeling whenever we return. My wife and I make a weekend in the city every Christmas that includes the theatre, shopping down Michigan Avenue, and champagne breakfast under the tree...
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This year there seemed a certain sense of urgency for getting in because in 2006 the very name of the place will be changed to the new owner's. After over a century Chicago's Marshall Field's will be morphed into New York's Macy's, and there is speculation about just how much the corporate minds in New York are willing to honor the whims and memories of those of us out in the hustings. The breakfast line that ran around the 7th floor and I think out a couple windows buzzed with the uncertain question; Does Macy's keep breakfast under the tree?

But I'm not going to turn this into yet another hand-wringing, mopey, over-wrought exercise of wayward sentimentality you may find from Chicago voices over this issue as the 2006 name-change inches closer to us. I'm going to straight-forwardly say that it would be a monument to stupidity on the new ownership's part to yank this particular rug. That brand of stupidity would surpass the current management's jaw-droppingly inane decision of making the Walnut Room breakfast a buffet last year, which was happily reversed this season.

This year we lucked out in more ways than one. Having taken a cab from The Drake we found our way past the lines on the first floor waiting for elevators and scurried up the escalator instead on the word of an employee who said "I don't know why they're standing there, the escalators are running and the line starts on the 7th floor."

Our second bit of luck was finding a more than amiable couple in line beside us. Brian and Kathy from Berwyn had made their trek into town as well, being fully versed in all the reasons we do this kind of stuff in Chicago like any other good pair of hometown natives. They were equally concerned that this may have been the last time such a thing would be possible, and we had a pleasant chat while waiting for our turns.

It progressed to such a degree, however, that when it became apparent that groups larger than 2 were being pulled from the line towards open tables and a hostess called out "4!?" --- we all instinctively raised our hands, shouted "4!" back at her and were together escorted to a smart little table in perfect view of the Great Tree.

I'm not exactly sure where the idea came from. Was it Kathy's or my wife's or was it just 4 Chicagoans who know how this kind of thing works and grabbed it...? I'm not even sure. Anyway who cares - what a stroke of luck to meet such a pair of much wit and generous sensibilities.

While fully engaging my waffles, strawberries, bacon and Champagne our accidental foursome passed a fine morning under the aura of that tree, this room, and our own particular understanding of the ambiance created by this tradition.

To people from out of town the lines may be too warm and too long. The staff may be unsure how to manage the lines from time to time. The food is hearty and satisfying with realistic portions but overpriced by a few dollars. The Champagne wasn't even really. And so the recommendations are passed to the visitor more so that you can say you've done it than have a great culinary secret whispered your way. And there is an unspoken understanding that I need say nothing to a fellow Chicagoan about this that they don't already know.

It may seem like you are merely having breakfast with a sparkling wine, surrounded by children who all seem to behave remarkably well considering we live in an age where you can't frighten them with Santa's wrath, but what you're really eating is time and remembrance.

I know few venues that serve that quite so well.

Labels: Christmas, restaurant reviews