Out with House Sparrows, in with American Goldfinches
By Mark Czerniec
May 9, 2008 11:57 AM

We have stopped the madness, and the backyard is much better now. We have cut way back on House Sparrows, and we're touting the American Goldfinch as the bird to feed for Racine's elite, birdfeeding smart set.

Amy and I started feeding wild birds years ago, back in our second-floor Kenosha apartment. We bought a couple of basic hanging plastic feeders and filled them with something like Kaytee Wild Bird Food — the standard, all-purpose mix of millet, milo, sunflower, cracked corn, and wheat. This attracted several species, but overall the vast majority of our customers were common House Sparrows. At times, there would be flocks of a hundred or so sparrows flying back and forth between our windows and the trees. They would squawk and fight and empty both feeders each day.

Like the old ladies always say when the authorities come to clear the 300 cats out of their houses, it just gradually got out of hand.

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Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie
By Mark Czerniec
May 6, 2008 5:24 PM

Even on public television's extensive menu of food and cooking shows, Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie is a standout offering. It's a globe-hopping, half-hour magazine of on-location footage and interviews featuring all sorts of fascinating topics from the primitive to the cutting-edge. A typical episode might take you from a Dante-quoting butcher in Panzano, Italy, to a traditional Door County, Wisconsin fish boil, to the inferno beneath a Moroccan bathhouse and the cooks who use its heat. There's often also a brief recipe or technique worth trying at home.

We've thoroughly enjoyed most of the show's two seasons so far on our local PBS stations, but only last week did I visit the Diary of a Foodie Web site and notice that all 20 episodes of the first season are available online for free downloading and viewing in iTunes. That's eight and two-thirds total hours!

Go and get it.

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Book review: I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, by Crystal Zevon
By Mark Czerniec
April 1, 2008 2:55 PM

I have been a Warren Zevon fan since "Werewolves of London" first hit my radio in 1978, and I even had the honor of being mistaken for him at one of Jackson Browne's Summerfest appearances around that same time (I had similar long hair and glasses). Over the years, we loved to see Warren filling in on the Late Show with David Letterman, and we were heartbroken when he made his last appearance there, announcing that he had terminal cancer (mesothelioma). The VH1 special about the recording of his final album, The Wind, was a study in perseverance that I will never forget.

Somewhat like Walter White in Breaking Bad, Warren apparently was determined to leave as much as he could to those who survived him, and so he also assigned his ex-wife Crystal Zevon to write the story of his life. But, he insisted, " ... you gotta promise you'll tell 'em the whole truth, even the awful, ugly parts."

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Shine a Light: Martin Scorsese's new Rolling Stones movie
By Mark Czerniec
March 30, 2008 12:56 PM

I was bouncing around on the Web yesterday when I saw an ad for yet another Rolling Stones concert movie that's apparently coming out this Friday in IMAX theaters.

Now, I have been a Rolling Stones fan since I received Goat's Head Soup as a Christmas present at age 13 in 1973. I will never forget watching Gimme Shelter for the first of many times on late night TV in my high school years, or seeing Mick Jagger mocking my stunned, slack-jawed expression back to me from the stage at Soldier Field on my eighteenth birthday.

I love the Stones.

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Book review: The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg
By Mark Czerniec
March 24, 2008 5:20 PM

I've come down from the upper class to mend your rotten ways.
My father was a man-of-power whom everyone obeyed.
So come on all you criminals!
I've got to put you straight just like I did with my old man
twenty years too late.

— Jethro Tull, Thick as a Brick

You can sense the relief welling up in George W. Bush these days like a long-awaited gusher. He may as well be a sixth-grader in class on a 70-degree afternoon in May with the windows open. You could see it as the president tap-danced, waiting for his hopeful successor, Sen. John McCain, to come over for a hot dog on March 5. His tribulation is almost over; baseball games and mountain biking are beckoning.

Watching that scene, I was dumbstruck once again, as I have been for the past eight years. I've never been able to fathom who the man in that suit might be and what makes him do the things he does — from wiping his glasses on Late Show producer Maria Pope to invading Iraq. Obviously, recalling moments like Bush's father breaking down over the end of his brother Jeb's political road, there must be some strong undercurrents below that family's surface. However, I've never seen them clearly charted.

So I was intrigued, to say the least, when I stumbled across Jacob Weisberg's new book The Bush Tragedy at Amazon.com. The description there touts Mr. Weisberg as the author who "uncovers the 'black box' from the crash of the Bush presidency" with a biography that "cracks the code."

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Top Chef Chicago
By Mark Czerniec
March 11, 2008 5:22 PM

I'm not a huge fan of reality television, but I am feeling my pulse quicken at the thought of a new season of Top Chef premiering Wednesday night on Bravo at 9 p.m. Central. Throw in the fact that this season's competition is set in Chicago, and I almost want to start phoning everyone I know to alert them.

Top Chef follows a standard elimination contest format. Sixteen aspiring chefs are gradually thinned to a single winner through a series of cooking challenges — typically one "Quickfire Challenge" and one "Elimination Challenge" per episode. The "Quickfire" task is usually immediate, on-the-spot, and something that takes no more than an hour or two to complete. Winners generally gain immunity from elimination. The "Elimination" test which follows typically involves a concept or theme, often an unusual location, and frequently some conspicuous product placement. At the end of this challenge, the show's panel of judges chooses a winner and also tells one chef to "pack your knives and go."

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Made in Spain with José Andrés
By Mark Czerniec
March 7, 2008 5:22 PM

I seem to be on a little bit of a Spanish kick with my posts here recently, so let's go for trillizos.

If you like chefs with wacky accents and cooking shows that amuse you while you're learning things, then set your TV-watching machine right now to catch the next installment of Made in Spain on your local PBS channel.

I first became aware of Chef José Andrés last July when he was interviewed by Dorothy Hamilton on her Chef's Story program. The fact that he had apprenticed under Ferran Adrià at El Bulli, reputed to be the best restaurant in the world, caught my attention. What really impressed me, however, was the guy's heart and imagination as he asked people to consider how fascinating even a tomato seed or a glass of water can be when approached creatively. For someone who was trained at the Los Alamos of molecular gastronomy, he was incredibly passionate about the miracle of cotton candy.

While traveling the world as a sailor in the Spanish navy after his apprenticeship, Andrés first set eyes on the USA in Pensacola, Florida. He returned and spent some time in Norfolk and New York City before being offered the opportunity to help introduce tapas to America at Jaleo in Washington, D.C.

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Movie review: Volver (2006)
By Mark Czerniec
March 5, 2008 8:10 PM

Pedro Almodóvar, Spain's most prominent director, is especially known for his films about sisterhood and female solidarity, films like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) and All About My Mother (1999).

Volver (a Spanish verb meaning "to return") is another pilgrimage to the world of women, this one a stylish and colorful fable about resilient heroines dealing with disturbing events.

This Spanish-language movie, shot in Puertollano, Spain, stars Penélope Cruz as Raimunda, a breathtakingly beautiful and profoundly resourceful mother with a keen sense of smell and impressive catering skills. She and her more timid sister Sole (Lola Dueñas), a beautician, both now live on the outskirts of Madrid, but hail from La Mancha, where their parents died several years ago in a fire.

As the movie begins, there is concern about the health of their Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave) as well. We soon meet Aunt Paula's neighbor Agustina (Blanca Portillo) and Raimunda's daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) who, along with a mysterious older woman played by Carmen Maura, make up the rest of this tight, mutually supportive network.

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Restaurant review: Olde Madrid in downtown Racine
By Mark Czerniec
February 17, 2008 1:54 PM

Olde Madrid
418 6th St.
Racine, WI 53403-1218
(262) 619-0940

Having enjoyed tapas and paella over the years at Don Quijote in Milwaukee, Cafe Ba Ba Reeba and especially Emilio's Tapas in Chicagoland, we were excited when Manny Salinas and Natalie Pope opened Olde Madrid this past July on Racine's Historic 6th Street, a dynamic little strip of food and culture that runs west from downtown Racine.

During two visits this month, both on Saturday nights, we found the restaurant packed with lively patrons, people generally in their thirties to fifties wearing slightly upscale casual attire. Olde Madrid has been a big hit, winning several mentions in 2007's Best of Racine County, including second-place in the Best New Restaurant category.

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Campaign robo-calls: Mosquitoes of the political world
By Mark Czerniec
February 14, 2008 3:39 PM

It happened last night, at seven minutes before seven o'clock.

Amy and I were savoring our dinner of Cranberry-Pear Chicken (PDF recipe; we added fresh thyme), steamed asparagus and a cheap Zinfandel, and we were engrossed in Casino Royale, watching James Bond playing high-stakes Texas hold 'em in Montenegro. We were enjoying our first moments together in a day that had begun at 4:50 a.m.

Then the phone rang. I paused the movie, and Amy got up to answer it. It was Wisconsin for Hillary, pitching us via recorded message.

We are well aware that there is a primary on Tuesday, and we know that Hillary Clinton is on the ballot. Anyone who does not is probably in some sort of vegetative state. We have watched most of the debates, and hours upon hours of political coverage. We even read. The idea that an automated, prerecorded phone call would persuade us to vote for any candidate is downright insulting, and the fact that it interrupted our dinner and our movie is just plain annoying.

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