The Addendum "I tried to write shorter ~Mark Twain
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is an occasional journal of Oregon, from arts and books to public policy & transportation.
All content © 2006- by Alexander B. Craghead, except where otherwise noted.
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Book Reviews
Review: Here There Nowhere
The Ephemeral 'Net
Meet the G9
Portland Streetcar Obamamania
Bachelor's Special #1: Instant Noodles Review
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Cafe Unknown
Travel, History and Portland Oregon by Dan Haneckow
Jack Bog's Blog
By Jack Bogdanski of Portland, Oregon. (Like he needs any other introduction by now? -- A.B.C.)
For Portlanders Only
"Why buy a mattress anywhere else?"
Good Stuff NW
Featuring stuff that is good in the NW
LOST Magazine
LOST Magazine is an online monthly magazine that combines elements of many other literary, online, and national magazines with a singular mission--to reclaim in writing lost people, places, and things.
Mapes on Politics
Way West of the Beltway
Outside Is America
A journal about photography, roadtrips, trains and life, with occasional detours into movies, baseball, music, family and more.
The Photographers' Railroad Page
Good photos usually have good stories to go with them.... The goal of The Photographers' Railroad Page is to provide an outlet for top quality photographs and their story.
Portland Food & Drink
Throwing Ourselves on the Grenade of Bad Food to Save You
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A Conversation About Access & Mobility in the Portland/Vancouver Region
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Authors, readers, critics, media -- and booksellers
Rambling West
The musings of a farmer with a typewriter and camera
Stumptown Confidential
Documenting Portland, Oregon architecture, history, and culture through photos, postcards, and words.
The Unauthorized Observer
Observations on faith, photography, trains, baseball, the city where I live (Fullerton, Calif.), anything that I find funny (a lot of things) or irritating (some things) and various incidents involving friends and family.
Under the Weather
...the open road, fatherhood, family life, music, railroads, photography, popular and unpopular culture, sex, violence, religion, the oppression of consumerism and capitalism and the general bullshit that makes up modern life.
Urban Planning Overlord
A blog to counter the myths, lies, and demagoguery others use against sound city planning to further their own ends, fair and foul - but also to urge the profession itself to pull back from the occasional wretched PC exces.
VanPortlander
Living in Vancouver; working in Portland. I have some thoughts.
Whiskey, Texas
...life and experiences in Texas and the Southwest. Recurring themes: Photography, railroads, fading ads / ghost signs, fallen-flag railroad logos, boxcars, bicycling, Texas music, pop culture, sports, road trips, literature, kids and family.
World Scott
The Travel Writing and Photography of Scott Lothes
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Thursday, July 10, 2008
Review: Here There Nowhere
Labels: Art, Book Reviews, Books, New Books
Here There Nowhere
Paintings by Michael Brophy with essays by Jonathan Raban and William L. Lang. OSU Press, 121 The Valley Library, Corvallis, OR 97331-4501; http://oregonstate.edu/dept/press; 12.0 x 12.0 x 0.25 in; paperbound; 60 pages, 20 color images; $25.00
The landscape of the Pacific Northwest is an ever-changing one, and so it should be no surprise that artistic views on that landscape have also changed radically over time. By the close of the last century, Oregon, once labelled the "Pacific Wonderland" on the state's automobile license plates, had become a battlefield of ideas and ideals. Portland artist Michael Brophy has been trying to capture that essence of division and change over his career as a painter, with his most recent expression taking place in a series of large canvases all painted in 2007. Brophy calls this series Here There Nowhere, and it is the subject of a recent book by the same name produced by Oregon State University Press.
The beginning of the book form of Here There Nowhere is heralded with an essay about the history of landscape painting in the Pacific Northwest, written by Jonathan Raban. The essay, titled Battleground of the Eye, may seem familiar to readers; it was adapted from the introduction Raban wrote for 2001's The Pacific Northwest Landscape: A Painted History, printed by Sasquatch Books. Although this is not new material, it helps to ground the painting series into the wider context of the artistic representation of the landscape of the Pacific Northwest. The only error I noted was that the Northern Pacific that entered Tacoma in 1883 was not the creation of the legendary James J. Hill, but of industrialist Henry Villard; a minor esoteric quibble perhaps, but it would not have taken much to fact check the essay one more time.
Following Raban's essay come the paintings themselves. Brophy delivers us images on a heroic scale, reminiscent of revolutionary art from South America or Russia during the last century. These are grand canvases with grand ideas. And yet, the content chosen to express those ideas is inherently anti-heroic, mundane, dull. Brophy likes repeating patterns and vast expanses of subtleties over the boldness of an up-front statement. It doesn't look like he's trying to be pretty. Darkened fields, broad skies, blank cliff faces; they are all empty landscapes, and rarely is a human figure seen. 
Michael Brophy, Crack of Dawn. 2007, oil on canvas, 74 by 80 inches.
Image courtesy Laura Russo Gallery.
It is perhaps the night images that stand out the most. Night Truck and Meadow both are evocative. The strongest of these is perhaps Crack of Dawn, a canvas with a deep wet cloud cover and a thin strip of dawn that any local will immediately recognize as the aggregate of countless mornings. Here we see how subtlety and muted color choices are key to understanding Brophy's take on the landscape. Not all the night images work in the book, however: Full Dark is a study in subtleties that sadly does not translate well to print at all.
There is also an odd disjointed feel to the series. Some of the images have a dark, painterly, brooding approach, like Blowdown or Aftermath; the palette of the former reminds me of something from Carl Hall. On the flipside are strong traditionalist images such as Ruin, which feels sentimental in nature, or Day, with a painterly realism of something very tangible, in this case the rear of a semi-tractor driving some two-lane road to nowhere in the vast inland Pacific Northwest. 
Michael Brophy, Ruin. 2007, oil on canvas, 74 by 80 inches.
Image courtesy Laura Russo Gallery.
If anything rescues the disjointedness, it is a common theme of nearly cinematic ideas; every time I flip through the images of the series I start feeling like I am looking at a storyboard for a movie about life in the forgotten flyover corners of the much over-hyped PNW paradise. What is amazing is that Brophy offers us a social commentary, a critique even, of how we view the world, and yet he does not choose the traditional route of painting scarred industrial landscapes or denuded forests or the like. Instead, he simply shows us that this is how we usually view the world, through mundane eyes that see only the same boring monotony. In a way, his critique runs deeper than the typical environmental or social commentary, pointing that the problem isn't the clear-cut or the junk-pile, but instead it is our viewpoint. It is internal, it is within us.
Reproduction and presentation get fair marks. Brophy's paintings are all very large works, standing at 74 by 80 inches. To stand before one is to be dwarfed, even for a tall person, and any attempt to depict this series with any justice on paper must be admired for audacity if nothing else. I don't quite think that the publisher managed to pull this off; one square foot just can't give you the sense of scale that standing before the real thing can. Further, I feel that some of the subtlety of the originals has been lost in the reproduction.
Following the images comes an essay by William L. Lang. Lang brings us back to the subject rather than the medium, concentrating not on Brophy's paintings so much as on the story they are a part of. He ably discusses the relationship of humanity to the land of the region, with occasional examples pulled from Brophy's work. Although a short and interesting read, I feel that Lang's comments are in some ways duplicative of Raban's text, while at the same time weaker and not relying enough on how an artist such as Brophy sees this world. What I wish had been included was a short piece by the artist himself, but such is not included in the book.
Overall, Here There Nowhere is a slim but important volume that highlights how landscape painting in the Pacific Northwest is evolving. For artists or students of art in the region, it would make a valuable addition to the bookshelf.
Here There Everywhere is available from Powell's or Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher. Thanks to Laura Russo Gallery for supplying images and other assistance with this review.
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Saturday, July 5, 2008
The Ephemeral 'Net
I can still remember, as a child, my mother's big oaken desk. It was sturdy, if a little worn, with a black blotter top and drawers that were heavy and deep. It was always a cornucopia of sensations: sticky translucent yellow glue, a Swingline stapler in a very 1970s dusky pink, stamps with perforated edges from back in the day when you had to lick the backs to make them stick to anything. There were tons of multicolored pens lurking in the lap drawer, most dry and useless. There was almost always a bottle of ink, with an acrid, new-rain smell and a color somewhere south of violet and north of blue sky blue. When I think back to that desk it is no wonder that I became a nut about ephemera. Labels: Art, Design, History, Technology
The desk serves on today, but with slightly less pizazz. While it still holds checkbooks and postage and envelopes and the like, it also serves as a stand for a three year old iMac. I'm reminded of my own "desk" a bit, and the war that always goes on between the space my computer takes up and the space I need to spread out my eight-and-a-half-by-eleven redundant memory aides. (They used to call that paper in the 20th century.)
Earlier today I used my computer and the incredible power of the Internet for a very non-technical purpose: to find labels. You know the type: gum backed, with a little foil edge, the kind that used to go on the marbled covers of composition books, the kind that used to lurk n my mother's desk. I didn't find any, but much like when I go searching Wikipedia, I ended up making what a friend calls a "wiki-tree" of strange ephemeral goodness. Follow along, all you fellow paper geeks!
First up is Donovan Beeson, who makes various handmade stationery products and sells them on her Etsy page. Handmade envelopes, custom journals, shipping labels. All very cool stuff. Donovan also has a blog, Murmurs and Musings, which focuses naturally enough on the lost world of paper. While browsing through her archives, I found a post point towards sarcastic stationer 16 Sparrows, who had begun a campaign known as the "Letter Writer's Alliance". (You can buy LWA stationery here.) The LWA mission is, and I quote:"In this era of instantaneous communication, a handwritten letter is a rare and wondrous item. The Letter Writers Alliance is dedicated to preserving this art form; neither long lines, nor late deliveries, nor increasing postal rates will keep us from our mission. As a member of the Letter Writers Alliance, you will carry on the glorious cultural tradition of letter writing. You will take advantage of every opportunity to send tangible correspondence. Prepare your pen and paper, moisten your tongue, and get ready to write more letters!"
I always find it amusing to see the net used for these sorts of projects. Paper hasn't died, it's just become a fashion symbol! It's probably no surprise this kind of thing is up my alley, after all I do shop a Blue Moon Camera and Machine.
Another source for ephemeral goodness is PodPost. Sadly, their "Pod Post Mail Art Bento" is out of stock. Too bad, too, it combines all my love of ephemera and otakuness in one convenient bundle. Drat!
As I skipped along, I also ran into busynest cards. Busynest focuses on a very lost art -- the calling card. There's some really nice graphic design work here. These cards really do drive home the odd mixture the Internet has brought about: an out-of-date practice (calling cards) married to a very sleek and modern graphic design and sold worldwide over the 'Net. The 21st century is a strange place.
As for calling cards themselves? This page has the scoop on what they were and why. Interesting tidbits: a calling card doesn't include where you work, and includes your profession only if it gives you a title (M.D., General, etc...), as including your place of work or firm makes the card a business card, and therefore socially inappropriate to leave as a calling card:"it was considered to be in very poor taste to use a business card when making a social call. A business card, left with the servants, could imply that you had called to collect a bill."
Interestingly, what we consider today to be a business card -- flashy pictures, promotional saying, establishment name displayed prominently, and so forth -- was not at that time considered a business card at all, but a "trade card".
Now, where did I put my Fedora?
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Monday, April 21, 2008
Meet the G9
Although I am a die-hard film shooter, I've been pondering buying a digital camera for some time now. Top on my list has been the Canon Powershot G9. (Canon info here, Digital Photography Review thoughts here.) Part of Canon's extremely well made G series of point-and-shoots, it is a top of the line machine: slim, sleek, and extremely capable. Labels: Art, Photography, Technology
The Canon Powershot G9, courtesy khedra @ flickr
So I went out and bought one. As a friend of mine said to me when he heard the news, "it's a sign of the apocalypse!"
Now that I've had it a few weeks, I thought I'd put up a few images and share a few thoughts.
All of the following images have been resized and tweaked in Photoshop Elements 3.0; none required more than some levels adjustments and a light use of the unsharp mask. Overall I like my images more contrasty, so the tonal range is a bit more limited here than what the camera produces straight up. All were shot at ISO 400; this is the typical ISO I favor for film, so I felt it was a good starting point to evaluate the camera.
A petition gatherer on a westbound MAX Blue Line train on April 8th, 2008. Shooting people shots, street photography, and the like was the focus of this purchase. Using the G9 was far less intrusive than the n80 with its massive battery grip. Composing from the view screen, however, means I'm still a bit slower.
The driver's side headlamp from a Triumph Spitfire. This was an attempt at a macro shot, and I used the camera's manual focus mode to fine tune a shallow depth-of-field image. Here I felt the LCD panel was helping a lot. Additionally this was using the camera's built in "black and white mode". I haven't yet compared this to channel mixing and the like.
Another shot using the camera's built in black and white mode: here, detail from the truck of a flatcar in Roy, Oregon. The original had far more tonal range; I've taken my usual contrast upping method to it.
One of TriMet's 200 series MAX cars, waiting at the Hatfield Government Center in Hillsboro, Oregon, on the afternoon of April 11th. I was very happy with the good tone and smoothness in this image.
A burnt out building in Portland's Central Eastside Industrial District. Note that even at f/7.1 -- near to the cameras maximum f/8.0 f-stop -- there is some sun flare from shooting towards a bright object. 
Posters advertising a PBS special in part of Portland's Central Eastside Industrial District. The light was rather poor, and the camera didn't fix that. It also didn't make me breakfast the next morning. I better talk to my shrink about this.
A stairwell from the B. P. John Building on the campus of Marylhurst University. This was handheld at 1/30th, not all that shocking really. What was more shocking is that I also got decent, usable images shot at 1/8th of a second. So far the minimal light performance on the camera is pleasing me.
None of these images is part of a real test of the camera's limits. As Summer progresses I'm sure I"ll put the G9 through more trying circumstances and see how it fares. Initial reactions, however, is that the camera performs very very well -- but it's not a professional camera. When I'm really pushing the limits, the n80 with its elegant control layout and its proven, known responses is still the winner. And when I think of making long-term, serious images, its still my first choice.
However -- and this is a big however -- the world is more and more digital. When it comes to sharing photos of your latest project, or wanting a snapshot camera for a day trip, or needing to get an image shot and emailed in short order and still have it be useable for print, the G9 is awful hard to beat. Plus the camera allows me to keep shooting without cost or equipment concerns, keeping my skills sharpened. No, it's not one of the four horsemen, but it is a useful addition to my photographic toolbox.
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Friday, March 28, 2008
Portland Streetcar Obamamania
Can we have a time-out on the whole streetcar expansion thing? Labels: Civics, Design, Portland, Portland History, Public Policy, Transportation
Recently, the Oregonian printed a story on the impending Portland Streetcar System Plan. What's really interesting is to compare the system's proposed map, (as shown here in a Big O rendering,) with historic maps of the Portland Traction system, such as this one from 1924. They are amazingly similar.
The historian/nostalgist in me thinks this is really really cool. The pragmatist in me has a warning. One of the -- if not the primary -- goals of streetcar construction is development. This is nothing new really. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, streetcar lines were built to areas like Sunnyside or Council Crest specifically with development in mind. They opened up farmland to become subdivision stock, making fast commutes from outlying areas possible for the first time. In many cases lines were "aimed" into areas where land was empty and cheap.
And this puts the first hurdle in the way of the Streetcar System Plan: by largely copying the old Portland Traction alignments, it is adhering to a development pattern of a century ago, and not necessarily of today. This puts redevelopment smack in the middle of some of Portland's more vital neighborhoods. Do we really want or need to tear up Hawthorne or Belmont to install multi-story condo developments? Because that's one of the likely results of putting a streetcar in on these streets.
There's another problem too, and it also requires a brief history lesson.
Portland's now lamented streetcar system morphed into today's TriMet bus system. Most of the areas that Portland Traction's trolly lines established are the primary neighborhoods of today. Due to this, TriMet's bus routes mimic to an amazing degree the former streetcar lines, and in many cases can directly trace their existence to them, having evolved from streetcar to trolly-bus to diesel bus.
If the streetcar were about transportation, and not development, it might make a lot of sense to build these lines. It is, after all, where a lot of people are going to and from today.
But... uh... what about the buses?
By replicating the old Portland Traction routes, the Portland Streetcar is making a financial stab at the heart of TriMet's territory. Until now, the streetcar served primarily as a people mover in the downtown area, where most of the TriMet service is free anyway. The eastside streetcar loop is starting to get into TriMet's transportation territory, but could be considered as no more than a downtown extension over to the central eastside. There is no question that installing a second transit alternative on the exact same corridors as frequent service TriMet buses will effect bus boardings, and as a result TriMet farebox revenues.
It's the transit equivalent of Julius Ceaser's 49 BC march across the Rubicon river. It might be speculated that TriMet doesn't look too kindly on this streetcar plan, and I can't blame them. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the workers on S.E. 17th found themselves voting for Sho Dozono over streetcar guru Sam Adams for mayor.
There's another issue of course, and it's just a small one: financing.
Although streetcars are far cheaper than light rail to build, they are far less popular with the Federal Transit Administration. One of the main reasons behind this is that streetcars just don't carry that many people. They serve as people movers or local pedestrian circulators, but they don't serve commute functions to any significant degree.
What streetcars do well is bring in economic development. It's one of the reasons I greatly admire the mode, and think they are good things to build. However, it's also something that is hard to quantify, and the FTA currently does not use economic development indicators as a significant tool in deciding how to make expenditures of federal funds.
The current 8-mile streetcar loop (4 miles each way) weighs in at a total construction cost of approximately $87 million. To establish bidirectional service, then, each mile would cost around $22 million. It doesn't take much staring at the proposed system map to see that the extensions outweigh the current system by many times. If there is no federal money, where will the financing come from? Local Improvement Districts (LIDs) cannot raise the money all on their own.
These are hardly the only issues. How, for example, will the streetcar fare against congestion? They can't weave around traffic impediments like buses can. The cars themselves cost about the same as three standard TriMet buses -- and for the money that means TriMet buses can offer more frequent service at a higher passenger capacity for the same money -- and without the need to tear up city streets.
But is this all academic? Does Adams really intend to build this many streetcar lines? Or is he applying his Machiavellian brand of politics to Portland, by making campaign promises he has no intention of keeping? It should be noted that by proposing streetcars for all the historic routes, he touches on Portland's brand of self-involved nostalgia while also promising "a streetcar in every pot" for nearly every neighborhood in the city.
Does any of this plan make sense? Perhaps. Certainly the peninsula of North Portland is under-served by transit, but I suspect that a better approach would be a spur line of Expo MAX, perhaps to a transit center in St. Johns or even beyond in Rivergate.
A better idea would be to install the streetcar along Sandy out to Parkrose. Sandy Boulevard is in many places well behind the times, and ripe for redevelopment. Its diagonal route cuts across so many neighborhoods that it would spread the economic impact of the project more than any other single proposal on the system plan map. It would still have impacts on TriMet service, however the 12 bus that serves Sandy is already over capacity and slow; any additional service here would be welcome. Most of all, it would help to turn over a strip of road that desperately needs public attention, which means that it's a relevant redevelopment for 21st century Portland. The fact that it's also someplace Portland Traction once ran would be a nice symmetry, but no more.
Most of all, however, what I feel we need is a breather. Streetcar building is not an end-all answer to every need the city has, and we need to stop giving it a Barack Obama-like mania. Yes, it's cool. But transportation should be designed with a clear and level head.
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Saturday, March 22, 2008
Bachelor's Special #1: Instant Noodles Review
The bachelor's kitchen can be a lonely lonely place. Recently, this predicament came up in conversations with some of my fellow bachelor friends, and I hit upon the idea of trying to solve it. Labels: Food
The goal, of course, would be to produce a good quality meal in 30 minutes or less, with little mess and few ingredients. This is a challenge I'm still working to solve.
In the meanwhile, how about something simpler to tide you by? A long time staple of the college student is the good old Nissen Cup [of] Noodles. Just add boiling water to these foam cups, and three minutes later, you have an Asian-styled take on the TV dinner.
One of my favorite places to shop is Uwajimaya, the Asian grocery supermarket with locations in the Portland and Seattle metro areas. Normally I shop there for some of the best produce anywhere, as well as exotic seasonings and a wide variety of noodles. One aisle, though -- one entire aisle -- is lined with instant noodle selections. Lined with them! Might there be something more exciting lurking behind the cryptic labels?
This is no Michael Pollan whole foods meal we'll be experiencing here. But it's okay to be bad now and then, and everything here is probably a heck of a lot better for you than the average McBurger.
Let the tests begin!
Nissen Cup [of] Noodles
We can't really undertake this sort of comparison without a base to start from. What to choose? This was the easiest decision: the iconic Nissen Cup [of] Noodles. These little foam cups are the the most popular and most commonly known of the instant noodle world. They're cheap, too: my chicken-flavored cup cost me a whopping 49 cents.
Pluses: The price of the Cup [of] Noodles would lead one to believe that the quality would be low as well, yet the resulting product isn't really all that bad. The noodles have a curling tendency that makes them easy to eat with either fork or chopsticks. The tall, narrow cup shape helps to hold in heat for the product for a long time.
Minuses: If there is any major fault with this old staple, it's that it's forgettable. The flavor is bland, and the ingredients can hardly be called authentic for a ramen soup; corn, peas and carrots seems to speak to sourcing common American agricultural products if anything.
Bottom line: For 49 cents, it's hard to beat the value, but surely noodles can be better than this.
"Kung Fu" Szechuan Pork Bowl
Next up: an entry made in Taiwan, the rather comically named "Kung Fu" Szechuan Pork Bowl. This is a typical offering from the instant noodles aisle at Uwajimaya, coming in a foam container shaped like a bowl. Flavor choices tend to be based on form of meat used; I chose the Szechuan pork flavor for its apparent position middle-of-the-pack. Unlike the Cup [of] Noodles, this noodle bowl comes with two packets inside that much be opened and added to the noodles, one containing dried vegetables and seasonings, the other containing a dried soup base that looks a bit like dried caulking. $0.79 of yummy goodness.
Pluses: The foam bowl on the Kung Fu offering is particularly thick, making it easy to hold. Although the flavor is not stellar, it is more pronounced than the standard old Nissen offering.
Minuses: The dried vegetables and other ingredients tend to stay rather firm, and the noodles, being round, tend to be harder to grasp with chopsticks than the good-old 49 cent standard.
Bottom line: While marginally better than the standard in flavor, with hard, difficult to identify vegetables this is a forgettable bowl of noodles.
Nong Shim Bowl Noodle Soup Spicy Chicken Flavor
Our next challenger is from Nong Shim, and is made in the exotic far-eastern locale of Rancho Cucamonga, California. Again we have a bowl-style package. Nong Shim only has one packet inside -- an envelope of seasonings -- rather than two. The resulting product is a Ramen style soup. It's pretty boring looking when made, nothing like the pretty picture on the label. $1.09 at Uwajimaya.
Pluses: The Nong Shim has a nice spicy kick that is quite appetizing. The noodles are no larger than the others, yet it seems a more substantial meal.
Minuses: The broth seems a bit cheesy at first; the vegetables are almost nonexistent.
Bottom line: Twice the price of the standard, the Nong Shim offering is also more the twice the flavor. Cheesy, but a good buy.
Thai Kitchen Noodle Cart Pad Thai
The Thai Kitchen line of products is fairly easy to find these days, being in most major supermarkets; I grabbed one anyway just to round out the test. The product comes in a different format, this time in a square plastic box similar to a Rubbermaid sandwich container. Inside is a packet of noodles, a packet of oil, a packet of seasonings, and a plastic fork. To prepare, you empty the noodle packet in the container and pour in boiling water, then lid it. When done, the water gets poured out of handy slits in the lid, the lid is removed, and then the oil and seasoning are tossed with the noodles. The price is $1.99, a full four times the Nissen standard. 
Pluses: The final product is tasty and decent. While, as usual, it's not as nice as the package photo, this did at least produce something that would look good on a plate. The inclusion of a plastic fork makes this ideal for an on the go meal.
Minuses: The container can get quite hot while cooking, making it harder to remove the water. Similarly, be careful not to overfill it; the lid doesn't feel the most secure at times.
Bottom line: This feels more like a real meal than the other options, and the tacky factor is restricted to the plastic container and utensil.
Nissen Donbei Tempura Soba
Like the standard, this -- our most expensive option at $2.69 -- is made by Nissen. Preparation is similar to the other bowl-shaped entries, with a seasoning packet that is poured onto the dried noodles before boiling water is added. Unlike the others, this one comes with what looks like a giant coin shaped cookie -- a cake of tempura batter which gets unwrapped and added like a floating crouton on top of the soup.
Unlike the standard, this product is attempting to simulate an authentic Japanese dish -- it is, after all, made in and primarily marketed to Japan. The noodles are square cut buckweat soba noodles with a decent texture and more flavor than any of the others. Upon opening, the strong yet appetizing seafood aroma emanates from the noodles. 
Pluses: Toothsome and tasty noodles, good flavor, exotic without being overpowering.
Minuses: Tempura cake seems odd -- what actually has been fried in it? It appears to be no more than a hunk of batter with no filling, and soon gets soggy in the soup.
Bottom line: A nice treat and a welcome break from monotony, but not worth it if you have a real kitchen and a far cheaper package of noodles.
The winner is a hard call. This is, after all, a "bachelor's special", designed as a quick and cheap meal on a night when you just don't feel like cooking. It's not a gourmet meal, so authenticity -- however nice -- isn't all that important. Fill and taste, however, are.
So, the winner?
The nod goes to Nong Shim. Although not the most authentic of the choices, their noodle bowls are by far the strongest flavored and most stomach-satisfying. They're also one of the simpler preparations, with a single packet to open and dump in.
Both the Thai Kitchen and Nissen Donbei offerings were worthy attempts at something better than a throw-away Cup [of] Noodles, and might make a good once-in-a-while addition to the cupboard, but it would be just as easy to stock some dried soba noodles and some bonito, or some rice noodles and peanut sauce if you felt like that sort of thing.
And of course, don't forget the humble Cup [of] Noodles standard; at $0.49, it remains the bargain basement champ.
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Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Week in Review... in review.
Since December, I've pumped out 11 weeks of Week In Review, but I just don't think I can put out a 12th. Labels: Blogging, Book Reviews, Food, Site News, Week in Review
I've learned a few things. First off, it's still too blog-centric. When I began The Addendum it was meant to be just that, an addendum for things that didn't have place in the regular route99west web site, but which were still begging for an outlet. Casual efforts, off-topic items, rants and raves, and the like. WIR was an attempt to introduce some regularity to the mix.
I have discovered I don't like regularity.
Once you start going down the "true" blog road, it becomes a kind of obligation. "What will I write about now?" That kind of thing. It can quickly become a contest to see who can write about something soonest, and with as many blogs as there are our there, why bother? You'll never be first.
Nor will you be original. The vast majority of blogs -- including my own WIR posts -- are basically responses to the work of others, most often the old media. It's all too much a mix of incestuousness and parasitic journalism.
Not everyone is like this though. More recently, I have been inspired by KAB's Good Stuff NW (who recently celebrated her 400th post by-the-way, congratulations!) to do some food writing. This is a topic I've wanted to get into for some time, but I just never quite got an idea of where I could begin.
Now, however, I do: the plight of the bachelor chef. I'm working on a few original content posts (wow, what a novel idea on the Blogosphere!) including solutions from the gourmet (cook it yourself in under 30 minutes with no canned, frozen, or packaged ingredients) to the not-so-gourmet (cup-o-noodles reviews, anyone?). And more importantly, I'm having fun writing them!
Now this is what the Addendum was for.
So, changes are coming to the blog. No more WIR. Instead? Less frequent but more original content, and maybe even a bit of firsthand journalism. One feature that's not going away are the book reviews, probably one of the more enjoyable features I write for The Addendum. In fact, I may have some news about those in the near future. And I'll still have thoughts and observations about journalism, local current events, government, and transportation topics too when appropriate.
But right now, can I just say, I can't wait until strawberry season?
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Friday, February 22, 2008
Week in Review, Vol. XI
Pronouncements of doom for various car styles have always amused me. Some time ago, my mother covered a screen with newspaper clippings of British sports cars -- the covers of magazines, newspaper articles, even classified advertisements. One of the articles is written in the late 1970s, and predicted the doom of the convertible. New U.S. safety standards, you see, made them inherently unsafe, and therefore it was only a matter of time before they would be gone from the market, a memory from the past. Labels: Automobiles, Civics, Design, Food, Portland, Transportation
Yeah. Right.
Well, now it's the muscle car's turn.
While in the world of transportation, it appears the Washington State Ferries sytem is in trouble. WS-DOT is even proposing a restructuring.
The mess gave me one of those "what ever happened to" moments regarding Mike Thorne. You might recall that Thorne used to be director of Port of Portland and quit to run for governor. When he dropped out of the race, he went to run the ferries in Washington.
So what's become of Mike? And can he be blamed (rightly or wrongly) for any of Washington's water-borne mess? Well he quit the ferry job in 2004 and returneed to Pendleton. As Seattle Times staff writer Susan Gilmore put it in 2004,"He said he came into the job with huge expectations, that he'd be able to achieve financial footing with no plan how to get there. Raising ferry fares drove away customers, voters rejected Referendum 51, which would have dumped billions of dollars into state transportation projects, and there were no plans how to replace the aging state ferries, some 70 years old."
And now? Notice that "Big Look" land use review that the legislature wants to fund? Thorne's a member. That may or may not mean anything -- put your tinfoil conspiracy hats on now if you wish -- but I find it an interesting path for someone who thought themselves a gubernatorial contender.
Which brings up another question: what ever happened to Ron Saxton?
Also up in Seattle, the Big O reports that it may only be a matter of time before the Sonics move to Oklahoma. The single commenter on the Big O's story says "who cares".
I have a question for you, ladies and gentleman. Who owns the Blazers? Where does he live? And what might he do if Seattle no longer had a pro basketball team?
Lastly, a food related story. Author Michael Pollan has been making the local circuit here lately, sending parts of the Portland food blogosphere into titters. Why? Pollan has written a book that dares to suggest that we should eat food, not "food substitutes".
Pollan has some interesting things to say, and Edible Portland sat down and did a video interview with him. The first part is here. I found Pollan's comments about Sour Cream and tofu-based meat substitutes to be so common-sense based that I had to pinch myself that I was hearing these words at all. Can it be? Might sugar and butter be... acceptable? It's so sad to think that Julia Child -- who seemed to improve any recipe by adding either butter or "booze" to it -- didn't live to see this day.
That's all for now.
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