Carnevor Review - Milwaukee, WI

*This is a restaurant review I wrote when I lived in Milwaukee. I thought it was on the blog. It wasn't. Here it is. If you're ever in Milwaukee and want a superb dinner. Go here.*

With no more than twenty-five feet of restaurant façade, Carnevor’s nondescript and dark exterior is not easy to find. In the upper right corner of the restaurant front, ‘Carnevor’ is written in lettering no taller than a foot and no wider than five feet. As I stood outside examining the exterior, its subtleties comforted me. Carnevor lets its reputation, and perhaps the occasional Lamborghini parked in front of its door, speak for itself.

My wife and I were there in search of Milwaukee’s best steaks. It was also my birthday and no employee at Carnevor let us forget it. The host immediately wished me a happy birthday and led us back into the dark, split-level restaurant. Immediately to our right was an orange-lit bar with dark clad employees waiting behind it who nodded to us as if we were regulars. Carnevor’s interior is modern and clever, using arced wood on the ceiling and vertical bamboo to separate the dark pockets of the restaurant. We were led to a secluded corner table on the third level where our waiter took over by handing us menus with ‘Happy Birthday’ printed on them. Not a few seconds later a bar attendant ran down the drink menu and left us to make our first decisions of the night.

If you are anything like me, there is no reason to hold back when you choose to go out to a high-end restaurant. The majority of us are going to be paying maybe up to four times more for a night at Carnevor than compared to our typical fare. So don’t hold back in an attempt to keep it cheap. Trust me, you are already screwed, but read on to find out if it is worth it.

Carnevor’s martinis are reasonably priced at $11. We were served superbly mixed drinks with top shelf liquor that hid its potency under the smoothest of finishes. I ordered the effeminate sounding Bloodytini, which is Carnevor’s Bloody Mary disguised, perhaps, for the purpose of getting more mid-day and evening orders out of a traditional brunch drink. Even though it is served in a martini glass, the Bloodytini still packs a punch with Ketel One vodka and plenty of Tabasco and Worcestershire. My wife ordered the Cosmopolitan, a wise choice, because if a restaurant can’t do the most popular drinks very well it starts us worrying. This wasn’t the case here though. The Cosmo had a beautiful, translucent shade of pink, not too cloudy from too strong a dose of lime or lemon juice.

Bread with herbed butter is complimentary at Carnevor. It was a hint of the delicious appetizers to come. We chose the crab cake ($16), yes singular, and a cup of the special butternut squash soup ($9). Luckily, the crab cake was big, with truly large lump crab served with garlic saffron aioli which we took alternating swipes at to drench the crab. The soup was thicker than expected, but inventive and adorned with a tantalizing heap of beef.

By now we had noticed that servers in Carnevor are, without a doubt, some of the best we have seen, comparing only to the service we once had at Ocean, the now defunct seafood eatery in Denver. The waiters were hiding out in a dark corner of the room, seemingly busy, but never letting an eye leave our table. As soon as we were done with our dishes they would swoop in and clear the table, taking away our silverware and giving us a new set for the next course. Water glasses were never close to empty and at one point I brushed a crumb aside. The waiter must have seen, coming in the next minute to wipe down the entire table. This may all sound like it was distracting to the serenity one might desire while eating out, but it wasn’t at all. It was subtle, but we obviously noticed their attentiveness. But don’t worry; it didn’t speed the dinner up at all.

Appetizers, or as Carnevor calls them, ‘Small Plates’, range from $9 to $16. You are mostly going to find experimental twists on traditional dishes like Panko Calamari ($9), tomato dusted and served with roasted garlic aioli and a cocktail sauce. They have even jumped on the sliders train by serving Steak Tartare Sliders with chives, shallots, Parmigiano-Reggiano, fried quail eggs, mustard oil and mushroom salad on toasted brioche buns.

The larger appetizers, designed to share at the table, are seriously big portions of Seafood ($45 to $85), Mac & Cheese ($11) and a Wisconsin Cheese Plate Sampler ($9 to $17). The latter two might seem a bit out of place, but not if you live here. It is expected for a restaurant in Wisconsin to offer at least a few dishes that prominently feature cheese, Wisconsin’s pride, second only to the Packers.

On to the good stuff—the meat. That is why we were there after all. Carnevor features two classes of cuts, ‘Carnevor Prime Cuts’ and ‘Reserve Cuts’. I noticed right away the first difference, price. The prime cuts range from $34 for a ‘Barrel’ cut 8-ounce filet mignon to $55 for a bone-in 16-ounce filet. The reserve cuts are priced from $52 for a 14-ounce New York strip to a mind-boggling $160 for a 7-ounce Imported Kobe ‘A-5’ filet mignon (Carnevor being one of a handful of restaurants in the U.S. that serves this Japanese delicacy, they brag) with tosa zu dipping sauce and wagyu beef jus.

Our waiter was very helpful, explaining the difference between the prime cuts and the reserve cuts. All prime cuts are wet-aged, meaning the steak ages for one to four weeks in vacuum-packed plastic where it doesn’t lose any weight. Here it is tenderized, but there is no flavor development as there is in the dry-aged process, which is used on some of the reserve cuts at Carnevor. Also, wet aging is cheaper, thus much more common. Dry aging is when the steak ages in an open-air, refrigerated environment. There it forms a crust that is trimmed away eventually leaving a juicier, tender cut. Dry aging can make a steak lose much of its original weight, not ideal for cost-cutting, mass market steak processing. Thus, it is very hard to find now, reserved only for those who are willing to spend half a week’s wages on one steak dinner. I am not one of those people.

At Carnevor, it is completely up to the diner to pick the toppings and sauces for the steaks. We inquired about ideas for our steaks, which arrived, like all steaks there, sans side dishes. You have to order those separately and you can do no better than the truffled mashed potatoes ($11), which is enough to serve two. Sides range from $7 to $11 and include a variety of vegetables to truffled frites. I went with the 20 oz. ribeye au poivre with béarnaise sauce. My wife, a filet mignon devotee, ordered the barrel cut with two sauces on the side, roasted shallot wine and a shiitake and brandy reduction.

Everything had been good up until the steaks, but that is when the night truly became memorable. The béarnaise complimented my steak wonderfully, calming the somewhat overwhelming and impenetrable peppercorn covering on my ribeye. The steaks were perfectly cooked. Filets are often delivered as damaged, overcooked goods, but not at Carnevor. The steak was served pink throughout and the sauces on the side weren’t necessary, but the shiitake and brandy reduction was our favorite of the two. The roasted shallot wine had a great oniony flavor, but it didn’t pair well with that specific cut.

One must take advantage of the wine list at Carnevor. Featuring glasses of reds, whites and champagnes from $8 to $15, there is something for everyone who doesn’t want a bottle, which at Carnevor is going to cost you quite a bit. The cheapest bottle is $35, and there is only one. After that the prices jump to more than fifty and then sky rocket to an impossibly high $4500 for a DRC La Tache ’05 Burgundy. I opted for a King Estate Pinot Noir ’06 from Oregon. It was smooth, but I admit it may not have been as great if I wasn’t drinking it with the finest steak I had ever been served.

We were served Carnevor’s donuts and dipping sauces (chocolate, raspberry and vanilla) as a birthday bonus. These delicately fried dough balls were a not-too-sweet ending to a memorable meal. You may want to end the night with dessert so ask your waiter for any recent additions, but if you are in the mood for chocolate you can’t go wrong with their torte.

Maybe a Scotch is in order if you want to continue the trend of spending more money on a meal than you ever have before. A modest 10-year Talisker is offered at $13 a glass and, on with tradition, there is a 30-year Macallan for $130 a glass just in case you are determined to have a final bill with four digits left of the decimal point.

As you can imagine, Carnevor’s clientele is unique. We saw a few groups of businessmen and businesswomen clearly spending on the company credit card. Besides those groups, there are many patrons celebrating special occasions and a few couples who were eating so casually that you just knew they were regulars. Little known to this diner, there is actually a celebrity watch site for Carnevor and other eateries on Milwaukee Street. Celebrities, in Milwaukee? Yes, at least celebrities to upper Midwesterners. The Brewers, Bucks, and Packers have all frequented Carnevor. If you are in town and have the need to be seen and to spend a lot of money, this is the place to go. But my wife and I weren’t itching to spend this much on a dinner. This clearly wasn’t the case with most people inside. We just were in search of Milwaukee’s best steaks. We found them. You will too.

Reminder

If you haven't read this blog. Please do.

The Problem With Getting Jacked Up

With gift subscriptions to The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Travel and Leisure, and Cooks Illustrated, there is never a lack of reading material in my apartment. With all these publications covering tables, desks, and bedside tables it is sometimes hard to find a book to read. This household went from having zero subscriptions I was interested in to five in the span of a few weeks. All this reading material has been a bit overwhelming and lately I haven’t been doing the best on keeping up with it. As an example of that, I was reading a New Yorker issue from late January last night.

The article (available online here) was written by Ben McGrath and titled “Does Football Have A Future?” It was well researched and informative in a good, addicting kind of way—the way all magazine writing should be. McGrath covers a lot of ground in this article, which addresses a topic sports fans have heard a lot about in the last year, concussions. I think what a lot of sports fans or parents of footballers aren’t terribly aware of are the repercussions from a career in football. And I’m just not talking about NFL football; I’m talking about junior high football to the NFL. And, to be fair, McGrath does point out that concussions occur in sports other than football, but the focus here was football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., which occurs in an alarmingly high number of football players. Detailed in the article are current and former players who admit to having memory problems and some who fear the side effects of a hit (not the hit itself) so much that they leave the sport altogether. I read about a 40 year-old brain resembling a brain from an 80 year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer.

I thought this quote about the parents who encourage or don’t mind the thought of their kids having a career in football rang true.

“Any parent who has let their child play football in the past fifty years and claimed never to have understood the risks involved was either kidding himself or an idiot,” Buzz Bissinger, the author of “Friday Night Lights,” wrote last week in the Daily Beast.

A few lines down, the author poses a question:

How many of the men on the field in the Super Bowl will be playing with incipient dementia? “To me, twenty percent seems conservative,” Nowinski said.

A conservative estimate? 20%? Ouch.

Right off the bat, this article addresses the issue of reporting on the concussion crisis and being attacked as anti-football, which translates for some to mean anti-fun, wussy, etc. And I understand that attack. People don’t like to find out that what they’ve been doing or what they want someone else to be doing is life threatening and certainly life-impairing. It’s like millions of people who must have been in denial for so long once people were coming out about the dangers of smoking and saying, surprise, smoking isn’t good for your health. Look, it makes your lungs look like this and they don’t work so well when they look like that.

I suspect, for many, knowing what we now know about concussions won’t be enough for them to step off the field or guide a son or daughter away from a sport which could make them a vegetable by 60, if they even live that long. We pick and choose the risks we are willing to take. I didn’t have this decision to make, but if I did, I hope I wouldn’t sacrifice the second half of my life for incredible material wealth during my 20s.

I Need Your Help

I got a tip from my grandma that the Denver Post is having a contest. The paper is looking for op-ed columnists. Anything like this peaks my attention and interest so I did some research. The Denver Post is asking for each contestant to send in two 650-700-word columns by February 22nd. I want to enter, but I need your help (if you are willing to give it) in selecting the writing I should send in. As far as I can tell, the writing samples don't have to be exclusively about living in Colorado, but it won't hurt if they are. So, let me know your favorite pieces of writing from this blog. There are over five years of writing on here. Pick out the stuff that stood out to you, stuff that you think you could be reading in a magazine or newspaper. If you find anything like that, email me at bperica@gmail.com and let me know what piece you like. If you don't find anything, email me anyway...I like emails. Or leave a comment on this post with any ideas.

Seriously, I would appreciate your help on this. Whenever there is a writing contest or a job to apply to that requires a writing sample I have a hard time picking out the piece of writing that most accurately shows promise or talent. Here is a link to a column about the contest and details.

Made My Day

When I was leaving work last week I pulled in behind a car with a bumper sticker on it. I read it and then started scrambling around for a pen and paper. I got my pen and I found an old receipt from Target and I wrote it down. The message stung a little, but damn, I haven’t read something so honest on a bumper sticker in a very long time.

“Show me someone with a deep loathing for all mankind and I’ll show you someone who works in retail.”

Brilliant.

Laramie Days

Kate and I were in Wyoming over the weekend. We ate out at a couple of our favorite Laramie establishments, one of which was host to our first date. We caught a swim meet (Wyoming vs. Air Force). The men and the women won. It was an exciting meet on the men's side and I spent some time on the pool deck trying to get good pictures of swimming, which isn't an easy task. I got a few, but to really capture the speed and to keep the noise down in pictures I would need a much more powerful lens than I currently have. In the meantime, I've never been able to capture shots like this with any camera I have had so I am happy with them.

Go Cowboys!

28

Kate gave me the entire Lost series on DVD for my birthday. 38 Discs. Time to get Lost...again.

And I took a hand-held self portrait on the day I turned 28.

Oscar Contenders

Despite what happens later this month at the Oscars, The King’s Speech (the KS from now on) deserves the best picture award. If you watch any TV, you’ve probably seen a spot for the movie, especially since the Oscar nominations were announced. Admittedly, the spots are a bit annoying because they use some of the best scenes in the movie and when I see them over and over again it sort of cheapens that particular scene, like I can’t take pleasure in watching it anymore. That’s a shame. However, the movie is excellent and there are no comparisons to The Social Network (the SN from now on) to be drawn.

Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are seasoned professionals and when you watch them in the KS you are witness to their dedication and talent. I am sure I didn’t feel that about anyone in the SN. While the acting in the SN was good enough to sustain the movie, it was the writing that pushed the story and made it interesting. Thus, I feel the SN is a better contender for adapted screenplay than it is for best picture. That award should go to a film with outstanding performances from the people on screen and behind the camera, in music, in special effects, etc. As we know, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes the movie goes to the most controversial film or the most groundbreaking or the most scandalous. But the KS satisfies more of these categories than any other movie I have seen this year.

True Grit

Dry, witty, at times both despairingly hopeless and funny, the True Grit remake had many marks of a Coen Brother’s film. And from what I have seen on AMC in the last couple of weeks, the remake greatly improved on the original. Why? At the risk of sounding ignorant and unappreciative of older films, the remake looks better, the film seems less scripted, the acting is better, and when the film ends, you are sort of left in limbo, a classic finish of some Coen Bros. films. Our protagonist (Mattie Ross) is victorious, but (SPOILER ALERT) she lost an arm and she never marries and when she tries to track down Rooster Cogburn she is told he recently passed away. In the end the exuberance and youth is drained out of Ross even though her words are still poignant and sharp. You can’t help but feel for her as she stands on the horizon with a lone tree, wondering how harsh the rest of her life was, that life after she fell into the snake pit and the life after the adventure with Rooster and LaBoeuf came to an end. It must have been a life of continuous trials and tribulations because Ross is hardened and seems to no longer understand much of the world she lives in. It reminded me of the end of No Country For Old Men, when Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones, sits at his kitchen table relating a dream to his wife:

…It was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback going through the mountains…It was cold and snowin…He [his father] rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin goin by. He just rode on past and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down...And when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it…And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there.

Did you say skiing?

Despite popular belief, there is no skiing in Wisconsin and there is no boating in Colorado. We moved to Milwaukee three and a half years ago. It was late in that first fall when I first heard people talking about skiing.

“I’m sorry,” I interjected. “Did you say skiing?”

“Yes,” they would answer.

“Going to Colorado?”

“No, here, in Wisconsin.”

I was never very good at hiding my puzzlement or containing my laughter. “There’s no skiing in Wisconsin,” I stated as fact.

They went on to tell me that, in fact, there is skiing in America’s Dairy Land. Later that year, I would drive by one of these so-called ski resorts. It reminded me of a giant landfill doused in just enough snow that you couldn’t see you were on trash. Really, that’s all there is to a Wisconsin ski resort. Wisconsin has enough snow to ski on, but there are no mountains, no hills even, at least by Colorado standards. I discovered that year that I was a ski snob and I don’t even ski.

And now, three and a half years later, I am in Colorado and I’ve discovered I am a boat snob and I don’t even go boating. People say things like, “Oh yeah, I ski all winter long and as soon as spring hits I start boating.”

“I’m sorry, did you say boating?”

“Yes,” they answer.

“On what body of water?”

They give me a name, but it doesn’t matter. In my head I see only Lake Michigan and its glassy surface extending out as far as I can see north, east, and south, challenging my definition of a sea. Like I said earlier, I’ve never been good at containing my laughter. You know how this ends.

SoTU Thoughts

Firstly, the State of the Union always seems too long. I suggest future presidents shorten them by taking out puffy, wasteful phrases, which do not tell us anything about the direction of the country and the current administration’s plans.

Obama’s speech was moderate. For those looking for words about gun control, disappointingly moderate. I would classify myself as being disappointed with the speech in this regard. After the shooting in Tucson, the State of the Union would have been an appropriate time to suggest the tightening of gun laws and regulating the industry as much as the toy industry. A simple suggestion of reinstating the assault weapons ban or suggesting there is no need for a Glock to hold 20 plus rounds would have been good enough, but Obama ignored the issue. He, like many Dems, is afraid of the gun lobby and what they can do to future election prospects. I think, if positioned confidently, a suggestion to make it harder for people to buy a gun would be widely accepted. A gun gives anyone the power to kill. I don’t understand why, in America, that power is so easy to come by.

The unique seating arrangement, which the media made a huge deal about in the days leading up to the speech, made for more interesting TV, but it was only an artificial show of unity between the two parties. I am sure the next day leading politicians in both parties went back to pointing the finger across the aisle. Either way, I think it should be required for politicians in one party to be seated with their opposing politicians. It is wishful thinking, but maybe the forced amalgamation of the two parties would start to be something greater than a show.

The Republican response was as expected. Let me paraphrase: The country is screwed if you and I, the decent Americans in this country, don’t stop Obama before it is too late. We will overcome this deficit by never asking for you or your company to give more money to the government than you currently do. Even though we have an unsustainable budget, what we need is not more money. We need to cut spending where we can, but overlook the biggest military and defense spending in the world. And raising taxes on households that make more than $250,000 a year would be too big of a burden for those homes to bear. Paraphrase over. Really, this response came as no surprise.

Did I watch the Tea Party response? Hell no, but I did see clips of its awfulness. Michelle Bachman didn’t look at the camera and it looked like her whole face had been injected with botox just a couple minutes before she stepped in front of the camera.

A couple highlights for me:

Watching Boehner fighting back the tears when Obama congratulated him, twice, at the beginning and end of his speech.

The teacher, Kathy Proctor, who was mentioned in the speech, turning to people on either side of her and saying, “That’s me.” The Daily Show did a hilarious couple minutes about this last Wednesday.

Sunset Pics: The At-least-they-were-taken-with-a-new-camera edition

Not Offended by Ricky Gervais

By the end of The Golden Globes Sunday night, you had a good sense of the animosity being directed at Ricky Gervais for his barbs and witty commentary that made fun of nearly all the stars there. Celebrities were attempting to make sly comebacks to Gervais’ one-liners, but they were failing miserably. A couple examples: 1) Gervais mocked Philip Berk, President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, by saying, “I just had to help him off the toilet and pop his teeth in.” Berk came out and fired back, “Next time you want me to help you qualify your movie, go to another guy.” 2) Before introducing Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, Gervais ran down a lengthy list of award-winning movies Hanks has starred in and then continued, “the other presenter is Tim Allen.” Hanks and Allen fired back.

Hanks: We can recall back when Ricky Gervais was a slightly chubby but very kind comedian.

Allen: Neither of which he is now.

The celebs’ comebacks weren’t funny, it’s the fact that they were seriously offended which made it funny. Why was Allen offended? Next to Hanks, Allen may as well do commercials. The celebs didn’t get the irony in attempting to send a barb back. News flash: you are paid actors, not paid comedians and Ricky Gervais is a paid comedian. What do you expect? For him to be kind? These shows need a comedian to make the night entertaining, to lighten the mood, to mock the one of many shows Hollywood puts on for themselves to celebrate their achievements and greatness.

This just in: Celebs, you aren’t funny. Gervais is. You’re easy to make fun of, especially when you make crappy movies. Get over it.

August 28, 1963

Movies: The Social Network

Last week I was listening to an old broadcast of Fresh Air (by old I mean three weeks old). David Edelstein, NPR's regular film critic, was listing his twelve best movies of 2010. I hadn't heard of 75% of them and if you aren't a film critic, then you probably hadn't heard of some of them either. Edelstein finished his list and he was asked why The Social Network did not make it because the film is the favorite in a lot of critic's circles. I listened to his response, which served more as a reminder that I needed to see the movie before awards season so I could access its worth compared to other frontrunners this year like True Grit, The Fighter, and The King's Speech. So I did. And not having seen The Fighter yet, I couldn't compare it with the SN, but I enjoyed True Grit and The King's Speech quite a bit more than the SN.

The SN is a good movie, but it's not great. I enjoyed it because people spoke very quickly throughout the movie. The whole film was an intense exercise in listening. Apparently, people who attend Harvard and/or score a 1600 on the SAT speak quickly and esoterically all the time. I love a movie that commands your utmost attention just to keep track of the arc of the film or who the hell is who. The acting was believable. Justin Timberlake puts in a respectable performance and by film's end you hate his character, Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster because he essentially talks himself into a 6 or 7% share of Facebook by suggesting the company move to California and he helps acquire some funding. But really, are we to believe Facebook wouldn't have taken off without his aid? I hope not. The SN's greatest shortcoming is that the viewer doesn't know the accuracy of the film. Mark Zuckerberg said that the film was not accurate at all, except for his college wardrobe at the time. So, what to believe? We know the lawsuits happened, but there is so much more to the film than lawsuits and beyond them we don't know what really happened during the creation and flourishing of Facebook. Jesse Eisenburg plays a pouty Zuckerberg who doesn't show much emotion at all from start to finish. Maybe that's the way Zuckerberg is in real life, but that doesn't make him hard to portray. If it were up to me, and it's not, I wouldn't consider Eisenburg for any awards because of this and that the competition this year is intense--plenty of performances outshine Eisenburg's.

Prior to seeing The SN I had heard that the movie portrays women in a disrespectful and degrading light. It does do that, but remember, the guys the movie centers around are in college and, whether or not it was an accurate portrayal, Sean Parker is no outstanding figure either. The characters are into women and sex. Are the women on Harvard's campus as good looking as the ones in the movie? There is no way. Are the women on Harvard's campus as easy as the women in the movie? Possibly, I don't know. Are there guys in college as interested in getting some as the guys in the movie were? You bet. So, for the most part, the portrayal of women in the SN was accurate.

I will write again soon about another movie. My closing thought: The SN was good, but man, not one of the finest movies of the century so far, like some critics have described it. I will say this though, The Social Network is better than Facebook.

Bad Days...

Happen when Sarah Palin appears above the fold in The New York Times.

Here's To...

Awarding mediocrity. There were 35 bowl games this year. I didn’t watch most of them, but from what I can tell they mostly sucked. This should come as no surprise. What kind of games do you expect to have when you put a 6-6 team up against a 7-6 team? Bowls used to be huge rewards for teams at the end of successful seasons, but now you only have to be at .500 to get in? Really, it’s despicable. And what it boils down to is the NCAA making more money off of its indentured servants. More bowls mean more money and who is opposed to that? Well, for one, I am.

It used to be fun to stumble across a bowl game on TV. You once had the guarantee of the two teams playing in said bowl game of actually being good. Now, not so much. I was about as excited to catch a bowl game over the holiday season as I was to find an infomercial for the Shake Weight.

Of course, classics like the Rose Bowl proved to be good games still, but enough with the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, etc. Had Wyoming won two more games, there was talk of a bowl game. Are you serious? Wyoming was piss-poor this year and putting them in a bowl game would have done the same thing as most of the other games did, it would have just contaminated the airwaves.

First Pics of 2011

This New Year's celebration consisted of me taking a lot of pictures of the family's Scottie dogs, eating great food at restaurants, cooking excellent food at home, and me taking more pictures of the dogs because it is awkward taking picture after picture of a human sitting in the same room just to practice taking pictures with a new camera.

Here, Max and Molly take in the view from the 12th floor and watch our first substantial snow of the year fall by the window.

Chowing down at the Root Down. Awesome!

King Crab Legs for dinner on New Year's. Succulent.

Max overseeing his kingdom.

Airing Out 2010

I want to sit down and churn something out about 2010. I want you to read it and be astonished at what you’ve read, be in dismay about the year I had because maybe it was boring, but I made it sound like so much more than that.

2010 was anything but boring, but I don’t know if I can convey that anymore. As it did like the year before, 2010 started off with a trip to Florida, but through January, February, the birth of my nephew, and a conference championship my mind was with my MFA applications to ten schools. I had labored over them for almost a year and I felt like I applied to the entire spectrum of writing programs out there. Starting in late February, or was it early March, the rejections started to trickle in. First, was Wyoming. Then I can’t remember who came next. But I do remember there were nine more and the agony of going to the mailbox every day was sustained until the last letter arrived in April. I took it—the last letter—up to the apartment with me. The blinds were drawn. It was dark. I lied on the couch. I didn’t weep. I didn’t tear up. I yelled. I fucking yelled.

March is a blur. I had the whole month off. I don’t even know what I did. I wrote about the rejections. I did an annual spiel on the Oscars, self-published of course. There was a power outage and I wrote about, writing, what I believe to be, some of my best words in 2010. On the way to work one day I pulled over and threw the key to the Longmont house into Lake Michigan, cursing it in the air and hoping some feelings would sink to the bottom of the lake with it. And then Kate and I went to Wyoming and Colorado. It was cold and snowy and being in Laramie was tough knowing I wouldn’t be going to school there in the fall.

I wandered aimlessly through April, wallowing in failure (a little like I am now, but hey, that was a huge chunk of 2010). I not only coached practices, I did practices. I threw myself into them, destroying my body and finding out that I can still be fast in the pool. When I do my best in sports I tap a vein of aggression and I get lost in it. I had plenty of fuel.

The venting continued in May, one of the most stressful times of my 20s. We had made our plans for the next two years and they were denied from us. In the middle of it all we went to Mexico to escape it. We were successful in that, but the stress was waiting for us the day we got back. What next? What now? Then I went to Colorado and spent a few nights with good friends looking for our new home. Then, a wedding in May for two people in love. But it was tough and weird at times, stages of the healing process. Getting everyone together again felt right and wrong, stages of the aging and living process. Instead of a strong bond among all of us I was acutely aware of an aging history held together with feeble attempts to reestablish community. Honestly, I thought the shit was going to hit the fan this week. It didn’t so much. Some things went better than expected and for the other things, well, words went unsaid and feelings unshared, traits once rare among this group.

Like Milwaukee knew we were leaving, it threw us thunderstorm after thunderstorm in June, ephemeral, but breathtaking and humbling exhibitions of power. I searched everyday for jobs. I didn’t land one and started to doubt the wisdom in moving back to Colorado. My Mom visited us one last time in Milwaukee. Kate and I started watching Lost this month on Hulu and we never looked back. Concerning movies and TV, Lost was easily the highlight of 2010 for us. It was outstanding and our devotion to it was respectable.

July started with another vacation. This time we were off to California to see friends married, to see family, and to breath in some salty air. And then we were back in the Midwest for a few more weeks of packing and thunderstorms, one of them giving us seven inches of rain in three hours. Imagine if California got that? In our final days in Milwaukee we shed tears, took a lot of pictures of our apartment, and welcomed my Dad to Wisconsin so that he would help us move to Colorado.

I blogged twice in August. We settled into our new home, not the home we thought we would be settling into, but we thank God every day it wasn’t. We drove up our first fourteener. We went to Wyoming. The West opened its arms for us and we basked in its warm, dry, sunny climate. The proximity of friends and family helped ease the joblessness on my part. And after working for a week, Kate was offered a full-time job.

I wrote a love letter to Milwaukee in September. I witnessed Boise St. give Wyoming an ass-kicking. We finished Lost, with a blitz of 3 episodes, plus a two-hour finale, in one day. And then I got a job and we started P90X.

October: I worked some. Spent some time catching up with friends in Colorado. We had visitors. Colorado proved to be as beautiful as ever. Life went on.

A lot of people voted Republican in November. I didn’t. Are you kidding me? We spent our first Thanksgiving as a married couple with my parents and grandparents. Kate worked through the holiday and it didn’t seem relaxing for her at times, but my busy holiday schedule started at 4:30 the morning after Thanksgiving. November was warm.

In December I’ll tell you now, publicly, that I celebrated a private accomplishment. The month flew by with busy work schedules and the time to relax and celebrate our Creator was upon us in a matter of hours. We had a new camera to document it and the years ahead. The wounds sustained earlier in the year have partially healed, yet I still sometimes find in me a crushing doubt, chanting, “Failure, failure,” at me every time my hands rest on this keyboard. In the waning days of 2010, Kate’s family joined us as we welcomed 2011 into our lives, a year that can’t possibly contain in its 365 days what I want it to contain, but I will greet its every sunrise and toast its every sunset in search of it.

Christmas Eve

Once the music starts I tilt my head backward and stare at the ceiling, which is not always truly magnificent, but I stare at it like it is and I smile because everything is magnificent tonight. Christmas Eve is an oddity. As I enter adulthood, this night has become the one night of the year when I feel bombarded by the past, like it’s trying to make me feel guilty for enjoying the night. My cynicism tries hard to eat away at the night with thoughts of broken hearts, misplaced trust, and betrayal, but its massive effort fails. On this night, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, I find that the flicker of a candle is more mesmerizing, the embrace more meaningful, the music more magical, and the mystery and wonder of our God more evident than any other day of the year. Rejoice that it’s easier to forgive and it’s easier to love tonight. And a God that makes us feel that way this day, or for all of them, is worth praising.

Merry Christmas!

New Camera

I picked up our new camera yesterday, a Nikon D7000 with an 18-200mm Nikkor lens. We haven't yet taken a picture with it, but we are just getting starting and can't wait to take this puppy out and start shooting.

Nat Geo Photos

National Geographic announced the winners of their annual photo contest. Check them out here.

Surf's Up, Milwaukee

Missing Milwaukee right now, not the weather, but that Milwaukee is on the shores of a lake you can surf on, and they were this week. From jsonline.com.

Dynamite

Hanukkah ended last night, but I thought I'd share this one.

Click here.

Big Pic: Pearl Harbor

I have linked to the Big Picture before, but I just checked the site today (I hadn't visited it in a while) and they have a stunning collection of pictures from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The history captured within the pictures just blew me away.

Click Here.

No Points For Variation

After weeks of no blogs, this, another picture post, doesn't really spice things up, but the view last night from our apartment was something else and I had to attempt the capture with my point and shoot even though I knew the camera wasn't going to replicate what I saw. I am hoping to remedy that in the near future with an upgrade, but I thought some of these were cool enough to share. The shelf of dark clouds and the mountains made such a beautiful band of light across the horizon that I couldn't pass it up.

October Pictures

My nephew, Nate. Cool dude.

The Banana Belt

As Denver’s first snow swirls outside my window, Milwaukee is experiencing a heat wave, the only time since late July that it has been warmer there than in Denver. I wintered in Milwaukee for the last three years and during that time I forgot how much easier the winters in Colorado are than in the upper Midwest. Of America’s 50 largest cities, Minneapolis is the only one that has a colder average annual temperature than Milwaukee.

Although average annual snowfall is higher in Denver, the first winter I spent in Milwaukee it snowed over 112 inches, an all-time record (pictured above, just one of many blizzards that winter). The winter of 2006-2007, the last winter I spent in Colorado, was record-setting in terms of snow. There was enough of it to cover not only the shadowed corners of your yard but the entire street and neighboring field for over a month. To have snow on the ground for over a month; that was a big deal to some Front Range residents and it was the first time I could remember having snow on the ground for that long. But in Milwaukee, if the snow only stays for a month you are in good cheer. It’s not unusual for there to be snow on the ground for three months straight. It’s not that they get more than Denver—I already covered that—it’s that the cold takes your breath away and they get slightly less daylight than Colorado in the winter.

When it comes to average annual temperatures, there is no competition. Among the places I’ve lived, only Laramie, Wyoming can compete with Milwaukee’s frostbite-inducing cold. Denver has its days, but I can’t honestly say the winters in Colorado are tough.

It’s amazing what a few years in a much colder environment can do to the way you respond to weather elsewhere. After just a few months of college in Laramie, I felt like I was going to the tropics when I drove south for an hour. Fort Collins was consistently 10-15 degrees warmer than Laramie. It was good I had that training, because without it I couldn’t have weathered the winters in Milwaukee with as much good cheer as I did.

Don't Forget

Conan O'Brien returns to television tonight on TBS. Locally, he's on at 9pm. I'm looking forward to it. Follow TeamCoco here.

The 2010 Midterms

After this November 2^nd, it is easy for me to be frustrated with and disappointed in thousands and thousands of Americans who, in 2008, launched the Senator from Illinois into the White House and then, only two years later, gave Republicans the majority in the House because Obama hasn’t yet dug the country out of a hole the Republicans led us into.

But I am still sanguine at times. Maybe I am crazy for being that way, but in previously shared governments meaningful legislation has passed and so I hope that the Republican majority in the House and the Democratic majority in the Senate can find common ground instead of going back and forth in a debate without results.

The Republicans are now the ones who find themselves with a mandate to govern as they see fit. This is a unique situation where they have to shift from just saying no to everything that came down from the White House to actually presenting solutions beyond making the Bush tax cuts permanent, repealing health care reform, or privatizing Social Security. Republicans came to power in these midterms because they kept promising the American people that they would represent their interests and that they would focus on jobs and reducing the deficit. I would love to see a Republican party with that focus. However, when I read the following in the paper this week I can’t help but shake my head at the Republicans:

But fresh from their victories, Republicans may have little incentive to defer to his [Obama] leadership. In the days leading up to the election, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, a top House Republican, repeatedly said there would be “no compromise” with Mr. Obama.

Is it too much to ask for Republicans to actually govern instead of again pushing on us their overtly divisive dialogue and diatribes, which accomplish nothing for the American people? If this remains the single more important thing they can do, then they have ensured their defeat in 2012 and such a defeat will be well deserved if they continue to just say, “No.” And while I am hopeful that the Republicans will do something good for America, I also know, and am comforted by the fact, that when 2012 is here, and if the Republicans have held to McConnell’s plan, than they will be in the minority again.

There are some positive signs from Tuesday’s election. There were several high profile candidates (O’Donnell in Delaware, Tancredo in Colorado, Raese in W. Virginia, Angle in Nevada, and Miller in Alaska) who all received glowing endorsements from Sarah Palin and they all lost. This is a huge bright spot. Even in her home state, Palin’s endorsement couldn’t even fend off defeat by Lisa Murkowski, a write-in candidate. This will not prevent Palin from running in 2012. She is obsessed with herself and there are enough delusional Americans out there who will push her to do it. However, in Alaska, where she was popular enough before she was McCain’s running mate, she has fallen flat on her face, leaving the governorship and the people she claimed to care about. Above the rest of the Republican candidates for 2012, she alone is the most narcissistic and it is the glorification of herself she wants to serve, not the “real America” like she always says. I suspect by 2012 America will be sick enough of her whiny voice which never delivers solutions or facts, just embellished tales from the crypt far-right.

And I don’t know how Harry Reid did it, but he defeated Sharron Angle, which is also another bright spot. Sharron Angle is a crazy ass. Read this, from a radio interview in Portland where she suggest an armed revolution: "I hope that's not where we're going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out." I would have been much more concerned for this country had she won. I’m not a fan of Reid either, but I am sorry, Nevada had to pick the lesser of two evils on Tuesday and thank God they did.

Colorado decided to give the Democrats a little more time in office. I am relieved they did, even if it was just by .9%. Had Buck won, the Dems would still control the Senate, but Colorado remains a battleground state. Obama won quite handedly here in 2008. That Colorado is giving him another chance is a good sign for 2012. Perhaps, by then, states won’t have to give Obama another chance, they will see some change by then and they will vote to continue it.

For me, the big takeaway is to be thankful that this campaign season is done and to hold the crazy belief that politicians will actually do their job for a year before they start campaigning again. That’s a lot to hope for. And then there are the Republicans. Will they actually do something over the next two years except rail against Obama and prep for 2012? Only time will tell, but Americans will get a very good representation of how the Right is going to govern and “re-invent” themselves and that is, in a way, comforting to me because if it’s anything like 2000-2008, I think the same Americans who contributed to this Republican comeback will be reminded of why they voted for Obama in 2008 and do it again in 2012.

2010 Midterms Pre-Blog

America, you did let fear give you a Boehner. Luckily it didn't last longer than four hours and we didn't have to seek immediate help from a doctor (a psychiatrist, that is) because the Dems retained their hold of the Senate.

More on yesterday to come.

November 2, 2010

For the short blog below I am borrowing from a hilarious sign from the Rally to Restore Sanity. The sign refers to John Boehner, Republican House Minority Leader who could likely become Speaker of the House with a Republican wave tomorrow. So, here's my message...

Tomorrow...Don't Let Fear Give You A Boehner.

Actual Bumper Sticker

I am in the process of transcribing voice recordings I have fallen behind on. One of them I listened to today was from May 15. On that day I saw a bumper sticker and wanted to remember what it said. It was on a truck seen in Milwaukee. It read:

Those that buy cars or trucks from foreign-owned companies are butchering America's economic health in an expensive way whether they admit it or not. Don't kill the eagle!

Well, I don't admit that I am butchering America's economic health by owning a Nissan and a Toyota, but I will admit to having better cars than the American-car-owning version of me that doesn't exist. However, it was news to me that I was killing an eagle.

Oh, Why Not?

Today's education from TPM: The Five Constitutional Amendments That Constitution-Loving Tea Partiers Would Change

On the mosque near Ground Zero...

"But others, led by Newt Gingrich, and far-right activist Pamela Geller, wanted the government to directly intercede to prevent the construction of a house of worship. First, though, you'd have to change that part of the Constitution that reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

On immigration...

Eliminating what's known as "birthright citizenship." That's right, you could be born here, but be deported if your parents were found to have illegally entered this country.

On taxes...

Repealing the 16th Amendment. Basically abolishing the government's right to tax our income. Instead, the government would be fueled solely by a sales tax.

On electing Senators...

This is the 17th Amendment. And some tea-partiers want to repeal it and instead give the duty of selecting senators to the legislature of the state. So, midterms would be obsolete.

On Prohibition...

TPM notes that Sharron Angle (God help us, especially Nevada if that woman wins) once expressed interest in repealing the 21st Amendment, you know, the one that repealed the 18th Amendment (Prohibition).

It is really a good read. Check it out. They do solid reporting over at TPM.