We had dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings bar and grill in West Covina on Monday, January 4, 2010, the first business day of the new year.  It’s a new branch of a national chain that was started by a group of people from Buffalo, NY.  We had first seen signs for it in late November or early December 2009.  It’s on Workman Ave. right off Citrus Ave. and right near the border with the city of Covina in a shopping center built during the past couple of years.  We drive by it when we go to church that, incidentally, involves crossing the Covina/West Covina border twice since the church is in Covina.  We learned from their website that Buffalo Wild Wings is a national chain and the next closest branch is in Chino Hills.  The West Covina branch had its grand opening on Tuesday, December 22, 2009.  We had considered going then, but had a family dinner at Pho Super Bowl scheduled for that day (see earlier review).

Our next plan was to try Buffalo Wild Wings on Wednesday, December 30 or New Year’s Eve Eve.  Since it had opened we had noticed that the parking lot for the shopping center was always full or nearly full.  However, I had to go to work early on Thursday, December 31, so I didn’t want to have to wait too long to get a table.  After I got home from work on Wednesday we drove to Buffalo Wild Wings.  The parking lot was crowded as usual and we had to drive around it a bit to find a space.  We noticed people waiting outside and there were also people waiting on benches inside.  It looked like they had been given pagers to let them know that their table was ready similar to the ones used at the Cheesecake Factory.  There was also a counter where people picked up take-out orders.  I thought, well, that’s a possibility if the wait is always too long.  We asked the hostess how long the wait was and she answered, “One hour.”  At least she was honest until other places that tell you 20 minutes that turns into an hour or more.  We left, but not before picking up a take-out menu.

We learned from the menu and the Buffalo Wild Wings website that they have many different kinds of sauces to choose for the wings and other dishes.  They have levels of spicy from mild to medium to hot to “Blazen” (I think that’s the term).  There are also some varied, exotic, and ethnic flavors such as teriyaki, honey barbecue, Asian spice, and Caribbean Jerk.  The menu includes wings both traditional and boneless that can be cooked with any of the sauces.  There are sections for appetizers and chicken tenders including “naked” tenders that are grilled rather than breaded and fried.  There’s a section for flatbreads that are like pizzas made with flatbread, barbecue sauce, cheese, and usually a meat such as chicken.  They also serve burgers, ribs, sandwiches such as pulled pork, and much more than just wings.  They have many different beers on tap including ones I hadn’t heard of such as Miller Genuine Draft Light.  For nondrinkers they serve some interesting flavors of lemonade: mango, berry, and huckleberry.  They also have desserts.  We also learned from the menu that they have bar trivia games.  Now that was something we had to try.

We planned to try going again on Monday, January 4.  We figured it might not be as busy on a Monday, but if it was still was busy we could afford to wait an hour for a table.  Traffic was slow on Citrus Avenue that evening because roadwork had closed the left lane at Arrow Highway.  The parking lot looked busy but when we drove in we noticed there were many spaces in between the cars that were there.  We parked fairly close to the door to the restaurant and reached it before 7 PM.  This time there was no one waiting outside and even fewer people waiting on the benches inside.  The group in front of us was seated right away.  The hostess told us she could seat us as soon as a table was cleaned.  She gave a choice between being seated in the bar or the dining area.  We chose the latter and within a few minutes she seated us at a booth along the south wall of the large dining area.

We couldn’t believe our luck: practically no wait for a large table that was well located.  The dining room has TV’s all around it mostly showing sporting events such as Monday Night Football and the BCS Fiesta Bowl between Texas Christian University (TCU) and Boise State.  Between the screens on the walls were various sports memorabilia: cards, posters, photographs, banners such as those listing the years USC and UCLA were college football national champions, and Kobe Bryant’s Laker jersey.  The restaurant looked more than half full.  We couldn’t see the bar area that was slightly elevated from the dining area.  The sound of the televised Fiesta Bowl played over the speakers.  My wife saw some posters just above the windows that advertised 50 cent wing Tuesdays and 60 cent wing Thursdays.

The server soon came by and gave us menus.  They had additional items that we hadn’t seen on the online menu or the take-out menu including Flatbread Flips that were like tacos made with flatbread and an additional dessert.  We read over the menus and placed our orders.  The first item the server brought was my wife’s huckleberry lemonade.  Then they brought our Buzztime (www.buzztime.come) trivia portable game console, a blue box with a small keyboard and monochrome digital display.  We read some of the instructions and learned that there were other games such as sports games and that players could register as club players and accumulate points.  We hit the start button to play the game and it said, “Get ready to answer” the next question.  But when it said, “Answer now”, no question appeared on the console screen.  We tried just guessing.  The instructions said the questions were multiple choice and to hit 1-5.  We didn’t do very well guessing when we didn’t know the question.

It took a little while for our food to be ready and the server brought us our entrees before our appetizer.  She said they had made our appetizer but then had accidently dropped it on the floor.  She offered to have them make another at a reduced price but we declined because our entrees looked like enough food.  I had the Smokestack Flip that consisted of pulled pork with honey barbecue sauce, fried onion rings, coleslaw, and jalapenos all inside two halves of a flatbread “taco”.  It came in a basket of chips with salsa on the side.  The sauce was spicy despite being low on the heat scale, probably due to the jalapenos.  But combined with the onion rings and coleslaw it was very good.  The pork was fully cooked only slightly chewy.  It was surprisingly a good amount of food.  The chips and salsa were just OK but this isn’t a Mexican restaurant.  My wife enjoyed her buffalo chicken flatbread that was like a small pizza with chicken, cheese, and spicy garlic sauce.

While we ate our entrees the server brought us our appetizer.  We had originally ordered four “naked” chicken tenders with medium sauce.  They brought us four tenders grilled with what looked like pepper and no sauce.  The server said they were compliments of the manager since they had dropped our original order.  We tried a few and they were still good without the sauce: fully cooked, juicy, and with smoky flavor.  The rest we took home and had in a salad the next day.  After we finished our entrees my wife ordered a dessert from the menu insert that had also shown the flatbread flips.  It was Sweet Cinnamon Bites: bits of sweet cinnamon bread pudding around a large scoop of vanilla ice cream that also had cinnamon sprinkled on it.  She enjoyed it and found that the ice cream was the kind that didn’t melt too quickly.

My wife noticed that on a flatscreen TV above the window they were showing photos of the trivia players with the highest accumulated points.  We then realized that the trivia questions appeared on these screens and not on the game console.  We saw our user ID, “VERDNT” in 5th or 6th place with zero points.  It was the latter half of a trivia game where players get more points the sooner they answer the question.  As time passed the wrong answers would disappear leaving only the correct one.  We got a few questions but didn’t place higher than 4th or 5th.  We didn’t know if the other players were at the West Covina branch or at other branches across the region and the country.  We were more ready for the next game, Countdown Trivia.  It was similar to the prior game in that we got more points for answering sooner starting with 1,000 points and dropping to zero.  But it was different in that the wrong answers did not disappear.  Instead, three clues gradually appeared: the first two eliminating wrong answers and the third indicating the correct one.  There were three rounds of five questions each.

We did well in the first round getting right answers to most of the questions quickly.  Soon we were just a few points off the lead and then we took the lead.  In either the first or second round we lost the lead but soon got it back.  The questions covered several categories including music, movies, and history.  We missed a question about the Mint in Philadelphia being the first government building built after the U.S. Constitution was signed.  We also missed one about the Lakota Sioux being the Indian tribe featured in the movie Dances with Wolves.  We noticed one player wasn’t getting any questions right.  Maybe they were like we were in the beginning and hadn’t yet seen the questions on the screen.  We were the only ones to quickly get the question about the U.S. fighting the British during the War of 1812.  By the third round we had a good lead over the others.  We got one about the meaning of Aud Lang Syne and with 2-3 questions our lead was unreachable.  We had to think to get the last questions and we weren’t able to get our score above 10,000.  We still placed first with a score of 9,745 and the screen showed that our score was second on a list of recent high scores.  I think the maximum score is 15,000.

We left Buffalo Wild Wings at about 8:25 PM and if we had had to wait an hour for a table we would have probably been still waiting for our food at that time.  Instead we had finished three courses and played a full game of Countdown Trivia.  We’ll be back because we haven’t tried their wings and there are many other sauces to try.  They also have music trivia on Saturdays at 6 pm.

Shakira released her latest studio album in November 2009.  We downloaded it (legally), burned it to CD, and listened to it while driving to our relatives’ house for Thanksgiving. I’ve been listening to Shakira for over 10 years now ever since I saw the video for her song “Inevitable” on one of the Spanish language channels.  I think it was Univision.  I got the album “Donde Esta Las Ladrones” that includes that song and is full of cerebral melodic songs along with soulful love songs all in Spanish.  They now seem like classics: the emotional and celebratory “Inevitable”, the soulful “Tu”, the political “Octavio Dia” and “No Creo”, the fun-sounding but still serious “Ciego Sordamundo” (Blind deaf-mute) and the title track, the quiet “Moscas en la Casa”, and the loud raucous “Ojos Asi” with its Middle Eastern rhythms.  I soon learned that Shakira is from Colombia like Juanes.  She’s from the town of Barranquilla and had been famous in Latin America since the mid 1990’s.  When I first moved it L.A., I would listen to Spanish radio stations and watch the Spanish channels to keep up with the Spanish I had learned in college.  I heard many of Shakira’s songs both from listening to 107.5 KLVE FM and watching Univision and Telemundo.

I soon acquired her first major CD: “Pies Discalzos” that was originally released in 1995 when she was 17 or 18.  She had actually released two CD prior to that one: “Magia” in 1990 and “Peligro” in 1993, but these are hard to find.  “Pies Discalzos” consists primary of love songs but some still rock such as “Donde Esta Corazon.”  “Estoy Aqui” was one I heard frequently on KLVE.  She won two or three Latin Grammys at the inaugural awards show in September 2000 and did an impressive performance of “Ojos Asi” on the show.  She still was not very well known among English-speaking Americans until November 2001 when she released “Laundry Service”, her first English language album.  Its songs were also catchy with intelligent lyrics.  There was at least one song just in Spanish on the CD, “Te Dejo Madrid” and two songs with both Spanish and English versions: “Where ever Whenever” (“Suerte”) and “Objection Tango”.  There was also an English version of “Ojos Asi” (“Eyes Like Yours”).

In the fall of 2002 we saw Shakira perform live at Staples Center for the L.A. leg of her “Tour of the Mongoose”.  I joined one of her fan clubs so I could get tickets before the regular ones went on sale.  I got seats in the front row of the top level and also got commemorative tickets with prints of paintings done by Shakira herself.  The concert was impressive with major production.  She did many songs from her earlier Spanish language albums.  The crowd was mostly young Latinas.  She did a couple of English language covers: Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like  a Lady” and AC/DC’s “Back in Black”.  There was one point where she was supposed to play drums but that didn’t work out and she said that she “owed us one.”  She had several costume changes and had the audience sing along with “Estoy Aqui”.  The concert ended after a first or second encore with an extended, production-heavy version of “Where ever Whenever” where she was brought out on a moving platform from above the stage and cannons shot out lots of confetti into the crowd on the floor.  When she finished she disappeared through a trap door in the stage floor.

A week or two later we were at the deli Dan’s Subs in Woodland Hills.  We overheard the deli’s manager, who was older than us, talking with another employee about being at the Shakira concert.  So she doesn’t just appeal to young Latinas and people like us.  I later read that Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez (known as “Gabo”) is a fan.

In 2005 Shakira released two new albums: the Spanish language “Fijacion Oral Volume I” and the English language “Oral Fixation Volume II”.  The former included the loud, rhythmic Reggaeton (labeled as Shaketon) song “La Tortura” featuring Alejandro Sanz.  The latter included the song “Don’t Bother”.  It didn’t do as well as expected so later they released a version with the song “Hips Don’t Lie” with Wyclef Jean.  This was a bit of a shallow departure from her more cerebral themes and I’m glad I got the original album before it was re-released.  Shakira recorded a duet with Beyonce, “Beautiful Liar” and in January 2009 performed at President Barak Obama’s inauguration with Usher and Stevie Wonder.

After “Hips Don’t Lie” I wasn’t sure what to expect of the next album to be released in late 2009.  The first single, “She Wolf” was in a similar vein, though it had a brash silliness to it.  Shakira had said she wanted her album to cheer people up during the recession.  The album consists of 13 tracks, a few of which may be bonus tracks and three of them are Spanish versions of English tracks.

The album begins with the title track, the electronic, quick-rhythm “She Wolf”.  It gets a bit silly with Shakira howling during the chorus.  Not her best, but interesting.  I saw the video online and it gets fairly suggestive.  The next song “I Did it Again” is a duet with rapper Kid Cudi.  It has some verbal not-too-fast verses.  For the chorus there’s a bit of a tribute to Michael Jackson with Shakira singing “Annie” and Kid Cudi singing “are you OK” or something like that.  The song seems to be about making a mistake: going with the wrong guy, so it’s not the same as “Oops, I did it again”, though it has the shallowness.  Kid Cudi has an extended rap towards the end where he mentions how Shakira said, “your hips don’t lie”, a reference to her earlier song.  The next song starts with a rhythmic percussive beat.  “Long Time” has the same level of shallowness as the preceding songs, or maybe it’s just silly.  How many other songs have the lyric “You got me thinking outside the box”?

The next song, “Why Wait”, has a similar rhythmic beat that almost sounds Middle Eastern.  It follows the common theme of the other songs and I found it more enjoyable when I didn’t listen to the lyrics.  The theme of the next song, “Good Stuff”, is nearly identical but the rhythm is faster and more electronic than percussion based.  It includes the silly-sounding “The grass is much greener with us on it.”  The theme finally gets more interesting with the next track, “The Men in this Town”.  It’s about L.A. and movie stars and starts by singing “Matt Damon’s not meant for me” in the first verse.  It goes on to mention the Skybar to the Standard (Hotel in Downtown L.A.).  It’s a fun party song with enough character to overcome its shallowness and it ends with some high singing.  I also like the next song, “Gypsy”, a slower song with acoustic (banjo?) and string accompaniment.  It’s about the gypsy life (“I might steal your cloths and wear them if they fit me.”)  It has the requisite silliness, a fun little song.

It back to shallowness with the next song, “Spy”, another collaboration with Wyclef Jean, this time celebrating an obsessive, overprotective boyfriend.  But it sounds fun and has some interesting “skat” like singing by Shakira.  The next song, “Mon Amour”, is a bit more interesting since it’s sung by a woman whose heart has been broken (“I hope you have a horrible vacation.”)  It’s a fast song heavy on guitar and pathos.  The end gets a little silly, though.  The next three songs are Spanish versions of the songs “She Wolf” (“Loba”), “I Did it Again” (“Lo Hecho este Hecho”) without Kid Cudi, and “Why Wait” (“Anos Luz”).  I think the songs sound better in Spanish.  The lyrics just sound better and somehow the songs don’t seem as shallow, unlike the last song, “Give it Up to Me”, a bonus track in English featuring Little Wayne.  The song is rhythmic and catchy but the subject matter about being submissive may not be the best message.  The song is popular, though.  I heard it playing on KISS FM at Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant on January 11, 2010.

Like the song, I can’t say that the album “She Wolf” is Shakira’s best effort.  It has some interesting songs and the music is good, often overshadowing the lyrics.  It’s always nice when a place in my old neighborhood, the Standard in Downtown L.A. in this case, gets mentioned in a song.  But overall Shakira has continued the successful “Hips Don’t Lie” formula and made an entire album out of it.  I guess there’s a fan base for that, but I found it a bit lacking.  It makes me want to listen to a better album such as “Donde Estan Las Ladrones”.  Shakira has come a long way since singing about “John Paul Satre” and “Carlos Marx”.  I’m just not sure it’s the best way.

I don’t know how Three Trapped Tigers by G. Cabrera Infante got on my books to read list.  It’s not a new book having been published in 1965 in the original Spanish and in 1972 in its English translation.  Maybe it was mentioned in the old Book Review section of the L.A. Times in the review of a different, more recent book as a comparison.  It’s about Cuba and I’ve read a few books that partially or entirely took place in Cuba, most recently Monkey Hunting by Cristina Garcia.  In any case, Three Trapped Tigers had been on my list for several years and I figured I better get it off either by reading it or attempting to read it.  It wasn’t available at the Covina Public Library but it was at the Cal State L.A. library in the original 1971 English translation edition.

I started reading it and the first page just before the prologue appears to be a map of the major streets of Havana, Cuba.  I believe most of the book takes place there during the time just before Castro’s revolution.  But in the first 50 pages it’s hard to get a sense of where the story takes place and what it’s about.  I had read that the book had been compared favorably to the book Ulysses by James Joyce and I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.  The prologue and the first seven chapters, all unlabeled and lacking even numbers, seem to each be written from a different point of view.

The prologue is a long monologue intro by an emcee at a nightclub.  The monologue goes on for one long paragraph introducing dignitaries in the audience, making jokes, and switching between English and Spanish.  Sometimes the Spanish is translated in the next sentence and sometimes it isn’t.  It seems to be more of a random rant than a prepared speech that reacts to the famous people as they are spotted.  It doesn’t reveal much about the emcee.  I’m not sure if he’s a man or she’s a woman and I can only guess he’s a man from the time period and his compliments of the ladies.

The first section is called “Beginners” and the first chapter is a monologue of childhood memories.  The next is a letter from a woman in Havana to a friend in another town whose daughter is in Havana leading a “scandalous” life as a model.  Then there’s another slang-filled rant and then another monologue about sneaking into movie theaters that also touches on the unrest in the street (that eventually leads to the revolution?).  The next chapter is one side of a phone conversation that seems to include a lot of nonsense.  Maybe that’s more realistic.  At one point the caller mentions the name Hermenegildo.  This chapter is followed by the first person account of a man trying to procure a raise.  The account is heavy on reflection.  The next chapter is about a man trying to start a new life but things get strange and dark very quickly.  In fact, the chapter is followed by two pages of black.  By this point I had reached the rule of 50 (page 54 actually) and I just wasn’t getting into the book.  I guess it consists of different voices in Havana during the time period but they all seem dark and disjointed.  There is a lot of cursing and possibly lots of pretentious symbolism and unreliable narrator angles.  I’ll leave this book for the literary scholars and the readers of Joyce and I can now remove it from my booklist.

In October or November of 2009, David Bisbal released his fourth studio album, “Sin Mirar Atras” (“without looking back”, sounds a bit like the Boston song title “Don’t Look Back”).  I’ve been listening to his music since the fall of 2003 when I saw him perform on the televised Latin Grammy Awards back when they were broadcasted on CBS with English commentary.  They moved to a Spanish channel with Spanish commentary in 2005.  When I first saw Bisbal on the 2003 telecast what first struck me was how he appeared on stage by sliding down a transparent slide.  He and the band and dancers (who also took the slide) then launched into his powerful, rollicking song “Llorare las Penas.”  After they finished, host George Lopez said something about only a Latino would be so lazy as to use a slide to reach the stage.  I believe Lopez also mentioned that Bisbal was a top finisher of Spain’s version of American Idol called Operacion Triumfo.

A few days after seeing that telecast I went to a music store, probably Tower at the time, and bought Bisbal’s debut CD “Corazon Latino” that had come out the year before.  It contained three fast intense songs (“Ave Maria”, “Llorare las Penas”, and “Corazon Latino”) and many softer but very soulful ballads including a duet with Spanish singer Chenoa.  I enjoyed it especially the faster songs that were tinged with Flamenco sound.  My wife (girlfriend at the time) enjoyed Bisbal’s Spanish accent especially his pronouncing the “s” sound as “th” such as “corazon” as “corathon”.  Bisbal released a follow-up album in 2004, “Buleria”, that had equal numbers of fast Flamenco-tinged pop songs and soulful ballads.  It alternated between the two and I liked this album even better than the first, especially the title track and “Camino y Ven”.  He performed on the Latin Grammys again that year first performing the song “Oye el Boom” from “Buleria”.  The dancers wore blank t-shirts with the shiny logo “db” on them.  He then performed a ballad as a duet with Jessica Simpson (Jeththica Thimpthon?) where he sang in Spanish and she sang in English.

In November 2004 I saw Bisbal perform at the Avalon in Hollywood.  The concert was supposed to be at the Wiltern on a Saturday but they moved it to the small venue on Friday due to low ticket sales, I believe.  I only found out about the change from the Weekender (or was it called Preview) section of the L.A. Times that came out on Thursdays.  I went to the Avalon and the crowded waiting to get in consisted mostly of young Latina women.  A venue security guard asked me where my date was.  I don’t recall if there was an opening act.  Bisbal had a full band, some with traditional instruments, and two dancers.  He sang well but his backup singers weren’t as strong as on his recordings.  He did one ballad that wasn’t from any of his albums.  One young woman made it up on stage to kiss him on the cheek.  His best performance was “Buleria” during the encore.  While there I got my own black shirt with the “db” logo.

In 2006 Bisbal released his third studio album, “Premonicion”, that was a departure from the Flamenco pop/soulful ballad formula.  Many songs were more serious such as “Que me iba a Decir” and “Aqui y Ahora”.  He tried experimenting with other styles such as spoken word raps and singing some lines in English such as in the song “Calentando Voy”.  There are also songs about serious issues such as “Soldados de Papel” about some countries enlisting children as soldiers.  The Reggaeton song “Torres de Babel” is about past injustices and features other rappers and singers.  Overall the songs were edgier, had more intensity, and showed progressive change.  The album also featured my favorite song so far by Bisbal, the very celebratory “Silencio” (Thilenthio).

In late 2007 or early 2008 my wife downloaded the live and compilation album “Premonicion Live” that included English versions of “Oye el Boom” (“Hear the Boom”), and “Me Derrumba” (“I’m Crumbling”) and a duet with Rihanna, “I Hate that I Love You”.  My wife also downloaded the latest album, “Sin Mirar Atras”, in late 2009.  It’s actually a deluxe version of the album that includes bonus tracks.  Overall, the music is similar to Bisbal’s music before “Premonicion.”  He has returned to his formula, somewhat.  The first track, “Esclavo de tus Besos” (“Ethclavo de tuth Bethoth”), is a fast, upbeat love song that he follows with a soulful ballad, “Mi Princesa” (“Mi Printhetha”) that has acoustic accompaniment.  He speeds things up for the next track, “Dame tu Amor”.  His fast songs don’t have the same level of production as those on his earlier album and that’s actually a nice change.  There aren’t too many background singers pronouncing the “s” as “s” rather than the proper “th”.

Unlike “Buleria” this album doesn’t alternate between fast and slow.  The next song is also fast and has a bit more production.  It’s the celebratory title track “Sin Mirar Atras” (“Thin Mirar Atrath”).  The next song, “Besos de to Boca” (“Bethoth de to Boca”) begins with a jazzy saxophone and has a bit of attitude.  The words make it sound like a sing of praise though the music makes it seem more like a soap opera or telenovela.  The next song, “Si Falta el Aire”, is more referential.  He follows this ballad with the equally reverential-sounding “Suenos Rotos” (“Thuenoth Rototh”) that has some strings accompaniment.  The next song is faster with some traditional strings and guitar.  “Al Andalus” (“Al Andaluth”) has a strong drum beat and I think the title alludes to the region of Andalucia in Spain.

It’s back to soulful ballads for the next song, “Antes o Despues” (“Anteth or Dethpueth”).  He seems to pronounce the “s” sound like “s” when singing the title words but he still sings “corathon.”  The song also has a strong guitar solo.  The next song is the fast and fun sounding “24 Horas” (“24 Horath”) about how his world would end if she isn’t in his arms in 24 hours or something like that.  The next track is the soft ballad “Cuando Hacemos el Amor” (“Cuando Hathemoth el Amor”) that has piano and acoustic guitar accompaniment.  A slightly more rhythmic ballad, “El Ruido”, follows.  He gets very soulful for the chorus.  I think this is the last song for the album proper and that the next two are bonus tracks.  The first is a duet with British teenage singer Pixie Lott who sings her part in English.  “Sufriras” (“Thufirath”) has a fast electronic beat and the title translates to “It will hurt”.  When Bisbal sings the song’s title in the chorus it sounds like he is saying the name of a character of the book Dune, Thufir Hawat.  Pixie Lott won the MTV award for Push artist, beating the band Hockey.

The last track of the CD is another soulful ballad, “Juro Que te Amo”, that’s similar to the third from the last track, “El Ruido”.  With this album, Bisbal has more or less gone back to his bread and butter: Flamenco-tinged pop and soulful ballads.  Unlike the title of the album he has “looked back” and done what originally made him successful.  Or maybe he’s just doing what he wants and not comparing it to what he has done before.  Either way, he still sounds good.  The album is energetic and doesn’t want for air (“falta aire”).  It’s not just noise (“ruido”), nor is it broken dreams (“suenos rotos”), and you could listen to it for 24 hours (“24 Horas”) and you will not hurt (“no sufriras”).  David Bisbal keeps it fun “Anteth o Dethpueth.”

I first heard of Fitz-James O’Brien from the book Dictionary of American Literature by Robert F. Richards that I read in 2008 (see earlier review).  The Dictionary had an interesting and sad description of O’Brien and his work.  It described how he came to the U.S. from Ireland after wasting his 8,000 (pound) inheritance in London and Paris.  After periods of success from his writing and poverty he served in the American Civil War during which he was cited for gallantry.  Unfortunately he was wounded and died from a tetanus infection in 1862 at age 34.  The Dictionary blurb described his stories as “written in the tradition of Poe.”  The most interesting part of the blurb was the one-sentence summary of O’Brien’s most well-known story, “The Diamond Lens”: “a story about an inventor whose powerful microscope enabled him to see a tiny female in a drop of water with whom he fell in love.” (Richards, p. 159)

The whimsical description made me want to check out the story and possibly other stories.  There was nothing by Fitz-James O’Brien at the Covina Public Library but the Cal State L.A. library had The Diamond Lens and Other Stories that contains all the stories by Fitz-James O’Brien.  His name, incidentally, translates to “bastard son of James, grandson of Brien”.  The book contains seven stories, each one 20-60 pages long.  The longer ones, including “The Diamond Lens” have chapters of 8-12 pages each.  The book was never published during O’Brien’s lifetime and the stories originally appeared in magazines.  “The Diamond Lens” originally appeared in Atlantic magazine in January 1858.  This book was first compiled in 1932 and the edition at the Cal State L.A. library was published in 1970.  According to the table of contents, the first story is “The Diamond Lens” and at 47 pages plus a 17-page introduction that mean I only had to read 14-15 pages over the rule of 50 to finish it.  The book is light blue-green in color and has ten illustrations by Ferdinand Huszti Horwath depicting scenes from the stories.

The book begins with an introduction by Gilbert Seldes that gives more biographical information and some discussion of O’Brien’s writing style.  It seems to have been written long after the stories were originally published.  I think the intro was written in 1932 for the first edition of the collection.  It uses one word I didn’t know when discussing “an intellectual gap between the ratiocination of (Poe’s) detectives and the deeper mysteries he declared but did not expound.” (p. 11)  My Random House Dictionary defines “ratiocinate” as “to carry on a process of logical reasoning.”  So Poe’s stories have a gap between what the detectives in the story figure out and the full mystery.  Seldes describes O’Brien as “a Poe in the minor mode.” (p. 10)  Seldes also goes into more detail about O’Brien’s service in the Civil War.  I think the event for which he was cited for gallantry was when he rode ahead of his regiment with General Lande at Bloomery Gap.  The two of them charged a Confederate force and demanded that the rebel commander surrender.  He complied.

The first and title story, “The Diamond Lens” reads fairly quickly.  There’s a little more to it than the Dictionary blurb’s one-sentence summary.  It’s told in the first person by the inventor of the microscope who seems to be an anti-social, obsessive, and somewhat disturbed individual.  The story covers most of his life though it focuses primary on his invention and discovery.  The title comes from his needing a rare diamond to make the microscope.  Though it is about a scientist, the story includes several elements of fantasy.  It also turns out to be darker than whimsical and does not end happily.  The moral seems to be to not get carried away by your obsessions and don’t tamper with the occult.  It is similar to Poe or perhaps that old scary fable “The Monkey’s Paw”.

After finishing the title story I thought I’d try the next one, “The Wondersmith”.  The first page describes a poor dirty street that the unnamed narrator likes because it has “outward character”.  But by the 15th page the story becomes even stranger and darker than “The Diamond Lens”.  I found myself not wanting to know how it ends or even what happens next so I stopped reading at about 21 pages in.  I had past 50 pages and finished nearly 90 pages, but I had enough.  Perhaps there was a reason O’Brien’s works cannot be found at the Covina Public Library.

We went to Pho Super Bowl with Mom and Dad (my parents-in-law) and our sister and brother-in-law on Tuesday, December 22, 2009.  Mom first heard about Pho Super Bowl from her niece (our cousin).  She also saw that it got good reviews on yelp.com.  She then tried it herself with some friends.  To get there from the house we drove north on Ramona, followed it to where it became Mission Drive, and then turned left on Main Street.  That intersection is a bit confusing because the east-west street is named Main Street to the left (west) and Las Tunas Ave. to the right (east).  We then turned left into a shopping center with a big sign for Pho Super Bowl.

Pho is pronounced “fuh” and is Vietnamese rice noodle soup.  Pho Super Bowl is a small to medium-sized restaurant with yellow walls and framed photos of scenes from Vietnam on them.  They seated us at a table for eight and gave us menus.  We learned from them that the “Super Bowl” in the restaurant’s name referred to one of the two sizes of bowls of pho that could be ordered and not to the NFL championship game.  The other size that can be ordered is Regular.  Every menu item has a corresponding number and there are two pages of all the different phos.  However, there didn’t seem to be much variation among them.  Most contained steak either rare flank or well-down flank, and/or brisket.  They also had chicken, pork and vegetarian pho.  The menu had many items beside pho.  There were sections for appetizers, rice dishes, vermicelli dishes, and on the back page were listed drinks and desserts including many teas and some sundaes.

We placed our orders by telling the waiter the numbers corresponding to each choice.  On our table were carols with utensils: forks, spoons, deep plastic soup spoons, and chopsticks.  They brought us our drinks first.  I ordered the soybean milk so I could compare it to the soy milk that I often drink.  It tasted like it came right from the beans and didn’t have any added sweeteners or flavors.  That doesn’t mean it tasted better than soy milk, though.  But it quenched my thirst.  They also brought the pot of tea that Dad had ordered for us.  Next they brought our appetizer of two orders of egg rolls.  They were medium size and came with garnish of rice noodles, shredded carrots, and lettuce.  There were some small bowls of sweet clear sauce for dipping.  The egg rolls were crunchy and flavorful but also very hot in temperature.  The first one I bit into burned my mouth.

They then brought our entrees.  Each one looked like a lot of food.  Even my regular bowl of pho didn’t look much small than another’s super bowl.  They also brought plates of vegetables to add to our pho such as bean sprouts.  I added a few but I guess I was supposed to let them cook a bit because they tasted too raw.  I was too hungry to wait.  The pho broth had a lot of flavor and was slightly sweet.  I’d only had pho once or twice before.  I think the last time was as a lunch special at Garland Café.  At Pho Super Bowl I got the number 14: pho with well-done flank steak and golden brisket.  The meat was in strips among the rice noodles and flavored by the pho broth.  Some strips of meat had quite a bit of fat.  I ate most of the broth before trying the noodles so it wouldn’t be too messy but I still got some oily drops on my shirt.

Mom enjoyed her pork chop with rice.  It looked flattened tender and she said it tasted good, not too salty.  My wife thought her Cornish game hen was OK but not as good as when Mom makes it.  She also felt that the butter rice that came with the hen didn’t taste particularly buttery.  As we finished our entrees the waiter gave us complimentary tapioca pudding for dessert.  It was made with coconut milk and tasted OK.  I still suffered from some digestive irritation that kept me awake through the night and made the next day a struggle.  I can’t think what could have caused it.  It didn’t feel like I had dairy.  Perhaps it was the soybean milk, the raw bean sprouts, or the tapioca pudding?  In any case, when it comes to Super Bowls, I’ll stick with the NFL championship game.

In 2009 the Swedish “Hair Metal” band Europe came out with a new album, “Last Look at Eden”.  I’ve been following them off and on for over 20 years.  They went on hiatus between 1993 and 1999 when they re-formed to play The Final Countdown at a concert on the eve of the year 2000.  Since then they’ve released studio albums in 2004, 2006, and their latest in 2009.  I’ve never seen them live unless you count their live almost acoustic webcast in January 2008.  (see earlier review)  They haven’t toured the U.S. since 2004 when I wasn’t following them as closely.  I think I heard that the tour wasn’t very successful and they’ve spent most of their time touring Europe (the continent) with some occasional concerts in Japan and South America.  In 2009 they played over 10 venues in Germany alone.  Looks like I’ll have to go somewhere like that to actually see them live.

Obtaining this latest album wasn’t very easy either.  Their website, www.europetheband.com, said that the album was going to be released sometime around September 15, 2009.  But when that day came around it was only released in a few select countries and was only available to order as an import on websites such as amazon.com.  Import versions can cost twice as much or more than domestic releases.  I think this one cost around $27.  The website cdnow.com was selling the album to be released in England (and possibly Asia) for only around $14.95 but it wouldn’t be made available until September 28, 2009.  I decided I could wait until then.

After two weeks I placed the order online and it took less than a week to arrive.  It seemed like the websites were selling different versions of the album, each with a different color trim on the CD case.  The one I got has a white cardboard case with orange-brown trim.  I had seen the cover of the album on the band’s website before it came out.  It’s the cross section of an apple sliced in halve from top to bottom surrounded by spikes on its skin.  The back shows more of the apple’s spiky exterior.  I’m guessing the apple represents either the Garden of Eden or the forbidden fruit of that garden.  The spikes mean that the fruit is now forbidden or that the garden is now off limits to us as if this cross section is our “last look.”  Anyway the symbolism, or my interpretation of it, may be a bit clumsy, but I still think it’s a great album cover because I like to eat apples.  You can make just about anything with them.  The album cover also includes the band’s name in their classic logo both on the front and side.

The CD consists of ten tracks plus a short prelude at the beginning and two live bonus tracks at the end.  It’s a very rock-oriented album that emphasizes their harder and faster sound more than their soulful side, though there are a couple of soulful tracks.  It begins with an orchestral prelude by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra that sounds a bit like a soundtrack or maybe a Mahler symphony.  It goes right into the first official track after about 50 seconds.  That song, the title track “Last Look at Eden” has a loud, hard, and anthemic beginning.  The lead singer, Joey Tempest, isn’t kidding when he sings, “and I won’t be quiet.”  The orchestral accompaniment continues throughout the song with heavy emphasis on the strings along with John Norum’s lead guitar.  Like most Europe songs it’s not easy to tell exactly what the song is about.  I think it’s a call to change the world or help solve the environmental problems.  It’s either take action now or take one “last look at Eden.”  Perhaps they believe the world now will be “Eden” compared to what it will become.  The theme is similar to their earlier big hit “The Final Countdown” without the science fiction overtones.

They lose the orchestra and overall political correct message for the next song, “Gonna get Ready”, but the loud fast rockin’ sound continues.  The theme is simply the title “get ready” though it’s not clear what to get ready for.  Just don’t hesitate, don’t fear, and try your best.  The theme changes for the next track, “Catch that Plane” that urges “my baby” to catch and plane and get back here presumably to work out some relationship problems.  Yeah, it’s a bit more selfish than getting ready or taking a last look at Eden.  But it’s just as rockin’.

They slow down for the next song, “New Love in Town”, that showcases Mic Michaeli’s keyboard playing along with Norum’s guitar and Tempest’s vocals.  The song seems to celebrate the beginning of a first love.  This is interesting because the book I just reviewed, How to Talk to Girls by Alec Greven explicitly states not to celebrate in front of the girl when you get together with her.  That’s probably why the video for “New Love in Town” has the band performing the song in an airplane hangar with no audience.  Then again, the song doesn’t always clearly refer to romantic love.  The chorus mentions how “you turned it around” and the bridges includes the profound lines “Everyone I met has made me what I am today/ Every choice I made has led me here today.”  I guess that’s how profoundly the new love has affected.  And the girl doesn’t want to hear about any of this.

They return to the fast rockin’ sound for “The Beast” that’s about going wild or possibly reacting to a situation (“We’re having more fun than we deserve.”)  The song has a bit of attitude with lines such as “we don’t show up, we arrive” and “we gotta live before we’re back to dust.”  The tone is urgent and only slows down for a short bridge.  The next song is only slightly slower, just as rockin’, and has a lot of attitude.  “Mojito Girl” is a about a party girl who’s the love with the voice singing the song (“can be the sweetest thing”).  The song gets self-referential with the line “Hey, let’s get out of this second verse.”  I wonder how the love of someone that “lost her halo a long time ago” and uses a mojito to “kill what’s left of her modesty” will be “the sweetest thing”.  This isn’t one of their better songs and reminds me a little of “Girl from Lebanon” from the 1991 album “Prisoners in Paradise.”

The next song is better.  It emphasizes Michaeli’s keyboards over Norum’s rockin’ guitar and has more of the anthemic song quality that I’ve enjoyed from their earlier songs.  The subject of “No Stone Unturned” is not clear.  It almost seems religious in nature (“Believe and you shall arrive.”)  It’s back to rockin’ guitar for the next song, “Only Young Twice”.  It seems to be about missed opportunities and the fleeting passage of youth, though it never really explains what is meant by only being young twice.  Is it like the James Bond film, You only Live Twice?  In any case twice young doesn’t seem to be enough.

They continue rocking with the next song “U Devil U” that’s actually a song of compliments.  They seem to have a thing for the wild and bad.  The song doesn’t measure up to their last devil song, “Devil Sings the Blues” from their 2006 album “Secret Society”.  They follow their latest devil song with “Run with the Angels.”  Are they paired to emphasize the religious dichotomy?  The song seems to be a pledge to be true to someone who “runs with the angel.”  It’s just as loud and rockin’ as the preceding “Devil” song.  Maybe they’re not all just about being bad.  The last track of the official album set, “In My Time” slows things down and sounds like a sad song with its haunting acoustic guitar.  But the lyrics indicate some joy.  It’s another pledge to be true as in “Run with the Angels” only more subdued.  Norum still has an electric guitar solo.  The song reminds me of “Settle for Love”, the subdued song that ends their 2004 comeback album “Start from the Dark”.

The official album tracks are followed by two live bonus tracks and the first of the two is fast becoming an old favorite of ours.  It’s the very rockin’ “Yesterday’s News” performed live in Paris in 2005.  We originally heard the song on their greatest hits CD “Europe 1982-1992” and it’s an outtake from their 1991 album “Prisoners in Paridise” making it 19 years old.  But its quality has held up and it is better than many songs on the “Eden” album.  The song has a slightly humorous chorus line: “I’m so down I’m reading Yesterday’s News.”  We find it even more humorous because my wife showed me an ad in one of her magazines for a brand of kitty litter called “Yesterday’s News.”  The next bonus track is a more recent song that’s just as rockin’: “Wake up Call” from “Start from the Dark”.  Midway through the song Tempest shouts, “Look out, Tokyo!”

Overall “Last Look at Eden” is pretty good but doesn’t quite measure up to the other two albums recently released by Europe.  It doesn’t quite have the standout anthemic emotional song that “Hero” is for “Start from the Dark”.  “Eden” attempt to have standouts with the title track and “New Love in Town.”  The musical quality of “Eden” also doesn’t match the more layered sound of the songs on “Secret Society”.  The music is simpler and the themes are less universal and altruistic.  But “Eden” still makes a good edition to their catalog.  The may not quite “Ride with the Angels” but they still rock like a “Beast”.  Let’s hope this isn’t the “Last Look . . .” at their music, that America stops thinking of them as “Yesterday’s News”, and they “Catch that Plane” that brings them on a U.S. Tour.